Why Early Reading Together®
The programme has been shown to raise children’s reading achievement in a significant and sustained manner and to improve relationships between children and parents and between parents and teachers.
The programme is designed to enhance the support which parents/whānau provide for their children’s language and literacy development. It has been specifically designed to support children and parents from diverse language/literacy, cultural, educational and socio-economic backgrounds.
The course is implemented by experienced educators in ECE services, schools and community organisations, in collaboration with community librarians.
The Early Reading Together programm is practical, user friendly, enjoyable and manageable for teachers, parents, librarians and children.
The programme
The Early Reading Together® programme comprises of 3 workshops over 3 weeks with each workshop lasting 1 hour and 15 minutes.
- Workshop 1: Helping young children with language and reading at home.
- Workshop 2: More ideas and ways of helping young children’s language and reading development (as they get older).
- Workshop 3: Sharing ideas, giving feedback and gathering more resources in the community library (where possible).
The Benefits of Early Reading Together®
- The programme enhances the language and literacy experiences of children and adults. It increases their motivation to read, their enjoyment of reading, their engagement in reading, and the frequency with which they read.
- Helps to build capability, knowledge and confidence among, and relationships between, young children, families/whānau, teachers, and librarians.
- Complements and supports the language/literacy education programmes of early childhood services, primary schools and libraries.
Helping parents
- The programme supports parents to 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
- explore additional ways of supporting children’s language and reading development when they are reading stories and rhymes, and singing songs together
- find out more about books, rhymes and songs which are suitable for young children and enjoyable for them
- borrow books and other resources from libraries, and access support from librarians.
"Early Reading Together® helps parents/whānau to read to and talk with their young children (especially babies to 5 and 6 year olds) in ways that build a love of reading and lay a sound language and literacy foundation for children subsequently learning to read themselves."
New Zealand
Ministry of Education