Strategies, Practices and Tools
Decades of research provides a clear understanding of how skilled reading develops and how to most effectively support children in learning to read proficiently. Evidence-based, structured literacy instruction develops all the foundational language and literacy skills that must be woven together so that children can make meaning from the words they read.
The information presented here is intended to complement evidence-based core reading curricula and intervention programs already in place and help educators fill in gaps or modify their approaches with effective strategies, instructional practices, and tools and activities to implement them.
Early childhood educators can focus their practices to help children build language and emergent literacy skills. Pre-K and K-3 educators can find evidence-based ways to provide explicit, implicit, and incidental instruction across the essential components of literacy. And English Language Arts teachers across grades 4-12 will find effective practices to help students meet the increasing need for skilled reading.
Instructional Strategy
Help children connect their ideas and words to writing.
Even when it seems that a young child’s writing is simply marks and scribbles, there is a lot being explored and learned through the process. It is remarkable what information you can glean by watching their scribbles change over time. During the toddler years, children’s writing increasingly reflects their ability to distinguish print from pictures, their understanding that writing carries meaning, and their understanding of the rules that govern print (e.g., left-to-right).
Source: University of Virginia
Effective Practices
- Label and narrate your writing.
- Make the act and purpose of writing visible in the early learning setting.
- Model writing throughout the day in different contexts.
- Use a variety of large writing materials.
- Take dictation.
- Help children connect their ideas and words to writing.
- In the context of reading books or during activities, pause to provide a quick definition of key words.
- Encourage children’s writing.
- Have children talk about their scribbles and drawings to reinforce that writing is intended to communicate meaning.
- Provide child-friendly writing materials that are accessible and available throughout the room.
- Provide materials which are easy to use (e.g., large grip crayons or large paint brushes near a child-sized easel), as well as displayed in interesting and accessible ways (e.g., in colored tins or baskets).
- Create a writing center that focuses on different, meaningful writing activities; provide models of different writing forms and allow them to explore and make their own versions.
- Examples include card writing during the holidays (with stickers and writing materials), letter writing (with envelopes or ‘stamps’ and perhaps a mailbox display), books (small pieces of paper stapled together), etc.
Tools and Activities
Emergent Writing
Explore the developmental progression of writing and discover ways to support emergent writing skills in early childhood programs.
Learn More from Head Start Early Childhood Learning & Knowledge Center
Related
Developmental benchmarks and literacy behaviors that most children display at a particular age/grade.
Evidence-based reading interventions support students who are identified as struggling with specific foundational literacy skills.
Evidence-based core curricula, interventions, and supplemental programs play a critical role in supporting students’ reading success.
While seemingly effortless, good reading is made up of a set of complex skills and strategies.