What is it about?
This book explores the importance of creating literacy-rich environments in preschool classrooms to foster early literacy development. It explains that experiences like shared reading, where adults ask questions and provide guidance, help preschoolers build critical skills like listening comprehension, narrative abilities, and metacognition (awareness of one's own thinking). The book synthesizes research findings, revealing that a curriculum emphasizing strategy instruction and diverse text engagement during shared reading proves more advantageous for early literacy skills than one solely centered on basic skills. It underscores the importance of teaching comprehension strategies such as making inferences and monitoring their own understanding. A significant highlight is the recent implementation of a new national literacy curriculum in Slovakia. This curriculum, grounded in evidence-based methods, showcases superior results in promoting the interconnected development of listening comprehension, narrative skills, and metacognition compared to the previous approach.
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Why is it important?
This book makes the case that what happens in preschool classrooms is vital for setting children up for success in reading and writing. It explains that while basics like letter knowledge are building blocks, preschoolers also need rich experiences with books, stories, and diverse texts to develop crucial capacities that underpin literacy. These include listening skill, narrative skill, comprehension strategies, and metacognitive awareness. Importantly, the book shares promising real-world evidence from Slovakia. A shift toward more reading-centered preschool curriculum shows greater interconnected growth across listening comprehension, narrative production, and metacognition. This demonstrates that wide literacy exposure generates dividends. It allows more children to enter primary school truly “reading ready.” The implications extend far beyond the early years. Equipping preschools to prioritize meaning-making would pay literacy and learning dividends for years to come. The book presents a compelling, evidence-backed case for investing in these meaningful reading experiences to secure a brighter future for our children.
Perspectives
This book compellingly demonstrates why cultivating early literacy skills goes far beyond phonics and ABCs. My chapter explores how metacognition in particular—a child's ability to monitor their own understanding—crucially supports reading comprehension down the line. The innovative curriculum data from Slovakian classrooms validates that this literacy-focused, comprehension-centered approach translates to systemic benefits. As both an editor and researcher, I'm convinced these findings make a water-tight case for the value of meaningful reading experiences starting early. This book demonstrates exactly why policies and practices need to facilitate that exposure for all children.
Dr. Kamila Urban
Institute for Research in Social Communication, Slovak Academy of Sciences
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Development of Key Literacy Skills in Early Childhood Education, March 2023, Peter Lang, International Academic Publishers,
DOI: 10.3726/b20261.
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