Emergent Literacy: Narrative Skills

Narrative skills is the last post in our series on emergent literacy I hope that you have found them useful.

Narrative skills are simply the ability to tell stories and describe things and events. They are important for children to be able to to share their experiences and to understand what they are learning to read because being able to talk about and explain what happens in a story helps a child understand the meaning of what they are reading.

So what can we do to help children develop narrative skills?

• Name and describe things (real objects and pictures in books) as you go through the day
• Talk through activities whilst they are happening e.g. getting dressed – “lets get dressed, first we are going to put on your pants, now we are putting on your red t-shirt, lets slide your left leg into your jeans, now your right leg, now put your feet into your socks and slip on your shoes”
• Describe future plans – first we are going to the shops, then we will go to the library and last of all we will go to the park. You can do this even before your child can talk and it helps children understand that stories have a beginning, middle and end
• Tell your child stories about what you have been doing to encourage them to share what they have done
• Talk to your child in ways that encourage interaction and a response, for example instead of saying “get your coat, we’re going to the shops” as an instruction try saying “Do you know where your coat is? Where is it? What shall we buy at the shops? What do you think we might see?” (for younger children you can ask the question and answer for them!)
• Ask questions that cannot be answered with “yes” or “no” as this encourages your child to think and increases comprehensionShare books with your child and encourage them to tell you the story using the pictures
• Play with puppets to act out traditional tales or rhymes that your child knows
• Play with sequencing cards – putting things in order e.g. photos of toothbrush, then one of toothpaste on the toothbrush and last of all one of a child brushing teeth or a child climbing a ladder, sitting at the top of the slide and then sliding down

Emergent Literacy: Phonological Awareness

Phonological Awareness sounds quite complicated but it simply means being able to hear and play with the smaller parts that make up words.

Children begin speaking by babbling or repeating the same syllable over and over again – dadada or bababa for example. Once they master several consonant-vowel repetitions, they begin mixing and matching the syllables together for example ‘daba’ ‘adda’. Already babies are showing phonological awareness which we can develop. This awareness can be increased by the use of rhymes – nursery rhymes are perfect for helping children get a sense for the feel and rhythm of language. They also begin to recognise rhyming schemes that show them how sounds are used in the language.

Activities to help increase phonological awareness include:

• Playing I spy
• Matching pictures / objects to initial sounds
• Playing alphabet lotto gamesSyllable clapping – say the word or sentence and clap the rhythm
• Syllable counting – say the word and then use fingers to count the syllables – e.g. yesterday is yes/ter/day
• Finishing the word – say the first syllable of a two syllable word and get the child to finish it e.g. zeb…ra
• Playing change the vowel – change the middle vowel to change the word, e.g. bat, bet, bit, but or cat, cot, cut (you can make a slider to do this by putting the two consonants on each side and the vowels on a strip of paper in the middle)
• Play rhyming games e.g. Slug in a Jug
• Make blends and ends dominoes
• Find the odd word out from a group eg. ring, sing, song, thing (both by listening and reading)
• Think of compund word pairs eg. foot/ball, sea/side, tea/bag
• Find rhyming pairs (the Find the Rhyme jigsaw is great for this)

Emergent Literacy: Vocabulary

Vocabulary is knowing the names of things, what words mean and when you can use them. Children build their vocabulary by coming in contact with new words over and over again – as they hear new words they assimilate them into their vocabulary and then will start using them. It takes many encounters with the same word for it to stick in their vocabulary which is one of the reasons children love repetition so much. Every time they hear the word again, they can strengthen the connection between word and object / meaning. This means that whilst it is tiresome as an adult to read the same favourite books again and again, day after day, it’s making a difference to their vocabulary!

All books help children increase their vocabulary so it is important to share books as often as possible with your children. As well as reading the words, discuss the pictures, what is happening, where are they, what they think is going to happen next, how do the characters feel – the possibilities are endless.

First word books are an excellent type of book for developing vocabulary as they have busy pictures featuring everyday objects.

This type of book includes scenes of everyday family life which gives the opportunity to discuss events, families and daily activities.

You can also choose books that will help your child put words to emotions – this is a great way to help them deal with feelings like anger, frustration, disappointment and sadness as well as joy, excitement and anticipation. Or books about first experiences which can help them build the vocabulary to deal with new places, activities and situations.

It’s not just books that can help children develop a vocabularly looking at picture flashcards or playing games are all great tools.

Playing games can be used to increase vocabulary too both the language of items in the game but also general game playing vocabulary. Games such as the Orchard Toys Shopping List game (especially the Fruit and Veg pack or the clothes pack) or Alphabet Lotto give opportunities to discuss new objects whilst games like Red Dog Blue Dog give the chance to discuss colours or Shape Snap.

