\t\t\t\tThis December, I completed a continuing education course presented by Vicki Reed, Ed. D., CCC-SLP, BRS-CL, which discussed literacy, the many skills involved, and its importance in academic success.\u00a0 Reed defined literacy as \u201cmore than basic reading and writing,\u201d as it requires the ability to think about language.\u00a0 Literacy entails higher level skills, such as reasoning and inference, which aid in our comprehension and expression of written text.\u00a0 For example, a writer must consider the prior knowledge that the intended audience would have on a topic and select appropriate vocabulary.\u00a0 Likewise, the reader or listener may have to rely on previous knowledge to discern figurative from literal comments or \u201cread between the lines\u201d to gain the author\u2019s perspective.<\/p>\n
During this course, Reed highlighted the fact that many children present with difficulty with expository language, in particular.\u00a0 Expository discourse is found in elementary textbooks, beginning in the third grade.\u00a0 It is also around this time that we see a switch from reading in class or to a parent to independent study. Children are not only asked to read and comprehend this challenging discourse, but they are often asked to use higher-level thinking skills to respond by summarizing, paraphrasing, and making inferences about what they have read.<\/p>\n
Reed stated that children who are not solid in their foundational language skills (i.e. vocabulary, decoding, spelling) will quickly fall further and further behind their peers.\u00a0 As parents, educators, and SLPs, we must take an active role in preparing children for this \u201cswitch\u201d by instilling a love for reading and helping them to build a strong foundation (i.e. alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, reading comprehension). It is important that parents remain engaged in their child\u2019s academic development. \u00a0Parents can support literacy development by asking school-age children to read aloud to a parent once in a while, asking questions and\/or for an\u00a0explanation of printed material in the child\u2019s own words,\u00a0and asking the child to make predictions and\/or hypotheses about the text.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This December, I completed a continuing education course presented by Vicki Reed, Ed. D., CCC-SLP, BRS-CL, which discussed literacy, the many skills involved, and its importance in academic success.\u00a0 Reed defined literacy as \u201cmore than basic reading and writing,\u201d as it requires the ability to think about language.\u00a0 Literacy entails higher level skills, such as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"A Look at Literacy","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","schema":"","fname":"","lname":"","position":"","credentials":"","placeID":"","no_match":false,"name":"","company":"","review":"","address":"","city":"","state":"","zip":"","lat":"","lng":"","phone1":"","phone2":"","fax":"","mon1":"","mon2":"","tue1":"","tue2":"","wed1":"","wed2":"","thu1":"","thu2":"","fri1":"","fri2":"","sat1":"","sat2":"","sun1":"","sun2":"","hours-note":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4151"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}