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comfortable for my colleague, and she still
remains uncomfortable reading aloud to
this day. ough her mother need not have
worried, her fear was understandable. Particularly
when you consider that at that time
and in the area she lived, her accent was a
barrier to employment.
is worry includes a misunderstanding
of the reasons why reading to young
children is so bene cial. Studies show that
conversation and storytelling are both key to
early brain development and early literacy.
As such, books can be thought of as tools
for developing rich brain-building language
interactions.
Strategies
We can teach parents in a variety of ways
that a book is a wonderful tool with which
to build conversation. Here are some e ective
ways to get that point across, especially
with parents with low or no literacy skills.
Here are a few key things you can
teach parents:
• Children don’t care about mistakes and
they don’t care how well you read. What
they need is to hear a parent’s voice and
to engage in conversation.
• Children are not going to pick up your
accent, and it doesn’t matter if you can
read in English. What does matter is the
quality time you spend with your child
and the fact that you are giving your child
opportunities to use and explore language.
• Storytelling is an excellent alternative that
also helps build cognitive and language
skills, and it is a powerful and e ective
bridge from conversation to reading. It is
Quick tip
22 THE MAGAZINE OF THE NATIONAL HEAD START ASSOCIATION
CHILDREN AND FAMILIES Back-to-School 2008
important to share stories from your own
childhood with your children. is helps
to build vocabulary and helps children
understand sentence structure and syntax.
Storytelling prompts the use of cognitive
skills and imagination in forming mental
images and making predictions, which
then enables children to form their own
stories.
• How to read interactively. e following
wordless book activity is e ective in
making this process easy to learn (without
embarrassing parents with low-literacy
skills).
Wordless book activity
Sharing books without pictures is a very
e ective way to help parents understand
that they can enjoy books without having
to read. In a group setting…
1. Model how to share a wordless book with
a group of parents. Be as interactive as
possible. You can start by role playing,
with you taking on the role of “parent”
and some parents as the “children.” If you
do this, rst model reading non-interactively,
or didactically, and watch the “children”
misbehave and become frustrated.
en model interactive reading.
2. Ask the volunteers and the group for
feedback a er each modeling exercise.
3. Now have the group get into pairs, and
pass out wordless books, one per pair.
Instruct the pairs to role play a parent
and child. e “parent” practices telling
the story by “reading” the pictures to the
“child.” ey can either switch roles a er
a few minutes, or take turns reading to
each other on every other page.
4. Get feedback from the group and discuss
the bene ts of building children’s
vocabularies, of bonding, and so forth.
Find out if they remember reading with
their parents as children. is is a great
opportunity for you to learn more about
the parents with whom you work.
O er supportive praise and encouragement to all families. Make parents feel good about what
they do in terms of rich language conversations with their children, and help them build on these
things. You’ll build their con dence if you help them recognize and build on their strengths.
Barrier #3: My child is too young
to learn to read. Reading is learned
in school.
is used to be a very common belief. In
the past, experts didn’t realize the amount
of brain development that occurs during
the rst few years of life, and they didn’t
understand how early language experiences
prepare children for reading when
they reach school age. Some parents truly
don’t see the point of reading to their child,
especially if their child is too young to speak
or to understand the story.
Strategies
Learning a little about early brain development
is o en useful in overcoming this
belief. Pictures are worth a thousand words,
and brain scans can be especially interesting
to parents. Here are some facts that might
help illustrate the importance of early childhood
experiences:
• Most growth happens early: At age 3, the
brain is 80 percent of its adult size; at age
5, it is 90 percent of its adult size
• ere are critical time periods for specialized
development associates with oral
language, especially grammar and pronunciation.
e window begins to close at 5
years of age.
• Conversation and sharing books during
this period help determine a child’s reading
and thinking ability later on.