What read aloud strategy is used for teaching students about print awareness?

Do you feel stuck coming up with simple and effective strategies for teaching concepts about print? Are your students at the emergent level of reading and you don’t know how to provide enough opportunities for them to learn and understand the basics of reading, like turning a page? If this is you, then keep reading for my 7 easy to implement strategies for teaching concepts about print in the classroom. 

If you need to take one step back because you’re thinking ‘what are concepts about print’, then you can read about that in this post here. You can also find more about emergent literacy and the 6 Key Emergent Literacy Skills here. These are great places to start if you’re a beginning teacher or are feeling overwhelmed and unsure about teaching students at the emergent level. Then when you’re ready, head back over here to find out about teaching concepts about print. 

So, you have a student or students who are working on their understanding of the concepts about print? I work with older students with disabilities (aged 12-18) and I’m often teaching at this level. These strategies and concepts about print activities are ones I have tried and tested in my classroom over the years. Let’s just jump right in. Here they are:

1. Use a Concepts about Print Checklist to collect data on what your students know

The first step when teaching any skill or concept is finding out what your student already knows and can demonstrate. Teaching concepts about print is no different to any other skill or concept, therefore I recommend collecting data first. You can get my easy to use Concepts about Print Checklist here, and use it with your students. I set the checklist up in this format to make it easy to identify the aspects of concepts about print that the student is still working on (e.g. Book orientation), as well as provide multiple opportunities for you to collect data and track progress. You can do this concepts about print assessment at any time using most low level emergent reading books. 

2. Provide a range of engaging texts to motivate students to read

Students are more likely to engage with a text if it is on a topic that interests them. So this strategy is a very simple but important one. Create a collection of reading material in your classroom that:

• Includes a range of text types (e.g. picture books, non-fiction, board/hard books (as mentioned above), magazines, comics, instruction manuals, menus).
• your students would find interesting (e.g. cars, cooking, bowling, famous people).
• is age-appropriate for your students.
• are at a reading level appropriate to your students (e.g. a student learning concepts about print may not be able to read a car instruction manual). 

Print motivation is one of the 6 Key Emergent Literacy Skills and is important because students who enjoy books and reading will be curious about reading and motivated to learn to read for themselves. Providing a range of engaging and accessible texts is the best way to motivate students to read. Once students want to read, it is much easier to implement the other strategies for teaching concepts about print.

3. Use, model and draw attention to written language in everyday life

I touched on this briefly in my post 6 Easy Emergent Reader Strategies, but a simple and important strategy for teaching concepts about print is creating a vocabulary rich environment. Language is all around us, and it is very likely that there is written language all over your classroom in the form of labels, posters, student work or timetables. You can develop students print awareness by simply:

• Wherever possible, ensuring all posters or information hanging in the classroom has big and easy to see writing (e.g. making the font large or only having a few simple sentences).
• Create posters and visual material with written language to be displayed in the classroom (e.g. make a vocabulary poster on a topic you are learning about).
• Regularly model reading off posters and visuals in the classroom, drawing students attention to the writing by pointing to the words as you read them. 

Similarly you can model reading written language in everyday life, by pointing and drawing students’ attention to written information and visuals throughout the school day. You can do this in countless ways including during cooking, meal times, around the school or in the community. With repetitive and consistent modelling of reading language in different contexts, students have the best opportunities to learn that words have meaning. 

4. Make adapted or hard books to help with book handling

This strategy for teaching concepts about print is specifically for developing students’ understanding of book orientation and book handling. Many of my older students learning concepts about print, also have difficulty with fine motor control. Sometimes the reason they are unable to turn pages 1 at a time, is that they can’t easily separate just one piece of paper/page of the book. To help these students, simply supply or create hard books for them. Now typically hard books are used for babies and toddlers, therefore are not always age-appropriate for my students (you can read more about using age-appropriate strategies here). Making your own age-appropriate and relevant books is a bit more time consuming, but it’s still very easy. Just choose which of these two options you’d prefer.

