What is pre reading skills


5 Pre-Reading Skills Kids Need To Be Successful Readers

By: Author ABC's of Literacy

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Before we can teach our children to read, it is important to first build the foundation for lifelong learning and reading success.  Here are 5 Pre-Reading Skills Kids Need To Be Successful Readers:

 

What You'll Find On This Page

 

5 Pre-Reading Skills Need To Be Successful Readers:

1.  Motivation To Read

In order to learn, children need to be ready and have the motivation to read.

What Can Children Do?

  • Show an interest in books and reading
  • Ask you to read aloud
  • Pretend to read

What Can Parents Do?

  • Let your child pick what book he or she wants to read
  • Read to your child everyday (Find a story in one of these book lists for kids)
  • Read with enthusiasm

 

 

2.

 Language Skills

Children need to have language skills before learning how to read so they can describe things and share their knowledge and ideas.

What Can Children Do?

  • Answer simple questions about a story
  • Retell a story in their words
  • Describe elements in a story such as the characters and setting

What Can Parents Do?

  • Ask your child open-ended questions like “what do you think will happen next?”
  • Have your child retell the story using puppets or a flannel board
  • Encourage your child to make up his or her own story

 

 

3.  Concepts of Print

In order to learn how to read, children must understand how books work or concepts of print.  

What Can Children Do?

  • Hold a book correctly
  • Turn pages in the right direction
  • Read from left to right and top to bottom
  • Understand words represent a spoken word and convey a message

What Can Parents Do?

  • Use your finger to track the words
  • Point to the parts of a book such as the front cover, title, and author (Use the Parts of a Book Poster & Worksheet to help you)
  • Let your child hold the book, turn the pages, and point to the words as you read

 

 

4.

 Letter Knowledge

Letter knowledge is understanding that the letters of the alphabet have different names and sounds.

What Can Children Do?

  • Name the letters of the alphabet
  • Recognize lowercase and capital letters
  • Name each letter’s sound 

What Can Parents Do?

  • Teach your child the letters in his or her name (Use the Letter Knowledge Assessment to track the letters your child learns)
  • Read Alphabet books
  • Ask your child to identify letters on things in the grocery store or on signs around town

 

 

 

5.  Phonological Awareness

Phonological Awareness is hearing and understanding that that words are made up of smaller sounds.

What Can Children Do?

  • Rhyme
  • Count the syllables in a word
  • Blend sounds together
  • Segment or break words down into individual sounds
  • Substitute one letter sound for another one to make a new word

What Can Parents Do?

  • Sing songs and rhymes
  • Play word games
  • Reading rhyming books

 

 

After a children develop these pre-reading skills, they will continue to learn and grow as a reader.  They will learn about phonics, sight words, and much more as they establish the building blocks for reading success.

 

 

Preschool Unit Lesson Plans:

Are you looking for fun, hands-on activities for your preschooler? These Preschool Unit Lesson Plans include an entire year of the most popular themed units! Click on the picture to learn more about this resource!

 


 

More Resources for Pre-Readers:

Learning the ABC’s

Book List for Kids

 

Pre-Reading Skills Checklist:

Do you want a checklist of these pre-reading skills? Click on the box below to automatically download and print Pre-Reading Skills Checklist PDF:

10 Ways to Build Pre-Reading Skills in Kids

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Here are some fun, simple pre-reading skills activities for preschoolers that are fun for home or school.

There are everyday activities kids should already be doing at home, as well as some other ideas to try.

What is Pre-Reading?

So, what are pre reading skills?

Before any child can learn to read well and become a competent speller, five pre-reading skills must be mastered in order to lay a proper foundation.

Pre-reading skills are important as they set children up to decode words independently and read with understanding. They need to be developed before teaching a child to read.

They are an important part of a child’s school readiness and early literacy development.

What are the 5 Pre-Reading Skills?

The five main prereading skills that every student must master before learning to read are:

1.

Print Awareness

Print awareness is the understanding that letters form words and that these words have meaning when they are read.

It is knowing that the four letters on a stop sign have a message and that the words in a book tell a story or provide information.

There is also an understanding of the order of reading as they watch people read from left to right, and cover to cover.

2.

Motivation to Read

The desire to decode words and understand what is in a book is essential before a child learns to read.

A baby is too young and does not yet have the motivation to want to decode the words in his plastic bath book.

Older children who have developed print awareness, and have listened to their parents read bedtime stories, will want to start understanding the words on the pages themselves.

This skill must be fostered until children develop a healthy desire to read.

3.

Listening Comprehension

When a child is able to ask and answer questions about a story or summarize what they have read or heard, they have developed listening comprehension.

4.

Letter Knowledge

Knowing the difference between upper-case and lower-case letters and recognizing letters and their sounds, forms the basis of letter knowledge.

