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7 Essential Skills Needed for your Child to Start Reading

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The first time a child picks up a book, they’re unlikely to know how to open it properly, let alone be a fluent reader. This is because like with any skill, you must start with baby steps before you can start walking. But unlike many skills such as walking or speaking, the ability to read is not acquired naturally without instruction.  Studies suggest that without quality instruction, a child who reads poorly in the early grades will continue to read poorly in the upper grades, and will require more and more instructional intervention in order to “catch up” (Juel, 1988).

We have spent the first half of the year teaching the necessary pre-reading skills to the Grade Rs and Grade 1s at Cosmo City Primary and they have been making great progress.  If you’ve got a little one, it’s never too soon to start helping them to acquire these skills too.

Through the course of their reading development, a child will go through 4 reading stages:

  • Emergent reader (cannot read yet) 
  • Beginner reader 
  • Early reader
  • Fluent reader

Throughout these stages, there are skills that children develop in order to become fluent readers. 

1. Interest and motivation to read 

In order to learn how to read, children must have a desire to read. They must be motivated in order to develop new skills, which will help them grow as a reader.  

A way to inspire interest and motivation in your children is to read to them everyday and allow them to choose the books.

2. Visual perception

This is our brains’ ability to process what we see and what our eyes have picked up. 

When children learn to read, their visual perception needs to be accurate so that they can distinguish between foreground and background, and discriminate between colours, shapes, sizes and positions in space. This helps children to visualise and process words in the long term. 

If your little one is having visual perception difficulties there are many activities that will help improve these skills.

3. Book and print awareness

Before learning to read, children will pick up books and enjoy the pictures without realising that the letters on the page can be deciphered to create meaning.  

Children need to develop an understanding of how letters create words and these words can be put into sentences to create meaning. 

Playing word games, pointing out words around children in their environment, modelling the correct way to handle books and using your finger to follow the text as you read a book to them are ways to improve their book and print awareness. 

4. Narrative and listening skills

When listening to a story, a child is able to focus on what the story is about, use their imagination and develop expectations of how the story will end. 

Through this process, they are able to develop their comprehension skills, vocabulary and memory. Good narrative skills allow a child to describe things and retell events. Both narrative and listening skills are essential for a child to learn how to read as they assist in improving vocabulary, predicting, understanding, concentration and memory.

5. Letter Knowledge

In order for children to read words, they need to understand that letters have names and sounds, and can be uppercase and lowercase. 

Ways to help improve your child’s letter knowledge are to read alphabet books,  teach them the letters in their name and make them aware of letters in their environment by looking at license plates on cars, recipe books, labels on groceries and other items. 

6. Phonological and phonemic awareness

This is the ability to hear that words are made up of smaller sounds and these sounds can be manipulated. When a child hears a word like ‘pat’, they should be able to identify the different letters and their sounds – /p/ /a/ /t/. They should also be able to hear sound patterns such as rhyme and syllables. 

Singing nursery rhymes, breaking down words into sounds, counting syllables, and changing the beginning sounds of words are some of the many activities that can help improve phonological and phonemic awareness. 

7. Vocabulary

Lastly, knowing the names of things is an essential skill in order to learn how to read. The greater your child’s vocabulary, the easier it will be for them to learn how to read and enjoy reading. 

When reading stories to your children they can hear the words and connect them with pictures in the storybook. This is a great way to improve their vocabulary. 

Other ways you can improve vocabulary include having conversations with your children and explaining unfamiliar words to them, asking them to describe things such as their toys or food, reading stories everyday and playing word games. 

Photo by Gautam Arora on Unsplash & WoodenEarth.com

Why Reading to Children is Important

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Reading allows us to transport ourselves into different worlds. New words can be learnt, different emotions can be felt; your imagination can run wild.

But why is it particularly important for you to be reading to your children? The answer lies within the developmental process of a child.

Assisted cognitive development is the first reason why reading to your child is important. Cognitive development refers to “how we perceive and think about our world in reference to our intelligence, reasoning, language development, and information processing” (https://www.highspeedtraining.co.uk/hub/why-is-reading-important-for-children/). It’s true, a baby’s brain is like a sponge – easy to absorb the information it is given. Thus, through cognitive development, a child is able to make sense of the world around them and be able to problem-solve better.