• Option 1- buy cheap or second hand baby board books. Stick laminated pages of words and images onto each of the board book pages. This could be single words with an image (vocabulary book) or simple sentences with a picture (emergent reading book). Seal each page with non-toxic PVA glue and let dry. 
• Option 2- create your own board book using a tutorial like this one. Draw, write or paint on the pages of the board book. Seal each page with non-toxic sealant spray or PVA glue and let dry. 

5. Talk through concepts about print as you’re modelling reading

Doing read-alouds, modelled or guided reading regularly is a great way to demonstrate to students the relationship between written text and spoken language. Modelling the skills outlined in the Concepts about Print Checklist while reading, shows the students how the books are meant to be used and handled. I personally use the teaching strategy ‘I Do, We Do, You Do’ in almost all aspects of teaching, and this activity is the ‘I Do’ of teaching concepts about print. To do this with my class I would:

• Model how to hold/orient the book. I’m often silly with my class to make it a bit fun, and model obviously incorrect ways of holding the book (e.g. upside down or on my head). This not only gets the students laughing, but gets them to demonstrate the correct way (We Do). 
• Talk aloud about features of the book including the front, back, title, author, illustrator and where we start reading the book. 
• Discuss where on the page we can see the words and where on the page we start reading (top left). I’m again usually quite silly with this, offering incorrect answers and getting students to show me on the page where I need to start reading. For my very early emergent readers, I will get them to physically put their hands or fingers on the words on the page to draw their attention to it. 
• Model reading the words as I point to them one at a time, moving from left to right. I will also get students to come up and be the ‘teacher’ by modelling and practising this 1:1 correspondence one at a time. For non-verbal students who do not read out loud, they simply point to the words as I read them. This activity is always a hit with my students, especially if they get to sit on the teacher chair or use my pointing stick while they do it. 

6. Model concepts about print during guided writing

This strategy is similar to number 5, however is focused on teaching concepts about print during the writing process. The same concepts about print skills, specifically text directionality, can be modelled to the class through guided writing. Some examples of activities to teach concepts about print through guided writing include:  

• Predictable Chart Writing.
• Daily class journal writing.
• Writing name on Sign In Chart.
• Morning meeting- writing the date and timetable for the day.
• Poster making.
• Modelling writing tasks (e.g. completing worksheets or writing sentences).

7. Use hands-on Working with Words activities (playing with letters, words and sentences)

I’m not sure if I’ve saved the best for last, but I’ve certainly saved the funnest for last. Probably one of the most hands on and engaging strategies for teaching concepts about print is through working with words activities. Using simple concepts about print activities can help students develop the understanding that words have meaning as well as the knowledge of text directionality, letters, words and sentences. Examples of working with words activities include:

• Building words from letters using task cards. These CVC Words Task Cards are differentiated to cater for varying levels, with the lowest level requiring students to match letters in the word. This not only teaches students that words have meaning (e.g. a picture of cat with the word cat), but also teaches directionality and differences between letters and words (e.g. you use letters to make up a word).

• Similarly, building words using these puzzles helps students to understand that words are made up of letters in a particular order. 

• Scavenger hunt for letters, words and sentences. You can do this in a book by highlighting them. Alternatively you can create a physical activity by printing letters, words and sentences on coloured paper. Then you can hide them around the classroom and discuss them as students find them. 
• Reading adapted books where students can move and match the words to construct the sentence. This can be done with any sentence or book. My printable set of Emergent Readers include this adapted book version, which is perfect for non-verbal students or those developing text directionality. You can check out a demonstration of using this strategy with my Bowling emergent reader here. 

• Get crafty and make collages of letters, words and sentences in everyday life. You can make a poster for each one. Students can cut out parts from magazines, print them from the computer or draw or paint them. 

Want to learn more about teaching concepts about print?

Still want to know more of the basics such as ‘What are concepts about print’? Then these articles are just what you need:

Concepts of Print– Victoria State Government

What are the concepts about print and why are they so important– My Special Edventures

How to develop Print Awareness– All About Learning Press

Also, for more information, ideas and resources for teaching literacy in special education, you can follow me on Instagram or Pinterest. 

Get started teaching concepts about print with my concepts about print checklist. You can get it sent straight to your inbox by signing up to my email list. By signing up you will receive occasional emails from me with other ideas for teaching concepts about print and other emergent literacy skills.

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