Engaging with your child

Things You Can Do:

Parental Input

Before your child can read:

Many preschool-aged children possess the ability to recognize and manipulate the sounds that are presented to them. However, many parents underestimate the linguistic abilities of their children. By using the speech they are exposed to, children have a far easier time associating the names of letters with their corresponding sounds. It has been shown that early measures of these associations predict later literacy in children.

How you can foster reading skills:

• Teach your child the alphabet even before school starts. Although they may not have a complete grasp on it yet, the exposure will prove to be very beneficial.
  • Use phonics training programs online.
  • Spend time on flash cards with your child.
  • Simply read and talk with your child to build language awareness.
  • Use puzzles and rhymes to help engage your child.
• Once your child has learned the alphabet, begin frequent shared reading with your child. Scroll down to learn more about shared reading!

Shared Reading

What Is Shared Reading?

Shared reading is great for literacy development. Shared reading can be any shared interaction with literature between a skilled reader and a child, such as reading a book aloud or simply labeling objects and actions. These experiences can begin even before your child starts to read (see Emergent Literacy) and should continue as your child further develops their literacy skills.

Why is Shared Reading Important?

• Helps develop and unify written and oral language skills by teaching children word patterns.
• Helps develop skills such as phonological processing and phonics (i.e. understanding letter-sound association), reading comprehension, and emergent literacy.
• Enhances vocabulary by allowing the child to use words in an engaging context.
• Improves expressive language abilities and facilitates emergent literacy skills.
• Researchers have proven that shared reading can be used to surpass socioeconomic status in predicting a child's literacy skills.

How to Read with a Child

It is encouraged that parents start initiating shared reading experiences with their child or children daily by 6 months of age. Giving your child an involved role through interactive shared reading will help maximize the improvement of their literacy skills. Let your child guide the experience by prompting them with questions and following their actions as you read together.

Dialogic reading aims to give the child more control over the experience. During dialogic reading, parents engage their child in discussions by prompting feedback or asking questions about textual comprehension. Your child should be encouraged to ask questions about the text as well as answer your questions and fill in the blanks while you take the form of an active listener. Dialogic reading has been shown to have a more significant effect than traditional shared reading on various areas of early literacy, such as oral language and expressive language skills. See the Word Learning & Literacy section for more information on dialogic reading. See this Youtube video link for a demonstration of shared reading.

Try This at Home!

Open Questions: Try asking your child open-ended questions about the reading material to prompt more descriptive answers from your child and help them better understand of the story.

Q: What’s Harry up to now?

A: He decided to dig a hole and get the brush so he could wash and then they would recognize him.

Q: What do you know about Harry?

A: He's a dog, his family can't find him.

Closed Questions: If your child is struggling with the open questions, closed questions are the next best thing to get them using language in context.

Q: How did the family feel when they couldn’t find Harry?

A: Sad.

Q: Did you know where Harry is?

A: Yes.

Q: Where was he?

A: Outside.

Long Term Effects

• 1st grade reading ability has been shown to predict 11th grade ability, so even small improvements in early reading level will gradually increase in the long-term.
• Shared reading leads children to engage in more independent reading.
• Independent reading leads to an increase in reading ability and critical thinking skills.
• Dialogic reading has stronger effects on child’s oral language skills than traditional shared reading.

Themes of Parent-Child Relationships

Interactions and Regulation

• As they grow older, infants will face increasingly complex physical and social situations (making friends, listening to music, working in class, etc). Early, engaging interactions with a caregiver to prepare them for these complex situations that they will experience later in life.
• Regulation allows infants to develop routines and rhythms with their caregiver. Regulation helps infants transition to interactive play, and eventually, the early stages of reading.

Formation of Effective Attachment

• Effective attachment gives child emotional security and provides the basis for early exploration of the object and interpersonal world.
• Additionally, effective attachment predicts a child's language development, emergent literacy and reading, aspects of cognition, and social interaction with peers and other adults.

Self-reliance, organization, and coordination of environmental and personal resources

• A child's self-reliance refers to the child's use of their own and other’s resources to engage information and tasks available to meet their social and task-related demands.
• Through the development of self reliance, children become involved with more explicit literacy-related activities, such as listening to stories, engaging in conversation, joint reading.