Welcome to Book Nook! I’m going to share some of my favourite children’s books and ways in which you can use them to build your child’s emergent literacy and language skills. Please remember, it’s never too early to start reading to your child. Read to your child often as it helps them to develop listening, thinking, language and reading skills.
Emergent literacy and language refers to:
The information your child needs in order to be a successful reader. There are ample research studies indicating that the larger your child’s vocabulary when entering school, the greater their academic success. Further, studies also indicate that children who begin school with greater literacy skills, phonological knowledge and an understanding of print in books (this does NOT mean they should know how to read even though they are 2 and 3 years!) also end up having higher academic success.
Emergent literacy skills include:
Sound awareness:
Understanding that words can be broken into smaller sounds and that certain letters correspond to a certain sound.
Knowledge of print:
Understanding that print is made up of letters of the alphabet, that letters put together make up a word and that (English) print is read from left to right.
Vocabulary:
How many words your child understands in terms of meaning is a critical factor in learning to read. The vocabulary should be both receptive (comprehension) and expressive (verbal). The larger the vocabulary the easier it will be for your child to learn new words and understand stories.
Story comprehension:
listening to and understanding stories will make it easier for the child to eventually read and write stories independently.
Emergent literacy and language skills can be picked up during book reading, but the way you read to your child will make a bigger difference to how and how much they learn about literacy. Therefore, I am sharing with you some helpful tips or strategies for how you can read a book with your child in order to best support their learning and development.
Every other month I will introduce a book and talk about how you can use it to build children’s vocabulary, language and foundations to reading and writing. If there is a particular book you would like me to talk about, please put in your feedback here or send me an email.
Enjoy!
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This month’s book: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? - Bill Martin Jr/ Eric Carle Topic: Developing Vocabulary and Rhyming |
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This book is great because it can be used with babies, toddlers and preschoolers! Additionally, it can be used to target several areas of literacy and language development such as:
Vocabulary – Use it to build on your child’s vocabulary and knowledge of colours and animals. You can also talk about how the animal looks, describe it; talk about the eyes, nose, claws, trunk etc and what they do with it; or talk about what looks funny!
If your child is currently not at the 1 or 2 word level, or if you feel your child may get confused with too many words read out together, you can simplify it by saying for eg “……what do you see? I see an elephant/dog/cat/duck” etc where you leave out the colour before the animal name. If your child is at the 1 word level then you can use this book to help them build up to the 2 word level and higher by prompting them to say the name of the colour when they say just the animal name. E.g.
Adult: Red bird red bird what do you see? I see a…..?
Child: Duck.
Adult: Yes, Yellow DUCK!.... which colour duck?
Child: Yellow.
Adult: Yellow duck! Now you say it together.
As your child starts stringing words together, allow them to fill in the blanks when you pause. They will soon start saying “what do you see” (4 words together) or “I see a” (3 words together). In this manner you build up their sentences as well. E.g.
Adult : What…..?
Child: do you see.
Adult: I……..
Child: see a…..
When you read this book out loud, use gestures and actions each time you say “WHAT do…..”and point to your eyes each time you say “what do you SEE”. Visual feedback, actions and gestures are a great way to help your child learn.
Rhyming: This book has a fixed chorus line on each page that rhymes. “What do you SEE? I see a/an xx looking at ME!” have your child imitate you and later pause so they slowly start to say these lines independently. If your child is older, you can talk about words that sound alike, and give them examples. Exposing them to rhyming words will build their sound awareness skills – a skill crucial to later reading and writing success. Remember, children with good awareness of sound patterns and language patterns become better readers.