March 24, 2023

Preschool Pre-Literacy Class

Let's Connect offers a pre-literacy class called Reading-Ready, which is uniquely designed for children ages 3 to 5.  Reading-Ready focuses on developing foundational phonological awareness skills and preparing preschoolers for reading.  Using a featured and beloved children's book, little learners explore and play with the words, syllables, and individual sounds we hear in everyday spoken language.

Getting Started

Our most advanced and last round of Reading-Ready for the school year kicked off and is themed around the very silly stories of author Jan Thomas.  Instruction and activities are targeting the most advanced level of phonological awareness known as phonemic awareness.  As children hone in on individual sounds called phonemes, decoding of basic words is also being introduced. 

Playing Word Detectives

The students tried out their new roles as brilliant detectives and worked together to solve every mystery word from our story.  I’m so delighted that they were successful because Is Everyone Ready for Fun? and The Easter Bunny's Assistant are both hilarious tales that no one should miss!  See the reading skills we targeted below:

  • Correct Production of Individual Sounds in Words
  • Blending of 2-3 Sounds to Make a Word 
  • Sound-Letter Correspondence 
  • Decoding VC and CVC Words (V=vowel and C=consonant)

At-Home Practice

Wondering what you can do to reinforce what your child is learning in Reading-Ready?  Here is how to practice at home with your child:

  1. Slowly say the word "us" ("uuusss"), and guide your child to tell you the first sound he hears at the beginning of the word.  
  2. Then, ask what is the last sound heard in the word.  
  3. Finally, challenge him to tell you the name of the letter that represents each of these sounds.  Can he point that letter out in a storybook or somewhere else with print, like on the cereal box?  Give it a shot!

Once your child is successful with this initial word, follow those same steps for these additional words: up, fun, nap, let, get.  (For words with three sounds, see if your child can identify the middle sound by listening closely.  This is usually a more difficult task, so you may need to provide the sound.)  Please be aware that these are still new skills that are being introduced, so guide your child as much or as little as he needs and rest assured that mastery is not expected at this stage.

Stay Tuned

Future notifications about class happenings and suggestions for at-home practice will be posted on the blog, so check back here or follow Let’s Connect on social media via Instagram to stay up to date.

- Johanna Sims, M.S., CCC-SLP


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