Without this, words cannot be decoded and sounds cannot be blended together.

5.

Phonological Awareness

This refers to hearing the different sounds in words (beginning sounds, end sounds, rhyming patterns, middle sounds and individual sounds).

Good phonological awareness means children are able to blend sounds together, decode them and manipulate them.

These five skills can be developed from a very young age in many easy ways.

Here are some ideas, starting with basic activities to develop print awareness, motivation and listening comprehension, and moving on to more advanced activities that build letter knowledge and phonological awareness.

10 Pre Reading Skills Activities for Preschoolers

Here are some simple activities for pre reading skills. They are also suitable for kindergarteners.

1.

Read to Children Every Day

It’s never too early to start reading to your children.

Initially, it may just be soothing to listen to you read as your baby falls asleep, but as our child grows he will get used to the idea that the book represents a message.

When reading to your older children, even those who can already read, you will be instilling a love for books and showing that you value time to read together.

Read your kids these fun rhymes about books. They are all about the magic of reading.

2.

Ask Questions While Reading

Develop listening comprehension and stimulate higher-order thinking skills by asking questions while reading.

Make sure to incorporate a variety of question types, such as cause-and-effect questions, predictions and opinions.

3.

Point Out Print in the Environment

There are several ways to do this:

  • Read the road signs as you drive and discuss what they mean. What would happen if people couldn’t read the sign that says “Beware of school children crossing the road”?
  • Discuss the labels on your groceries. Why does the chemical cleaner have warning words? How do you know how much sugar is in your cereal?
  • Discuss books. How do you know who is the author of a book? How do you know what the book is about before you read it? Which cover is the front cover and which is the back cover?
  • Open the mail together (letters and emails). Who are these letters from? What message do they have for me? How do I know how much I need to pay for electricity usage this month?

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4. Learn the Letters
  • Play with magnetic letters, letter tiles, stamps, letter cut-outs and shapes.
  • Teach your child the letters in their name.
  • Learn the alphabet song.
  • Think of nouns that start with each letter.
  • Use alphabet charts to compare upper-case and lower-case letters.

5.

Learn Rhymes and Poems

Rhymes, songs and poems are a great way to start introducing rhyming words, which are an important skill for reading. Point out the sets of rhyming words as you sing them.

Make up new rhymes with simple patterns such as an (can, man, ran, pan) or ip (tip, rip, lip, sip).

When your child is old enough to play with sounds, move on to rhyming games.

6.

Play Rhyming Games
  • Find rhyming words – Say the word cat. What sound does cat end in? What other words end in atmat, pat, rat, etc.
  • Identify words that don’t rhymeSay three words e.g. lap, map, hop. Which word doesn’t fit in?
  • Finish the sentences with a rhyming word – Finish the sentence by finding a word that rhymes with cat: My cat is wearing a _____?

7.

Develop Listening Skills

Develop listening skills by asking your child to listen to a word, remember it and then remove part of it, mentally. Use compound words at first.

Here is an example of the instructions to give:

  • Say jellyfish
  • Now say jellyfish again but without jelly.
  • Answer: fish

This can be very difficult at first but is an excellent activity for developing listening and the ability to manipulate sounds.

Give the answer at first until the concept is understood, and your child can do it independently.

8.

Hear Sounds in Words

Start by listening for the beginning sound in words:

  • Write down two sounds or use two letter tiles.
  • Say a simple, 3-letter word and ask which sound the word begins with.
  • Your child must either circle the letter or point to it and say it out loud.

Then, follow the same procedure and listen for the end sound.

And finally, identify the middle sound.

Vary this activity by saying just one sound (e.g. ‘t’) and asking where the sound is in the word – beginning, middle or end.

9.

Manipulate Sounds

When your child is able to identify sounds and hear them at the beginning, end and middle of words, she is then ready to manipulate sounds. Here is an example:

  • Say cat
  • Now change the c to a m
  • What do you hear?
  • Answer: mat

Make sure you are using the actual sound, not the letter name (mm, not em)

  • Say ham
  • Now change the m to a t
  • What do you hear?
  • Answer: hat

10.

Blend and Decode Sounds

The final step is sounding out words and blending letters. These activities can be done with letter tiles.

Sounding out/decoding:

  • p-e-n (pen)         
  • c-a-t (cat)

Blending: 

This activity can be done with letter tiles. Place an e and d together to form ed, then add new letters to the beginning to make new words.

  • b-ed (bed)
  • r-ed (red)
  • l-ed (led)

When children have the phonological awareness to decode words, then they are ready to read!

I hope you enjoyed these preschool and kindergarten pre reading activities.

Remember that pre-reading and pre-writing skills are both important to develop before introducing formal instruction to young children.

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Pre-Reading for Toddlers - Child Development