Language programs for toddlers

Linda: Absolutely, that you find a way to make sure the child experiences some kind of continuity between home and school.

And there is someone at some time who uses that language with that child conversationally, reading the books beforehand, pointing out the words in the classroom. The programs that I've run we've had tremendous success in getting people to come in and work with the children so the child hears their language and they understand the teacher values it, and the teacher can learn a few words from child, if there's no one else to teach the child.

But these are very simple things that are very significant. Carrie: Wonderful, well I think you have shared some really great tips and strategies and information that we can all benefit from. Thank you so much for your time. Treshawn: That was so helpful. Many thanks to Carrie and Linda for taking time to share some really important information about supporting our children's learning and development. So let's take a few minutes to talk about the context for all of this learning.

The consistent positive relationship you develop with your children and the rich language interactions you have with them, help them to learn to use language and words to express their curiosity about objects, and materials, and the people that are in their environment. And as children grow, they show increasing interest and curiosity about the world around them.

When you narrate what children are doing and what you're doing, when you use interesting and new words, when you share books, when you say rhymes, when you sing songs in English and home languages and tribe languages, and you give children the tools they need to communicate their curiosity and creativity, and all of that language and those opportunities to learn and use children's support, the language supports children's development in another domain, which is Approaches to Learning.

And Approaches to Learning focuses on how children learn, rather than what they learn—little different. So this domain also includes initiative and curiosity and creativity, and by applying these skills, children learn new skills and set goals and meet them. And they learn—they learn to do things that are challenging and frustrating or things that just simply need time to accomplish.

So let's watch a video of Ms. Keisha: Should we make a discovery? Should we check and see what's inside the avocado? What do you think is in here? What do you think is inside? Inside the avocado. Andrew, you're working on getting inside the avocado? Andrew's opening up his avocado. Let me see friends. You are experimenting with rolling your avocado because it's so round.

You too, Mia, you're going to roll it around the table? You helping Mia with your—with your fork? You want to use it on your avocado?

Let's see. Do you want to try and open another avocado? Let's see if I can help you. Yes, you're taking out You have dark green on the outside of the avocado and light green on the inside of the avocado. Mia, you're eating it, how does it taste? How does it taste? It smells so good. It makes me warm inside to know that children are playing with avocados 'cause we do the same thing. But providing a safe environment that's nurturing, and nurturing response of daily interactions to help children approach the learning in a positive way.

So when you're curious and when you wonder aloud about—about what you're curious about, then children develop curiosity. And they hear you using those words. And they'll learn to use those words to then express themselves and their curiosity. And when you're creative and you use language in creative ways, using new and interesting words and making up your own words, and rhyming, children then learn to be creative and they use language in creative ways.

A family's values and beliefs in cultural practices really effect how children approach and engage in learning. So it's important to find out from family members what language or languages they speak at home, how language is used in the home, like what do they use for words for comforting, for managing their child's behavior, and what their children already know and enjoy in the languages that they hear at home. Knowing what families value in terms of approaches to learning will help you understand the children that you work with so that you can better meet their needs.

And for example, in our house, we try, and again I say try very loosely, not to use the word "no" at home for redirection; instead we use uh-oh, mostly with our younger son. So we've communicated that with our teachers, although thankfully they're not using no in the classroom.

But just to be sure, we communicated our family values to our teachers so that hopefully they're using that, you know, in the classroom or other forms of redirection. Judi: Yeah that would make a huge difference in terms of what your son feels, in terms of, you know, how he's redirected if he's used to being redirected in one way at home and then experience something very different, that could be challenging for him, especially really young kids. I love the comments that we have about this video.

The exploration of the avocado's great 'cause the outside of an avocado is really fun, but the inside is really interesting, too, in terms of like a sensory experience but I just love how Ms.

Keisha's just hanging out and following the children's lead, she's creating a very safe space for them to just explore, and that's what's required. And that's what we mean when we say creating this environment supports children in their approaches to learn, right?

So the only way that she can work on supporting their development of vocabulary is to first create this safe environment where they can explore. And when they feel safe in exploring then she gets to build the vocabulary on top of that. So, it definitely is That's the environment you want. You can tell that the children are comfortable and that they're used to being given options in terms of what they explore and what they do.

And because that setting is there, it allows them to really get into it, and it allows her then to build vocabulary on top of it, which is perfect.

