The (Really) Big Six: Early Literacy Skills

Phonological awareness. Print motivation. Remember how strange some of the six early literacy skills sounded when librarians first heard about them? These days, the six skills (which also include vocabulary, print awareness, narrative skill, and letter knowledge) seem to be household words in libraries that serve young children. But back in 2000, when the National Reading Panel first brought these skills to our attention through the Association for Library Service to Children and the Public Library Association's early literacy initiative, they seemed like an odd mouthful. Most youth librarians aren't trained reading teachers, so a lot of us found their connection to mature or skilled reading a bit murky, too.

Familiarity and repetition have made us more comfortable using these terms in our daily work with parents, teachers, and caregivers. But it took a local college professor to help many of us at Multnomah County Library really understand the connection between the six early literacy skills and skilled reading. Christyn Dundorf of Portland Community College created a simple diagram on “how the six skills contribute to skilled reading.” Intended for the early child-care and education community, Dundorf's explanation speaks to librarians as well. After listening to Dundorf, one of our colleagues said, “It all suddenly just clicked. Now I can see how phonological awareness is the first step in understanding phonics, and how a strong vocabulary helps children comprehend the words they are decoding.”

Dundorf singles out print motivation as the key skill. That makes great sense to us. Youth librarians know that first and foremost, reading must be fun and children must develop a love of books in their early years if they are to become skilled readers. Much of our work is devoted to helping children fall in love with books. Storytimes, booktalking, and finding just the right book for the right child—it's all about building excitement for books and reading.

Next, Dundorf addresses phonological awareness, print awareness, and letter knowledge, relating them to decoding. Children must learn that symbols on a page have meaning and represent words (print awareness). They must learn to recognize individual letters of the alphabet (letter recognition) and the sounds those letters make before they can link the two together to decode or read a printed word. Decoding involves phonics and “sounding out” words. Phonics is the relationship between the sounds of spoken language and the letters that represent those sounds in written language. Phonological awareness, the understanding that words are made up of combinations of small sounds, must come before phonics because the understanding of the sounds is the first step.

The two other early literacy skills, vocabulary and narrative skill, Dundorf relates to reading comprehension. Knowing the meaning of words, and knowing a lot of words, helps children comprehend the words they see on a page. Children with good word knowledge usually have good world knowledge, too. Children who have been to the zoo to see a monkey or who have seen and discussed pictures of monkeys not only know the word to apply when they encounter a monkey again, but they can more readily recognize the printed word for monkey. And those children are also more likely to know where monkeys live, what they eat, and the sounds they make. That all helps children more readily understand what a text is saying about monkeys. Strong vocabulary skills work with narrative skill (understanding how stories work, with events happening in a logical sequence) to help children make sense of the words they are decoding and understand how those words fit together.

Skilled reading results when children have the ability to both decode and comprehend what they are decoding. The key to that—thank you, Portland Community College—are those six terms that now roll off our tongues as easily as the alphabet song.