Learning to read: get them talking first

This is a Book Week guest post by Rachel McClary from rightfromthestart. Rachel is an early years consultant and has some great advice for parents of babies and pre-schoolers on what we can do to prepare them so they will take to reading happily and easily.

When our children first attend pre-school and school, for a lot of parents the first concern is how they will learn to read and write and how to support them at home. There are, in my opinion, a lot of commercial materials to encourage reading and writing that are not worth the paper they are written on or the batteries that feed them. The most important skill for learning to read is the ability to talk and listen – as James Bitten puts it, ‘Reading and writing float on a sea of talk’.

If we think about it logically, how can we expect children to be able to write stories if they can’t tell a story in spoken form, or do not even understand what a story is? If a child can’t listen well and distinguish between two sounds, how can we expect them to learn phonics? In fact, I bet few of us know that the size of a child’s vocabulary at the age of three is the significant indicator of later success in reading.

So what should we be doing to help? It may seem obvious, but talking and singing with babies is a brilliant first step. This engages them and shows them what communication is for and starts an early familiarity for picking out rhythm and rhyme which are essential skills for breaking down words.

Read lots of stories – current recommendations are five stories per day for pre-schoolers (this includes any that they may read at school or nursery). Don’t worry that children may want to read the same story again and again, in fact this repetition helps them to develop a sight vocabulary, predict and interact with language patterns.

Get children to join in with rhymes and raps, make it fun by adding rapper costumes and big actions – Ros Bayley has some great resources for rapping and steady beat activities that are available through Lawrence Educational.

Teach your child the alphabet using the letter names first – children are used to naming things, think about how they learn vocabulary, colours and numbers – they don’t need to learn the sound associated with it at this point.

Talk about sounds, maybe things in the environment or copying voice sounds. Play games like I-spy, but use the sound rather than the letter name. Use role play to help develop their vocabulary and build dens and cubby holes for them to go in and talk to one another. Help children to learn the purpose of print by pointing out signs, and talking them through the everyday stuff we read and write or involving them in helping you with shopping or to do lists. Explain the difference between words and pictures and show them that sometimes things are handwritten and sometimes typed.

In my experience, the majority of children, if they grow up with books around them and develop a love of the written and spoken word, if they learn to have fun with sounds, rhyme and song and can understand the purpose of reading and writing, if they are not pushed to achieve things before they are ready and made to sit down at tables and learn by rote, if they are given experiences that are relevant to them and their own interests, then they will learn to read easily, and it will not be a chore. When your child is ready to learn about phonics it should be clear from their questions and play.

The charity I-can has some excellent resources for parents with ideas for literacy and language development and some of them are free. A highly recommended book is Flying Start with literacy – loads of fun ideas aimed at parents and answers to lots of common questions about literacy.

Written by Rachel McClary. Rachel is an early years consultant and blogs at www.rightfromthestart.wordpress.com. You can also find her on Twitter.