What are the literacy skills

What is literacy? | National Literacy Trust

The importance of literacy

Lacking vital literacy skills holds a person back at every stage of their life. As a child they won't be able to succeed at school, as a young adult they will be locked out of the job market, and as a parent they won't be able to support their own child's learning. This intergenerational cycle makes social mobility and a fairer society more difficult.

People with low literacy skills may not be able to read a book or newspaper, understand road signs or price labels, make sense of a bus or train timetable, fill out a form, read instructions on medicines or use the internet.

Low levels of literacy undermine the UK’s economic competitiveness, costing the taxpayer £2.5 billion every year (KPMG, 2009). A third of businesses are not satisfied with young people’s literacy skills when they enter the workforce and a similar number have organised remedial training for young recruits to improve their basic skills, including literacy and communication.

COVID-19 Research and Policy Observatory

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Literacy statistics

Our research underpins our programmes, campaigns and policy work to improve literacy skills, attitudes and habits across the UK.

• Children who enjoy reading and writing are happier with their lives

  Children who enjoy reading are three times more likely to have good mental wellbeing than children who don’t enjoy it. Read more.

• 1 in 11 disadvantaged children in the UK say that they don’t have a book of their own

  Children who say they have a book of their own are six times more likely to read above the level expected for their age than their peers who don’t own a book. Read more.
  

• Children born into communities with the most serious literacy challenges have some of the lowest life expectancies in England

  A boy born in Stockton Town Centre (an area with serious literacy challenges) has a life expectancy 26.1 years shorter than a boy born in North Oxford. Read more.

• 1 in 2 children in the UK enjoy reading

  Only 1 in 2 children and young people said they enjoy reading in early 2022, which is as low as the number has ever been since we first asked the question in 2005. Read more.

• 2 in 5 children in the UK enjoy writing

  In 2022, 2 in 5 children and young people said that they enjoy writing, a slight recovery from 2021, when it was at the lowest level we have recorded since 2010. Read more.

• Audiobooks can support wider literacy engagement

  1 in 5 children and young people said that listening to an audiobook or podcast has got them interested in reading books. Read more.

See more of our research reports.

Adult literacy rate

16.4% of adults in England, or 7.1 million people, can be described as having 'very poor literacy skills.' Adults with poor literacy skills will be locked out of the job market and, as a parent, they won’t be able to support their child’s learning.

More information

• How does England's literacy compare with other countries?

  How does literacy in England stack up against other European countries?

  Learn more

• Education in England, Wales, Northern Ireland & Scotland

  How does the national curriculum work in England, Wales, Northern Ireland & Scotland?

  Learn more

• Literacy and digital technology

  What opportunities and challenges does digital technology present to children's literacy?

  Learn more

What are literacy skills? | Thoughtful Learning K-12

Literacy skills help students gain knowledge through reading as well as using media and technology. These skills also help students create knowledge through writing as well as developing media and technology.

Information Literacy

Students need to be able to work effectively with information, using it at all levels of Bloom's Taxonomy (remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating). Information literacy involves traditional skills such as reading, researching, and writing; but new ways to read and write have also introduced new skills:

• Consuming information: The current excess of information requires students to gain new skills in handling it. When most information came through official publications like books, newspapers, magazines, and television shows, students encountered data that had been prepared by professionals. Now, much information is prepared by amateurs. Some of that work is reliable, but much is not. Students must take on the role of the editor, checking and cross-checking information, watching for signs of bias, datedness, and errors. Students need to look at all information as the product of a communication situation, with a sender, subject, purpose, medium, receiver, and context.
• Producing information: In the past, students were mostly consumers of information. When they produced information, it was largely for a single reader—the teacher—and was produced for a grade. It was therefore not an authentic communication situation, and students felt that writing was a purely academic activity. Now writing is one of the main ways students communicate. It has real-world applications and consequences. Students need to understand that what they write can do great good or great harm in the real world, and that how they write determines how powerful their words are. Students need to take on the role of professional writers, learning to be effective and ethical producers of information.
  

Media Literacy

Media literacy involves understanding the many ways that information is produced and distributed. The forms of media have exploded in the last decade and new media arrive every day:

Students' use of media has far outstripped educational use, and students will continue to adopt new media long before teachers can create curricula about it. It is no longer enough to teach students how books, periodicals, and TV shows work. Students need to learn how to critically analyze and evaluate messages coming to them through any medium.

As with information literacy, the key is to recognize the elements of the communication situation—sender, message (subject and purpose), medium, receiver, and context. These elements are constant regardless of the medium used. By broadening the student's perspective to see all media as part of a larger communication situation, we can equip students to effectively receive and send information in any medium. Students must learn to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of each medium and to analyze each message they receive and send.

