Among the many challenges early childhood teachers face, perhaps the most impactful is laying the groundwork for literacy. Studies have shown that early childhood educators have a profound effect on the development of reading skills—yet some teachers say they need more training in specific strategies to support emergent literacy (Weadman et al., 2023).

Two key abilities, phonological awareness and print awareness, make up a large part of reading readiness. How can early childhood teachers support students who need to build these skills so students are ready to read by the end of the school year?

School psychologist, speech-language pathologist, and early literacy expert Kathleen Williams, PhD, NCSP is the author of the (PPA Scale™) Phonological and Print Awareness Scale, and she’s been helping preschool teachers answer that question for much of her career. Here are a few of the strategies she recommends. 

Find out where each student is starting. 

The beginning of a preschool year is busy. Many students are experiencing a school environment for the first time, and early childhood educators are creating learning opportunities across multiple developmental domains starting on day one. To ensure that all students can take full advantage of those carefully crafted opportunities, it’s important to understand what each student already knows and can do. Assessing phonological and print awareness is a good place to start. 

“We really need to know where children are if we want to know how far we’re going to take them—and we want to take them to reading fluently,” Dr. Williams explains. “I think we should start looking at children coming into pre-K and early education programs, trying to find—early on—those children who have not had experiences with print, or who have never had letter names pointed out to them. Why wouldn’t we want to know which students don’t have the skills they need to learn to read?” 

Explore letter and word sounds as you move through the day. 

In rich, challenging early literacy environments, preschool students play with sounds as much as they do toys. Teachers can draw students’ attention to word and letter sounds during routine tasks, daily play, and structured learning. Activities that develop phonological awareness ask students to:

• name letters
• connect sounds to letter symbols
• identify words that rhyme
• notice when words begin with the same sound
• match words with similar ending sounds 

“When you ask children to match words that end the same, they have to do two things,” Dr. Williams points out. “They have to separate the first part of the word from that last sound. Then they have to focus on just that last sound. We have found that it’s almost as difficult as the phonemic awareness task—where we ask children to count how many sounds they hear in a word.”

Another method Dr. Williams has found helpful is using tactile sensory experiences to practice letter and sounds. It can be productive to ask students to draw letters in sand, shape letters with modeling clay, or notice how their mouths feel as they make certain letter sounds.  

Guide students as they explore the print materials you’ve provided. 

Class read-alouds are a staple in most preschool classrooms. In addition to instilling a love for the experience of shared reading, reading aloud is also an opportunity to build print awareness—the knowledge of how books work.

Print awareness includes skills like: 

• understanding that printed words have meanings;
• identifying the parts of a book (cover, pages, etc.);
• starting in the top left corner of a text;
• following words from left to right; and
• knowing that words are made up of letters and sounds. 

“I know a lot of people prefer to read on an iPad or on their phones, but we’re talking about young children here,” Dr. Williams says. “If we have a young child, and we have a book—a tactile book with the element of print—we can let them see what reading is all about.”

In addition to reading aloud, teachers can post letters and labels in the classroom space to reinforce explicit instruction in letter-sound connections. That doesn’t mean teachers need to fill every available inch of wall space (which can be overwhelming for young children who are sensitive to visual stimuli). Instead, teachers can be mindful and purposeful in presenting focused literacy opportunities in the classroom. 

Learn more: How School Leaders Can Champion Early Literacy  

Notice signs that a student may have dyslexia. 

Students with typical development generally learn to match sounds to letter symbols once they’ve received explicit, systematic instruction. That process may take more time and effort for students with dyslexia and other learning or language conditions. 

When students don’t progress as expected, or when instruction doesn’t seem to be building early literacy skills, it may be time to request a dyslexia evaluation. Identifying dyslexia and beginning specialized intervention early is better than waiting for students to fail, experts at the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity say. Early intervention can lead to individualized supports, better reading outcomes, and less anxiety.

Preschool teachers may need to educate families about the nature of dyslexia or its characteristics. “Some think it’s a visual problem, but it isn’t,” Dr. Williams notes. Imaging studies in children with dyslexia show differences in activity in centers of the brain involved in phonological processing and executive functions (Pellegrino et al., 2023). 

Learn more: The WPS Dyslexia Assessment Tool Kit 

Check in regularly to make sure your reading readiness plan is working.  

Lots of students respond well to explicit, systematic reading instruction. Some kids, however, may need extra support. In certain cases, a comprehensive evaluation may be needed to understand whether a health or language condition is interfering with the development of phonological and print awareness.

As you move through the school year, it’s a good idea to pause instruction to assess student growth in these crucial areas. If you’re using a formal assessment, select one that allows for progress monitoring. Growth scores may give you a good indication of how much and how fast students are learning, and that information will help you plan your instruction going forward.

“If we have that visual of the growth score, we have an understanding or a measure of how far we’ve brought these children during the school year, and I think that’s essential,” Dr. Williams says. 

Key Messages  

Early literacy preparation has long-lasting effects on the learning trajectories of preschool students. To build a solid foundation for reading, begin by assessing phonological and print awareness. It’s also important to prioritize explicit, systematic instruction of letter-sound connections, using read-aloud experiences and sensory cues to reinforce what students are learning about how words and texts work. As the school year progresses, preschool teachers can measure growth, adjust instruction, and request comprehensive evaluations for students who need them. This short list of early literacy strategies isn’t exhaustive, but like preschool, it’s a good place to start.  

Learn more about planning interventions with the PPA Scale in this on-demand webinar.