Concepts of print include:

• understanding that print has meaning
• how a book works – author, title, contents page
• the idea of directionality- that in English, books are read from left to right, top to bottom
• and other print features such as understanding the relationship between letters and sounds, and how they work together to form words.

Research indicates that by developing a strong foundation in print concepts, children are better equipped to become successful readers and writers (Justice & Sofka, 2013).

Children learn about print when they observe and interact with adults who use the written word in everyday, meaningful situations. Adults play an important role in supporting children to understand how and why print is used, for example, by drawing attention to print during shared book reading or noticing familiar words, phrases and names in the environment. We can also look for opportunities to scribe and communicate children’s thoughts, ideas and feelings, for example, through storytelling and story acting approaches (Lee, 2015).

We can help children make connections with print and communicate ideas and thoughts by recording children's own words, providing mark making materials and displaying texts across the setting.

We can look for opportunities to draw attention to print by commenting about different features of print during shared reading, modelling the use of reading and writing in day-to-day tasks.

As adults play and talk together with children, we can use reading and writing in pretend play and provide opportunities to involve children in creating print across the environment.

Developing awareness of print is an important step in learning to read and write.

Justice, L. M., & Sofka, A. E. (2013). Engaging Children with Print: Building Early Literacy Skills Through Quality Read-Alouds. Guilford Publications.

Zucker, T. A., Ward, A. E., & Justice, L. M. (2009). Print Referencing During Read-Alouds: A Technique for Increasing Emergent Readers' Print Knowledge. The Reading Teacher, 63, 62-72. https://doi.org/10.1598/RT.63.1.6

Support children to understand how and why print is used

Lee, T. (2015). Princesses, Dragons and Helicopter Stories: Storytelling and story acting in the early years. Routledge.

Create print-rich environments which help children explore and make connections with print

Department of Education, Victoria State Department. (n.d.). Concepts of print. Literacy Teaching Toolkit.

Education Scotland. (2020). Realising the ambition: Being Me.