Building the Literacy Foundation in K-2

Literacy development begins with a foundation on oral language. From the moment children first hear meaningful speech to the very first book read aloud to them the foundation of literacy is already in motion. As children start school, educators begin to support their ability to distinguish and play with the sounds of oral language. Emergent literacy also encompasses learning letter names and the sounds that letters make, so that eventually children can develop the ability to decode words and start recognizing words by sight. All this is the foundation of learning to read that starts at home and goes all the way to the end of second grade. This is one of the most consequential periods in learning.

What happens in those early years of language and literacy development shapes a child's reading ability, and therefore, it also shapes who they become as a learner.

For this reason, we often point to a critical milestone: reading proficiently by the end of third grade. Research shows that this period constitutes one of the strongest predictors of long-term academic success. But why? And how do we ensure our kids get there?

The Architecture of Early Literacy

Literacy is like a structure: we can’t build walls before the foundation is set, and we can’t set the roof before the walls are standing. Each stage from Kindergarten through Second Grade is supported by what came before. 

Kindergarten is where oral language thrives as kids are ripe for learning more and more words. This stage in emergent literacy is important because before children can easily decode a word on a page, they need to own that word in their mind. This process begins at home as kids are exposed to meaningful oral language, and it continues developing at school. In Kindergarten, this ownership takes full shape through conversations, read-alouds, songs, and storytelling that help children build vocabulary through meaningful interactions. These experiences also help them develop the ability to hear and play with the sounds of language. Teachers play a big role in guiding the development of phonological awareness by choosing books, songs, and activities that allow children to recognize rhyming words, identify individual sounds, and play with the sounds of language. Some favored games include rhyming bingo with pictures and I Spy with initial sounds, among others.

Via read-alouds, children understand early on that print carries meaning, the direction in which we read a book, what the cover and images can tell us, among other details that help them develop early print knowledge. That’s when their curiosity for literacy takes a big spike. It is also at this time that they begin to learn letter names and the sounds that the letters make.

With oral language and letter knowledge in place, first grade is where decoding starts to click. Children begin to blend sounds into words and recognize spelling patterns. Little by little, more words become sight words, which allows kids to recognize them at first sight without the need to sound them out. 

By second grade, decoding becomes more and more automatic. Children move from reading sound by sound to reading word by word, and now begin to focus on the meaning of phrases. This is the stage where fluency emerges. But fluency is not the finish line. It’s the bridge to comprehension and one of the clearest signals that the early foundation is holding strong.

But What Does This Look Like for Bilingual Learners?

Here’s where things get more complex, and where many parents and educators are left without clear answers. The issue is that bilingual literacy development doesn’t necessarily follow a straight line. Therefore, we need to interpret what is going on so that we can successfully guide and support children in the development of bilingualism and biliteracy.

The expectation is that growth will not happen evenly across languages. In K–2 bilingual and multilingual learners, development happens across two languages, and in multiple domains simultaneously (listening, speaking, reading, writing).

For this reason, we may see varied behavior that is unique to bilingual and multilingual learners, and that is very much dependent on the context of acquisition and learning. This means that the languages spoken at home and at school will play a role in language and literacy development, and so will the type of program a child is placed in. As a result, we can expect to see diversity in the early grades. For example, some children may exhibit very strong listening comprehension in one language and stronger letter knowledge in another, or rich oral vocabulary but underdeveloped decoding skills in the same language, or even strong listening and reading comprehension but weaker oral fluency.

This is bilingual development.

Emergent bilinguals are not behind or delayed. They are developing across two linguistic and writing systems. The problem is that we keep comparing them to children who are developing in just one language and one writing system, without realizing that we are comparing apples and oranges, and expecting the apples to juice like oranges, and the oranges to bake like apples. 

What we have to remember is that progress in one language supports growth in another. That is why we want to see development in all areas measured in at least one language. The skills developed in one language will invariably transfer to the other language. But how can we easily view growth across languages and skills if we don’t have tools that are able to capture bilingual growth in an efficient manner?

Making Development and Growth Visible

To support students effectively, educators need more than a single score per language. They need to see how listening and reading comprehension and oral communication are developing across both languages simultaneously, as well as across all domains and subdomains that play a role in literacy development.

And once they have the right data on development and growth, they need to have guidance to easily interpret it and apply it at the level of instruction to support the growth of all children, independently of whether they are struggling in either or both languages, keeping up, or soaring in language and literacy development.

And why is this early foundation so important?

Because when children arrive at third grade with a strong literacy foundation and a rich oral vocabulary, they are ready to read fluently, which means they will read more and learn more.

In our next blog entry, we'll take a closer look at early reading development through a bilingual lens, and what those differences mean for how we teach, assess, and support our youngest learners.