Beginning to Read: Transition to School

When children go to school, they find a social, emotional, and intellectual structure different from the one at home.  They join a group in which they have new rights and new responsibilities.  There are over 20 others who are somewhat like them, with whom they can be compared for better or worse.  There are routines and structures.  There is only one adult, and there is talk that is separated from familiar routines.  There are expectations - from the child, the child's family, the teacher, and the curriculum.  In light of these many challenges, it is not surprising that the experience a child has during the first year of schooling has lasting a impact on school performance.  (Alexander and Entwisle, 1996; Pianta and McCoy, 1997).

Many parents realize that real reading begins at about age 5 to 7 years after the child has entered school. The transition to "real" reading involves changes in skills and concepts about literacy.  This transition is likely to be less difficult for a child whose home literacy experiences and verbal interactions more closely resemble what goes on in the classroom

Most 5 year-olds from supportive literacy backgrounds continue to make rapid growth in their literacy skills.  Those who have spent 4 or more years without a rich literacy support will show patterns in learning similar to those hat are much younger than they actually are.

Beginning readers will first focus on pictures as the source of text and increasingly attend more to print.  They will begin to realize that the text is the source of the meaning.  They will start to bring together their own knowledge about text; symbols, words they recognize, letters, or text parts, etc.  They'll begin to show us that they are do have knowledge about how print works through other context like play, writing, and environmental print (ex. Regonizing "M" for McDonalds).

Parents want their children to succeed in school and in order to give them the best advantage when beginning school parents must expose children to literature and literacy experiences through reading and exposure to print as early as possible.