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 develop early literacy skills by providing them with opportunities to explore books and other written materials
Reading to children is important for language development. Caregivers can be intentional about the books they choose to read aloud to maximize language interactions with young children.
Effective Practices
- Make reading interactive and fun!
- Birth to 6 months: Use books with simple, large pictures or designs with bright colors.
- Make board books available for toddlers to look at, turn pages, and talk about with you and others.
- 18 to 36 months: In the context of reading books or during activities, pause to provide a quick definition of key words.
- Tell stories and use finger plays.
- Birth to 6 months: Repeat favorite songs, stories, rhymes, or finger plays on a regular basis when interacting with babies.
- Use puppets and do simple finger plays that toddlers can imitate.
- Use books as part of child’s daily routines; reading can happen in various settings.
- Read before naptime or bedtime.
- Share books made of plastic at bath time.
- Read a story while waiting for the bus.
- Bring books to the doctor’s office.
- Read with gusto.
- Use different voices for different characters of a story.
- Let the child “read” their own way.
- Let children turn the pages at their own pace.
- Follow the child’s lead to make reading a positive experience.
- Let the child choose books or select books to meet their age and interest.
- Birth to 6 months: Offer chunky books to touch and feel.
- 6 to 18 months: Offer sturdy board books with familiar bedtime routines, few words to a page, simple rhymes, animals, shapes of all sizes.
- 18 to 36 months: Offer simple stories or rhyming books, counting, the alphabet, shapes, or sizes, opposites and books about the world around them.
Tools and Activities
Dialogic Reading in Preschool Classrooms
Dialogic reading is a strategy to build vocabulary and oral language skills. Watch a short video for practical tips on book selection to maximize learning.
Learn More from the Florida Department of Education
Teacher Time: Language and Literacy for Infants & Toddlers
Hear from infant and toddler teachers about how they support children’s language and literacy development.
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.