Supporting your child's reading, writing, listening and talking

Published 01/01/2017. Last updated 09/12/2025

What is Literacy and English?

We often think of literacy as reading, writing, listening and talking. While this is true, the development of literacy skills and knowledge also extends beyond this by opening doors to subjects across the curriculum and many other aspects of children’s lives.

Why is it important?

Literacy skills such as reading, writing, listening and talking are important ways to communicate effectively and make sense of the world around us. Children learn from the various ways they encounter literacy at home, in their community, from peers, online and through social media channels.

What will my child learn?

Each area of the curriculum is broken down into experiences and outcomes. These are clear and concise statements about children's learning and progression from pre-school to S3. This stage of your child's education is known as the broad general education (BGE).

Read the experiences and outcomes for Literacy and English.

How can I support my child’s learning?

There are many opportunities in everyday routines to practise and apply literacy skills in real and meaningful ways

Early experiences of literacy across all subject areas

Learning from home

Young children’s first experiences of literacy take place within their homes, families and communities. They will come into Early Learning and Childcare settings or school with all of these language experiences to draw on.
As parents we can tap into children’s interests and provide opportunities to talk about, watch or listen to books, films and all of the literacy experiences that surround us in everyday life.
Engaging them with a wide variety of stories, rhymes, songs, and texts in different media is a great way to support children’s enjoyment and development of early literacy skills.

Listening and talking

Communicating with your child happens from the earliest stages and may consist of words, gestures, movement, drawing or writing.
Supporting children to express their thoughts and feelings can help them to feel heard and understood. As parents we can role model language and vocabulary, helping children to make sense of the world.

Listening and talking to support reading

We can help children to notice and listen to the sounds and conversations around them, developing the skills needed to pay attention and hear the different sounds they will need to recognise as they learn to read.
Talking with your child about the different words and texts that surround them at home and while they are out and about is another important step in learning to read.

Reading and enjoying stories in different ways

Exploring different types of books, such as non-fiction, can help to engage some children whilst others might enjoy the repetition of a familiar story at bedtime.
As well as looking at books, there might be different ways that your child likes to explore stories with you. Watching films or television programmes provides lots of opportunities to enjoy and talk about stories together. Listening to stories at home or in the car, on the bus or train can also be fun.
We can help children to understand the words, pictures and stories which can be found all around them. This could be talking about the different characters in a story or stopping to guess what might come next.
We can chat together about stories or books they particularly like or don’t enjoy, helping them to make choices and follow their interests.
Play also helps children to act out some of the ideas and stories that they have come across in books or films and also helps to develop their imagination.

Developing writing skills

Writing can be supported through play as children’s exploration of making marks, from the earliest age, develops an understanding of print as a form of communication and expression of ideas and feelings.
As writing develops and children are building control of their fine motor movements, they also need to develop the larger muscles in their body and core strength.
Playing outdoors is an ideal way to develop these larger movements. Fine motor and hand-eye co-ordination can also develop through experience of pinching, grasping, twisting, threading, squashing and squeezing objects during their play.

As children become more confident, literacy increasingly involves:

Thinking critically
Being creative and expressing yourself
Displaying empathy and having the confidence to act on what you believe to be right
Showing genuine, positive engagement with texts
Recognising and using skilled and powerful language

Reading, listening and talking

We can support the development of children’s reading, listening, and talking skills by engaging in dialogue about texts they read, watch, or listen to. The following questions can be used to start conversations that support the development of comprehension:

Likes

What did you enjoy about the text?
What was interesting about the characters, setting, action, language…?

Puzzles

Was there anything you liked or disliked?
Did anything confuse you or seem strange or inconsistent?

Patterns

Can you make any links from what you have read, watched or listened to with other parts of the text or other texts you have read before?

Helping children to choose what to read

There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to what children read for enjoyment. Rights of the Reader illustrates the steps we can take to encourage children to read and how we can empower them to make choices about texts.

Writing, listening and talking

We can support the development of children’s writing, listening and talking by engaging in conversation about:

The characters and setting they create and the plots they develop
The strength of the arguments they make
The skilful use of language in their discussions to subtly sway the reader
The accuracy of the information they present
The style and craft they use

What is critical literacy?

Critical Literacy helps children to:

Identify how texts try to influence the way we think and feel
Explore the role of language in persuading and manipulating
Analyse information and ideas in detail
Consider how people’s values and opinions might shape texts

Critical literacy makes sense of a complex and fast changing world

Critical literacy encourages readers to be active participants in the reading process as opposed to passive absorbers of information. As a result, critical literacy encourages readers to challenge what they read by asking critical questions to explore how texts:

position them as readers
convey power relations
make assumptions or stereotypes
represent or under-represent groups of people.

Further information and resources

Supporting your child’s reading at home