Secondly, reading to your child allows them to become more empathetic as they are constantly put in front of different characters and situations. Developing empathy is important as it allows one to understand emotions better and how to respond to certain situations.

Thirdly, reading to your child allows them to feel validated and loved. By spending time with them you are building your bond.

Creativity and concentration skills are also improved by reading as it encourages your child to sit still and listen for long periods of time. Did you know that “Multiple studies have found a correlation between reading for pleasure and higher academic achievement in every subject, not just English?” (https://www.highspeedtraining.co.uk/hub/why-is-reading-important-for-children/)

Some tips for reading to your children:

  • Read as much as you can and consistently: whether it be for 10 minutes a day or an hour, the most important thing is that you are reading!
  • Be patient: reading is an activity that requires you to fully engage with what you are reading as well as your child’s responses.
  • Make it fun and interactive by using different voices, pointing out connections and asking questions to test their understanding.
  • Encourage language exchange through conversation or verbal storytelling.

Reading is a wonderful form of entertainment and your children’s vocabulary will expand. It is important that they are surrounded by books. If you do not have the means to always purchase a new book, consider joining a public library or even using the wonderful resources available on the internet. Let’s continue to create a culture where we encourage the people in our lives to read more to their children as they are the future of this world.

Going Digital

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According to a UNESCO report published in September 2020, ”Education, the Internet and broadband connectivity have a tremendous potential to solve some of the world’s most pressing challenges including the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Nevertheless, today 3.6 billion people still have no access to the Internet and about 258 million children are out of school.” (https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374309/PDF/374309eng.pdf.multi)

If you live in Gauteng, or probably anywhere in South Africa, you don’t have to look very hard until you find school children who have never accessed the internet.  For most of the little Grade 1s at Cosmo City Primary School outside Johannesburg, the first time they did was when they used the Book Village digital library through the Sora app from Overdrive.

And for these children, Library Time is a real treat!  We use some of the enriching material available on the internet all the time to liven up our lessons – but most importantly, the internet is a platform that enables the children to connect with the outside world like never before. With the Book Village app, we are extending the reach of one teacher in a classroom of over 60 children, to giving every child their own individual tutor so that they might learn at their own level and pace.

Apart from overcrowding in schools, many children start Grade 1 without having any pre-school education. There are only 50 places in Grade R at Cosmo City Primary for example, yet there are about 200 Grade 1 children. To help catch them up, we’ve designed a pre-reading programme that can be digitised and worked through with an individual online tutor when the children start school. We’ve been through this with the Grade Rs and Grade 1s this year, and they are making fantastic progress. We will include this programme in a future version of the Book Village app.

Finally, from the same UNESCO report, “School connectivity must also be about empowering those who are online by providing them with high quality, meaningful, inclusive and relevant content that is accessible through safe and secure platforms and delivered by innovative methods of instruction.”

And at Book Village, we are doing just that.

Freedom Day

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In a country like South Africa, freedom was not afforded to everyone. Blood, sweat, and tears are what lead to the first democratic elections that took place on this very day, 28 years ago. Race was no longer considered a factor in the voting process and South Africans could rejoice over Apartheid’s demise. 19,7 million people casted their vote for their government of choice, resulting in Nelson Mandela from the African National Congress, being inaugurated as the first black president of South Africa.

Freedom Day is an important day to acknowledge because it was the start of a reformed society that began to embrace difference and welcomed notions of freedom of expression and choice. People of colour were finally able to express themselves freely through their writing and certain books were unbanned. Works such as ‘And a Threefold Cord’ by Alex La Guma, ‘I Write What I Like’ by Steve Biko, and ‘Amandla’ by Miriam Tlali were a few of these books that were unbanned.

One book that every South African child should read on this day is Nelson Mandela’s ‘A Long Walk to Freedom’ abridged by Chris Van Wyk. This book details Mandela’s journey in a beautifully illustrated work that makes the concept of Apartheid and the significance of freedom easily understandable. Another way you could teach your kids about this day is by taking them to one of the many museums that have wonderfully curated exhibitions. Learning through live interactions and experiences is one of the best ways to ensure that your children remember what they are learning. Robben Island and The Apartheid Museum are good options to visit, and if you’re lucky, you might even receive free entrance if you go on the day!

The 27 April is a day that we should remind our children to shoot for their dreams as anything is possible if you put your mind to it. The freedom fighters that resisted Apartheid are a prime example of this.

