Literacy Coaching: Elementary Grades

Learning to read and write begins early in children's development, long before they enter kindergarten. Moreover, literacy skill development in early childhood provides the foundation for children's long-term academic success. Over the past two decades, researchers have identified key emergent literacy skills that develop progressively in children during their preschool years and are highly predictive of later success in learning to read (Elish-Piper, 2011). These skills include phonological awareness (e.g., hearing and manipulating smaller sounds in words), letter knowledge (e.g., identifying and naming letters), print awareness (e.g., noticing print and following words on a page), and oral language (e.g., describing events and telling stories). Many young children face significant challenges in learning to read because they lack essential early literacy skills when they begin school. In fact, children who are poor readers at the end of elementary school are most often those who fail to develop...
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