Key principles for designing early years literacy programs

What is best practice when it comes to early years literacy program design? Professor Robyn Ewing shares some key considerations, based on decades of research.

Becoming literate is more than just learning a set of skills. Literacy is a highly complex, dynamic, contextualised, and ongoing mix of social practices and processes that we perform, negotiate, and achieve over time.^[1]

The early childhood years should begin a journey of lifelong literacy and engagement with reading, with research showing strong links between reading attainment and enjoyment.^[2]

Ensuring good program design in our preschools, schools and libraries helps children develop skills that will enable them to understand and enjoy the lifelong benefits of reading for pleasure.

Talking together, developing a love of story, and sharing and responding creatively to imaginative literature are key factors in developing deep literacy skills and are an important part of literacy program design.

Becoming literate is an ongoing process, rather than something we learn in the early years of school and have forever: if we don’t keep using and growing our literacy skills we can lose them.

Teachers, librarians and early educators need to design and, where appropriate, adapt programs to meet the individual needs and interests of their learners.

We all learn best when we are enjoying the learning process. Ensuring a range of engaging literacy strategies and literary experiences is essential when designing successful early years programs^[3]^–and helps our children develop a lifelong love of reading.

The following principles may be helpful in designing early years literacy programs that foster a love of stories, books, and reading:

Involve parents and caregivers

Sharing the rationale and research that underpins your program with parents and caregivers, and involving them where possible, will make a huge difference in establishing a partnership. Parents need to know, for example, that those children who share stories regularly with loved ones are more likely to continue to read for pleasure as their own skills develop.^[4]

Foster confidence in oracy

Make time for lots of active listening and talking together. Encourage prediction, wondering, questioning, and imagining to help young learners make sense of stories, their worlds, and their place in them. Discuss possible meanings and different perspectives raised in stories. Have fun exploring and experimenting with sounds, rhymes, rhythm. Such experiences help build learners’ vocabularies. Confident use of oral language is the foundation for successful reading, viewing, and writing.

Tell and read a wide range of stories

It matters that we choose quality stories to share with children. Imaginative stories build empathy and compassion. Learners need to be able to see themselves in characters and link their own experiences with the stories we share. Acknowledge learners own stories and act as a scribe to record them. Research demonstrates that those children who have lots of opportunities to share stories are more likely to enjoy reading independently as their own reading skills develop.^[5]

Provide opportunities to share a broad range of different kinds of texts

For example, recipes, instructions, information and digital texts. Talk about their different purposes. Create different kinds of texts together.

Enrich reading through creative arts activities and experiences

Respond to stories and other texts through arts-rich activities and experiences such as dressing up, role playing, using puppets, drawing, painting, moving, making music. Quality arts experiences strengthen learners’ meaning-making and nurtures their imaginations and creativities as well as building their verbal skills.^[6]

**Prioritise time for children to choose what they like to read**

Reading for pleasure plays a critical role in ongoing literacy development. Learners often choose books where they can relate to the characters or explore themes that are meaningful for them. At the same time they are building a vocabulary and learning about spelling and grammar. Research shows that many children report that their favourite book or story is most often one they have selected themselves.^[7]

Connect talking and listening, reading, viewing and writing activities

Confidence using oral language underpins learning to read, view and write. Finding ways to integrate these different language modes will help ensure learners understand their interrelationship.

Program design needs to be flexible

Literacy programs need to include a comprehensive mix of strategies and approaches carefully shaped to meet the interests and intellectual literacy learning needs and interests of individual learners. Different children will need more time with particular skills and strategies.^[8] This might mean including space for more emphasis on phonics and phonemic awareness or more time making sense of the text.

Provide access to books for home and outside school use

Children from low socio-economic or refugee backgrounds and those experiencing trauma or family crisis may not have as many opportunities to read at home as their more advantaged peers. While they will need more support at school, finding ways to ensure all learners have regular access to school and public libraries is also critical.

Robyn Ewing AM is Professor Emerita, Teacher Education and the Arts and Co-Director of the Creativity in Research, Engaging the Arts, Transforming Education, Health and Wellbeing (CREATE) Centre. Formerly a primary teacher, her teaching, research and writing includes a focus on primary curriculum, children’s literature, drama-rich pedagogy, early literacy development and innovative teacher education. Robyn is passionate about the role quality arts experiences and processes can and should play in transforming the curriculum at all levels of education. Robyn is an Honorary Associate with Sydney Theatre, Principal Fellow of the Australian Literacy Educators Association (ALEA), Visiting Scholar at Barking Gecko Children’s Theatre, Co-Convenor, Foundation for Learning and Literacy, Co-Director, Big Sky Stories.

Citations

[1] Luke, A., & Freebody, P. (1999). Further notes on the four resources model. Practically Primary, 4 (2), 5-8.

[2] Clark, C., and Douglas, J. (2011) Young People’s Reading and Writing: An indepth study focusing on enjoyment, behaviour, attitudes and attainment, National Literacy Trust

[3] Foundation for Learning and Literacy (2024) Foundation for Learning and Literacy Touchstones

[4] Tremblay, B & Rodrigues, ML & Martin-Chang, S. (2020) ‘From Storybooks to Novels: A Retrospective Approach Linking Print Exposure in Childhood to Adolescence’, Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 11