Family literacy is defined as home literacy activities that provide literacy skill-building opportunities for young children and that encourage reading development in all members of the family.
Research shows that children raised in homes that promote reading grow up to do better in school than children raised in homes where reading is not encouraged. While early family literacy often involves encouraging young children to read books, there are many other ways to promote literacy activities at home; for example through picture books, singing, reading poetry and storytelling.
One of the easiest ways to show a child the importance of reading is to create a special place to store a child’s books. This shows the child that books are special and deserve a storage space all on their own. Placing books in areas within a child’s reach is also a great way to create a home library. Parents and family members should help organize books on a shelf and teach children to handle books in a way that promotes ownership of them.
Young children often use their imaginations to create stories that go along with pictures they have seen. One of the earliest literacy skills children can develop is the idea of sequencing where a story is told from start to finish and in order. You can use photos, pictures from magazines or their drawings as a starting point for telling these stories. Family members can help the child to ‘read’ the story by asking them to tell the story they imagine from these pictures. As a child gets older, family members can have the child dictate the story to them so that they can write it down and later ask the child to write the story for themselves.
One of the best ways to help foster early family literacy is to encourage all family members to practice storytelling. Its a great way to share family history and it engages all family members, especially others that may be building their own literacy skills whatever their age. Family members should provide a supportive environment for this activity; for example, when a child misses an important element in the story they should be reminded to include it and parents should help the child to pronounce key vocabulary words such as the names of relatives, locations, and so on. This activity helps to build vocabulary, understand sequencing and promotes information recall. Simple techniques like this will help a child to regard storytelling, and hence reading stories, as a natural activity to engage in and will improve their literacy in the future.
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