PROMOTING

EARLY

LITERACY

TANYA S. WRIGHT, SONIA Q. CABELL, NELL K. DUKE, AND MARIANA SOUTO-MANNING

Editors’ Note: Literacy learning begins at birth and continues throughout our lives. Birth to age 5 is a critical period in building the foundation for later success in reading and writing. Educators play a vital role in nurturing young children’ s early language and literacy knowledge and skills. However, the specific practices that support literacy development in early childhood are often different than those used with older children.

Literacy Learning for Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers: Key Practices for Educators is written by some of the foremost early literacy experts in the field. Using eight key practices— Knowing, Showing, Designing, Including, Engaging, Explaining, Observing, and Responding— as their framework, the authors discuss how educators can support important areas of young children’ s early literacy development: Language and knowledge, print concepts, sounds and letters, writing, and text comprehension.

In the following excerpt, the authors focus on the key teaching practice of Explaining to provide support for children making sound-letter connections.