Will Your Child Be Literacy Ready

When Its Time For School?

What to Look For In Childrens

Literature.

What important
facts do we
know

 Toddlers learn on an average ten new words per

day.
Only half of infants and toddlers are read to
routinely.
Kindergarten teachers report that 35% of children
enter school unprepared to learn.
A childs vocabulary upon entering school serves
as a prime predictor of school success and failure.

 Between ages four and ten, a childs brain

metabolism is twice that of an adult.
By the time a child leaves Kindergarten, he has
been with the teacher for 700 hours. That same
child has been with their caregivers for 52,000
hours.
Reading scores have not declined as much as the
level of literacy required in todays world has
increased. Reading scores have not significantly
improved since 1971 on National Assessments.

 In the United States, males compose 70% of our

remedial reading classes. This is not the case in
many other countries. So, it is not a matter of
gentic differences between male and females.
76% of mothers read to children while only 15%
of father do so. Boys may come away with the
idea that reading is for girls and not important for
them.

How can you as

parents help?

 Set an example. Children who are read to at a

young enough age will want to imitate the
behavior
Reading selections must be exciting and
interesting enough to hold a childs attention and
allow him to use his imagination.
Attention spans must be gradually increased over
time. Start with shorter reading and work your
way up as a childs attention span increases.

We have taught children how to

read but forgot to teach them to
want to read. -Trelease p. 5
Many children do not
view reading as an
enjoyable activity. The
only reading that many
children engage in is for
homework.

When was the last time

an older child couldnt
wait to tell you about a
great book he had just
finished reading?

Why is reading aloud to children

so important?
Conditions the childs brain to associate reading
with pleasure
Create background knowledge
Build vocabulary
Provide a reading role model
Also, for the same reasons we talk to them:
reassure, entertain, bond

You know that reading aloud to your child is

necessary to provide the best possible start
for school success.

But, where or rather

WHEN do you start?!

Age 0 - 6 Months

There are studies that show babies

respond to readings that they have
heard in utero.
If a child is old enough to talk to, he
is old enough to read to.

Why read to a child that is to young to

understand the story?

Children will become conditioned to the activity(listening to your

voice and the sight of books).
Special needs children can benefit greatly by this early effort.

Book Qualities for 0 - 18 Months

Colorful pictures that
arent to complicated
or three dimensional
Exciting sounds
Rhythm (like a
mothers heartbeat)

Rhyming words
(Children who cant
identify words that
rhyme with cat seem
to be candidates for
later reading
problems.)

Wordless Books

Story is told entirely through pictures. Pre-readers are able to tell you
the story of the book.

Picture Books 0 - 18 Months

One image per page at

first
Exciting image(bright,
colorful, pop-up)
Deals with the
identification of
objects
Durable board book
with laminated pages

Sheep in a jeep
on a hill thats
steep.
Rhyming
Rhythmic
Simple
illustrations
Bright colors

Goodnight Moon
by Margaret Wise Brown

Illustrations are
dominant to the text
even though many are
black and white.
Rhyming
Rhythm
Repetition(Child can
join in by the end of
the book.)

Books for Toddlers - Pre-School

Ages 2 1/2 - 3
Simple plots begin to
appear. For Example:
Finding a lost puppy
or mitten
Exciting and
Repetitious language
with increasingly more
narrative.

The Napping House

by Audrey Wood/Don Wood

Cumulative Rhymes
of a snoring granny,
dreaming child,
dozing dog, etc.
Simple plot Everyone was sleeping
and now they are not.
Why did the bed
break?
Text is still limited on
the pages.

Alfie Gets in First

By Shirley Hughes

Simple plot that

children will identify
with; however it
become more
important to the book
Everyone must solve
the problem of how to
unlock Alfie from the
inside of the house.
There is an increased
amount of text per
page.

Book Qualities for

Pre-School -Kindergarten

Plot becomes much more important.

What does the story add up to?
What happens next?
Poems with long narrative twists work
best(not so much nursery rhymes)

Heckedy Peg
Audrey Wood/Don Wood

Illustrations are more

elaborate and 3-d
Clues to solve the
story and guess what
happens next
Teaches a lesson
Quick as a wink, the children
turned back into themselves.
They hugged and kissed their
mother, and hugged and kissed
each other.

Smoky Mountain Rose: An

Appalachian Cinderella
by Alan Schroeder

Story is less dependent

upon illustration even
though the book has
them. (They are not
always on the same
page.)
Obvious use of
paragraphs
Importance of the plot

Sarah Plain and Tall

by Patricia MacLachlan

Mini chapter book

Book is dependent
upon plot - not the
illustraions
Slightly more
complicated plot
dealing with real life
issues.

You may have tangible wealth untold:

Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be I had a mother who read to me.
--Strickland Gillialan,
the Reading Mother
Best loved Poems of the American People.