Children start learning literacy skills very early in life. The first building blocks to literacy are oral skills. Learning to tell a story helps a child to understand how letters form words, words make sentences and sentences express meaning. To be able to read children need to recognise letters and their individual sounds, mix these letters together to make the word and understand its meaning as well as remember the context of words within the sentence and paragraph. Writing a sentence is also broken down into many steps when learning. Each word is reduced to its sound, and the appropriate letter is written. Each component needs to be placed in the correct order to produce the correct word, sentence and meaning of the story. Grammar rules need to be followed and punctuation marks need to be added to give clarity to the text.
A trained speech pathologist can assess your child’s literacy skills and determine areas that your child excels in, and any areas that may be in need of assistance.
Here are some easy early literacy strategies to use with your child to help build their language skills.
Read to your child to encourage literacy
Reading stories to your child helps them to relate written words to the story as told by you. Reading aloud helps to demonstrate how words flow together to make sentences and paragraphs. Repetition is a great way to build your child’s understanding, as it reinforces the meaning of the story over time.
Expand on your reading
Ask leading or open questions about the story, or the book’s pictures, as you are reading to your child. This may include questions like “how do you think”, “what else could have happened” or “who in this story would be most likely to…” This helps to develop their comprehension of the tale and cultivate their language skills.
Hide and Seek – developing literacy through play
Stick pictures of familiar objects or grocery items from advertising on individual pieces of cardboard and write the name of the item underneath the picture. Hide the cards around the room and ask your child to find them. When each card is found, the child needs to identify the letters that make up the name on the card.
Snap
These same cards can be used in a game of snap by dividing the pile of cards face down, between all people playing. As each person turns over their card, placing it into the middle of the group, that person must name the object. “Snap” can be made by matching letters of the names of objects if there are no duplicate pictures.
Picture Fishing
Attach a paperclip to each card, and a magnet to the end of a piece of string tied to the end of a ruler or chopstick. Using the magnet, “fish” for each card and name the picture and discuss the letters that make the word.
By implementing early literacy strategies, you can help your child develop not just a talent for language but a passion for it too.
Vince Borg, Lisa Furlong, and Vicky Andrews all have a special interest in speech development and language difficulty. Book your child an appointment with a speech therapist at Box Hill Speech Pathology Clinic on (03) 9899 5494 or direct your child speech therapy questions to enquiries@speech-therapy.com.au.
