Print Rich Classrooms
This is one suggestion for creating a print-rich environment where children can give and receive messages from the teacher.
What is a message center?
This is one of the three main functions of a language arts center, providing a place to store materials.
What is storage?
When planning language centers, staff classify materials into these two categories: "looking and listening" or this other one.
What is "working with"?
Families can stimulate speaking by doing this naturally and clearly, as if talking to a friend, while listening without correcting errors.
What is talk to children?
This term refers to building new and descriptive words into children's language through family conversations.
What is vocabulary?
In a print-rich classroom, educators should do this to everything that connects to the current curriculum, often pairing it with a picture or photo.
What is label?
A language arts center should accommodate this number of children at one time for optimal engagement.
What is five to six?
In planning a center, this is determined along with display and storage to support activities requiring concentration.
What is working space?
To build vocabulary at home, families should include these types of words in conversations and be responsive to children's interests.
What are new and descriptive words?
In a literacy environment, this is the interrelatedness of speaking, listening, reading, and writing that centers aim to teach.
What is communication?
This activity in a print-rich classroom involves using children's names, physical features, or preferences to create visual representations with print and numerals.
What is graphing activities?
This area within a language arts center includes puppets on shelves, a puppet theater, and a loft with a rug for play.
What is the puppet play area?
Centers often rearrange furnishings until achieving this, with the goal of helping children grasp the interrelatedness of speaking, listening, reading, and writing.
What is the most functional arrangement?
Families can encourage literacy by taking these and jointly labeling them to create stories or picture books.
What are photographs?
This concept from earlier chapters, promoted in centers, involves hearing and isolating sounds in words, like in rhyming activities.
What is phonemic awareness?
To highlight the functional use of print, teachers point it out during daily life, such as in this type of area where conversation is monitored and labels are suggested.
What is imaginative or dramatic play areas?
To provide quiet retreats in a language arts center, schools use creative spaces with pillows or these other items for privacy.
What are packing crates, barrels, or pillow-lined closets?
For a computer center, planning includes placing it in this type of area to allow for teacher monitoring while minimizing distractions.
What is a quiet, separated, low-traffic area?
During conferences, teachers and families exchange these about the child's needs and strengths to promote full potential.
What are perceptions?
Families promote this by being "word conscious," identifying specific characteristics like calling a color "turquoise" instead of just blue-green.
What is expressive oral language vocabulary?
This print-rich strategy involves creating individual tickets or cards with children's names that stick to a board or slot to limit the number of children in a play area.
What is individual child tickets or cards?
Every inch of floor and wall space in a language arts center is used for these types of activities that motivate communication.
What are communication-motivating activities?
Planning a computer center considers children's comfort, adequate lighting, seating, and these areas for visual aids to machine use.
What are display areas?
Families should create this atmosphere at home to discover together, offering activities just beyond what the child knows and recognizing effort with verbal approval.
What is a "let us discover together" atmosphere?
This is the functional use of print in daily classroom life, highlighted to children to show its real-world purpose.
What is functional print?