Guidance on Helping Children Understand and Learn
about Books and Reading
E Dollie Wolverton, Chief Education Services Branch, Head Start Bureau
In Head Start's effort to foster emergent literacy and expand the exploration of children's worlds through pictures, information, and language, staff need to help children understand and learn about books and reading. As Head Start centers bring books into their environments and establish book collections, staff should work to assist children in:
To encourage this understanding, it is recommended that Head Start staff:
- Seeing how pictures and words can tell a story;
- Learning how to follow a story through a picture sequence; and
- Appreciating that books are enjoyable and can be exciting, funny, interesting, and informative.
In addition to borrowing books from the public library, encourage children to bring books from the Head Start program and their homes to supplement temporarily a book collection.
- Include books in daily curriculum activities as appropriate, by integrating them into the various learning centers;
- Create a quiet, cozy, comfortable area where the children, and also their parents, can enjoy books. There could be rugs, pillows, a rocker, or small sofa in this area;
- Display books in a well-organized, attractive way with props to attract children, such as puppets, a quilt, a musical instrument, a stuffed animal, or plant;
- Make puppets or flannel board pieces to accompany stories that children like and request often;
- Encourage parents to read to children, either individually or in small groups, when the children or a child asks to hear a story;
- Help parents to develop oral and written stories with their children based on family photographs;
- Avoid forcing a child to listen to a story or look at a book;
- Read themselves-children who see adults reading will model the behavior; and
- Above all, make reading fun for staff, parents, and children.
When selecting books from a public library, use the following criteria and choose books that:
- Are in good condition;
- Are free of gender, cultural, and racial bias;
- Parallel children's interests;
- Have varying complexity (picture books, stories with few words, poetry, etc.);
- Have different purposes ("how to" books, funny or silly books, books with rhymes, and books with real or serious children's themes such as anew baby in the family, moving, going to school for the first time, or a death in the family);
- Are from both realistic and fantasy literature; and
- Have characters the same ages as Head Start children.