I think that's why you like this video, right, Treshawn? Judi: OK, so the last thing that we're going to talk about today is ongoing assessment. So, if you remember, and we've talked about ongoing assessment before. Observing and documenting children's growth in children Their growth in vocabulary and emergent development—emerging development requires this focused observation and intentional engagement with children. So if you think about Ms. Keisha in that video, what do you think she would be observing for?

And what do you think she would want to be documenting while she's working with those children and while she's observing them playing with the avocados? She might be want to listening for new sounds or new words that children are expressing. Want to be looking at their fine motor skills. You saw that little boy with a fork, right? He was trying to get that fork into the avocado, which is a great opportunity for him.

So we want to make sure that we focus on listening for and documenting the moments when children show us that they understand what we're saying, and when they use words to communicate with us and with others, we want to pay close attention so that we notice a small shift from maybe just banging a marker on a piece of paper to really intentionally trying to make a mark, a dot, or some careful line.

We want to make sure we're observing those so we can document that shift. Oh, it's starting to become intentional now. It's also essential to have two-way communication with families, especially for these young kids.

We want to know what their experiences are at home, what the language is, language or languages are that they're hearing, that they're understanding, that they're using at home. As I mentioned before, my son uses different words at home and then he does at school and that's important for teachers to understand so that they have this idea of the whole child and their development.

And their experiences with printing or writing might be different at home than it is in a group care setting depending on their family's literacy practices or what family value in terms of early emerging literacy. So it's really important to make sure that we are communicating in a bi-directional back-and-forth way about experiences and how children are growing and developing, so we have that sense of the whole child. So we're going to talk a little bit about how you collect ongoing assessment data to help you individualize your strategies to support children's vocabulary and emerging literacy.

But first, let's listen to a teacher talk about effecting infants and toddlers who are dual language learners—they speak Spanish and English. And as you listen, feel free to share, again, in the chat box what you're thinking. I feel like this is something that we Is very common experience about how do we understand the whole child and what they know and are able to do.

Educator: The assessment and individual report right now that we have, you know, for the preschoolers, they do—they do English and Spanish. In our situation, because our younger toddlers, we assess them in the language they're speaking.

Like I said, our children I have to assess them in English because I'm going to assess them in Spanish when they're not going to understand me, so I have to go with the English. And the other ones I do it in Spanish, because the same thing when I go to the home visit, I have to do the home visit in Spanish. The other parents want it in English, so I have to talk to those parents, those two other parents in English because they want it in English, so it has to be, you know, assess the children that know English, and the other ones in Spanish.

That's how we assess them. And that's how I do observations. On the Spanish ones, I do the Spanish observations. On the English, I do English. So when I go to the home visit, that's when I'm going to show the parent, you know, their language, and, you know, so they can understand, too, what I'm doing in the room and what kind of observations I'm doing because if I'm going to do it in Spanish, then the parent, I'm pretty sure she's going to ask, "But my child doesn't understand in Spanish, why you assessing my child in Spanish when he only knows English," so, you know, that's why I do it under home language.

Judi: So this teacher presented some really good strategies for what she does to assess her students. That were also And her approaches align with her program's dual language policy and guidance. So, depending on where you are and what program you're working, you may have different approaches, but I think what was really important here is that she recognized where her child, each individual child, where their strengths were in their language, and then did her best to assess them in the language that they understand.

And so that is definitely a first key, a goal to have when you have young children is to find out what languages the family speaks to their child at home and then use that language to assess—assess the children because that's the language that they know best, that they're most familiar with.

And then we also want to make sure that the observations and documentations that we use are representative of the whole child. That if we can, if we have the chance to ask questions or have conversations or interactions in the language that the child knows best, and if not you have the opportunity, hopefully, to maybe speak with the families about what the child knows or is able to do at home, when they're hearing their home language.

But we want to make sure that we share these observations with parents. If you have home visiting or if you have the opportunity to visit their homes, you can see what the languages are that are being used in the home, and have conversations with families as to what you observe and what they observe. A couple of other important points to make about assessing infants and toddlers, including children who are dual language learners, we want to make sure that we're using this information to plan our continued interactions and learning experiences.

So we want to make sure that we're documenting the important stuff, the big stuff, or even the little shifts that I was mentioning in children's—in children's knowledge and skills. But what we are noticing that is new or is important so that we can understand how they're developing and what to do next. If each of those children at the table with the avocado is at a different place with their language, with their vocabulary, maybe with their expression of words, and so the teacher wants to make sure that the opportunities she provides and the responses she gives to each of those children is based on what she knows about their knowledge and skills.