Kahlil Gibran’s famous quote: “Life without liberty is like a body without spirit” is a moving description that sums up the importance of freedom.

Mother Earth Day

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April 22nd is UN Mother Earth Day. A day that raises global awareness of the challenges to the well-being of the planet and all the life it supports.  Mother Earth Day also recognises a collective responsibility (as called for in the 1992 Rio Declaration), to promote harmony with nature and the Earth, to achieve a just balance among the economic, social and environmental needs of the present and future generations of humanity. (https://www.un.org/en/observances/earth-day).

At the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015, 193 countries adopted the 2030 Development Agenda and 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). International cooperation on climate change is closely linked with the other principal concern of humanity – how to achieve sustainable development for global prosperity. Climate change, biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation threaten the achievement of all of the SDGs, including Goal 4, Quality Education, that Book Village is most closely aligned with. (https://www.unep.org/resources/making-peace-nature)

We’ve been looking for the best ways to get talking about climate change and the environment with the children at Cosmo City Primary. Ultimately, we enjoyed spending time on ‘Climate Box’, an interactive platform from the UN (https://climate-box.com).  The toolkit provides to be highly enriching with the inclusion of a textbook, quiz, maps and posters – all aimed at primary and secondary school children.

Many books on the subject are quite alarming and wouldn’t make for good bedtime reading.  We recently read ‘My Friend Whale’, by Simon James to the Grade 1s.  We were enjoying the book until it just ended, as unexpectedly as the ‘Diary of Anne Frank’, with the friendly whale simply disappearing.

But there are some beautiful, hopeful books too, and these are the ones we chose to read to the children for Mother Earth Day.

‘The Brilliant Deep’, by Kate Messner tells the story of the environmental scientist Ken Nedimyer, founder of the Coral Restoration Foundation and how he is saving and regrowing the world’s coral reefs.

Another lovely picture book ‘What on Earth is That?’ by Sarah Savory is a story about a pangolin, the most trafficked mammal on earth. 

‘I am Farmer:  Growing an Environmental Movement in Cameroon’ by Miranda Paul and Baptiste Paul is the true story of how environmentalist Farmer Tantoh is transforming the landscape of Cameroon.  It is a beautiful, inspirational story and the quote at the end of the book is poignant – “It doesn’t matter where you come from – you are never too small or insignificant to contribute to the long-term sustainability of our planet.  By doing simple things to the best of your ability, you are improving the world.”

Human Rights Day

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“To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity” – Nelson Mandela. This quote captures the essence of why every year on the 21st of March, Human Rights Day is celebrated in South Africa. This day acknowledges those that fought against the pass laws in the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 and on a broader scale, for democracy. Tragically, 69 people were unrightfully killed by police officers in the Sharpeville Massacre. The protestors’ rights to life, dignity, equality, and freedom of movement were stripped away from them. Thus, this event is a reminder of how pertinent it is to learn from history and ensure that an atrocity like this does not occur again.

Human rights serve as a trajectory for the way people should be treated and should treat others. One particular right that should be focused on in a South African context, is the right to education. Although human rights are enshrined in our constitution, there is still significant work to be done to actualise these rights and not just ensure that everyone can access an education, but further, a quality education. According to a 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), eight out of ten grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning across all languages in South Africa. These statistics are concerning, but it does not mean that many South Africans are not trying to change the course of these statistics. One of the key areas affecting literacy rates is the provision of resources. Book Village aims to combat this and hopes to make reading more accessible to young South Africans through our online literacy programme.

We, at Book Village believe that education is the tool to empower the youth to live comfortable lives filled with opportunities. Book Village is dedicated to honouring the right to education by giving children the skill of literacy. Being able to read, not only allows for a sense of enjoyment, but it also enables children to grow their understanding of the world and make it a better place for all.

Happy Human Rights Day from Book Village!

Library Week 14 – 20 March 2022

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Benefits Of Reading Aloud - Several Children's Books Laid Out On A Table

The Library and Information Association is celebrating Library Week 14-20 March 2022 with the theme of Re-Imagine, Re-Purpose, Re-discover…Libraries! https://www.liasa.org.za/.

Libraries continue to be affected by COVID and many are still unable to provide services to the communities they serve.  With this in mind, the theme for Library Week 2022 will look at the ways in which libraries are having to reimagine and repurpose their services and spaces so that communities will rediscover and see the benefit of their libraries.

