How do children learn to read and write?
The first important milestone of the journey in emergent literacy is called print motivation. This basically means that children need to: • Understand that there is a world of printed language. • Have a desire to be a part of that world. Children must see how printed language applies to them, or how much fun it can be to learn what is inside a book. This gives a reason for trying to crack the code. However, this journey of learning to read and write is not an easy one. There must be strong and consistent motivation for a child to want to start and continue on this path. We can help children get this motivation by immersing them in reading and writing. Reading books together, providing many different writing materials, keeping books, magazines, newspapers, and even junk mail around for children to access are all good ways to immerse children in the world of print. Skills There are several skills that are important in the process of beginning to read and write (National Research Council,
