Six Pre-Reading Skills

Early literacy is what children know about reading and writing before they can actually read and write.  Helping children learn important skills now helps them become  good future readers.  Attending GPL’s Wee Read and Book Bugs programs is a great way to supplement and enhance your children’s future reading success.  We also have a wide variety of books to encourage literacy.  Each topic below links to a list of children’s books available at GPL that you can check out and read with your child to build those specific skills. 

Vocabulary
Knowing the names of things.

Print Motivation
Being interested in and enjoying books.

Print Awareness
Noticing print, knowing how to handle a book and knowing how to follow the words on a page.

Narrative Skills
The ability to describe things and events and tell stories.

Letter Knowledge
Knowing letters are different from each other, knowing their names and sounds and recognizing letters everywhere.

Phonological Awareness
Being able to hear and play with the smaller sounds in words.

The ALA’s guidelines also dovetail with the Nebraska Department of Education’s Early Learning Guidelines for Language & Literacy Development:

• Listening and Understanding
• Book Knowledge and Appreciation
• Speaking and Communicating
• Print Awareness and Concepts
• Phonological Awareness
• Early Writing and Alphabet Knowledge

You can read more about Nebraska’s early learning guidelines here: http://www.education.ne.gov/ech/ELGuidelines/ELG_3to5.pdf

The American Library Association also provides a wonderful brochure for parents with this information as well as more ideas to help their children become strong readers.

The Seward Memorial Library also teamed up with Concordia University to create “Leading to Reading.”  This is a fantastic program to help develop young readers.

Another wonderful site for early literacy information is the  Hennepin County Library.  Be sure to check out their wonderful database called ELSIE where you can search by topic and/or particular skill.

The 6 Pre-Reading Skills information comes from the Every Child Ready to Read @ your library ® early literacy project of the Public Library Association (PLA) and the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), in partnership with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), a division of the National Institutes of Health. PLA and ALSC are divisions of the American Library Association. 
Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/ecrr/index.cfm