The first, second and third steps can be implemented simultaneously, accommodating learners’ needs and preferences.
The below parental guide explains the six steps of how to nurture literacy foundation and cultivate love of reading from birth until primary school age.
The first step is to create a literacy-rich home environment. Establishing a home environment filled with books and printed materials promotes ‘consistency’ in language exposure and learning.
The second step is providing children with daily or consistent story time. Reading books to children embracing loving parent-child moments is vital to nurture their love of reading and literacy foundation. For more detailed parental guide on how to best provide children with story time, click the button below.
FAQ 1: Is reading stories important in child language development?
Yes, it is vital to read books because reading stories can support language development by situating and immersing language learners in various sociocultural contexts and scenarios that are supported for language acquisition. In addition, listening to parents read stories can help develop children’s phonological, lexical, syntactic, and semantic development.
To help support the development of children’s literacy foundation, it is crucial to understand how children cultivate a literacy foundation from birth, as demonstrated in the three phases below.
FAQ 2: How can we help children develop their vocabularies?
When children understands and connects the sounds and meanings of words, they begin to develop vocabulary. Singing songs, reading stories, and conversing with them play an essential role during this phase (Phase 1 in the above chart).
Following, children start to recognize letters through their implicit and explicit exposure to them (phase 2 in the above chart). Reading stories, watching song videos, playing with alphabet figures, and setting up your home environment rich in print with text can support the development of their recognition.
During phase 1 and 2, it is highly suggested to provide children with ample language input time to foster their phonological and letter recognition and knowledge.
FAQ 3: How can we support children’s writing development?
Between age one and a year and a half, have children start to enjoy scribbling and drawing freely as they wish. At around age three, children can be exposed to writing systems and tell a story or message while the parents write on behalf of them and demonstrate how to write. When they reach around four or five, they can start tracing letters if they are ready or interested in writing. When they get used to tracing, they can move onto copying letters and then finally writing simple words independently.
