This course is designed to prepare early childhood professionals for promoting children’s emergent literacy and reading development. Through a developmental approach, the course addresses ways in which early childhood professionals can foster young children’s oral language development, phonemic awareness, and literacy problem solving skills, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. This course provides the foundation for early childhood professionals to become knowledgeable about literacy development in young children. Instructional approaches and theory-based and research based strategies to support the emergent literacy and reading skills of native speakers and English language learners will be presented.