The traditional hard-copy book library at Cosmo City Primary 1 school (where we are conducting our trial), was refurbished and re-opened in 2015 with funding and support from (the now closed) School Aid charity and the Peter Cundill Foundation. The Bookery NPO catalogued and covered the books that can be accessed in the library, as well as contributed towards the librarian’s livelihood for 3 years. The library was a thriving and much loved part of the school from 2015 until the beginning of 2020, when it was closed for book lending due to COVID. The book lending service of the library remains closed, and this has probably been the fate of many libraries across South Africa.

But the Cosmo City Primary library has been re-imagined!  It is still a busy, thriving space and it’s still devoted to books and reading.   In one corner the government’s Reading Champions take small groups of grade 2 and 3 learners and help them catch up on some of the learning time that’s been lost due to COVID. We work in another corner of the library, surrounded by lovely books, which sadly cannot be borrowed anymore, but the children often get a story read to them which they enjoy.  All children and teachers at the school are able to borrow books from the Book Village digital library at any time – and they’ve been loving it.  We’ve been focusing on the grade 1s this term, and they have become wizards at logging in, navigating around the library and borrowing their own books. We’ve been amazed by their progress in interacting with technology.

The Cosmo City Primary community really values books, reading and their library space, even though the library has gone digital. And for this, we think the children there are lucky to be surrounded by individuals who will encourage a safe space for learning and furthering the education of these young students.

I Reread Twilight as an Adult, Loved It, and I Am Not Ashamed: A Confessional.

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Twilight book on bed

Way back in 2009 I was a gangly (and angsty) fourteen-year-old. It was a simpler time, although my fourteen-year-old self would never admit this.  

A time when paperback books were more popular than kindle. 

When the idea of a world-wide pandemic would be the plot of a thriller novel. 

When school was taught in classrooms, and I didn’t have the crushing expectations of adulthood on my back. 

Vampires and Werewolves suddenly became the flavour of the month and I could not get enough.

Bella and Edward’s hardships made light of my measly fourteen-year-old problems – not enough friends, horrible at putting on eyeliner. The usual. 

My fourteen-year-old self would never forgive me if I didn’t stress the fact that I read Twilight before it was cool. Like before the movies were released. My seventeen-year-old self might die if she knew I was telling you, dear reader, that I read these books more times than I can count. And that I had a seriously unhealthy obsession with Edward Cullen. 

By the time I hit seventeen, you see, Twilight was no longer “cool” and the fact that I still had a closeted crush on Edward (and, let’s be honest, Jacob), was cringeworthy. So I shunned my old favourite, banishing Forkes and the Vampires and Werewolves to a dusty old shelf until I’d one day be ready to pick them up again. 

A few weeks back, I found myself longing for some comfort and solace in the whirlwind of the end of 2020, and who better to bring that comfort than an old friend in the form of a long-forgotten book? 

Telling anyone who would listen that I was only rereading them for “research purposes”, I picked up my well-loved copies of the books from the shelf and began reading. 

I finished the entire saga (four books, a few thousand pages) within a week, struggling to tear myself away from the books to do mundane human things like eating, sleeping and going to the loo. 

I found myself rooting for Edward and Bella in Twilight, sobbing over heartbreak in New Moon, sobbing even more in Eclipse and squealing like a teenaged girl the whole way through Breaking Dawn. Over ten years since reading the novels for the first time, and it felt just as intense as the first time. 

Reading Twilight in my mid-twenties was different. More relatable in some ways, having actually had a real boyfriend and had my heart broken. But also, a bit alarming as I realized just how poor a role model Bella Swan is for the modern woman. 

As a die-hard “Team Edward” member in my teens, I now look at Jacob with softer eyes, thinking about what would really be best for Bella. As a teen I so desperately wanted to experience a whirlwind, knock-you-off-your-feet romance like Bella. Now I see a girl who perhaps needed to spend more time with her friends and, you know, not rush into anything crazy like marriage, bearing a half-vampire, half-human child and immortality.

Reading this old favourite was a shot of nostalgia straight to the heart, and I allowed myself to be fully wrapped up in it. I let myself bawl as Edward leaves Bella, and felt my mood sour as she was plunged into the depths of depression. I stayed up until 2 am finding out if the Cullens beat the bad guys. I emerged from my reading binge foggy eyed, with a sore neck from days spent crouched over the books. 

