Jenny Pierce Tassin M.S., CF-SLP
Rapides Parish Schools
Alexandria, LA
Lindsey Poche', M.S., CF-SLP
Union Parish Schools
Farmerville, LA
Fawnda White, M.S., CF-SLP
Pulaski County Early Childhood
Benton, AR
David Irwin, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, LSU Health Sciences Center-Shreveport
Professor and Head, Department of Clinical Services
School of Allied Health Professions
Introduction
Parents can help children gain literacy skills at home by actively promoting and sharing reading activities. Reading pattern books are ideal for young and beginning readers. Parents can also engage their child in reading and writing simple words and sentences, gradually developing to more complicated sentence structures. Parent participation and enthusiasm are valuable tools in teaching children and helping them sustain interest in reading (McMackin, 1993).
The purpose of this study was to identify strategies used by preschoolers' parents at home to prevent difficulty regarding literacy acquisition and to determine the frequency of use of those strategies.
(Note- Within this article, "literacy" is used to describe the ability to read, write, and speak English and compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job and in society, and to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential. "Reading" is the process by which the person constructs meaning from printed symbols; reading involves two components- decoding (word recognition) and comprehension (understanding/interpreting language). Communication Facts - 2002.
Review of Literature
Research has led educators to re-evaluate and revise many beliefs that were entrenched in traditional reading programs. It is important for parents to understand how these revisions have altered teaching philosophies over the past several years. By understanding what researchers have revealed about the reading process, parents may begin to feel more comfortable providing literacy support at home (McMackin, 1993).
When considering strategies for promoting written language awareness in preschool children, adult-child interactions during shared book reading have been targeted as a potential context for bolstering children's skills. Specifically, researchers have suggested that adults reading with young children may stimulate growth in written language awareness by directly facilitating children's interactions with print. Snow, Burns, and Griffin (1998) in a seminal report commissioned by the National Research Council, recommended that all preschool children should participate in shared book reading that stimulates verbal interaction to enhance their knowledge about print concepts (Justice, Weber, Ezell, & Bakeman, 2002).
Preschoolers are developing communication skills and emergent literacy skills (ASHA, 2001). Watson, Layton, Pierce, and Abraham (1994) identified six components of emergent literacy: print awareness, book awareness, story sense, phonological awareness, matching speech to print, and practicing prereading and prewriting. They discussed how to integrate and facilitate emergent literacy by using the six components during typical activities of a preschooler's day (Paul, 2001).