Literacy Skills in the Making

Your children know a great deal about reading before they ever hold a book in their hands. What is the nature of these very early literacy skills and how can parents turn their children into bookworms?

A young child’s understanding of reading and other related skills in the days before he is ready to read is called emergent literacy. There are several reading-related concepts that a child must have under his belt before he can begin the actual process of learning to read. But to begin with, a child needs to acquire three main skills before beginning his reading education, or for that matter, his education in general.

* Communication—a child should become familiar with spoken language and be able to communicate through speech.

* Alphabet—a child should understand the concept of letters and have the ability to name the individual letters of the alphabet.

* Exposure to Written Words—a child should be exposed to many stories and books before he is of an age to attend school. This is the way toward motivating a child to learn to read.

Get Busy

If you’ve ever looked on in envy as you saw a neighbor’s child always with a book in hand, you can now curtail the jealousy and begin to get busy. It is in your hands to turn your child into a reader. But the process begins as soon as your child is born.

Spend time reading to your child each day. Take care to choose books with simple story lines and colorful illustrations that will excite your child’s mind. As you read aloud, inject lots of expression in your voice. Let him feel the emotions expressed in the text through the feeling you put into the reading.

Another way to help your child gain reading comprehension is to tell her the story in your own words. The story comes alive for your child as she hears it through the device of natural conversation and a parent’s voice.

After Napping

Most people choose to read to children only at night, just before kids go to sleep. But in terms of encouraging reading skills, you want your child well-rested. After a nap is the optimum time to read to your child. Both of you should be relaxed and calm.

Offering a baby a book to play with is another great way to give her a chance to interact with words, illustrations, and pages. There are cloth or plastic books and sturdier children’s books that are terrific for this purpose.

The main idea here is to expose your child to lots of language. This is the key to helping her develop her vocabulary and communication skills. When your baby reaches toddlerhood, start reciting nursery rhymes with her and hesitate here and there to allow her a chance to fill in the words. Participatory recitation of rhymes is a very big step toward reading readiness. Your child will also memorize the rhymes. Developing word memories is yet another crucial part of learning to read.

Take your child to the library and make it a regular special jaunt for the two of you. Read her favorite stories to her again and again. Ask open-ended questions like, “What do you think will happen next?”

Network with other parents and share techniques for honing your child’s pre-reading skills. If you give it your best effort, you may just end up with a bookworm for a child. What could be more wonderful?

This post has been copied in its entirety with the kind permission of www.cognibeat.com

Writing on the Wall

Handwriting Issues Persist in Autistic Teens

New research finds that handwriting issues persist into adolescence in autistic teens.

A recent study has found that handwriting issues affecting autistic children tend to persist into adolescence. The results of this research were published in the November 16, 2010 issue of Neurology, a publication put out by the American Academy of Neurology.

Study subjects included 2 dozen boys and girls aged 12-16 years. Half of them had been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, and all of them scored within normal range for perceptual reasoning on IQ tests.

Scrambled Sentence

The researchers had the teens take the Minnesota Handwriting Assessment Test, which makes use of a scrambled sentence to remove the possibility that fluent readers will gain an advantage in terms of speed. The teens were asked to copy the sentence, "the brown jumped lazy fox quick dogs over,” and were instructed to make the letters all the same sizes and shapes as those used in the sample. They were asked to use their best handwriting for this purpose.

The teens’ handwriting received scores in five different categories: spacing, size, alignment, form, and legibility. The teenagers were also examined to assess their motor skills and assigned ratings in categories such as timed movement and balance.

Out of a possible 204 points total for the handwriting assessment, the teens with autism scored an average of 167 points, while the teens without autism scored an average of 183 points. There is a statistical significance in the difference between these two averages. The teens with autism were also discovered to have impaired motor skills.

Possible Strategy

The researchers found that handwriting issues in autistic teens could be predicted by perceptual reasoning scores. Perceptual reasoning is the ability to use reason to solve problems in nonverbal material. "That reasoning skills can predict handwriting performance suggests a possible strategy by which adolescents with autism could learn and utilize compensatory strategies to overcome motor impairments," said study author Amy Bastian, PhD.

According to Bastion, while it’s true that autistic teens tend to have handwriting issues, there are a variety of techniques that can be used to improve the quality of their handwriting, for instance making adjustments to pencil grip, stabilizing a writing hand by holding it with the opposite hand, or taking more time to write the letters. “These therapies could help teens with autism to progress academically and develop socially," Bastion said.

Bastion is affiliated with the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, MD. The Autism Speaks Pre-Doctoral Fellowship and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) underwrote the study.

Related articles

• Handwriting Problems Hard to Outgrow With Autism (webmd.com)
• For Teens with Autism, Handwriting Problems May Persist (nlm.nih.gov)
• Autism and Handwriting: Part 2 (psychologytoday.com)

Wakefield’s Fraud

BMJ says Autism/Vaccine Study Data was Falsified

British medical journal, BMJ, finds that the 1998 study linking autism with the MMR vaccine was based on falsified data.

