1. Hollis’ Parent Literacy Night
Practical Tips for Parents to Help Your Child Develop Literacy

2. Oral Language
Oral language (listening and talking) is the foundation for literacy.
Writing
Writing
Writing
Reading
Listening
Talking

3. Listening Skills In Kindergarten, your child:
- follows 1-2 step oral directions
- listens to understand age-appropriate stories read aloud
- follows simple conversation
In First Grade, your child:
- follows 2-3 step oral directions
- remembers facts taught in class
In Second Grade, your child:
- follows 3-4 step oral directions in order
- understands words about place and time (behind, next to, before, after, yesterday, tomorrow)
- answers questions about a story
ASHA (2012)

4. Listening Skills In Third Grade, your child: - listens well in groups
In Fourth Grade, your child:
- gives an opinion based on facts
- listens for important details in discussion/stories
In Fifth Grade, your child:
- Listens and makes conclusions about different subjects such as math and science
ASHA (2012)

5. Tips to Develop Listening Skills
Encourage active listening while following directions, listening to stories, forming opinions, and making connections to daily life
Help your child listen to sound patterns in words (e.g., rhyming words and beginning/middle/end sounds within words)
Use sequence and time words like first/next/ last or before/after when giving directions and talking about daily activities
Do daily activities with your child like folding the laundry and making dinner. As you do them, talk about what you are doing and give them directions to follow.
ASHA (2012)

6. Talking Skills In Kindergarten, your child:
- answers simple yes/no questions (Did you have fun today?) and open-ended questions (What did you eat for lunch?)
- retells parts of stories/events
- talks about things that happened during the day
- asks/answers questions, asks for information, makes comments
- shows interest in talking with others
In First Grade, your child:
- says all speech sounds clearly
- tells and retells a story in the correct order
- uses complete sentences to talk about ideas
- uses most parts of speech or grammar correctly
- asks and answers wh-questions (who, what, where, when, why, how)
- starts conversations with others, takes turns and stays on topic when talking
ASHA (2012)

7. Talking Skills In Second Grade, your child:
- use oral language to inform, persuade, and entertain
- starts conversation, stays on topic, takes turns, uses appropriate eye contact, and ends conversation properly
- asks and answers more complex questions
- explains words and ideas
- uses more complex sentences when speaking
In Third Grade, your child:
- asks and answers questions
- uses words taught in subjects such as math, science, & social studies
- stays on topic and introduces new and related topics
- retells a story correctly
- knows how to talk in different ways in different places (quiet voice in library vs. outside voice on playground)
ASHA (2012)

8. Talking Skills In Fourth Grade, your child:
- understands and uses figures of speech (“It’s raining cats and dogs!”)
- summarizes information in the correct order
- uses words and ideas learned in subjects such as math, social studies, & science
In Fifth Grade, your child:
- participates in discussions about different subjects
- tells about information gathered in group activities
- gives a summary with main points during discussions
- makes inferences based on given information
ASHA (2012)

9. Tips to Develop Talking Skills
Talk to your child often
Ask your child to tell you 1 or 2 things that happen each day
Talk about what your child is reading and ask questions
Discuss connections between what’s read and heard at school, home and other daily activities
Talk about how things are the same and different
Talk about new words your child hears
Use drawings, wordless picture books and/or cartoons to tell a story or describe concepts
Use figures of speech (idioms, similes, metaphors) when opportunities arise and talk about its meaning
Ask opinion (“what do you think?”), prediction (“what do you think will happen next?”) and inference (“why do you think that?”) questions when reading or during daily activities
ASHA (2012)

10. Key Areas for Reading Instruction
1. Phonemic Awareness 2. Phonics 3. Fluency 4. Vocabulary 5. Text Comprehension
NIL (2006)

11. Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic Awareness is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate the individual sounds or phonemes in spoken words.
Before children learn to read print, they need to understand that words are made up of speech sounds or phonemes.

12. Why is Phonemic Awareness important?
It improves students’ word reading and comprehension.
It is essential to learning to read in an alphabetic writing system because letters represent sounds.
It helps students learn to spell.
It is a strong predictor of children who experience early reading success.

13. What are examples of Phonemic Awareness skills?
Rhyming – identifying and producing rhymes
Segmentation – isolating the first sound, the last sound, and finally all the sounds in a word.
Blending – combining the separate sounds in a word in order to say the word.
Sound Manipulation – changing sounds in a word.

14. Phonics
The basic reading instruction that teaches children the relationships between letters and sounds.
Knowing these relationships helps children to read familiar words, analyze new words and write words.

15. Phonemic Awareness and Phonics work together!
Phoneme awareness instruction linked to systematic decoding and spelling instruction is a key to preventing reading failure!
At home parents can:
Practice the sounds of language.
Take spoken words apart and put them together.
Point out letter-sound relationships.
Read every night and model the use of phonics to read unfamiliar words by “thinking aloud”.

16. Reading Fluency
Reading fluency can be defined as the ability to read accurately, with proper pace, and effortlessly, using appropriate expression and creating understanding. Fluent reading “sounds good” to our ears.

17. Fluent Readers
Read with Accuracy

18. Fluent Readers
Read with Smoothness

19. Read with Proper Volume
Fluent Readers
Read with Proper Volume

20. Read at a “Just Right” Pace
Fluent Readers
Read at a “Just Right” Pace

21. Fluent Readers
Adhere to Punctuation
“ ? ! ,

22. Important Fluency Activities
Repeated Readings
Reread of short texts
Poetry Readings
Fluency Phrases
Scooping Phrases
Reading Aloud
Being Read Aloud to by a Grown Up

23. Sight Words/High Frequency Words
Sight Words- The most frequently used words in the English language, "sight words" are words that a reader automatically recognizes without decoding or using picture clues. High Frequency Words- Words that appear often in printed material.

24. Comprehension Strategies
Ask wh- questions (who, what ,where, when, why and how) when reading
Make connections to yourself (This reminds me of or when ...)
Visualize (What do I picture in my mind?)
Draw a picture
Label pictures, look for new vocabulary (What does this word mean?), and use the words in a sentence
Ask opinion (“what do you think?”), prediction (“what do you think will happen next?”) and inference (“why do you think that?”) questions when reading

25. Comprehension Strategies Continued…
Monitor
Being aware of miscues, the pronunciation of unknown words, and comprehension processes during reading to develop the ability to correct oneself.
Clarify
If it doesn’t make sense, reread the part that didn’t make sense and clarify understanding.

26. Read to Your Child
Reading aloud to your child is one of the most effective approaches to helping them learn to read.

27. References
“Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read-Third Edition.” National Institute for Literacy.
“Building Your Child’s Listening, Talking, Reading and Writing Skills: Kindergarten to Second Grade.” American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
“Building Your Child’s Listening, Talking, Reading and Writing Skills: Third Grade to Fifth Grade.” American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
Vacca, J.A.L., Vacca, R.T., Gove, M.K., Burkley, L.C. Lenhart, L.A. & McKeon, C. A. (2009) Reading and learning to read. Boston: Pearson Education, Incorporated.