by Frances Laing

Created on: February 08, 2011

The most important way to enhance reading skills in preschoolers is to make sure children hold on to a positive approach to listening and reading. The message needs to be: reading can be fun, can be interesting - and can open up new opportunities and adventures.

Reading is a difficult skill to master - especially reading in the English language, where words are not always written how they are spoken. Learning to read means learning to crack a challenging code and many practitioners believe that learning to communicate with spoken language is a fundamental building block of learning to read.

Children should not be pushed to read at an early age. This can turn them off reading (and learning at school) altogether. Communication, talking and enjoying reading aloud really are the key things for the under-fives. Children start to walk or talk at different ages. They are developmentally all very different and there can be huge developmental variations in a preschool class. We need to allow for this fact and we shouldn't be expecting each child to develop in the same way, at the same time, or at the same rate.

Listening and communicating enhance reading skills for preschoolers. Talking and play are very important - whether this is between the children themselves, between children and their parents or between children and carers at preschool. For the under-fives, play is a child's work. It is the way they understand the world, the way that they cope with it, the way that they learn, and even the way that they can deal with challenging situations in their lives. Play is a means of communicating and learning in itself.

Nursery rhymes, singing games and action games with fingers should all be mainstays of early years practice. Many under-fives enjoy dancing and talking. Story-telling, story time and inventing stories and narratives are vital, too.    

Systemic phonics teaching is now common in early years practice. It is, however, doubtful that systemic phonics teaching as a stand-alone practice which takes place at the expense of play, story-telling and communication is the most effective way of encouraging children to read, and to maintain their interest in reading, throughout life.  

The way to enhance reading skills in preschoolers is for practitioners and parents to take the time to communicate. That means taking the time out to read aloud with your child on a regular basis. With busy lifestyles, performance pressures and league tables, this is no mean feat.

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