Transcript Slide 1

Lisa Van Thiel, Mary Lu Love, and Jennifer Kearns-Fox
Institute for Community Inclusion
University of Massachusetts Boston




Expand conversation between adults and
children and among children
Use print to document conversations and
promote storytelling
Intentionally link phonemic awareness, letter
identification, and writing
Explicitly support English language learners








Table discussions
English Language Learners oral and written
language development
Break
Strategies for conversing with children
Language and Literacy skills (Video)
Making Print Talk (Video)
Practice and apply scaffolding
Works plans in small groups






How are oral and written language
similar?
How do they differ?
Why do children use written language?
What can we learn from observing
children’s writing?
What about English Language
Learners?





Phonology, or the sounds of language
Vocabulary, or the words of language
Grammar, or how the words are put together
to make sentences in the language
Discourse, or how sentences are put together,
for example to tell stories, make arguments,
or explain how something works
Pragmatics, or the rules about how to use
language.
Tabor 2008

A longitudinal study of English-speaking
children from low-income backgrounds
showed that early language input at home
and in early childhood settings is predictive
of literacy abilities in kindergarten (Dickinson
& Tabor, 2001) and that kindergarten abilities
are highly predictive of fourth-grade reading
comprehension (Snow, Porche, Tabors, &
Harris, 2007).


Simultaneous acquisition of two languages
occurs when children are exposed to both
languages from a very early age.
Sequential acquisition occurs when a child
begins to learn a second language after the
first language is at least partly established.




Children use home language in the second
language situation
Children enter a non-verbal period
Children begin to go public with words and
phases
Children productively use second language to
communicate in phrases and then in
sentences
 Social language
 Academic language






Expression
Attention-getting
Requesting
Protesting
Joking
Responding to questions (non-verbally)




Help children join small groups to
play.
Provide children with some words or
phrases.
Encourage other children and adults
to give some feedback on what
works and what does not.
Promote peer tutoring. Children
need to count on adults and other
children to help break through the
social isolation.



Describe the questions asked in the first
video.
Reflect on the questions and why they limited
children’s responses and turn-taking.
How do the questions in the second video
change the responses and turn-taking of the
same group of children?
Activities that target letter
recognition (alphabetic
principle)
2. Activities that emphasize
the sounds that make up
words (phonology)
3. Activities that show how
books look and how they
work (book and print
concepts)
1.
4.
5.
Activities that emphasize words and their
meanings (vocabulary)
Activities that encourage telling stories,
explaining how the world works, or building
a fantasy world (discourse)






Knowing names of printed letters
Knowing the sounds associated with printed
letters
Manipulating sounds of spoken language
Rapid naming of letters, numbers, and
objects
Being able to write one’s own name on a
drawing
Being able to remember the content of
spoken language for a short time
 Children
should be learning 610 new words a day in the
early childhood period.
Using language in ways that
go beyond the here and now
and focus the conversation on
• Past events
• Explaining something not
present
• Discussing a future time
and/or place
• Building a fantasy


Which of Rhanda’s questions work best to
help Colin tell the story clearly?
How does the second conversation support
Colin’s language and cognitive development
and skills?
Watch the following 4 vignettes
and consider:
 How does the teacher help
children connect written and
spoken words?
 How does the teacher make
print meaningful in the
classroom?
 What is done to encourage
children to use print?
1.
2.
3.
4.
22
Visual memory of each letter
Line segments that form each letter
Sequence used to put lines together
Directions to draw each letter
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
23
When and why should I write?
How do people know what I’ve written? Is
there a special way to organize these marks?
How come sometimes the words are listed
down the page, and other times, we write
across the page?
How do I know which of these marks to use
to represent my words?
How do I know that someone else will be able
to know what I meant?
Motor development and understanding of
letter-sound connections are two separate
skills and develop concurrently and
separately.
- Some items adapted from Vernon & Ferreiro (1999)
24
Children’s messages are represented by
scribbles, marks, and pictures, which represent
the way they identify print. Their differentiation
between writing and drawing is intermittent.
25




