Thanksgiving is quickly approaching, but did you know that November is also National Native American Heritage month? During this time, be intentional about using terms that value and respect all people and avoid stereotyping by planning lessons and using materials that celebrate Native American heritage and traditions. For example, steer away from creating “Indian headbands”… Read more »
Tag: Early Literacy
Pretending Can Build Literacy Skills
One of the many joys of being an early childhood educator is watching and developing children’s growing imaginations. Symbolic behavior play is related to the understanding of a representational system like written language and language behavior in dramatic play is related to literate language (Mielonen, Paterson, 2009). Children are also developing their oral language skills… Read more »
Culturally Responsive Literacy – Día de los Muertos
What are you learning about with your students? Fall to Winter in the PreK-3 classroom usually means one thing – holidays. While we know you’re busy picking books, scripting plays, making treats, and coordinating your holiday teacher sweaters, we thought the season was ripe for recommending some fresh ideas for doing holidays inclusively with your young… Read more »
Literacy Rich Environments
Research affirms that a literacy rich environment promotes the development of literacy skills. You can create an accessible literacy rich environment by: Providing a wide variety of print, reading, writing, and electronic materials. Adapting literacy materials to meet children’s individual needs (e.g., pencil grips, page turning devices, Velcro, etc.) Balancing informational and narrative texts. Modeling… Read more »
Oral Language Development Beyond Building Vocabulary
Intentionally planning vocabulary instruction (see Words, words, words post) is an important part of developing children’s oral language skills, but what other research-based practices can you use? See below: 1) Ask children many open-ended (those without a specific answer) questions throughout the day. Make these interactions effective by providing scaffolding support that enables children to… Read more »
Words, words, words!
Yes, we know, vocabulary development is important! But just how important is it? Research tells us that “vocabulary is very important to reading comprehension; readers need to know the meanings of individual words to understand the text as a whole” and “oral language is a predictor of a range of expressive skills beyond comprehension, including… Read more »
All About Dialogic Reading
Dialogic Reading Link is an evidence-based interactive shared-reading practice that teachers and families can use to enhance children’s oral language development. It involves using the same book multiple times to progress through three levels of questioning with small groups or individual children. Dialogic Reading introduces new vocabulary, supports comprehension, and develops creative and critical… Read more »
Partnering with Families
The importance of recognizing and supporting family members as their child’s first teachers is not new information. However, doing so on top of many other responsibilities can be daunting. Even so, it is critical to engage families in home literacy practices so that children have additional authentic opportunities to learn and practice their skills. Here are… Read more »
Translanguaging for Young Literacy Learners
We live in an increasingly complex, multilingual society where young children from a variety of ethnic, racial, and linguistic backgrounds work together to learn literacy in our classrooms. As we’ve written about before, there are many different Englishes (Fu et al., 2019). Our emergent bilingual students, in particular, will bring diverse English practices that include… Read more »
Home Language Reading and Literacy Growth
Research has found that providing children access to books in school and at libraries can have a positive impact on reading scores (Rowe & Fain, 2013). One culturally responsive way to do this is by diversifying your classroom library (diversify your library). Another way is to encourage families to read books and talk about the… Read more »