Children begin their path to reading as babies when they hear and respond to the sound of a human voice. Literacy—the ability to comprehend and communicate through reading and writing—begins as babies understand spoken words. Listening, talking, reading and writing are all parts of early literacy learning—and they’re all connected.
On the road to becoming readers and writers, young children need many opportunities to hear and understand spoken language. This helps them become aware of the different sounds of language. They also need to learn about print—letters and words seen in books and all around them at home and in their community. Young children need writing to help them learn about reading, and reading to help them learn about writing. However, they need to talk and listen before learning about both!
It is especially important for adults to encourage a love of reading. At Once Upon a Time we have dedicated book areas and story time is held every day. We place a strong emphasis on listening and attention skills through our circle time activities and playing games. When children are developmentally ready we use an English phonics programme called ‘Letters and Sounds’.
Sharing a wide range of books and talking about the pictures is a really important step that must not be forgotten when children first start learning to read. This increases children’s language skills and develops their understanding of the world. In the early months of pre-school, we place an emphasis on sharing stories and listening to the sounds of language such as rhythm and rhyme. When individual children are ready for direct phonics teaching we focus on letter-sound relationships. Children learn how a letter (grapheme) or a group of letters make a sound (phoneme) for example, ‘ai’ sound as in ‘rain’. Letter sounds are not taught in alphabetical order, instead they are taught in the order best suited to blending for reading. Children can then start to read simple words by blending the sounds together to make a word for example s-a-t, sat. We use lots of practical ways such as searching for letter shells in the sand or making play dough letters.
We have recently introduced the Oxford Reading Tree books for our pre-school children. These fun and innovative books are designed for young, beginner readers. There are two strands within the series: phonics books enable children to practice their letters and sounds and first stories introduce young readers to common words and everyday language. We also use a supplementary scheme: Songbirds. These are lively, engaging phonics stories with built-in progression to guarantee reading success.