8.4: Introducing the Foundations

The preschool learning foundations for Language and Literacy are organized into three broad categories or strands:

• listening and speaking
• reading
• writing^[1]

Supporting Listening and Speaking

Language takes place all around us—in social interactions between teachers and children, in classroom management, in play between children, and in instructional activities. For example, when children learn mathematics and science, they learn them through language as well as through meaningful, multi­sensory experiences.

Language also enhances or limits children’s ability to choose playmates and join in games on the playground. The foundations for listening and speaking include:

Language use and conventions focuses on how children use their language for a number of purposes, including learning how to participate in short conversations.

1.0 Language Use and Conventions

Vocabulary learning is one of the most important accomplishments of early childhood and is related to later reading comprehension.

2.0 Vocabulary

Grammar allows children to go beyond mere naming with their vocabularies to express their ideas in sentences. It’s understanding how words are put together in a sentence.

3.0 Grammar

Teachers can support children’s development of the listening and speaking foundations with the following:

• Make sure that children have a chance to talk by setting aside time for them to discuss and to share their ideas.
• Acknowledge their contributions by making eye contact, using their names, restating their talk, providing explanation when they ask a question, and building on what they say.
• Engage in “getting to know you” conversations.
• Model the use of language conventions and encourage children to do the same.
• Build on preschool children’s own experiences by asking children to recount simple daily experiences.
• Use dramatic play and co-construct stories.
• Give story stems.
• Notice where children look and then talk about the things that are the focus of attention and action, using interesting, rich vocabulary.
• Narrate what you are doing.
• Use new vocabulary in natural conversations.
• Play language games.
• Ask children to tell you about their artwork and other creations.
• Talk one-on-one with children.
• Know individual children and their families (especially important for children whose home language is not English)^[2]

Supporting Reading

Reading billboards effortlessly on a car ride or making a shopping list involves literacy skills. Literacy includes both reading and writing. Literacy is also involved when people understand language and know enough about the world to comprehend the books they read. Children hear many books read aloud before they can read for themselves, and they can use scribbles to represent the thoughts they compose before they will use conventional print. Literacy does not develop overnight; it comes from being talked to and read to and from being encouraged to look at books, to draw, and to write. Children start on their journey to literacy at birth through visual and auditory observation of their world and through interactions with people and materials, in a variety of daily experiences, both at home and at school.

Reading provides access to meaning represented by print. It requires the translation of print into speech and the interpretation of meaning. Reading depends heavily on oral vocabulary and grammar and also on specific literacy knowledge (e.g., names of alphabet letters) and skills (e.g., detecting sounds in spoken words). Preschool children engage in reading by listening to stories and by retelling familiar books. They also engage in reading when they interpret environmental print by using physical clues (e.g., the stop sign is the red one at the end of their street) or when they reenact through play the literacy-related social behavior of family members (e.g., making a shopping list or pretending to read the cooking directions on a food box).

The foundations for reading are organized into:

Concepts about print involves the understanding that print is meaningful and can be used for a variety of purposes.

1.0 Concepts about Print

Phonological awareness concerns learning to notice that spoken words have parts.

2.0 Phonological Awareness

Alphabetics and word/print recognition includes identifying alphabet letters and linking letters in printed words to sounds in spoken words.

3.0 Alphabetics and Word/Print Recognition

Comprehension and analysis of age-appropriate text involves thinking that leads to understanding stories and other kinds of books.

4.0 Comprehension and Analysis of Age-Appropriate Text

Literacy interest and response includes children’s engagement in and motivation for reading.

