Literacy Skills: Print Motivation, Letter Knowledge and Print Awareness

This post will be part one of my discussion on literacy skills. Today, we'll cover the last three after we covered the first three yesterday.

Print Motivation:
What is it?
Children who have print motivation like being read to and enjoy books. They may also pretend to write, ask to be read to and enjoy trips to get new books.
How can you help?
One of the simplest ways to encourage this literacy skill is to make reading time a special time through music, activities or a special spot. Make sure that books are easy for children to access and show them that you, too, enjoy reading. It also helps to make examples of reading and writing in everyday life to demonstrate how important it is.

Letter Knowledge:
What is it?
Knowing that letters have different names and different sounds is the foundation of letter knowledge. During storytime, we practice letter knowledge with the letter of the day.
How can you help?
Reading and writing activities can both help with letter knowledge. Pointing out and naming the letters in various applications including books or signs will also increase your child's letter knowledge. For younger kids, drawing the letters or talking about shapes will help them.

Print Awareness:
What is it?
Print awareness teaches children the rules of English such as the directions that we read in (top to bottom, left to right). Being able to point to words on the page on command is an example of print awareness.
How can you help?
Asking your child to point out and discuss the words in books or on signs is a great way to work on print awareness. This will also be a game they are familiar with from when they accomplished letter knowledge.

Literacy Skills

I'm sure this skill set is familiar to a great number of you, but I thought it might help to have it handy online.

I've created bookmarks with these listed on it to hand out to parents but there are a number of ways to make parents and caregivers aware of them including signage in the story time or children's area of your library and discussing applicable skills during your reading time together.

• Print Motivation
• Letter Knowledge
• Print Awareness
• Narrative Skills
• Vocabulary
• Phonological Awareness

I'll be going further indepth on each of these over the next few days so make sure to follow up for tips and tricks :)

Wednesday Story Time

At my library, I do two story times on Wednesdays - a baby time and a toddler time. Each week, I try to select a few finger plays and three books that match whatever theme we're focusing on. This week's theme is All About Me.

We started with our letter of the day, M. The kids accurately told me that "Momma", "Mug" and "Monkey" started with M.
After a frantic rush to find new books because I decided I didn't like the previous titles just hours before story time was to start, I selected the following.



You're Finally Here! by Mélanie Watt

After doing our warm ups, I wanted to start with this book because it's high energy and fun. It also allows for a decent amount of audience participation which I try to encourage! The kids seemed to like this one all right but didn't really get as excited as I was :)



Me and You by Janet A. Holmes and Judith Rossell

This is a sweet, but not saccharine, book about all the things one can do and how it's always more fun when friends are involved. Since this was another bunny book (accidental!), I let the kids demonstrate their hopping and they really enjoyed that. I think the parents liked this one because it has a cute message.


I Like Myself! by Karen Beaumont

Karen Beaumont's stories are some of my favorites and this is no exception. The little girl is so full of energy and self confidence, it seemed like the perfect way to end our story times. Everyone liked this one for the great illustrations. it got a lot of interaction from the kids with them shouting out things like, "I can do that!".

Our fingerplays this week were a rousing rendition of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes and Ten Little Fingers. We also used the Song Cube which I'll be writing a post about later this week. (UPDATE: Read the Song Cube blog post here. )