Literacy
What is literacy?
Literacy is another incredibly complex form of communication. Before we are literate, we require early literacy foundations to be built, and from there we can begin to learn the skills of reading and writing.
These foundational skills begin from early childhood when children have stories read to them and therefore learn to orientate books. At a young age, they also learn the power of letter manipulation and rhyme through clever nursery rhymes. These skills, amongst others, all add to the toolbox of pre-literacy competency.
When we begin to read and write, it is crucial that we are not simply learning to put letters on a page. Competent literacy instruction supports the understanding that letters are representations of sounds, and sounds can be represented by multiple spellings (and not to make things confusing, but letters can represent multiple sounds!).
When we refer to the skill of ‘reading’, we’re not only talking about the ability to read the words on the page, but we are referring to the ability to do so fluently and to comprehend what it is that you are reading.
How is literacy taught at school?
When children enter into school, they spend the first three or so years learning how to read and write. It’s not an easy task by any means – just look at our language! Some of our vowels make little sense to us, even as adults (Think of ‘ough’ and ‘eigh’, not to mention the ‘oo’ in look sounds different to the ‘oo’ in the zoo).
When children enter Years 3 and 4, they no longer learn to read, and instead they read to learn. The gear changes and the curriculum expects that the students are able to read a text in order to extract information. If a student was having difficulty ‘learning to read’, the gap is likely to widen as the other children charge forth into ‘reading to learn’.
Literacy skills carry on throughout schooling and adulthood. Literacy is not just the act of reading the words on a page, but it’s also the act of comprehending and inferring information that has been read. Some children can slip past unnoticed because when they read aloud, they read fluently and confidently. Their literacy delays may only be noticed when asked to clarify what they have read, and they seem to have retained minimal information.
How can we help?
Flourish: ITS is incredibly passionate about literacy. It is complex and it is layered but we are here to help. We teach you, the parent, about pre-literacy skills so that you can begin to build those foundations.
We work extensively to teach letter-sound correspondence, blending, and sound manipulation. We work with children in the early years of primary school, and even upper primary and secondary schooling. It is our goal to ensure that each student is not only confident in decoding the text, but they are confident in learning from the text. We give your child every chance to thrive.
Ready to empower your child's communication?
Send us an enquiry today to discover how we can help