Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Developing Print Awareness

Encouraging ‘Print Awareness’

Print awareness is one of the first, very exciting stages in your child’s development of learning to read and write.

At about four to five years of age, along with your child developing speech and language appropriately, they begin to recognize familiar words in their environment. You can encourage this by drawing their attention to signs they may see frequently. These are words that we read and understand so automatically, it doesn’t occur to us to make any kind of comment about them … words such as ‘Ladies’, ‘Men’, the words ‘street’ or road’ in your neighbourhood, ‘Stop’ or ‘Give Way’. Even drawing your child’s attention to familiar symbols they see such as a 'round-about' symbol on the road or the ‘pedestrian crossing’ sign is the beginning of making a connection between a symbol (just like a letter) and its associated meaning. You can play a game in the car, seeing who is the first one to spot a sign or symbol.

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