Technology Literacy

We are living through a technological revolution, with huge changes taking place over brief spans of time. A decade ago, Facebook didn't exist, but now many people could not live without it. The average cellphone is now more powerful than computers from several years ago. We are surrounded by technology, and most of it performs multiple functions. In Growing Up Digital: How the Net Generation Is Changing Your World, Don Tapscott outlines the following eight expectations that students have of technology.

• Freedom to express their views, personalities, and identities
• Ability to customize and personalize technology to their own tastes
• Ability to dig deeper, finding whatever information they want
• Honesty in interactions with others and with organizations
• Fun to be part of learning, work, and socialization as well as entertainment
• Connecting to others and collaborating in everything
• Speed and responsiveness in communication and searching for answers
• Innovation and change, not settling for familiar technologies but seeking and using what is new and better

As you can see, students expect a great deal out of their technologies. You can help them use technology wisely:

• reading Web sites;
• using search engines;
• using map searches;
• accessing videos, podcasts, and feeds;
• evaluating Web resources;
• researching on the Internet;
• e-mailing, chatting, texting, microblogging;
• using social sites;
• visiting virtual worlds;
• blogging and using wikis; and
• using message boards, newsgroups, and VOIP (Skype).

By understanding how to evaluate this new information and how to use these new tools to create effective, well-grounded communication, students can harness the power of new technology and be inspired to learn.

Six habits of early literacy | Multnomah County Library

Young children need a variety of skills to become successful readers. The Reading Experts Group has identified six specific early literacy skills that are the foundation for further development of reading and writing skills. Research shows that the more of these skills children have when they first enter school, the better they understand reading guidelines in school.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary, that is, knowing the names of different things, is an extremely important skill that children need when they are learning to read. Most children, when they come to school, know between 3,000 and 5,000 words. Help expand your child's vocabulary by reading a variety of books, both fiction and non-fiction, and by naming everything the child sees around.

Craving for the printed word

Craving for the printed word is the child's interest in books and the pleasure he gets from reading books. A child with a craving for the written word likes to be read to, plays with books, pretends to write, asks to be read to, and loves to go to the library. Cultivate this love of books in your child by turning book reading into a special ritual, giving your child access to books and letting him know that you also like to read. Explain how you use reading in your daily life.

Understanding the concept of writing

Understanding the concept of writing includes knowing that writing in English follows certain rules, such as writing from left to right and top to bottom, and that people who can read read the printed text on the page. An example of understanding the concept of writing is a child's ability to point to individual words on a book page. Your child's understanding of the concept of writing can be developed by pointing to words and reading them aloud wherever you see them - on signs, on labels, in grocery stores and in the mail.

Storytelling skills

Storytelling skills, that is, the ability to understand and tell stories and describe things, are important for a child to understand what they are learning to read. An example of a storytelling skill is a child's ability to tell what happened at a birthday party or when they went to the zoo.

Help your child develop their storytelling skills by asking them to tell you about a book instead of just listening to you read it. Regularly ask your child to tell you about what he did.

Letter knowledge

Letter knowledge refers to knowing that letters have names and that they are different from each other, and that certain letters correspond to certain sounds. Letter knowledge is when a child can say what the letter B is called and what sound it corresponds to.

Letters can be developed through many fun activities that include reading and writing; for example, you can point to letters in the alphabet, in picture books or on signs and labels and name them. Talk with younger children about the shape of objects, and with preschoolers, you can try drawing letters and pictures in the sand.

Understanding the concept of sounds

Understanding the concept of sounds is the ability to hear and manipulate the individual sounds that make up words. Understanding the concept of sounds includes the ability to hear and create rhymes, to speak words while skipping certain sounds or parts of words, and the ability to put two parts of a word together. Most children who have trouble reading also have difficulty understanding the concept of sounds.

Develop your child's understanding of sounds by playing fun word games:

• Think of funny words by replacing the first sound in a word: wolf, regiment, talk, folk, rolk.
• Say the words, pausing between syllables ("cro-" and "-lik"), and have your child guess which word you are saying.
• Read poems with rhymes or different sounds to your child.

3rd and 4th grade literacy development, recommended books

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Reading time 5 min

Content

1. Tips for parents for home
2. School literacy development
3. List of recommended books for grades 3-4

In grades 3-4 acquired skills allow children to write faster and more competently. The learning to read phase is now complete, and children are now using their new skills to read new books and master new ideas. The ability to read independently gives them joy. They like to read artistic and informative books. However, they still enjoy listening when they are read to, love to add new words to conversations, and show their writing experiences to teachers and parents.

Tips for parents at home

Speaking and listening

1. Talk to your child about school, friends, and activities.
2. Encourage him to share his thoughts and feelings.
3. Listen to his interests, concerns, likes and dislikes. Ask him to justify his opinion.

