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
Provide opportunities for children to experiment with writing.
Encouraging drawing and writing helps a preschooler gain fine motor skills and connect the expression of ideas through written words.
Source: University of Virginia
Effective Practices
- Label and narrate your writing.
- Make the act and purpose of writing visible to children as you reflect on your own writing in the classroom.
- Infuse large writing displays in whole group routines, activities, and discussions.
- Join writing with something you are discussing/teaching.
- Discuss the form and function of different types of writing.
- Discuss the form and function of different types of writing such as signs, lists, and letters; for example:
- Signs: we don’t start at the top of the page and may put words in the middle to get everyone’s attention.
- Lists: each line in the list represents one thing.
- Discuss the form and function of different types of writing such as signs, lists, and letters; for example:
- Select books that feature interesting print features.
- Take dictation.
- Help children connect their ideas and words by writing down what they say and explicitly connecting.
- Encourage children’s writing.
- Encourage children’s independent writing.
- Make children’s writing products visible.
- Comment on the value of their writing efforts.
- Prompt continued exploration of writing.
- Provide child-friendly writing materials.
- Encourage journal writing throughout the day.
Tools and Activities
Writing Activities
Find simple ways for young children to engage in writing activities, from scribbling to drawing to letter-like forms and shapes.
Learn More from Reading Rockets
Picture Story, Word Story
Appropriate for children who have begun to write, this instructional strategy provides students with explicit instruction in which the teacher models writing at each development level.
Download from New Mexico Public Education Department
PAC and Emergent Writing
Tips for building phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, and concepts of print into writing activities.
Download from Cox Campus
Emergent Writing Daily Activities
Simple, everyday activities for Prek-K children to use writing to communicate useful information.
Download from Cox Campus
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.