Print Rich Classrooms
What can the environment promote?
Language skills in many ways since it provides the reality behind words and ideas.
What happens once rooms or areas are designated as language centers?
Staff members classify materials into “looking and listening” or “working with" categories.
Name a way to strengthen home-school connection with families of English learners.
1. Host a back-to-school night with interpreters. Make accommodations for parents’ schedules. Offer transportation, food, and childcare. Use this event as an opportunity to find out how to establish and maintain regular contact with families. Also include information about adult education opportunities.
2. Find bilingual volunteers, parent liaisons, or staff assistants to translate or serve as interpreters and bridge the gapbetween the center and homes.
3. Develop family learning activities (including multilingual activities.) Send these home to involve the family.
4. Consider sponsoring single parent and/or native language parent groups. Consider having meetings away from theschool campus in the communities in which the families live.
5. Involve language minority parents on advisory committees, councils, and key communicator groups.
6. Hold family nights on parenting issues including child development; early math, writing, science and literacy; setting up awork area at home; and goals for their children and family. Provide translators.
7. Offer ongoing interactive training sessions for parents of rising kindergarteners on topics such as standards, assessments, and behavior management.
8. Implement a bilingual hotline number where parents can get information on how to help their children at home.
9. Form a citizen advisory group that can advise the center staff on how to improve services for students and families experiencing poverty, those living in single-parent households, and those who do not speak English.
What is the definition of Language center?
A classroom area specifically set aside and equipped for language arts-related activities and child use
What did Gerde et al.’s study find?
A correlation between the level of print in the classroom and children’s writing ability
How big should the area be?
Big enough for 5-6 children at a time.
Most centers rearrange furnishings until?
The most functional arrangement is found.
Teachers can gain insight into how families view?
Their level of participation, volunteer work, and at-tendance at school meetings
Definition of audiovisual equipment
Any mechanical or nonmechanical item useful in offering sight or hearing experience
What do Reutzel and Clark suggest?
The first step in creating an effective literacy classroom involves taking an inventory of supplies, furnishings, literacy materials
What does the ideal language center have?
Comfortable, soft furnishings with ample workspace, proper lighting, and screening to block out other areas of an active classroom
Most centers provide?
Quiet retreats within a language arts center
Early childhood teachers and centers employ a wide range of strategies to enhance their relationships with families.
When reaching out to families, teachers are likely to find that intra-group differences may be as great as inter-group differences.
Definition of software?
A wide range of commercial programs developed for computer users’ convenience, education, entertainment, and so on.
What is one suggestion to create a print rich environment?
1.Create a message center and classroom news bulletin where children can give and receive a message from teacher and vice versa.
2. Create a slogan, caption, question, or new idea for each school day. Print it and talk to chil-dren about it, and print child reactions.
3. Create individual child tickets or cards bearing children’s names that stick to a board or fit in a slot in a play area that accommodates only a certain number of children at any given time.
4.Use print and numerals in games or use symbols.
5. Have an attendance chart that allows children to take off their names from the chart and place them in a basket as they enter the classroom.
6.Use graphing activities with children’s names, physical features, or their selected preferences or choices
7.Add print to imaginative or dramatic play areas by monitoring conversation and suggesting labels.
8. Highlight the functional use of print in daily classroom life by pointing it out to individuals or groups.
The language art center should be?
A quiet place that is separated from the more vigorous class-room activities.
What should a writing center have?
1.Tables and chairs
2.Writing posters and a bulletin board for children to display their writing by themselves
3.Writing utensils
4.Writing materials
5.Computer or tablet with keyboard
6.Materials for writing stories and making them into books
7.A message board for children to post messages for the teacher and students
8.A place to store “Very Own Words”
9.Folders for children to place samples of their writing
Child literacy at home and school is influenced by three important factors
1. setting
2. models
3. planned and unplanned events.
Definition of family literacy programs?
Community programs attempting to provide literacy-building opportunities and experiences for families. Services areavailable for both adults and children
What is in the language arts centers?
Related instructional materials are located in one convenient and inviting area. Teaching staff can easily stock, supervise, and maintain materials, furnishings, and equipment.
Different books that can be found in the language center?
Informational, nonfiction, books that reflect cultures, books that reflect family structures and books that reflect lived experiences of the children of the classroom.
What should a literacy center have?
1. Manipulatives
2. Children participate in designing the center
3. Area placed in a quiet section of the room
4. Visually and physically accessible, yet partitioned from the rest of the room
5. Rug, throw pillows, rocking chair, bean bag chair, and stuffed animals
6. Private spot in the corner, such as a box to crawl into and read
7. The center uses 10 percent of the classroom space and fits five or six children
Educators need to understand what about families?
Desire for their children. The relationship with the family starts the day that family members walk through the school’s door.
Definition of outreach?
An early childhood program’s attempt to provide supportive assistance to attending children’s families to promote their children’s success in school and developmental growth