Literacy Standards in the Early Years

Language Use and Conventions

• Style and syntax.
• Vocabulary and word choice.
• Spelling.
• Punctuation, capitalization, and other conventions.

Prekindergarten standards are being written for literacy development of 3- and 4-year-olds. We are recognizing that children this young are capable of learning many literacy skills and enjoy learning them if engaged in activities in an appropriate manner. The following are representative of some prekindergarten literacy objectives being created by different groups.

Listening Comprehension

• Listens with increased attention.
• Listens for different purposes.
• Understands simple oral directions.
• Listens to and engages in conversation.
• Listens to tapes and responds to directions on the tapes.

Speech Production and Discrimination

• Identifies differences between similar sounding words (e.g., tree and three).
• Produces speech sounds with increased ease and accuracy.
• Experiments with language.

Vocabulary

• Shows an increase in listening and speaking vocabulary.
• Uses new vocabulary in daily communication.
• Refines understanding of words.
• Increases listening vocabulary.

Verbal Expression

• Uses language for a variety of purposes.
• Uses sentences of increasing length and grammatical complexity.
• Uses language to express routines.
• Tells a simple personal narrative.
• Asks questions.
• Begins to retell stories in sequence.

Phonological Awareness

• Begins to identify rhymes.
• Begins to attend to beginning sounds.
• Begins to break words into syllables or claps along with each syllable.
• Begins to create words by substituting one sound for another.

Print and Book Awareness

• Understands that reading and writing are ways to obtain information and knowledge and communicate thoughts and ideas.
• Understands that illustrations carry meaning, but cannot be read.
• Understands that letters are different from numbers.
• Understands that a book has a title and an author.
• Understands that print runs from left to right and top to bottom.
• Begins to understand basic print conventions (e.g., letters are grouped to form words, words are separated by spaces).

Letter Knowledge and Early Word Recognition

• Begins to associate letter names with their shapes.
• Identifies 10 or more printed letters.
• Begins to notice beginning letters in familiar words.
• Begins to make some letter–sound matches.
• Begins to identify some high-frequency words.

Motivation to Read

• Demonstrates an interest in books and reading.
• Enjoys listening to and discussing books.
• Requests being read to and rereads the same story.
• Attempts to read and write.

Knowledge of Literary Forms

• Predicts what will happen next in a story.
• Imitates special language in a book.
• Asks questions about the information or events in a book.
• Connects information and events in books to real life.

Written Expression

• Attempts to write messages.
• Uses letters to represent written language.
• Attempts to connect the sounds in a word with its letter forms.
• Begins to dictate words and phrases to an adult who records them on paper.