Letterlike/number-like
forms emerge
Child often uses
same three letters
Often letters from
own name
Writer can talk
about own writings
Children recognize that text has a fixed number
of forms and a variety of characters. They begin
to explore writing independently.
27
Children begin to make correspondences
between letters and syllables.
28
Strict one-to-one correspondence between oral
syllables and letters, but the letters are not
pertinent—ANY letter can represent any given
syllable.
29
Systematically use one letter for each spoken
syllable and use an appropriate letter for most
syllables.
30
A mixture of syllables and phonemes
31
Systematic phoneme-letter
correspondences, although spellings may
not be conventional.
32
(i.e., a word or a phrase) that they have not yet
been taught to write, we can witness a real
process of construction. Data include not only
the written product, but also all the comments
and verbalizations made during the writing
process and interpretations children give once
the piece of writing has been completed...
Between initial scribbling and invented
spellings, a whole range of precise
conceptualizations take place.”
- Vernon & Ferreiro (1999)
33
1.
2.
3.
4.
Say the word mentally to himself
Break off the first phoneme from the rest of
the word
Mentally sort through his repertoire of
letters and find one to match with that
phoneme
Write down the letter he has decided on
- Beverly Otto (2002), Language Development in Early Childhood
34
5.
6.
7.
35
Recite the word again in his mind
Recall the phoneme he has just spelled,
subtract it from the word, and locate the
next phoneme to be spelled
Match the phoneme with a letter of the
alphabet, and so on, until all of the
phonemes have been spelled
“Children’s errors often show us what they
know about writing conventions, as well as
what they have not yet learned.”
- Schickedanz, J. (1999). Much More Than
the ABCs, p. 115
36
1. Individually fill out the yellow worksheet “Writing
To, With, and By Young Children” based on your
own classroom.
2. Complete all four columns:
 writing resources you provide for children.
 ways you include writing TO children.
 ways you include writing WITH children.
 ways you include writing BY children.
3. After completing your charts, share with table.
37
Look for opportunities to talk about writing –
“What letters should I write?” or “What letters do
you need?”
► Encourage children to read their “writing”
before trying to interpret it – “Can you read your
writing to me?”
► Write the whole word when a child asks –
seeing the word in its entirety helps the child
form a visual picture of the word and its
configuration.
► Never write directly on children’s work…write at
the bottom of the page or on a separate strip.
►
38
What child and
teacher do together
scaffold
What child can now
do alone
I do it.
What child can now
do alone
We
do it.
You
do it!
What child can do
only with help
39
►
Progress within a child’s Zone of Proximal
Development can be enhanced when not only
social interactions are present but also special
instructional techniques are utilized. (ZPD = the
space between the child’s level of independent
performance and the child’s level of maximally
assisted performance.)
►
Scaffolding = how an expert can facilitate the
learner’s transition from assisted to
independent performance.
40
Scaffolds do not make the task itself easier, but
rather make it possible for a learner to complete
the task with support.
► Initially, maximum teacher assistance is needed
to elevate performance to its highest potential
level. Gradually, the level of assistance decreases
as the learner becomes capable of doing more
independently. At this point the teacher “hands
over” responsibility to the learner, removing the
scaffolds.
► Teachers must help learners develop strategies
they can apply to novel problems they will
encounter, not just answers to specific questions.
►
41
► The
child creates his/her
own message and then,
with the teacher’s help or
independently, draws a
highlighted line to stand for
each word in the message.
► The child then fills out the
empty lines, placing
scribbles, letter-like forms,
or letters on the line to
stand for the words in the
message.
42
► In
pairs, practice Bodrova and Leong’s process
of scaffolding. Each partner should take a turn
being the “child” and the “teacher.”
► The
child creates his/her own message and
then, with the teacher’s help or independently,
draws a highlighted line to stand for each word
in the message.
► The
child then fills out the empty lines, placing
scribbles, letter-like forms, or letters on the line
to stand for the words in the message.
43



Reflect on today’s professional development.
Establish a goal for yourself.
Design an action plan for yourself.
◦
◦
◦
◦
What is your goal?
What supports will you need?
How will you use your coach as a resource?
What changes do you expect your coach to observe
in the classroom?

What is one thought
you will take away
from today’s
session?