Why It's Time for an Early Literacy Shift
And ultimately, why I wrote a book about it.
Let's start with the obvious. Play in preschool is a hot topic. And as someone recently pointed out to me on LinkedIn, talking about play and early academics can sometimes feel like an unpopular road to walk.
I totally get it! For years, early childhood educators have watched developmentally inappropriate academic expectations creep further and further down the age ladder. We've seen worksheets replace play. We've seen children expected to sit, complete, perform, and produce before they're developmentally ready.
So, when someone starts talking about academics in preschool, it can feel like we're opening the door to all of that again. But here's where I think our mindset has to change.
Talking about early literacy is not the same thing as pushing academics down onto young children. And I believe we have to be willing to have this conversation, because it matters for our children. Too many children are reaching elementary school without the foundational skills they need to become successful readers. And once children fall behind, catching up becomes increasingly difficult, especially for those that do not have the luxury of tutors and extra support.
So I keep coming back to the same question: What if we stopped treating play and intentional instruction as opposing ideas? What if we looked at what we know about how young children learn, what we know about how reading develops, and asked ourselves how we can build a strong literacy foundation without taking childhood away?
That question is ultimately what led me to write The Early Literacy Shift.
But before I tell you about the book, I want to tell you why I felt like it needed to be written in the first place. Here are six reasons why I decided we needed a change!
1. My daughter taught me how easy it is to miss the signs when teachers don't have the knowledge.
When my daughter was young, I noticed little things. Here and there, there were signs that something might be harder for her than it was for other children.
But I didn't know what I was looking at. I didn't have the knowledge to recognize the early signs of dyslexia, even as a teacher with a master's degree in special education.
Eventually, I learned more about research-based practiced, educated myself on developmental milestones, was able to get her tested, get answers, and figure out what she needed.
I was fortunate. I had the financial resources to pursue testing and find the support she needed.
But I have thought about that experience a lot over the years.
What happens when a family doesn't have those resources?
What happens when a parent doesn't know what to look for?
What happens when a teacher hasn't been given the training to recognize the early signs?
That's when this became bigger than my own daughter. It became an equity issue. Early literacy support shouldn't depend on whether a family can afford private testing or happens to know exactly what questions to ask. We need more educators who understand how early literacy develops, what to watch for, and how to intentionally build those foundational skills.
And we need that knowledge in all classrooms serving all children.
2. We know early intervention matters.
One of the things that has always bothered me about the way we sometimes approach reading is that we wait for a problem to become blatantly concerning before we respond to it.
We have one or two children out of fifteen who just aren't progressing like the rest, but we keep pushing on. When in reality, the signs are there.
The signs that a child may be at risk for reading difficulties can show up much earlier than we once thought, with research suggesting that differences can begin to emerge as early as 18 months (The Harvard Gazette, 2025). That doesn't mean we should diagnose a reading disability in a toddler. It means we need to be paying attention.
Are children developing the oral language skills we expect? Are they noticing and playing with sounds? Are they beginning to recognize and talk about letters? Are there patterns that tell us a child may need more support?
When we aren't intentional about what we're looking for, we can miss those signs.
That is the opportunity of the preschool years. The brain is highly plastic, foundational skills are developing rapidly, and we have the opportunity to intentionally strengthen the skills that support later reading.
We know early support can make a difference, and we have a responsibility to advocate for our children. That can look like noticing sooner, supporting sooner, and giving children more opportunities to build the foundation they need while their brains are especially ready to learn.
We don't have to wait for a child to struggle with reading before we start paying attention to the skills that make reading possible.
3. The first five years build the foundation.
We talk a lot about how important the early years are. Yet we often act as though the important academic learning begins when children walk into kindergarten.
It doesn't.
The first five years are a critical period of brain development. Children are developing language, vocabulary, phonological awareness, knowledge about print, and an understanding of letters and sounds long before kindergarten.
They are also building the foundations for attention, problem-solving, communication, relationships, and how they approach learning. During these early years, their brains are building neural connections at an incredible rate, with young children having roughly twice as many synaptic connections as adults. These early experiences don't just prepare children for kindergarten. They build the foundation for how children will learn, think, communicate, and make sense of the world for years to come.
What we do in these first five years matters. The language we model, the skills we intentionally develop, the experiences we provide, and the opportunities we give children to practice and apply what they are learning all contribute to that foundation.
