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Promoting Literacy in Babies and Toddlers
Mini-lecture: Early literacy doesn’t mean early reading. It means offering many moments, minutes and hours that will encourage and stimulate cognitive development that is necessary for literacy to blossom. It means developing a love/ a joy for literacy. Each child develops, changes, and grows at his/her own rate.
Activity: Each question is on a strip of paper that is folded up and placed in a basket. Tell parents that we are going to talk about ways to promote literacy in babies and toddlers asking them to pick a question out of the basket, read it aloud, and offer an answer.
Make Sharing Books Part Of Every Day
Read or share stories at bedtime or on the bus.
Question 1: When do you read to your toddler? What time of day?
Have Fun
Children can learn from you that books are fun, which is an important ingredient in learning to read. Question 2: What is the most important ingredient when reading to your child?
A Few Minutes is OK—Don't Worry if You Don't Finish the Story
Young children can only sit for a few minutes for a story, but as they grow, they will be able to sit longer. Question 3: How long should you read to your child?
Talk or Sing About the Pictures
You do not have to read the words to tell a story.
Question 4: What others ways can you tell a story to your child while you’re reading or in addition to reading?
Let Children Turn the Pages
Babies need board books and help turning pages, but a three-year-old can do it alone. Remember, it's OK to skip pages!
Question 5: At what age can a child turn the pages of a book?
Show Children the Cover Page
Question 6: What’s a good way to introduce a story to your child? Where do you start?
Show Children the Words
Run your finger along the words as you read them, from left to right.
Question 7: At what age can you show your child how to read from left to right?
Make the Story Come Alive
Create voices for the story characters and use your body to tell the story.
Question 8: Same as Question 4
Make It Personal
Talk about your own family, pets, or community when you are reading about others in a story.
Question 9: What other ways can you get your child interested in reading?
Ask Questions About the Story, and Let Children Ask Questions Too!
Use the story to engage in conversation and to talk about familiar activities and objects.
Question 10: How can you engage in a conversation when reading a story to your child?
Let Children Tell the Story
Children as young as three years old can memorize a story, and many children love to be creative through storytelling. Explain what the story is about.
Question 11: At about what age can a child memorize and repeat a story to you?
Book Handling Behaviors
Behaviors related to a child's physical manipulation or handling of books, such as page turning and chewing.
Question 12: How can chewing on a book promote literacy?
Looking and Recognizing
Behaviors related to how children pay attention to and interact with pictures in books, such as gazing at pictures or laughing at a favorite picture. Behaviors that show recognition of and a beginning understanding of pictures in books, such as pointing to pictures of familiar objects.
Question 13: How do you know if your toddler is comprehending a story?
Picture and Story Comprehension
Behaviors that show a child's understanding of pictures and events in a book, such as imitating an action seen in a picture or talking about the events in a story.
Question 14: Same as Question 13
Story-Reading Behaviors
Behaviors that include children's verbal interactions with books and their increasing understanding of print in books, such as babbling in imitation of reading or running fingers along printed words.
Question 15: Same as Question 13
Retrieved from http://www.zerotothree.org/child-development/early-language-literacy/tips-tools-early-lit-and-lang.html on February 16, 2013. Handout entitled “What We Know About Early Literacy and Language Development”.
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