Interboro School District

PreK Parent Literacy Information

At School Literacy Building Strategies 

Here in the Interboro Early Learning Academy, our PreK team fosters language-rich environments that promote self-expression and rich vocabulary.  This is done through daily interactions with adults and children, turn taking conversations, interactive read alouds, and through play-based activities.  Specifically with a PreK Reading Specialist, we help engage our youngest learners in literacy-based activities both whole and small groups.  We love game-based learning and whole body movements - from exploring stories, poetry, and rhymes to concentrating on building language and phonological awareness skills - we are always growing!  Throughout the year, you can find the PreK teachers and Reading Specialist honing in on the skills needed to help get our littlest learners on the right path for Kindergarten!  

At Home Literacy Building Strategies 

Building Oral Language in Children

Talking to and with your child increases not only their vocabulary and expressive language skills, but also builds background knowledge.  Skilled reading is a language-based ability, so young children are starting their journey now to later become a proficient reader. 

Ideas to support your child at home:

Talk, talk, talk!  Conversations about any and everything that is going on in the child’s life.  Let your child ask questions, share big words with them, and encourage them to use their words to express themselves.

Read together! Reading aloud exposes your child to new words and helps create an understanding language and how it’s used.  It also helps grow listening skills.  Reading wordless picture books and making the story up as you go is also a great way to grow your child’s language skills.  

Sing songs! Rhythm, music, nursery rhymes, and silly songs can help your child learn and process language.  Find your favorite nursery rhymes, make up some motions to go along with it, and have fun repeating it over and over again! 

Early Literacy Skill Development

Adults can help young learners grow with their very early literacy skills by pointing out and reinforcing the simplest forms of print.  Words that children see in their environment become their very first connections to print and reading.  Pointing out a store sign you may pass in your daily commute or taking notice of the name and logo of their favorite cereal or snack, can help build the knowledge that print has meaning.   

Ideas to support your child at home: 

Use their name! Write their name on labels or display it on the refrigerator and refer to it often! This helps give them an awareness that letters and words have meanings including their own name.

First letter of their name! Drawing attention to the letters in your child’s name can aid in beginning letter identification.  Adding the sound that beginning letter makes is even better!  (ie.  Your name begins with a “J.”  J says /j/. I hear the /j/ sound in the beginning of your name John)

Environmental Print! Recognizing familiar signs for stores, foods, games, or anything the child encounters on a consistent basis is encouraged!  Maybe their favorite toy is a Disney item - pointing out the sign says ‘Disney’ and then praising your child for when they find something like that they recognize is a great first step to let your child know they are a ‘reader!’

Rereading your favorite stories! Allowing your child to enjoy their favorite stories over and over again, helps build foundational literacy skills.  Model pointing to the words in sentences and encourage your child to join in saying any parts of the story they may know.  “Pretend reading’ by your child is also a great way to start their attention to print!

Literacy is all around us! 

Visit a local library!  Take your child to the local library and explore books together!  Local libraries often have great free programs, presentations for little ones, and book clubs that can help foster the love of literacy! 

Creating print!  Have paper, crayons, pencils etc and let your child draw and create “words.”  Encourage the use of print when doing pretend play.  For example, if you are playing ‘restaurant’ with your child, have a piece of paper and writing utensil ready for them to ‘take your order.’  Gather old take out menus or create your own!

Building background knowledge!  Capitalize on your child’s interests and talk about it in depth!  Use and explain big words to them to help build their background knowledge.  For example, if your child likes dinosaurs, explore dinosaur names and what they looked like, sounded like, and things they ate.  They could even draw a picture of it and label the different parts!  

Cooking with your child!  Allow your child to help make a meal and if you can use a recipe that’s even better!  Explain the process or steps of how to make the meal.  This could be as simple as making cereal or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  This helps build language and also print awareness of the recipe - showing the child print is not just for stories in books.