Developing Young Readers

Good Talkers Make Good Readers

By the time they start school:

• Children have acquired much of the language that a mature language user will use

• They can understand approximately 2500-2800 words.

• They can use approximately 1800-2000 words.

Language Acquisition

• “Language is the basic educational skill and children who have difficulty with language are liable to have difficulty with almost everything else. Whatever else they may need to learn or be taught, they will need language first” (Anne Locke, Living Language)

Children with a history of pre-school speech and language problems frequently have difficulty with reading.

Second Language Acquisition

• There are developmental factors common to both first and second language acquisition. Children learn roughly the same regardless of their first language background.

• Children take up to two years to develop “basic interpersonal communication skills” (playground/street survival language), but it takes from five to seven years to acquire the full range of literacy skills (cognitive academic language proficiency) needed to cope with studies such as GCSE.

• A silent (receptive) period is natural in the learning of a second language.

Listen to your child talk and ensure that he/she knows that what they have to say is important.

Developing Reading Reading is a complex skill that takes years for children

to master. However, the more curious children become about the written word, the greater the chance that they will want to learn how to read. Reading a range of texts will help children understand that books are written for different purposes and audiences and are constructed differently.

How can you help?

• Read stories just for fun• Try to make story -reading part of the routine of going to

bed. Children who are read to frequently soon learn the language of books, just as they learnt the language of speech from their parents.

• Actively promote books by sharing your own enjoyment of them- let your children see YOU reading! Children model themselves on their parents behavior.

• When reading a story together, use your finger as a guide running along the words and sentences. This helps develop left-to-right orientation.

• Draw attention to the words on signs, advertisements, and food packets.

• Use large print books and point to words as you read them.

• Read the same book several times and make it available for children to read independently.

• Ask children to make predictions before you read. Encourage children to look at the cover for clues.

• Read narrative and informational texts, poems and rhymes.

• Read functional print such as notices, recipes, instructions.

• Share greeting cards, write messages, letters, emails.

• Praise children when they :– identify letters that occur in their own name,– identify other words which start with the same letter as

their name,– identify words.

• Read familiar rhymes and leave the last word for the children to say.

• Tell or read a story and discuss the sequence of events, use picture clues, have children retell the story.