Read

1. Talk about your favorite books. Give him the opportunity (if he wants to) to read aloud to you.
2. Encourage your child to ask you questions about unfamiliar words found in the text, and explain the meaning of these words in intelligible language.
3. Ask your child to compare the book he is currently reading with other books he has read.
4. Keep reading to him. Discuss the feelings caused by reading the book and the feelings experienced by its characters. Ask your child to guess what will happen next, ask him questions about the plot of the book like “What if ...?”.
5. Find books of interest for your child. Ask him to keep a list of his favorite writers.
6. Set aside a quiet place in the house and special times for reading and doing homework. Cheer up the child.
7. Involve him in the process of making informed decisions.
8. For example, watch a TV program together and choose which programs to watch.

Letter

1. Give your child a place to write.
2. Invite him to try his hand at different forms of writing (stories, poems) and colorfully arrange what is written.
3. Ask your child to show you his work.
4. Encourage him to keep a diary. Let it be his private affair.
5. Publish a family newsletter and share it with friends and family. Let the child be in charge of this publication, and you help him organize "interviews" with family members.

School literacy

Speaking and listening

1. Schoolchildren present their ideas to classmates, achieving logical and reasonable information.
2. Express ideas in a variety of ways (discussion, presentation, play, poem).
3. Listen to each other and compare different points of view.
4. Ask questions and agree or disagree with the arguments.

Read

1. Set reading goals and read individually and in groups.
2. Read aloud expressively.
3. Discuss characters, time and place of action, main ideas and details of books read or listened to.
4. Formulate the ideas of the read work in their own words.
5. They read to understand the topic for themselves, making assumptions and conclusions.
6. Establish links between the books you read.
7. They ask questions about the content of the book and, while reading, try to find answers.
8. They offer their own point of view about the books they read, comparing and contrasting information on a particular topic.
9. Use multiple sources to obtain information on a topic and write down facts and thoughts.
10. Identify important and minor details, facts and opinions, themes and different points of view.
11. Compare information from different sources.
12. Read independently for a long time.

Letter

1. They write for various purposes: they invent their own stories, convey information, describe people's lives, create poetic images.
2. Write down fictional stories and talk about themselves to share their thoughts and evoke a response in the reader.
3. Learn to write essays on a variety of subjects using multiple sources of information, such as a well-formed social science report.
4. Get acquainted with the formal structure of the language (rhyme, rhythm, correct choice of words).
5. They study the formal structure of a written text (paragraph) and the different ways of organizing it (cause and effect, chronological presentation).
6. They apply the skills of correct writing (choice of words, presentation of thoughts, use of metaphors and figurative language).

Read also: What is literacy and how to develop it: 35 tips for parents.

Some books you will read to your child, some he will read to you. Ask your librarian or teacher to suggest other interesting books for you. These and other books can be obtained from:

1. in the school library;
2. at the nearest public library.

Grade 3

Grade 4

Books	How to use	Gender orientation
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland L. Carroll	Self reading	For all
"Kashtanka" A. Chekhov	Reading adult	For all
The Tale of Ivan Tsarevich, the Firebird and the Gray Wolf	Self reading	For all
"Old Man Hottabych" L. Langin	Reading adult	For all
"Silver Hoof", "Mistress of the Copper Mountain", "Malachite Box" P. Bazhov	Adult reads	For all
"Once Petka and I" A. Anisimova	Self reading	For all
"The country where we live" Sergei Baruzdin	Reading together (assisted by adults)	For all
Keith DiCamillo Flora and Odysseus	Self reading	For all
Polytechnic University “From dinosaur to compote. A scientist answers 100 (and 8 more) questions about everything”	Reading together (assisted by adults)	Predominantly boys
"The Adventures of Dunno and His Friends" N. Nosov	Reading together (assisted by adults)	For all
Fox Mickey's Diary Sasha Cherny	Self reading	Predominantly boys
Pippi Longstocking A. Lindgren	Shared reading	For all
Robinson Crusoe D. Defoe	Shared reading	Predominantly boys
"Krivolapych" S. Vostokov	Self reading	Predominantly girls
Da Vinci Cat K. Matyushkina	Self reading	For all
Museum of Inventions. From wheel to smartphone» Homes Copano, Liliana Fortuny	Self reading	Predominantly boys
"The Adventures of Pencil and Samodelkin" V. Learn more Learning to read pre k A nonfiction story Simple sentence for kindergarten Oh what a good boy am i Sensory bag with shaving cream Bugs for kindergarten Phonic for children A good night routine Educational math games for kids Nursery rhymes for baby boys Descriptive nouns list