Sucess Stories

A Family Plan for Literacy Success

Literacy achievement reflects the times as much as society's recognition of literacy as a personal accomplishment. The next generation will have a critical emphasis placed on literacy - a wide range of reading, writing, speaking, computing, and solving tasks found in everyday life. What is known today that will help a family plan early for their child's literacy success?

Recently, a new multidisciplinary council of scientists presented a synthesis, "Young Children Develop in an Environment of Relationships" on how important interactions are to being able to learn. Some of the points are:

• A responsive, emotional relationship between mother and infant develops the child's brain during initial, early interactions. Stronger cognitive skills, school success, and early language development result.
• Child care should be a warm, supportive experience with stable relationships and stimulating activities, resulting in more social competence, less behavior problems, "enhanced thinking and reasoning skills at school age" ( National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2004, pgs. 1-4). Facilities with high staff turnover, little training, and inferior programs lack positive findings.
• School readiness skills must include the ability to have positive relationships. Literacy skills alone are not enough.

The National Center for Family Literacy's Parent's Guide to Reading lists ten ways for parents to help develop learning and literacy readiness. A strong parent-child bond is reflected.

1. Create a special reading place. A comfortable place with the child's belongings can stimulate the child's multi-sensory development.
2. Get close. Letting a child sit close or on your lap allows for a sense of security.
3. Find your child's pace. Work up from short to longer reading sessions to enable attention span increases and the lengthening the amount of time a child is learning at a higher level with assistance.
4. Act it out. Acting out stories with sounds and different voices develops listening skills.
5. Read with your fingers. Run your finger under key words, phrases to train the child's eyes that text moves left to right. An awareness of phonemes or individual sounds is also stimulated.
6. Read it again. Reading over and over helps a child increase memory skills, learn to recognize sequences, use knowledge to make predictions.
7. Make a point. Pointing out pictures, colors, numbers, and words leads to "print awareness."
8. Word power. Saying words carefully and clearly allows the child to begin to learn rules of language and how to speak.
9. Share and compare. Comparing and contrasting objects in the book or with things in the child's world develops analytical thinking.
10. Total recall. Ask questions. Asking the child to tell what happened at the beginning, middle, and end of the story will develop listening skills and reading comprehension (NCFL, 2004, p. 17).

A national survey looked at how well the public understands child development. Two of the misconceptions were when young children begin to "take in and react to the world around them" and in "misjudging the ability of very young to sense the mood of caregivers" (DYG, Inc., 2000, p. 7). Both of these points can have an impact in the daily interactions young children have with significant adults.

The NCFL has coordinated a research synthesis and drawn some implications for parents in supporting their child's early literacy efforts. Findings suggest that "the greatest impact is demonstrated when parents are trained to teach their child specific reading strategies" (Westberg, 2004, p. 8). Family literacy programs can integrate into lessons and PACT time tasks such as literacy strategies for everyday family life, activities in emergent reading, rhyming and sound games, book lists, take-home literacy kits, weekly activities calendars, and keeping a family reading log with questions/observations. Emphasize talking with children when the family eats, rides in the car, and shops and why this is important can help the parent realize a family plan for literacy. (For more information: http://www.famlit.org/Resources/ReadingTips/ParentsGuide/ Age_Appropriate_Tips/index.cfm). [There is no space between the slash after Guide/ and the words Age_Appropriate.]

A family plan for literacy success not only includes parents reading to the child from infancy through the early school years, but providing a literacy-rich environment with books, other print sources, writing materials, and developing a close, verbal relationship from infancy on. Research indicates that vocabulary development is dependent on early experiences. "Children who hear fewer words and are engaged in less conversation before age three have dramatically smaller vocabularies than those with richer early language experiences and are unlikely to ever 'catch up' to their more advantaged peers" (Ounce of Prevention Fund, 2003, p. 6). Language experiences in the first three years are a good predictor of reading ability by grade three. A family plan for a success story!

DYG, Inc. (2000). What Grown-ups Understand About Child Development: A National Benchmark Survey. Chicago, IL: Civitas Intiative.

National Center Family Literacy. (2004). "Reading Is Brain Food," Connecting: the World of Family Literacy. Louisville, KY: NCFL.

National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. (2004). "Young Children Develop in an Environment of Relationships." Available (August 2004): http://www.developingchild.net/papers/paper_1.pdf.

Ounce of Prevention Fund. (2003). "Ready for School: The Case for Including Babies and Toddlers As We Expand Preschool Opportunities." Available (August 2004): http://www.ounceofprevention.org/downloads/publications/ready_for_ school.pdf.

Westberg, L., Shanahan, T., and Uribe, S. (2004). "Evidence-based Practices for Parents to Support Their Children's Reading Acquisition", Connecting: the World of Family Literacy. Louisville, KY: NCFL.