And those foundational skills can be taught through play. Not play instead of intentional teaching, but through a spectrum of play that includes free play, guided play, games, and playful instruction. This is where intentionality matters. We can be thoughtful about the skills children need to develop while still honoring how young children learn best. We don't have to choose between meaningful play and intentional instruction.
That is what this book is about: taking what we know about how young children learn and translating it into intentional, developmentally appropriate experiences that build the foundation for future learning.
The first five years aren't a waiting room for learning. They're where the foundation is built.
4. The system isn't working for too many children.
At some point, we have to look at the outcomes.
In 2024, only 31% of fourth-grade students performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level in reading. That means nearly 70% did not. We have made important shifts in how we think about reading instruction, including a growing understanding of the science of reading and research-based program entering elementary classrooms across America. But even with that shift, there is still significant room for growth.
We can't keep doing what we've always done and expect a different outcome. We can't continue to ignore the importance of the early years. That doesn't mean turning preschool into mini kindergarten or pushing developmentally inappropriate academics onto young children.
It means shifting our understanding.
We need to understand how the reading brain develops, recognize the foundational skills that support later reading, and become more intentional about how we build those skills in the early years.
We can't go back and change what happened when a struggling fourth grader was three. But we can change what we're doing with the three-year-olds sitting in our classrooms today.
5. I've seen what happens when we wait.
This one is personal for me because of my work as an MTSS coordinator.
I saw students struggling with reading across grade levels. One experience that has stayed with me was helping a middle school ELA teacher figure out how to provide a phonics intervention.
Think about that.
A middle school ELA teacher was trying to teach a child a foundational reading skill that should have been addressed years earlier. And imagine being that child. You're in middle school, surrounded by students reading chapter books and complex texts, and you're being asked to go back and learn something everyone assumes you should already know.
I saw high school students who couldn't read. And I kept thinking: How did we get here?
How many times did these children show us they were struggling? How many opportunities did we have to intervene earlier? How many teachers wanted to help but didn't have the training or resources they needed? And how different might some of these stories have been if we had built a stronger foundation earlier?
Research shows us that children who enter kindergarten behind in foundational literacy skills are still behind year later. The graph above makes that pattern difficult to ignore. (NWEA data, 2026).
That experience changed the way I think about early literacy. We have an opportunity in preschool to build the foundation before the gaps become harder to close.
6. We don't have to choose between play and intentional instruction.
This may be the most important reason of all.
I don't believe the answer to our literacy crisis is to take play away from preschool.
Quite the opposite. I believe we need to get better at understanding how play and intentional instruction can work together.
Children need free play. They need to explore, imagine, create, move, build, pretend, talk, and follow their own interests.
And there is a place for intentional, teacher-directed instruction that is developmentally appropriate and playful. Those things don't have to compete. The challenge is knowing how to translate what we know about early literacy into what that actually looks like with young children.
This is where the Science of Reading matters. It gives us a growing body of research to help us understand how reading develops and which foundational skills children need along the way. But knowing what children need is only part of the equation. We also need to know what that looks like in a preschool classroom. Sometimes that means stepping back and letting children lead. Sometimes it means joining their play and intentionally extending the learning. Sometimes a game provides meaningful practice. And sometimes a teacher needs to step in and explicitly teach a skill.
This is play as a spectrum.
The goal isn't to choose between play and instruction. It's to understand when and how each can support children's learning. And that is the shift I want to make in this book: taking what we know about early literacy and the reading brain and translating it into what we can actually do with young children.
Not more for the sake of more, but for the sake of better understanding, greater intentionality, and a stronger foundation for every child.
Why I wrote The Early Literacy Shift
The Early Literacy Shift didn't start as a book idea.
It started with questions.
Questions I had as a mother. Questions I had as a teacher. Questions I had as an MTSS coordinator. And questions I kept hearing from early childhood educators who wanted to do the right thing but were caught between competing messages.
Do I let them play?
Do I teach letters?
Is direct instruction developmentally appropriate?
How much is too much?
What does the Science of Reading actually mean for preschool?
How do I build foundational skills without turning my classroom into kindergarten?
I wrote this book because I don't think early childhood educators need another person telling them what they're doing wrong. They need someone to help connect the dots. To take the research and make it practical. To show what intentional literacy instruction can actually look like with young children. To make room for play without pretending that play alone will teach every skill a child needs. And to make room for instruction without losing what makes early childhood special.
Because I don't believe we need to choose between play and learning. I believe children deserve both, and I believe it's time for an early literacy shift. Join the cause!
%20(52).jpg)
Comments