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McKay School of Education > Project SEEL > At Home > Literacy and Your Child

Literacy and Your Child

Reading Changes Everything

Reading is critical to success in school; it can lead to success in life as well.  Literacy, the development of  reading and writing skills, should have a solid foundation.  We suggest that parents actively support what their child is learning at school by providing additional practice.  Children have different learning styles and demands, and some need more  practice than they can get in school.

The most caring place for support and practice is the home. We understand that parents are busy with a wide variety of responsibilities, so we will suggest  meaningful things that can be done easily in very little time. By keeping the time you spend short but playful and specific, you can provide meaningful support that both you and your child will enjoy. 

The SEEL program (Systematic and Engaging Early Literacy) has been developed to teach important early literacy skills through lessons and activities that are engaging and fun for children.  If your child is receiving the SEEL program at school, we provide some additional things you can do to supplement it.  If your child's class is not involved with this program, you may want to adapt many of the SEEL classroom materials to enhance and practice what your child learns.

Focus on One Literacy Target at a Time

A literacy target is one or more  skills or patterns on which you focus. Naming the letter M and giving its sound (/m/) or thinking of a word that rhymes with cat are examples of literacy targets. Children must learn many skills if they are to be successful readers and writers. Click on Curriculum to see all of the targets included in the SEEL program. Click on Parent Resources to see activities you can do to help your child learn and practice the literacy targets.

Make Learning Playful

Playful practice is the heart of SEEL instruction; with playful SEEL activities children uses multiple senses to learn, remain engaged, and experience plenty of practice in a very short time. Activities include reading and telling stories, exploring, experimenting, making things,  singing, dancing, and playing games. Within these activities, you highlight the target skill as you enjoy the activity with your child. During activities you carry on a lively conversation with your child. You may comment on the children’s actions ("You are finding so many things that begin with C") or ask informational or imaginative questions ("What -ack family words can we put in our back pack?).  Give children choices whenever you can (pudding or pie?), and always acknowledge children’s comments and ideas.

 Include a Range of Literacy Skills

The components of literacy are broad categories of learning that include a range of skills involving many individual targets or patterns. Teaching a literacy target such as the short o sound will include a range of skills that are appropriate for the students. The following list of skills demonstrates the range of skills in which teachers or parents may engage students.

Introduce Phonics and Decoding

Phonics is the relationship between spoken sounds and the letters or words that represent those sounds in print.

One of the primary goals of SEEL is to help children understand the relationship between sounds and printed letters or words. Children are beginning to understand phonics when they can do the following:

  1. Match a sound to a written letter or word
  2. See a written letter or word and say the sound
  3. Understand words that they see in print and hear spoken

To increase phonics/word recognition in children, SEEL uses some of the following strategies:

  1. Expose children to written letters or words with their accompanying sounds during activities or play
  2.  Arrange for children to encounter letter-sound associations as they interact with print
  3. Offer a variety of activities that include sounds along with their accompanying letter(s) or word(s) in different settings and circumstances throughout the day

Practice Letter-Sound Association

Letter-sound association is knowing the sound each letter makes. Since reading is based on associating the written letter with its sound, children must be able to do this quickly and automatically in order to read words and sentences.

 Parents can teach the sounds that letters make and strengthen children’s ability to make letter-sound associations in playful yet purposeful ways. Children do not have to know all letter names before they begin to make letter-sound associations.  Some letter names and sounds can be taught at the same time.

Practice Sound Blending

Sound blending is the skill of combining individual units of sound  to make words; it is involved in both written and spoken language.

In the SEEL methodology, sound blending is an integral part of early literacy learning. SEEL helps children develop the following sound blending skills:

  1. Recognize individual sounds in words
  2. Separate individual sounds in words
  3. Blend individual sounds together to make words

 SEEL instructors use several methods for helping children blend sounds:

  1. Follow-up or extension activities immediately following a literacy activity: e.g., after a rhyme activity, placing different sounds in front of the rhyme-ending to make new words
  2. Segmenting and blending of words during reading activities: e.g. while teacher reads aloud or children practice reading words
  3. Quick focused activities during which children play with segmenting and blending sounds to make words

Help Childen Learn New Vocabulary

Vocabulary is concerned with understanding and using words accurately.

An important objective of SEEL is to expand children’s oral and print vocabularies.  SEEL goals for children’s vocabulary development include the following:

  1. To understand the meanings of new words introduced in books, conversations, and activities
  2. To be able to read common primer and pre-primer sight words

 Varied activities and lessons are used to teach vocabulary:

  1. New words introduced in activities
  2. New words  encountered through pictures, actions, experiences, or play
  3. A variety of activities for playing with new words.

Practice Story Comprehension

"Story comprehension" refers to  awareness and understanding of stories.  Designers of  Project SEEL have chosen the following story comprehension goals for  children:

  1. To focus minds and imagination into the stories
  2. To engage children in stories, allowing them to comment and question
  3. To involve children by asking them to answer questions about the story

Comprehension is practiced through many strategies:

  1. Connecting stories to children's activities and experiences
  2. Building stories around  classroom experiences or activities
  3. Enacting stories, with children portraying characters--with props and costumes as appropriate
  4. A variety of follow-up activities  tied to stories the group has read