Pre-Literacy: Print Awareness


Baby A has recently showed budding print awareness, the third of six pre-literacy skills. Print awareness is self-explanatory: recognizing text, and that it is organized. A child with print awareness skills may recognize that the grocery store lane lamps have numbers on them, or be able to point out the text on book pages. Print awareness can be fostered in everyday life:

Point out literature in the environment, such as street signs, menus, words on clothing, or the child's name on a doctor's office bill. (This was already discussed with print motivation.)
Describe books by pointing out the front cover and the back cover, turning the pages in order, and running your finger along words to demonstrate reading left to right and top to bottom (in English). This also demonstrates that you are not making up words for the book, but that you are reading. Feel free to go off-script, but pointing to words as you read them will show that you are reading what is written.

Print awareness doesn't need to include recognizing letters or words--just that written words exist and that they can be read by others. 

Here's an example of Baby A's budding print awareness--she knows there are letters, and can sing most of the alphabet, but she doesn't know A from K, yet. It's all OK to her...










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