When a teacher reads to a classroom aloud, the teacher and the students are actively engaging with the text. The teacher should pause and ask questions about what was just read. Students must engage with the text as much as possible. The teacher can ask them what was just read and what they think will happen next. This can also evolve into storyteling. Here, the teacher could change the outcome based on the students' responses. In this way, the teacher and students could essentially write a story together.
For preschoolers to learn to read and understand how the English language works, they need to be surrounded by the printed word. They need to see proper sentence structure and rhyming words. They need to see punctuation and spacing and other grammatical structures. A great way to show students relationships between words is to incorporate poetry around the classroom. Poetry will reveal to students the relationship between rhyming words, help them to understand syllables and illustrate how writers combine them to create a story.
Teachers should encourage students to write their own stories with their own pictures. A good practice is to give the class a prompt, for example, "This summer I am going to..." Then they can ask each student to draw a few pictures about his or her summer plans and write captions for those pictures. This will give the students direction and focus but still allow ample room for imagination and creativity. Teachers could take it one step further and ask the students to act out their stories. This brings life to the text and will help students to establish meaning behind their words.
For preschools that may be more technologically advanced, teachers should take advantage of computers. Computers are an important tool in today's society, and children will have an easier time finding the letters on a keyboard than using a pencil to actually write the letters out. Teachers should ask the students to read what they have written and even print it out and trace their typed letters. Studies have shown that students who are familiar with computers at an early age will have more reasoning and pre-literacy skills than those without access to computers.