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 :)

All Mighty Song Cube!

This is three sides of my story time cube. It isn't gorgeous but I don't think it's bad for a box I taped together myself, Microsoft Clipart and some packing tape.

I got the idea from Mel's Desk (a fantastic resource!) and decided that I had to have my own.

For those of you unfamiliar with a song cube, it's basically a fun way to choose what songs to sing during story time. A song's title and a symbol to represent it are on each side. Mine has:

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star //star

I'm a Little Teapot //teapot

If You're Happy and You Know It //hands clapping

Row, Row, Row Your Boat //sailboat

The Wheels on the Bus //bus

Itsy Bitsy Spider //spiderweb

This will help children with print recognition when they see the words each week and can associate them with the symbol. Once you've used it enough, the kids will start to shout out the name of the song that it lands on. It's also an easy way to up participation by allowing someone different to roll the cube each week!