Stages Of Literacy Development Essay

Introduction

Literacy – the ability to read and write – is arguably the most important skill necessary for success in school. Literacy skills allow children to become proficient in Language which is used to communicate with people. Learning to read and write occurs on a continuum and incorporates key experiences in listening and speaking, reading and writing. The processes of reading and writing, together with speaking, develop simultaneously and are interdependent and occur in the early stages of literacy development. During these stages, literacy instructions are crucial as children as early in the preschool years develop their oral vocabulary and begin to understand the alphabetic principle which are precursors to reading success in the

While skills developed in the preschool years are important aspects of literacy development, for the purpose of this paper only the key stages of emergent literacy development stages will be explicitly discussed along with the compulsory instruction

To develop letter-sound correspondence children can be engaged in hands on activity by sorting picture according to beginning and middle sounds. This is appropriate because when children understand that words are made of individual sounds, teachers can begin segmentation activities. Emergent readers should be able to segment many CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words. For example, the teacher can says a word like "dad," then asks the class to say each sound separately. This helps the children to acquire strong word analysis/phonemic decoding skills which equips them with skills necessary to use their knowledge of letter sound relationships to “sound out” unfamiliar words in text. This is one of the keys to becoming an accurate and independent reader (readingrockets.org). As children learn basic decoding skills spelling should be taught simultaneously as these patterns would be evident in their writing as