Reading readiness

Skills that indicate whether a child is ready to learn to read include: • Age-appropriate oral language development and vocabulary • Appreciation of stories and books • Phonemic awareness (ability to distinguish and manipulate individual sounds of language) • Understanding of basic print concepts (for example, printed text represents spoken words; spaces between words are meaningful; pages written in English are read left to right starting at the top of the page; books have a title and an author, and so on). • Understanding of the alphabetic principle (letters represent the sounds of language) • Ability to distinguish shapes (visual discrimination) • Ability to identify at least some letters of the alphabet. ==Instructional programs for reading==

Whole language: With this model, language is kept whole rather than segmented into fragments or skills. Within this philosophy, children are expected to learn to read and write in the same manner that they learn to talk. Reading, writing and oral language are considered to be intertwined. Some strategies according to the whole language model include encouraging the child to learn to read by "reading," and making up stories that they think go along with the pictures in the book. This model also believes that adults should allow the child to witness reading behaviors, such as holding a book properly. It is also important for adults to model these behaviors in an environment that is free from criticism (Matthews, Klassen and Walter, 1999). An early proponent of whole language reading instruction called reading a "psycholinguistic guessing game," and thus children are taught to guess words that they don't know by using context clues. Skipping unknown words is encouraged, and "inventive" spelling is also acceptable. Phonics: This approach involves teaching the correspondence between graphemes (spelling patterns) and phonemes (sounds). ==Influential perspectives==

The two most influential perspectives are the growth-readiness view and the environmentalist view. The growth-readiness view focuses on the internal workings of the child in order to determine readiness, while environmentalists focus on the external environment. Both internal factors such as genetics and environmental aspects such as school atmosphere can influence a child's readiness for reading. ==See also==