Learning About Print in Preschool: Working With Letters, Words, and Beginning Links With Phonemic Awareness

Learning about print is a critical component of early literacy---key to young children's success in early reading and school readiness. To help your students become strategic early readers and writers, you need to know the print-related skills and instructional strategies necessary for developing preschoolers' knowledge of print. The second edition of Learning About Print in Preschool, part of the Preschool Literacy Collection, will help you do this and much more with its all-new professional development guidelines.

The strategy-based chapters in this book focus specifically on how to target three key predictors of early literacy success and school readiness: concepts of print, phonemic awareness, and alphabet knowledge. Each strategy is presented in a highly practical format and includes a rationale for its use, step-by-step instructions on how to implement the strategy, variations, and guidelines for accommodating differences.

To extend your learning of the book's best practices, chapters feature professional development guidelines for use with long-term programs, whole-school teacher education, small teacher study groups, or individual teachers. These guidelines, which include chapter-specific suggestions for reflection and discussion, interactive activities, and follow-up, will help you integrate this book's knowledge and strategies into an instructional plan that is intentional, organized, and developmentally appropriate.

Dorothy S. Strickland is Samuel DeWitt Proctor Professor of Education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA.
Judith A. Schickedanz in Professor in the Department of Literacy and Language, Counseling and Development, Boston University's School of Education, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.