Preliteracy

Preliteracy refers to the skills and knowledge that children develop before they learn to read and write. It encompasses a range of abilities that lay the foundation for later literacy acquisition. These skills are acquired through everyday experiences and interactions, and they are crucial for a child's successful transition into formal reading and writing instruction.

Key components of preliteracy include oral language development, which involves building a strong vocabulary and understanding sentence structure. Phonological awareness is another vital area, referring to a child's ability to recognize and manipulate the sounds of spoken language. This includes skills like rhyming, segmenting words into syllables, and identifying the initial sounds in words. Print awareness, the understanding that print carries meaning and has a specific directionality, is also important. Children begin to recognize letters, understand that words are made up of letters, and know that we read from left to right and top to bottom. Finally, emergent writing, where children engage in scribbling, drawing, and attempting to form letters, is a precursor to conventional writing.

Activities that promote preliteracy skills include reading aloud to children regularly, engaging in conversations, singing songs, playing rhyming games, and providing opportunities for drawing and scribbling. These experiences help children develop the necessary cognitive and linguistic tools to decode and encode written language when they begin formal schooling. Strong preliteracy skills are strongly correlated with later reading success and academic achievement.