Language and Literacy

LANGUAGE AND LITERACY:

Language and literacy are intertwined. Research shows that as spoken language increases, written skills also improve. As written skills improve, so do spoken language skills. Communicative competence, in spoken and written modalities, continues to improve from childhood into adulthood as language and literacy continue to reciprocally build on each other's competence. Below are some tips to continue to build on your child's communicative competence and literacy skills through verbal discussions, oral reading and written opportunities:

1. Read as frequently as possible to your child and provide your child the opportunity to "shadow" read during your guided reading together. They can read your sentences immediately after you have read to them.

2. Touch each word in print as you read and cue your child to do the same.

3. Verbally cue to look at pictures to search for clues to facilitate decoding skills.

4. Take picture walks before reading the story, but do not reveal the ending. This will serve for opportunity for your child to make predictions. You can use guiding language such as, "Let's make a prediction. What do you think will happen at the end of the story?"

5. Take moments to stop periodically throughout the story and ask literal or concrete wh-questions, such as Who did...?, What happened? Where does the story take place? Overtly verbally pre- cue your child into story elements before you start reading, i.e. character, setting, problem, solution, e.g. Who is the main character(s); Where does the story take place? What is the problem in the story? How do you think the story will end? What will be the solution to the problem?

6. Leave room for higher order thinking and creativity. Tune your child into "thinking" questions that are higher level, e.g. "Why do you think....?; How would you change the ending? Could there be a different solution to the problem?" Teach your child to be a "clues detective", i.e. Model going back into the text to look for evidence to support answers to questions. Do "think-alouds" with your child so that they can observe your logical thought processes as to how you would answer the WHY questions.

7. Periodically stop along the course of the story and sequence events using sequential language markers, e.g. "first......, next......., then.....finally" to mark story events. This will also teach your child to organize language logically and summarize and hold events in working memory so that they are mentally manipulating information to process it in short-term memory to eventually store it in long-term memory.

8. You can also play "memory games" as the story is being read aloud. For example, you can read a short paragraph aloud or one page from the book without displaying pictures and tell your child to "VISUALIZE" (make a picture in your mind) about what I am saying. Think about WHO is in the story, WHAT are they doing,? WHERE are they? After reading the paragraph, ask your child to tell you three things they remember. Show them the picture and ask if the picture they visualized matches the picture in the book. This is a good task to work on auditory memory for auditory processing. It will also teach the critical strategies of VISUALIZING and LISTENING FOR KEY WORDS for developing good lifelong listening skills for information processing.

9. Depending on grade level, have your child dictate 3 events of story sequences into an iPad or iPhone and write what they dictated. Have them go back in the text to check their memory skills. Have them go back in their written text to self-monitor their written productions for sentence structure and meaning as well as spelling. Self-monitoring is a critical foundational skill for written output and comprehension checks.

10. Above all, have fun. Reading together is shared time for learning, enjoying the text and making connections!