I regret nothing. 

Except ever thinking that I was “too cool” for a book, or that rereading was cheating. So if you happen to be reading this, I implore you: go reread your Twilight, or that awful Nicholas Sparks novel which you secretly loved. Or your high school English set work that made you feel something for the first time. Do it, and do it proudly.

The joy of re-reading and reconnecting with an old story should not be something you reserve for Netflix.  

– Ali

Photo by Mel Poole on Unsplash

Why Do We Celebrate Heritage Day?

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In South Africa, Heritage Day is celebrated on 24th September to honour the various cultures and diversities in our country, from the official languages, our cuisine, our music and creative expressions of our historical inheritance. (Department of Arts and Culture).

I love the annual Heritage Day celebrations at schools, with the colourful traditional costumes and dancing. It is a great celebration of our different cultures.  This year there was no dancing or singing at Cosmo City Primary, but many of the children arrived at school on Wednesday proudly wearing their beautiful and varied traditional dress, together with their masks.

Before 1994 some heritages were not freely appreciated or promoted in South Africa. In our democracy it is important for us to recognise the significance of our living heritage and to safeguard it for future generations. Language is an important part of people’s identities and their living heritage, and everyone in South Africa has the right to use any of the 11 official languages of their choice.

In Cosmo City Primary School, where we are conducting our pilot study, children are addressed by their teachers in their home languages, but a lot of formal teaching is conducted in English, and most textbooks are in English.  The graded reading scheme that we will be using for our Book village App has been specially developed for South African children learning English as their first additional language. The books depict the everyday lives of South African children, making them easier for the children to relate to than books set in England or America.  Other South African languages will be added as they become available.

Whilst most of the books in the Book Village library are in English, we have been trying our best to include books in the other SA languages so that the children can enjoy reading in their mother tongue.  We have formed a partnership with the excellent Nal’ibali organisation, and their wonderful stories, available in many South African languages, have been digitised and included in our library for children to borrow.

The Quirks of a Digital Library

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Books in digital format

Photo cred: Pen Waggener 

We at Book Village have been loving the Gauteng Provincial Online Library during lockdown, but it really does have some odd quirks!

Unlike in a traditional library, digital books cannot be stolen, lost or overdue, but it seems that they can disappear from the library when the licence expires, which can be confusing!  So you might be able to put a hold on the third book in the wonderful Cicero Trilogy – Dictator because the library once owned it, but you might never receive it unless the librarian decides to repurchase the licence.  The other two books of the trilogy don’t seem to have ever been owned by the library, but you can make a recommendation for the library to buy them through the OverDrive website. So we’ve been busy recommending the purchase of obvious missing library books to the Gauteng Online Library.

Over the past few years we have worked in school libraries stocked entirely with donated books, and the best of these libraries all have some common features:  entire shelves of Enid Blyton books, several copies of each Roald Dahl book, the middle book of, say, His Dark Materials Trilogy and, in the best libraries, extremely tatty and loved copies of some of the Horrid Henry books, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and if the kids are really lucky, the odd Harry Potter book and some new teen fiction. The non-fiction is usually a dismal collection of 1950s biology textbooks and random books about writing batch files for MS-DOS or the Natural History of Guam.

Book Village Digital Library

The Book Village digital library was bought from OverDrive as a curated collection of children’s books and generally only shares the best aspects of a traditional library.  When having noticed a few quirks and gaps in the digital library, we asked them how they put the collection together. 

They replied stating that they consulted with librarians in South African Schools and focused on popular South African authors and titles, as well as titles popular in schools internationally.  They maintain the library by adding more copies of in-demand titles, as well as new releases and requests.  

The Book Village library is indeed a wonderful collection of books and we think there will be books for every child to love.  But we are quite sure that the kids would happily swop Anna Karenina for the 13 Storey Treehouse and The Lives of the Necromancers for anything by Philip Pullman.  

We are always looking for new book recommendations and so if you have any ideas please email them to sarah@bookvillage.co.za.

Sign Up To Be Part Of Book Village!

By signing up to become a volunteer, you will be among the first to hear when the Book Village app officially launches and have the opportunity to be among the first people in the world to start making an impact through the Book Village platform.