We could also, as I mentioned, use this information to engage with families about what we're thinking about how their children are developing, especially with really little ones. Sometimes, it's hard to tell what the progression is, and so for parents to hear and families to hear, "Wow your child is doing something new," you know, they might not recognize that going from banging a marker on a paper to drawing lines is a big deal—it's a big deal.

So we have that opportunity if we document it to share it with families and let them know about how their children are learning and developing. We can also support them in thinking about supporting language and literacy at home. So, you know, asking them for what they see or hear during everyday activities, like meals or diapering or getting dressed or bath time or when they're playing with siblings, if the children have siblings at home or cousins or family and friends, what happens out when you're about shopping or running errands?

Sometimes, we need to cue parents in to observing and documenting themselves, and letting us know what it is that they see about how their children are changing in terms of vocabulary.

I was just at the pediatrician yesterday and there's this little girl who came in and she was babbling, babbling, babbling, babbling—it was the whole time in the waiting room—and the secretary at the front desk was like "Wow, she is really talking now," 'cause I guess she hadn't seen her in a while, so the last time she saw her, but it was like this significant change, you know, and you could tell. She did not stop chattering.

I didn't understand anything she said, but she did not stop chattering the whole time. So—so that was exciting to see. But how fun would that be to hear as a parent? You know, wow, I really noticed that your vocabulary, your child's vocabulary is increasing or changing. I think that that could be really affirming for families to hear as well. One thing, too, that I was kind of [Inaudible] in the chat box Treshawn: Connie mentioned a great way that they do assessments in her school is they use videos.

So, they take little short clips, video clips of children. And so, you know, sometimes, these ELOF—or whatever assessment tool you use—those goals might be, you know, cumbersome for parents or, you know, just You want to put it in parent's language to make it easier for them to understand, but if you have a video to show them what that means, and, you know, I feel like that strengthens the assessment as well, parents can actually see what's going on at school then, you know, then what might be different at home, so you have You can pull parents in that way so they can see what's going on at school, which would be fun.

Judi: Definitely. Yeah, we, you know, we have the—the—the benefit of having the ELOF which really shows us the goals, as you mentioned earlier for children in this area. But helping parents understand what it means to be moving, making progress in terms of learning and development, I think video can be really helpful, especially for progression, right? Sometimes you don't get to pay attention to that, so having someone do that for you is really helpful.

I like that family collaboration helps in our planning, I like that collaboration, right? This is not just me telling you everything you need to know, it should be this back-and-forth collaboration because the parents are, you know, the kid's first teacher, right, so we want to build them up and support them in doing all of these great things as well. So, well we are This hour just flew by for me.

Judi: Like I said at the beginning, we'll stay on for a few minutes to chat with you if you guys have additional questions or want to talk about anything more. Like I said, Jan is really good at giving us some resources. If you were I also wanted to bring to your attention, we have a MyPeers community; if you're not a part of it, our Teacher Time community is a great place to join.

CLRP is much easier to say, but this is a great group that's really focused on these practices that are culturally and ethically responsive, so that's a great group community. It just started up, so if you want to join, you can just request to join, and you will join. We also have Text4Teachers. You can find more information on that, about that on the ECLKC, and ELOF as well, which is an app that you can download onto your phone and it has all of the information you need about the ELOF, including the goals that we talked about today, and some really great opportunities to learn and see more about what these mean in action The video.

Hear from infant and toddler teachers about how they support children's language and literacy development. Experts discuss the ways infants and toddlers learn to talk and build early literacy skills.

Note: The evaluation, certificate, and engagement tools mentioned in the video were for the participants of the live webinar and are no longer available. For information about webinars that will be broadcast live soon, visit Upcoming Events. Language , Literacy. Resource Type: Video.

Age Group: Infants and Toddlers. Audience: Teachers and Caregivers. Skip to main content. Teacher Time. OK, so now we're going to move on, Treshawn, to emergent literacy.

Judi: That'd be awesome. Treshawn: I think I need that anyway. Wouldn't it be fun? How many cats do we have? One, where's the other one?

He's sleeping. Not there? Missing, OK. And the brush? What does she say? Treshawn: I wish I had those little chalkboard characters. Carrie: And you may never get past the first page, and that's OK.

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