Overview
Access resources, activity ideas and advice for teaching literacy skills to early years children.
Early years literacy resources
These resources will help you when reviewing your current curriculum to make sure you are meeting the requirement of the revised literacy area of learning.
As you make changes to your curriculum consider what you want children to learn first and plan opportunities for them to achieve this.
What the early years foundation stage (EYFS) framework says about literacy
It is crucial for children to develop a life-long love of reading. Reading consists of two dimensions: language comprehension and word reading.
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Language comprehension (necessary for both reading and writing) starts from birth.
It only develops when adults talk with children about the world around them and the books (stories and non-fiction) they read with them, and enjoy rhymes, poems and songs together.
Skilled word reading, taught later, involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words.
Writing involves transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech, before writing).