Early Reading Together® meets the need expressed by early childhood education providers and educators for an effective family language/literacy programme to support younger children (under 6 years).
ECE services can apply to the Ministry of Education for funding to offer the programme. Email [email protected] to find out more and apply.
This programme is very highly recommended to all ECE Services. It is a proven family language/literacy workshop-based programme to support young children in Aotearoa New Zealand.
1. Understand more fully the ways in which talking with young children and reading to them (from the time they are babies) helps the child’s language and literacy development.
2. Explore additional ways of supporting children’s language and reading development when they are reading stories and rhymes, and singing songs together.
3. Find out more about books, rhymes and songs which are suitable for young children and enjoyable for them.
The Workshop programme is designed to enhance the support which parents/whānau provide for their children’s language and literacy development. It consists of guidance to provide 3 workshops over 3 weeks (each workshop lasts no more than 1 hour and 15 minutes).
Workshop 1
Week 1: Helping young children with language and reading at home – Getting started
Workshop 2
Week 2: More ideas and ways of helping young children’s language and reading development (as they get older)
Workshop 3
Week 3: Sharing ideas, giving feedback and gathering more resources in the community library (where possible)
As an early childhood educator or teacher you can do this if you wish in collaboration with junior school teachers or local community librarians.
What’s great about the programme is that it is practical, user friendly, enjoyable and manageable for teachers, parents and caregivers and their children.
The overall goal of Early Reading Together® is to help children develop a love of language and reading and the range of language and literacy abilities they need to function confidently and effectively within their communities and wider society.
Early Reading Together®: Workshop Leader’s Handbook
This handbook is intended for use by early childhood educators, junior school teachers and children’s librarians who are interested in implementing the Early Reading Together programme for groups of parents whose children are at home, in early childhood services, and in the first year of primary school.
Booklet with suggestions for helping young children with language and reading at home
This booklet for parents contains suggestions for enhancing children’s language and literacy learning at home.
Boz: A ‘reading book’ for adults
This is used for one of the activities within the workshop programme. Boz has a special alphabet which has been invented to help adults gain some understanding of what children experience as they are learning to read.
Rhymes and songs
The set contains six sheets of rhymes and songs. Parents are given two sheets at each workshop and are encouraged to enjoy these with their children at home. Or you can purchase sets of these sheets (a minimum of 10 sets) for parents or teachers at your early childhood service or playgroup.
Learn more about Early Reading Together – the resources and programme
