Lesson 04: Development of Language skills through ECE
Reading Readiness
The third language skill i.e. reading should be introduced only at the primary stage. The ECE programme should only include activities to prepare the child to learn the skill of reading later. The skill of reading requires the following Readiness experiences and competencies: Visual discrimination- will later make it easy for the child to differentiate between alphabets. Sound or Auditory discrimination- will later help the child to discriminate the sounds of different alphabets. Visual-Auditory Association- helps in associating sounds with visuals e.g. picture and word matching. Directionality- helps to attend to any task in the direction of left to right. So, the ECE programme should include activities for each of these specific competencies for example, activities like dominoes, picture word games, games involving identification and recognition of beginning sounds and end sounds, word cards for visual discrimination, showing an odd man out activity etc. Experiences of these competencies will facilitate the learning of reading when the child enters grade 1.
Participants