What does early literacy look and sound like?

Yesterday I was trying to make a grocery list for a quick run to the store.  While I was in the act of writing the items on paper and checking the cabinet for a few critical supplies, Bossy Boots (age 4) walked in.  She immediately wanted to help me with my list and snatched the stack of sticky notes and grabbed a pen.   She said she would write my list for me.

Wonderful, I thought.  There goes my quick trip to the store.

Here is what she wrote:

The items on her list include mayonaise, jelly, pasta, and lemonade.

If we take a close look at this “list”, it shows a tremendous amount of knowledge of letters, sounds, and written communication.

Knowledge of beginning letter sounds.  If we dig into the sound-symbol relationship, we can see she is able to hear the beginning sounds and can write the corresponding letter (representing the item) to create a list.  In order for this to happen, I had to provide some support by saying, “pasta…what sound do you hear..?”  Her response was, “I hear Piero’s letter.  P!”

Knowledge of written communication.  Overall, Bossy Boots knows that we use symbols on paper to communicate.  We can write these symbols (letters) with different items including pens, pencils, crayons, and markers.  This is a giant concept as students emerge as readers and writers.  There is a message in the symbols- it is called meaning.  We can write to express meaning in many different ways.  These are both key concepts in building a foundation of literacy.

Tips for building these ideas:

• Play word games that emphasize sounds such as rhyming.  Example: “Hat and bat rhyme.  What else rhymes with bat?”
• Provide paper of all kinds along with different pens, pencils, markers, and crayons.
• Point out when you get mail.  Who sent it to you and what were they telling you? Example: “I just got this bill from the cable company.  It looks like it is time to pay them for our service.”
• Talk about environmental print such as McDonald’s, Harris Teeter, etc. and the letter sounds they start with.  “Look!  McDonald’s starts with your letter- M.”
• Use the names of people you know as “anchors” for letter sounds.
• Allow preschoolers to start writing.  Lists are the perfect place to start!
• In the grocery store, point to the words on the signs and specifically the beginning sounds. Example: “Look- I see bananas and this sign starts with a B.  Look- it says bananas.”

Preschool literacy takes time, but is well worth the payoff!