/ Effective Literacy Practices / Strategies, Practices and Tools (Ages 0-3) (Phonological Awareness)
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.
- Strategy 1
- Strategy 2
- Strategy 3
Instructional Strategy
Talk to babies in their language — parentese.
Parentese is not “baby talk” that uses made-up words or silly sounds like “goo goo gaa gaa” According to Patricia Kuhl, parentese’ is fully-grammatical speech that uses real words, longer, exaggerated vowels, and a sing-song tone of voice.
Source: ZERO TO THREE
Effective Practices
- Engage children through the use of exaggerated sounds to help them learn language.
- Use stretched out vowels.
- Use a high-pitched tone of voice
- Use simple sentences.
- Practice speaking to children by saying simple words in a happy and elevated tone but with a much slower tempo.
- When speaking in parentese, use the real names of things to help young children associate things using the right terms.
- Incorporate the child’s name when using parentese, always face the child and make regular eye contact.
Tools and Activities
Phonological Awareness
Find more effective practices and examples of how to support phonological awareness with infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.
Learn More from the National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching and Learning
Parentese in Practice
Get tips and see examples of using parentese with infants.
Watch this short video from Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences
Instructional Strategy
Share nursery rhymes, rhyming books, alliterative texts, and songs and chants that play with words, including in home languages.
Babies learn the differences between sounds (e.g., voices, barking dogs, and vacuum cleaners) and language as they interact with others and explore the world around them. Songs, poems, rhymes, silly sentences, and rhythmic and repeating phrases can capture toddlers’ attention, inspire them to move their bodies, and encourage their active participation in singing or following along. It’s not just fun to infuse the toddler classroom with this sound-oriented language; it’s important for their literacy development.
Source: National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching and Learning
Effective Practices
- Sing nonsense songs that rhyme or tell a story with rhymes as you conduct familiar routines.
- Use language that has silly phrases children can repeat.
- Sing and actively teach songs or poems with specific movements/finger plays.
- Adding movement to songs and poems engages young children and also provides a concrete way for them to reflect an awareness of various sound units (e.g., words within sentences) and rhythm patterns.
- Select books that will expose children to rhymes, rhythmic text, and repeat text.
- Provide regular opportunities for children to hear rhyming text and learn the songs and poems they most enjoy.
Tools and Activities
Planned Language Approach: Focus on Phonological Awareness
This video presentation explores the developmental progression of phonological awareness and how to support its development with young children.
Learn More from Head Start Early Childhood Learning & Knowledge Center
How Parents and Families Support Phonological Awareness
Help families understand how they can support their child’s development at home and in the community.
Download from Head Start Early Childhood Learning & Knowledge Center
Instructional Strategy
Support and develop child’s ability to notice different sounds in words.
Rhyming helps babies and children learn about words, sounds and language formation. Hearing and using rhyme, rhythm and repetition helps children develop early literacy skills
Source: University of Virginia
Effective Practices
- Draw attention to the rime endings of rhyming words.
- Present rhyming text using exaggerated stress and silly voices to emphasize rhyming words within sentences.
- Play music with obvious rhyme and repeat phrases as part of the daily routine.
- Say rhyming words, song refrains, or rhythmic or repeated text together.
- Teach rhymes or songs by presenting a line and then asking children to join you as you repeat the words/phrase a second time.
- Support rhyming by pausing before rhyming words in a very well-known song and encourage children to say the words with you.
- Comment on words that sound similar or rhyme.
- Explicitly label and define rhyming words within songs, poems, or text to reinforce the concept of rhyme and draw children’s focus to the sound of the language.
Tools and Activities
Sound and Rhyme Awareness
With support, toddlers develop their ability to notice different sounds in words.
Learn More from ECE Resource Hub
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.