The importance of reading in early years education

Preparing for Literacy

Explore strategies and tips to foster a love for reading and enhance literacy skills in young children.

Education Endowment Foundation

Education Endowment Foundation

Early reading should be developed using a balanced approach that focuses on both language comprehension and decoding.1,2 This approach, often underpinned by a framework known as the Simple View of Reading (Figure 2), is well-supported by evidence and provides a helpful overview of the reading process.3

To support language comprehension, children appear to benefit from a range of complementary activities, including those focused on vocabulary development, language structures and the development of background knowledge.

Storytelling and shared reading activities have consistently been shown to improve children’s language comprehension skills.1,4,5–8 A range of frameworks can be used to support shared reading, often emphasising different aspects of comprehension. For example, the PEER framework, described in Box 3, can be used
to develop vocabulary and background knowledge. Parents can also be encouraged to use a version of shared reading with their children at home; a framework to support this is provided in Recommendation.9

To support the development of decoding, children are likely to benefit from activities focusing on alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness.

Box 3: The PEER framework

This is a simple sequence that can be used to support shared, or ‘dialogic’, reading. When reading together, adults can pause and:

  • Prompt the child to say something about the book;
  • Evaluate their response;
  • Expand their response by rephrasing or adding information to it; and
  • Repeat the prompt to help them learn from the expansion.12

For example, if an adult and child were looking at a page in a book about a zoo, the parent might point at a picture and say, ‘What is that?’ [prompt]. The child replies, ‘zebra’, and the adult responds, ‘That’s right [evaluation]—it’s a black and white stripy zebra [the expansion]; can you say, “stripy zebra”?’ [the repetition].
There are five main types of prompts that can be used as part of the PEER sequence. The prompts can be remembered using the acronym CROWD:

  • Completion—leave a blank at the end of a sentence for children to complete (this works particularly well with books with rhymes or repetitive phrases);
  • Recall—ask children about something they have already read (these prompts support children to understand the story plot);
  • Open-ended—often with a focus on pictures in books (this works well with illustrations and encourages children to express their ideas);
  • Wh—prompts that begin with ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘why’, and ‘when’ (‘what’ questions can be used to develop vocabulary); and
  • Distancing—connects the book to children’s own life experiences and provides an opportunity for high quality discussion.

Singing and rhyming activities are likely to help children develop phonological awareness.13 As phonological awareness develops, children become increasingly able to hear and manipulate smaller units of sound.10 Children with well-developed phonological awareness can spot and suggest rhymes, count or clap the number of syllables in a word, and can recognise words with the same initial sounds such as ‘money’ and ‘mother’. Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness. It involves hearing and manipulating the smallest unit of sound, the phoneme, and is discussed further in Box 4.

There is strong and consistent evidence in favour of an approach that is balanced both between comprehension and decoding and within these dimensions; any individual component, such as vocabulary development or alphabet knowledge, should be viewed as necessary but insufficient for long-term success.1,3

However, this does not mean that all aspects should receive equal time as some aspects, such as alphabet knowledge, can be taught relatively quickly. This highlights the importance of using high quality assessment information to adapt teaching to ensure that it is both effective and efficient (Recommendation 6).

Approaches to develop early reading can often also be integrated successfully with communication and language approaches (Recommendation 1) and may also benefit from parental engagement (Recommendation 5).13 Studies indicate that when new approaches are introduced, high quality training and professional development is likely to increase impact.13,14

Box 4: Phonics in the early years

Phonics approaches aim to improve phonemic awareness, which is the ability to hear individual speech sounds, and to teach children about the relationships between speech sounds and letter combinations.

In Key Stage 1, there is very extensive and consistent evidence that systematic phonics teaching should be included as part of an overall balanced approach to developing reading.15,16 The EEF’s guidance report, Improving Literacy In Key Stage 1,15 highlights features of effective phonics programmes at primary school.
In the early years, there is evidence that early literacy programmes that include activities related to phonemic awareness and phonics skills lead to better literacy outcomes than programmes without these components.17 However, fewer studies have been conducted in the early years than at primary school, meaning that further research would be beneficial in this area. To date, very few studies appear to have assessed the impact of phonics instruction on three or four-year olds. It would be valuable to conduct more research to identify the most effective ways to develop phonics and phonemic awareness for this age group.

