LITERACY SKILLS
PRE-LITERACY SKILLS
Pre-literacy skills are an important basis for learning to read and spell. These skills include phonological and phonemic awareness. Before a child learns to read, they must understand that words are made up of smaller units, syllables and sounds (phonemes) and be able to manipulate sounds in words.
Phonological awareness skills include rhyming words, segmenting words into syllables and sounds, blending sounds together, identifying and manipulating sounds within words.
Phonological awareness skills are developed in a sequential pattern as follows:
Hearing syllables in spoken words and then being able to clap out syllables
Recognising and producing rhyming words.
Segmenting words in a sentence
Hearing sounds at the beginning of words and being able to produce words that begin with certain sounds
Identifying individual sounds in words.
Blending individual sounds together to make a word (e.g. c_a_t = cat).
Segmenting sounds in words (e.g. cat = c_a_t).
Deleting, substituting and manipulating sounds in words
READING, SPELLING AND WRITING
Literacy encompasses spelling, writing and reading. Reading includes recognising words (decoding) and understanding what they are reading (comprehension).
Some children may have difficulties with literacy due to underlying speech and/or language difficulties (e.g. poor vocabulary). Other children may have learning difficulties or a specific learning disorder (e.g. Dyslexia, Dysgraphia).