An investigation published by the esteemed British medical journal BMJ has determined that a study authored by Dr. Andrew Wakefield was an “elaborate fraud” now believed to be responsible for wreaking long-term damage on public health. Wakefield’s study claimed that autism was linked to childhood vaccines.

Falsified Data

According to BMJ, Wakefield falsified the 12 patient medical histories used to support his contention of a link between vaccines and autism in a study he conducted in 1998.

"It's one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors," said Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of BMJ, in an interview with CNN. "But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data."

Wakefield’s medical license was revoked in May. But according to an editorial accompanying the BMJ report, taking away Wakefield’s ability to practice medicine can’t stem the damage already done. “…the damage to public health continues, fueled by unbalanced media reporting and an ineffective response from government, researchers, journals and the medical profession."

Wakefield defended his work in an interview with CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” insisting that the fruit of his research had been, “grossly distorted,” and that he was the victim of, “a ruthless, pragmatic attempt to crush any attempt to investigate valid vaccine safety concerns.”

Parental Panic

Wakefield’s report on vaccines and autism sent parents into a panic that led to a significant decrease in the number of children receiving the MMR vaccine that protects against measles, mumps, and rubella. In Britain, vaccination rates took a sharp drop from the time the report was published, and fell to just 80% by 2004. At the same time, a sharp rise in measles cases has been observed.

The panic was not limited to residents of Britain, and in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 2008 saw more cases of measles than in any other year since 1997, a year prior to the publication of Wakefield’s report. The CDC reported that over 90% of those infected had either not received the vaccine or that their vaccination status was undetermined.

BMJ opines that the effect of the vaccination scare on the rate of infectious disease does not supersede the fact that so much effort, emotions, and resources were wasted on a bogus issue instead of finding the true causes of autism and ways to help children with autism and their families.

CNN Reporter: Autism study motivated by 'money'

Washington Post: Autism/vaccine link: Another nail in the coffin

Related articles

• Autism/MMR Vaccine Study Faked: FAQ (webmd.com)
• Doctor defends retracted austism study (cnn.com)
• Andrew Wakefield: Autism Vaccine Fraud or Conspiracy Victim? (cbsnews.com)

In Full Command

Good Readers are Conscious Strategists

What skills do “good readers” draw upon to make for successful reading sessions? How much of this process is conscious?

Experts have struggled to determine the difference between good and poor readers. One measure experts have used to study these differences it to ask readers to describe their thoughts, out loud, as they read. The result of these efforts is the idea that good reading consists of a number of complex skills that are automatic and well-coordinated in practiced readers.



The coordination of reading skills begins before the start of a reading session. Typical (good) readers set goals for their reading. They note the structure and organization of the text and may make mental outlines to help determine the text’s relevance to their goals. As they read, good readers make fast and accurate work of reading the text while processing the meanings of the words at the same time. They also manage to comprehend groupings of words: phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and so forth.

If good readers fail to understand the text on its surface level, they look to see if they can tie in the context of surrounding sentences to help them make sense of those words. They may dig deep into their own acquired knowledge to help them toward comprehending what is read.


Good readers may interact with the material by asking themselves questions on what they’ve read and may reflect on the ideas contained within the text. They use their background knowledge to predict what will happen next. They engage in constant assessment and revise their predictions as the need arises.
They’re Selective

Good readers are selective. They focus on parts of the text that are related to their reading goals. They may skip over parts of the text because they contain information they already know or because the information isn’t relevant to their goals. They may decide they don’t understand the content of what they’re reading or may find that content boring and decide to pass on reading that chapter or even skip an entire book.

If there are gaps in the writer’s descriptions of characters or events, good readers use textual cues to fill them in, or draw on their own background knowledge to make sense of the text. They can create mental images of characters, settings, or events described in text and use those images to help them better understand written passages.

Good readers monitor their own comprehension as they read. If they realize they haven’t understood what they’ve read, they’ll apply techniques to repair their lack of understanding. They may rephrase what they’ve read or look up a word in a dictionary. They may highlight a passage of text and stop and reflect on that passage.
Uses Metacognition

Good reading involves something called metacognition. Good readers are aware of their own mental processes; their thoughts about their own trains of thought. They review their own comprehension strategies and choose those most appropriate to the text.

When good readers are done with their reading sessions, they reflect on the text they’ve covered. They may summarize key points or find other reading materials to help flesh out the same topic.

Good readers apply strategy to their reading. They have numerous techniques they can use to glean the meaning of the texts they read. These are conscious strategies that are within the readers’ control. They decide when to apply which strategies. They are at all times, in full command of the process.


This article has been copied with kind permission from www.cognibeat.com and can be found here