Based on evidence from primary schools, it is likely that the quality of phonics provision is as important as the quantity of instruction provided,18 so settings should adopt an approach or programme with secure evidence of effectiveness. Features of effective programmes include:

  • systematic—use an explicit, organised and sequenced approach, as opposed to incidentally or on a ‘when-needed’ basis.
  • training—ensure all staff have the necessary pedagogical skills and content knowledge, for example, sufficient linguistic knowledge and understanding;
  • responsive—check if learning can be accelerated or extra support is needed (see Recommendation 6);
  • engaging—lessons that engage children and are enjoyable to teach;
  • adaptations—carefully consider any adaptations to the programme as they may reduce its impact; and
  • focus—a dynamic approach to grouping children is likely to help focus effort and improve teaching efficiency by building on what children know and can do (see Recommendation 6).15

References

  1. National Early Literacy Panel (2008) ‘Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel’, National Institute for Literacy. https://lincs.ed.gov/publicati...
  2. Gough, P. B. and Tunmer, W. E. (1986) ‘Decoding, Reading, and Reading Disability’, Remedial and Special Education, 7, pp. 6–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/074193258600700104
  3. Stuart, M. and Stainthorp, R. (2016) ‘Reading Development and Teaching’, Sage.
  4. Wasik, B. A., Hindman, A. H. and Snell, E. K. (2016) ‘Book reading and vocabulary development: A systematic review’, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 37, pp. 39–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecre...
  5. Swanson, E. et al. (2011) ‘A synthesis of read-aloud interventions on early reading outcomes among preschool through third graders at risk for reading difficulties’, Journal of Learning Disabilities, 44, pp. 258–275. https://doi.org/10.1177/002221...
  6. What Works Clearinghouse (2015) ‘Shared Book Reading’. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Do...
  7. Blok, H. (1999) ‘Reading to Young Children in Educational Settings: A Meta-Analysis of Recent Research’, Language Learning, 49, pp. 343–371. https://doi.org/10.1111/0023-8...
  8. Mol, S. E., Bus, A. G. and de Jong, M. T. (2009) ‘Interactive Book Reading in Early Education: A Tool to Stimulate Print Knowledge as Well as Oral Language’, Review of Educational Research, 79, pp. 979–1007. https://doi.org/10.3102/003465...
  9. Barnett, W. S. et al. (2008) ‘Educational effects of the Tools of the Mind curriculum: A randomized trial’, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 23, pp. 299–313. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecre...
  10. Law, J. et al. (2017) ‘Early Language Development: Needs, provision and intervention for preschool children from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds’, London: EEF. https://educationendowmentfoun...
  11. Barnett, W. S. et al. (2008) ‘Educational effects of the Tools of the Mind curriculum: A randomized trial’, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 23, pp. 299–313. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecre...
  12. Reading Rockets (2018) Shared Reading, available at: http://www.readingrockets.org/... reading [accessed 1 April 2018].
  13. Higgins, S. et al. (2017) Sutton Trust - Education Endowment Foundation Early Years Toolkit | Early literacy approaches. https://educationendowmentfoun...
  14. Education Endowment Foundation (2018) ‘Putting Evidence to Work: A School’s Guide to Implementation’.https://educationendowmentfoun...
  15. Education Endowment Foundation (2016) ‘Improving Literacy in Key Stage 1’. https://educationendowmentfoun...
  16. Torgerson, C., Brooks, G., Gascoine, L. and Higgins, S. (2018) ‘Phonics: reading policy and the evidence of effectiveness from a systematic “tertiary” review’, Research Papers in Education, pp. 1-31. https://doi.org/10.1080/026715...
  17. Chambers, B., Cheung, A. C. K. and Slavin, R. E. (2016) ‘Literacy and Language Outcomes of Comprehensive and Developmental-Constructivist Approaches to Early Childhood Education: A Systematic Review’. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.edurev.2016.03.00
  18. Higgins, S. et al. (2017) Sutton Trust - Education Endowment Foundation Toolkit | Phonics.https://educationendowmentfoun...