One of the greatest gifts parents can bestow upon children is to instill a love for reading and writing at a young age. How young? Some may be surprised to learn that the groundwork for literacy can be laid beginning at birth; through story-telling, sharing books, singing songs and simply talking to their children, parents stimulate children’s brains, and language and literacy skills begin.
Perhaps the best example is found in reading books. This can be done from birth, but as soon as the child is able, parents who invite them to help hold the book and turn the pages create a familiarity for their children. Children learn the physical actions related to reading, the left-to-right, top to bottom orientation of English. When they hear their parents say the words on the page, and their little fingers are guided along the lines, they make the connection between the marks on the page and the sounds of the words. Later, they mimic what they’ve seen on the pages as they learn to write.
All adults in a young child’s life — parents, grandparents, godparents, aunts and uncles, pre-school teachers, babysitters — play a crucial role in whether a child will be successful in school, both from cognition and motivation standpoints. And let’s not forget confidence: The ability to read and write at a young age inspires self-confidence and a love for learning that can have a major impact on the rest of a child’s life.
How Does Early Literacy Benefit Children?
The skills of reading and writing are intertwined and mutually beneficial. Being able to read begets a child’s ability write, and vice versa. Language they hear spoken by adults helps children work through the early difficulties reading and writing. Cultivating these skills in young children helps develop their willingness to listen, their desire to be read to and to ultimately read, their curiosity about words and the letters that form words, their enjoyment of songs and nursery rhymes — and the list goes on.
Arousing and engaging a child’s mind through consistent interaction at a young age undoubtedly helps them become higher-functioning students when school starts. Beyond school, children who are taught to read and write, and who see and hear their parents engage in real-life conversations, are able to manage tasks like ordering from a menu, making a telephone call and relaying the information from the call, at a much younger age.
Young children who mastered reading and writing tend to view the skills as pleasurable activities in adulthood. Studies suggest that highly literate children who continue to advance their reading and writing skills into adulthood become some of the smartest and highest-functioning members of society. With that functionality comes better employment opportunities — and while those with higher-paying jobs may sometimes experience more stress, these are also the people who use reading and writing (maybe journaling or academic writing) as an escape to cope with the stress of their daily lives. Thus the benefit of early literacy comes full circle.
For all these reasons, it is crucial that teachers understand the building blocks of literacy, and know how to reach students struggling to read and write. CTX proudly offers a Master of Education in Advanced Literacy Instruction degree, fully online. This program prepares students not only to teach in classrooms at all levels, it also creates leaders and advocates for literacy education. Students are required to complete 30 hours over the course of eight weeks.