Read All
About It:
Linking the
Baby Signs® Program and Literacy Development
By
Catherine
Brown, M.A., CCC-SLP
The buzz word is literacy. All around we hear about the
importance of literacy. Parents are told to read, read, read to their children
– without much instruction on the “do’s and don’ts” of doing so. We hear about
the “No Child Left Behind” program and how government funding these days
usually means proving that your program relates to literacy development. We
hear more and more about dyslexia and the hope that neuroscience will be able
to identify new remedies. With all this emphasis on literacy, it seems
particularly important to review the connection between literacy and the Baby
Signs® Program.
Although we traditionally think of literacy as the ability to
read, it is now recognized that the skills needed in the technologically
advanced world that we live in go beyond reading. The National Institute for
Literacy actually defines literacy much more broadly as “an individual’s
ability to read, write, speak in English, compute and solve problems at levels
of proficiency necessary to function on the job, in the family of the
individual, and in society.” Somewhat
more narrowly, the “No Child Left Behind Act” of 2001 defines reading skills as
“a complex system of deriving meaning from print that requires all of the
following:
• The skills and knowledge to understand how phonemes,
or speech sounds, are connected to print
• The ability to decode unfamiliar words
• The ability to read fluently
• Sufficient background information and
vocabulary to foster reading comprehension
• The development of appropriate active
strategies to construct meaning from print
• The development and maintenance of a
motivation to read.”
Whether defined broadly or narrowly, literacy is now recognized
to start well before the school years. In fact, there is growing appreciation
for what are now referred to as emergent literacy skills. These include a
variety of behaviors that research has shown predict success in learning to
read. And many of these, it turns out, are helped along by signing. Some
examples:
Verbal
language skills
Research shows that children who are strong in verbal language
skills have an easier time learning to read. Reasons for this relationship
include the following: Knowing lots of words helps children comprehend what is
read, guess at words that are difficult to decode, explain problems they are
having, and understand explanations and instructions teachers provide. And how
does the Baby Signs® program figure in all this? The NIH-supported research published by Drs.
Acredolo and Goodwyn showed that infants exposed to signs during infancy had
better receptive and expressive language vocabularies by the time they were two
and three years old. In fact, the infants who learned to use signs as infants
had verbal IQ scores that remained high well into the elementary school years.
Familiarity with print and enjoyment of books
Ask any Baby Signs® family and you are likely to hear that their
children love books. The reason is because the ability to use signs enables
babies to take an active role in book-reading. Instead of simply listening
passively as their parents name things on the page, signers can provide the
names themselves long before they would be able to do so with words. And the
praise they receive in return makes them eager to keep exploring new books. In
fact, parents even report that their toddlers sit down and read their books by
signing to themselves!
Phonological Awareness
This term refers to recognition of the
fact that words are comprised of separate sounds (or phonemes)—that
“cat,” for example, is made of “c” + “ah” + “t.” Because individual letters stand for
individual sounds, it’s easy to see why knowing that words are composed of
separate sounds is important to learning to read. And one of the best ways to
help children develop this awareness is through the use of rhymes. When a child
becomes familiar with a rhyme (e.g., Jack and Jill when up the hill), he or she
learns that words can differ in how they begin but be the same in how they end.
This realization, by definition, involves recognizing that words are made up of
individual sounds. Voila! Phonological awareness.
And what’s the role of the
Baby Signs® Program in developing this skill? One of the most popular ways that parents
teach signs is through rhymes and songs, like Twinkle Twinkle, Itsy, Bitsy Spider,
and the many songs and rhymes created specifically for the Baby Signs® Program.
These rhymes and the rhythm that we expose children to while we are singing and
signing help children develop this crucial emergent literacy skill.
