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
Familiarize children with letters of the alphabet and corresponding sounds and foster an understanding of print concepts.
Print knowledge is a precursor to skilled reading. Preschool children’s print knowledge is linked to later achievement in decoding, spelling, and reading comprehension. Print knowledge sets the stage for children to understand the alphabetic principle.
Source: Institute of Education Sciences, Foundations in Emergent Literacy Instruction
Effective Practices
- Small group explicit instruction:
- Teach letter names and letters sounds.
- Show a letter and ask the child to point out the same letter.
- Ask children to discriminate between different letters, (e.g., "Point to the letter T.")
- Plan to teach all 26 letter names and sounds.
- Provide frequent exposure to letter names and sounds.
- Teach letter names and letters sounds.
- Reinforce learning through practice and play.
- Plan whole-or-small group activities to reinforce concepts taught during explicit instruction and prior learning
- Incorporate letter shapes, letter manipulatives, and writing materials into learning centers.
- Plan letter-learning games.
- Use daily routines to reinforce concepts.
- Use children’s printed names in a variety of ways, such as identifying helpers, choosing who will play in particular learning areas, and determining who is ready to line up for outside play.
- Use print referencing during read-alouds.
- Focus children’s attention on print by explicitly commenting on, asking questions about, pointing to, and tracking text that is being read aloud
- Teach concepts of print such as parts of the book, reading left to right, different print symbols and that words (not pictures) convey meaning of written words.
Tools and Activities
Classroom Strategies: Alphabet Matching
Alphabet matching is an early literacy activity designed to help young learners recognize the uppercase and lowercase letters of the alphabet.
Learn More from Reading Rockets
17 Activities for Teaching Alphabet Knowledge
Get activities for large and small groups or one-on-one practice in building letter recognition and letter naming skills.
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Phonological awareness instruction paired with alphabet knowledge:
- Show a letter and ask the child to point out the same letter.
- Ask children to discriminate between different letters.
- For example, "Point to the letter T."
- Use children’s printed names in a variety of ways such as identifying helpers, choosing who will play in particular learning areas, and determining who is ready to line up for outside play.
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.