5.0 Literacy Interest and Response

Teachers can support children’s development of the reading foundations with the following:

• Provide print props to support dramatic play.
• Provide print props in the block area.
• Use literacy terminology, such as letter and word, naturally.
• Use print, with supporting images, to support classroom routines and limits.
• Take the time to read environmental print.
• Model using print as a tool to get things done and to record information.
• Use print to support teacher-guided activities.
• Model basic print conventions, such as reading left to right.
• Write down interesting words as they come up and encourage verbal explanations of word meaning.
• Play games that focus on sounds.
• Use silly songs and poems daily.
• Play with sounds.
• Discuss rhyming words and words that begin with the same sound.
• Use children’s printed names as labels and to support routines, transitions, and free-play experiences
• Provide access to alphabet letters in a variety of contexts.
• Focus on first letters and sounds in alphabet books and posters.
• Use everyday opportunities to model attending to print details in words.
• Provide materials with environmental print in an interest area.
• Provide predictable textbooks in library and listening areas.
• Read stories daily.
• Make stories come alive with your voice and expression.
• Make story time just the right length (not too long, not too short).
• Read stories several times over a few days.
• Define new words in a story you are reading.
• Discuss a story after reading it.
• Read information (nonfiction) books.
• Model using information gained from text (books and nonbook sources) and provide opportunities for children to do the same.
• Provide the space and materials for children to retell stories independently.
• Place books in all areas of the classroom.
• Make reading and writing meaningful and useful.
• Provide ample opportunities for children to cross their midline (moving the left hand or foot to the right side of the body, and the right hand or foot to the left side of the body which requires communication between your brain’s left and right hemispheres)^[4]

Supporting Writing

Developing as a writer depends on the writer’s understanding of how a particular written language looks and on the writer’s language and thinking skills. Conventional writing requires knowledge of alphabet letters and an understanding that letters stand for sounds in spoken or signed words. Deciding what to write requires oral or sign language, knowledge, and thinking. Preschool children engage in writing when they use scribble marks and proudly announce their meanings (e.g., “This says ____”). Preschool children frequently use drawing, rather than writing marks, to represent their thoughts, and they often combine scribble or other writing-like marks with their drawings to communicate. Preschool children are happy to serve as their own interpreters, telling people what their early writing and drawing is meant to say. Teachers are careful not to criticize children’s early scribble productions. To find out what a child’s writing means, teachers may ask a child: “Tell me about these wavy lines down here.”

Writing focuses on understanding that print represents ideas and on learning to move from drawing and scribble writing to using letters and words. Much exploration with paper and writing tools occurs before children will try to write to convey specific meanings. When children write to convey meaning, they are using their language, their physical ability to hold a crayon or pencil, and the cognitive understanding that the marks they make on the page are symbols that represent a meaning that can be shared.

1.0 Writing Strategies

While direct writing instruction is not yet developmentally appropriate for preschool-aged children, who do not quite have the fine motor coordination needed to write legibly, they are developing important skills and knowledge that contribute to their ability to communicate in written form.

Table 8.1: Four Levels of Writing Development over the Preschool Years

Teachers can support children’s development of the writing foundations with the following:

• Setting up a well-stocked writing area
• Frequently adding new materials to the writing area
• Providing writing materials in other interest areas and outdoors
• Embed writing in everyday transitions and routines
• Encourage children to write in the art interest area
• Respond sensitively to children’s emergent writing; focus on the meaning that children are trying to convey rather than on the form of their writing
• Respond to children’s questions and requests for help with writing; describe and model how to write the letter on a separate piece of paper
• Model writing
• Display children’s writing
• Provide ample opportunities for children to cross their midline
• Provide experiences in which children strengthen fine motor muscles (fingers, hand, wrist, forearm), and develop dexterity, such as working with clay, cutting with scissors, and working with tools^[6]

Engaging Families

Teachers can use the following strategies to help families to develop their children’s language and literacy.

• Send families home with things to look for on the weekend, topics to talk about, or stories to tell together (written in their home language).
• Suggest ways that parents can send a response back to the classroom.
• Send books, other reading materials, and writing materials home with children.
• Provide a lending library in the home languages of the children and encourage parents to read to their children in their home language.
• Share ideas with parents about questions they might ask about books, and provide these in the home language.
• Introduce parents to community resources to get books for home
• Encourage family members to share their writing with children.
• Share children’s triumphs and experiences and people they really enjoy with families.
• Use displays to help family members understand the developmental nature of writing.
• Invite families to share their stories with you.
• Think about projects to do in class in which children can bring materials from home.^[9]