Interactive reading will enhance a child’s literacy
ACQUIRING reading and literacy skills and competence during the early childhood years is critical for human functioning.
Yet, estimates of global illiteracy among children and young people range from 175-million to 200-million, mostly from poor countries. In South Africa, our Department of Basic Education has acknowledged that more than 50% of children in Grade 3 did not achieve the required level of literacy competency.
This has a huge impact on the social, education, cognitive and health development of children.
The effect is felt not only by the child and the family, but also by the community. Children who do not acquire reading and literacy competence in their early development will experience significant delays with serious consequences.
One way of mitigating the effects of poor early literacy is for parents and caregivers to talk to, sing to and read to their young children no matter what age. In fact, the earlier the better. Just this past week I watched as a three-day-old baby “responded” to being spoken to and sung to.
Stellenbosch University’s Professor Mark Tomlinson together with professors Lynne Murray and Peter Cooper of the University of Reading, have a simple way of enhancing children’s early literacy: share picture books with them. They base this is on their research evidence, which shows that children’s language development and literacy skills are enhanced by book sharing with parents or a caregiver.
They report improvements in the child ‘sustained attention’ when parents and caregivers are trained in book sharing and report that this improvement “… is directly related to the carers’ increased sensitivity, warmth and responsiveness.”
When reading with children it is important to keep it active, with the child actively participating in the activity rather than simply being ‘read to’.
While reading with the child, parents and caregivers can ask questions about the story, about colours on the page and about what the child sees on the page, for example. This is active learning.
The days of reading to a child and instructing the child to listen belong in a bygone era. From experience in reading many, many stories to young children, it is clear that interactive reading produces the best understanding and comprehension and facilitates early literacy and early language development.
To achieve these outcomes does not require expensive resources. Parents can read with their children from basic readers, they can tell stories with their children and sing with them.
The important thing is for parents to realise that these everyday activities contribute to developing language, literacy and confidence in children.
Children who do not have these foundational competencies are held back at school and leave school before becoming functionally literate.
As a country we cannot waste our children’s potential by not creating the opportunities for early reading and early literacy.
South Africa is indeed fortunate to have a number of world-class reading and literacy programmes provided by non-profit organisations such as PRAESA (The Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa), Nal’ibali, Book Dash, Wordworks, Mikhulu Trust, Shine and the Centre for Early Childhood Development.
To find out more about becoming a Funda Leader, visit http://nalibali.org/funda-leader. For more information about the Nal’ibali reading-for-enjoyment campaign and the ‘Story Bosso’ competition, as well as reading tips and stories in a range of South African languages, visit www.nalibali.org , www.nalibali.mobi or find them on Facebook and Twitter: nalibaliSA. Nal’ibali is driven by PRAESA, 2015 laureate of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial award for children’s literature and reading promotion.