Knowing
A starting point for supporting children’s development as clever communicators.
What is 'knowing' in a classroom setting?
Teachers show children every day how to use language to meet a variety of purposes.
What is showing?
The broad term that refers to the awareness of the sound structure of an alphabetic spoken language, including the ability to manipulate it
Phonological Awareness
"Dog" and "log" have the same sounds at the end.
Rhyming
True or false
Children learn multiple phonological awarenesses simultaneously.
True
Learning the meanings of new words is a particularly important part of children’s language and literacy development. Children must know words and their meanings for speaking and listening as well as for reading and writing.
What is learning new words helps build language and literacy skills?
Modeling and showing children every day how to use language to meet a variety of purposes.
What is a teacher's role in showing?
The understanding that alphabet letters represent spoken sounds in a systematic way
Alphabetic principle
The words "big" and "boy" start with the same sound.
Alliteration
True or false
Sounds vary across different alphabetic languages.
True
>Have authentic and responsive back-and-forth conversations with children
> Engage children in interactive read alouds of books
> Support children’s learning about the social and natural world
What is the teacher supporting children’s development in critical language and literacy domains?
This type of talk involves discussing events or ideas outside of the child’s immediate experience, like past or future events.
What is decontextualized language?
The individual unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another
Phoneme
Attending to the smallest units of sound.
Phonemic awareness
True or false
Rhyming is the most important phonological awareness.
False
In the early childhood years, children learn a lot about language and how it works. Children need to learn the meaning of many words so they can use their vocabulary to speak and listen.
Why are language and knowledge development so important in the early years?
When a child asks, “Why is the sky blue?” or “What if we ride to the end of the earth?” the teacher is encouraged to do this to support language development.
What is extending the conversation and building on children’s curiosity?
The instructional practice that explicitly maps graphemes onto phonemes
Phonics
"I like pizza" has three separate words.
Sentence segmentation
Do children become aware of larger units of language first or smaller units?
Larger units
What is building vocabulary through concept development?
This process happens when children not only learn new words like “seed,” “stem,” or “friendship,” but also begin to understand the ideas and experiences those words represent through real-life interactions and contextual learning.
Instead of correcting a child who says “Her is nice,” teachers should do this—repeat, reword, and expand their sentence to model proper grammar.
What is providing a language model and extending the conversation?
The symbol that represents a phoneme
Grapheme
"Dinosaur" has three syllables.
Syllabification
How is phonemic awareness best learned?
It is best learned along with letters.