Importance of Early Intervention

Children do not acquire the skills they will need to be able to read on their own. Children in early childhood programs need their teachers to show them how print is used, to have conversations with them, and to teach the specific skills needed for reading.⁶According to the National Early Literacy Panel, research shows that the children who develop more skills in preschool tend to perform better in elementary school. Early literacy skills have a strong effect on developing the more advanced literacy skills and the level of reading achievement in the early elementary grades.⁴ Research has shown that the children that develop reading problems are the ones who had difficulty with oral language skills early in their childhood.⁴ You can help prevent reading problems by teaching children in your early childhood education classrooms to become aware of the patterns of sounds in language, recognize words and break them into smaller units, learn the relationship between sounds and letters, and you can help them develop good vocabulary skills.⁴ By teaching your students these skills, you will enable them to be able to have good decoding, fluency, oral reading, reading comprehension, spelling, and writing skills.⁴