Playing with your child and talking to them about everything they are doing increases their vocabulary and encourages them to communicate. You can talk about pushing a car under a bridge, a train through a tunnel, climbing up the stairs, jumping off a wall, kicking a ball all of this discussion will help them add words to their vocabulary.

Last of all – don’t worry if your child doesn’t use the words verbally yet – this doesn’t mean that it isn’t in their vocabularly as children learn to understand what words mean before they use them. Some children may find the use of sign language helpful to develop thier vocabulary.

Emergent Literacy: Letter Knowledge

Letter Knowledge means knowing that letters are different from each other, that each letter has a name and that specific sounds go with specific letters.

Here are some ideas for introducing letters to your child:

• Practice matching letters using flashcards or lotto games…
• Choose a letter of the day and see where you can find it / how many times
• Talk to your child about the letters that make up their name
• Draw pictures of letters and turn them into pictures that start with the letter (e.g. a letter s can become a snake or a m can become a mountain)
• Read alphabet books
• Talk about the letters on road signs when out for a walk
• Practice writing letters in different kinds of materials – take turns writing letters and letting each other guess what they are
• Go on an alphabet search  around your house
• Look for letters in books, in magazines, on food packaging, on bath products, on toys
• Look for and compare how letters look different in  various fonts
• Make play dough letters – either using alphabet cutters or by rolling sausages and then bending into shape
• Play with magnetic letters on the fridge
• Practice matching upper case and lower case flashcards
• Make an alphabet poster with a picture of something for each letter sound
• Play I-spy looking for each letter of the alphabet in turn on signposts whilst out in the car – how far can you get?
• Do alphabet puzzles

Emergent Literacy: Print Awareness

Print Awareness is about knowing how a book works and being able to recognise print. As part of the Early Years Foundation Stage Communication, Language and Literacy strand children are tasked with knowing that in English we read front to back, top to bottom, left to right. How do they learn all that? Through experience with different types of print and books!

Here are some suggestions – ranging from formal instruction to silly games…

• When reading books talk about having them the right way up and starting at the beginning, turning the pages in order etc
• Encourage your children to turn books the right way up and look at them from front to back when they are exploring books on their own
• Use your finger to point to the words as you are reading to children to show that the words you are saying come from the text on the page not from the pictures
• Play games with picture flashcards that have the word written underneath explaining that the word tells you what the picture is
• Show your child print in different environments – e.g. cereal boxes, street signs, clothing labels, leaflets
• Hold the book upside down and begin to read or try and start at the back – get your child to correct you!
• Play games like shopping list to show that words are functional

Emergent Literacy: Print Motivation

Print motivation is the interest in and engagement with books as fun things to play with and learning that books and reading are pleasant.

How can we make this happen?

• use a variety of different types of books – touchy feely books, noisey books and lift the flap books; board books, big books, cloth books or even bath books; fact books and story books – or first word finding books – the more different types of books children have access too the more likely they are to find some they like!
• let your children choose their own books (your local library is an excellent source of new books)
• let your children see you enjoying books / reading
• show reading is a way to find out information – if you don’t know something see if you can find the answer in a book
• use books about first experiences as part of your explanation to your child about every day experiences e.g. starting school, going to the dentist or going on holiday

The goal here is to help little ones have successful experiences with books and other forms of print so that they will look forward to spending time with books.

Emergent Literacy

Now all the Littlesheeps are at school for at least part of the week I’ve been doing some reading about how children learn and develop skills.

Developing literacy (the ability to read and write) is an essential part of a child’s education but preceding actual literacy is what psychologists call “emergent literacy” – the set of skills children need to have before they can learn to read and write.

Emergent literacy refers to a young child’s interaction with books, rudimentary writing (mark making) and other pre-literary skills. The process starts shortly after birth and continues until the child has developed complete reading and writing capabilities.

There are six skill areas:

1. Print motivation – interest in and engagement with books as fun things to play with and learning that books and reading are pleasant
2. Print awareness – knowing how a book works and being able to recognise print
3. Letter knowledge – knowing that letters are different from each other, that each letter has a name and that specific sounds go with specific letters
4. Vocabulary – knowing the names of things
5. Phonological awareness – being able to hear and play with the smaller parts that make up words
6. Narrative skills – the ability to tell stories and describe things and events

Over the next few weeks I’m going to look at each of these in turn and how you can support your child’s literacy development (and then I’ll look in more detail at emergent numeracy!).