10/01/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 10/01/2024 14:56
The early years are crucial for developing skills that prepare children for reading and writing. Early literacy lays the foundation for formal learning. Discover its impact on children's educational and professional futures.
By Ximena Dueñas, Gina Catalina Loaiza, Silvana Godoy Mateus and José Luís Sánchez
The early years of a person's life are crucial for their development. Scientific evidence has shown that early care impacts sensory skills, motor skills, comprehension, expression, curiosity, exploration, non-verbal communication, vocabulary, and emotional relationships. During this period, early literacy develops, fostering foundational skills that will prepare children for formal reading and writing learning.
The sophistication of these skills depends on the quantity and quality of oral and written language experiences from birth. These experiences include:
• Learning words and their meanings.
• Back-and-forth conversations.
• Exposure to a variety of texts and reading materials at home or in the library.
• And the accumulated knowledge about the child's world and the written world.
Learning opportunities are shaped by the environment, caregivers, family, and access to quality early education. These initial experiences lay the foundation for learning to read and write, known as early literacy.
Early literacy, as defined by Donna Coch (2022), includes the emerging literacy knowledge and skills that infants and toddlers develop at home, in daycare, and preschools. These skills form the basis for formal school learning and determine professional and economic prospects throughout life.
Coch emphasizes the importance of teachers and caregivers preparing children, rather than waiting for them to be "ready to read." In this sense, they must help and support them in developing the necessary skills, knowledge, and attitudes to learn to read and write.
As illustrated in Figure 1, the blue line shows that children who begin preschool (K) with these foundational skills tend to develop them further and experience successful educational trajectories. In contrast, the red line represents those who start school without these skills, who face ongoing difficulties that may lead to dropping out or progressing through the educational system without learning, perpetuating the so-called Matthew effect.
Figure 1. Educational Trajectories Based on Fundamental Skills
Source: Adapted from Coch, 2022, p. 21.
It is important to create learning opportunities in family environments, daycare centers, and early education settings to develop foundational skills. These skills represent essential knowledge that must be cultivated beforehand, so children can learn to read and write, thus forming competent readers and writers.
Some of the most important foundational skills are addressed in the 2008 National Early Literacy Panel report:
Finally, early literacy is the "stage" where the adults most significant to children build emotional bonds with reading and writing through playful, meaningful practices, offering caring and motivating interactions. Families, caregivers, and teachers play an essential role in fostering rich oral exchanges in terms of both vocabulary quantity and depth, as well as complex syntactic structures (more elaborate sentences). They provide children with reading materials, read to them aloud, engage in back-and-forth conversations about what has been read, participate in library activities and story hours, promote early scribbles and name writing, and create an affectionate environment around oral and written language that motivates learning and helps children find meaning in words.
If you want to learn more about these topics and other important skills related to early literacy, we invite you to explore the following resource and stay tuned for the upcoming launch of the free course "The Journey of Literacy."