[no audio] [program starts at 00:29) [no audio] [program starts at 00:29) - All right, good afternoon.

Welcome.

We're so glad that you guys are here, that you've decided to be here with us and hanging out through the late afternoon.

We really appreciate it.

We're glad to see you.

This is Connect Four: Language and Literacy at Home and School.

My name is Catherine Burke and I'm here with my colleagues, Jessica Burris and Amy Pascal.

And we are mentor evaluators at the Early Educator Support Office at UNC Charlotte.

Before we get started, I do wanna say thank you to a few more of our colleagues who couldn't be with us here today to present, but they really were instrumental in helping develop the content that we're gonna share with you.

So I just wanted to shout them out and give them some credit too.

So thank you to Tammy Potts, Phoebe Seiler, and Dr. Rich Lambert for all your contributions for the Literacy Crosswalks.

So I think it's important for us to take a moment and reflect on why we're here.

You know, why did we wanna put this session together and why did you choose this one to be at at the end of the day?

We're all here because we want the very best for young children.

We wanna ensure that every child has the opportunity to develop foundational skills that will help them succeed in school and in life.

And the best way for us to do that is through close collaborative partnerships with a shared understanding of what works.

So it's really important that you're here.

Today we're gonna look at a framework that can be applied at home and school to ensure young children have consistent opportunities to be poured into and really effective ways.

We use many tools to support our work as mentors and evaluators, but today we're gonna focus on what can be found in the "North Carolina Foundations "for Early Learning and Development."

Here's my copy right here.

This document was created so that educators, families, and others working to support young children can fully understand widely held expectations for children's development in each of the five domains, and find strategies that can be used to promote their progress.

You can use the QR code included on this slide and throughout the presentation to access a padlet of resources that we're gonna be referring to and using during this session.

So in our session we're gonna share information about key components of early language and literacy development.

And of course, we don't have enough time to really get into everything there is to learn about this.

So we're gonna hit the highlights today and we shared some resources on our padlet for you to take a deeper dive on your own time.

We are going to share a series of resources that our office created to help you see the connections between children's development in these areas and information that you can find in foundations.

And finally, and most importantly, we're gonna do some shared brainstorming of ideas that can be easily implemented in the home or classroom to promote children's early language and literacy development.

So we know that you're here with your own set of knowledge and experiences.

And so some of this information is gonna be a refresher for you and some of it will be new.

Our intention is to help bring awareness of the effectiveness of the many strategies that you're already doing and encourage you to move forward with more intentionality.

So with all that said, let's get started.

I'd like you to take a moment to think back to a pleasant language or literacy related memory from your own childhood.

Really take yourself there.

You can close your eyes if you need to.

As you're reflecting, think about where you are.

Think about who's with you, if anybody, what are you doing?

What's happening around you, and how are you feeling?

You can hold your memory with you for now.

If you'd like, you can jot down a note if you have the memory like I do, and you won't remember when we circle back to this at the end of the presentation, but we are gonna come back to it later.

So just tuck that information away for now.

- According to research by Dr. Karen Perviss, scientists have discovered that it takes approximately 400 repetitions to create a new synopsis and the brain unless it is done in play, in which case it only takes 10 to 20 repetitions.

Research shows us that children learn best through play, and this is why we want to make sure that all of our activities, both at home and at school are aligned with our goals, but are also fun and engaging for children.

Language and literacy are major domains of early childhood development.

These are connected areas, but they refer to different things.

Language development involves the development of the skills used to communicate with others through languages.

While literacy development involves the ability to read and write.

As educators and caregivers, we know that children learn best when activities are developmentally appropriate, meaningful and engaging.

In my experience as a classroom teacher and as a mentor and evaluator, I have observed that children are often interested in and excited about the things that we as parents, caregivers and educators are interested in.

Children want to connect with the people they are close to.

This is why it is so important to make connections with children while promoting language and literacy development.

Some ways that we can do this is through songs, rhymes, sharing stories, asking questions, and sharing meaningful environmental print.

We want to provide children with opportunities and experiences that will cultivate a love of learning.

We want children to learn new information without feeling overwhelmed by the process.

We know that it can feel difficult and sometimes overwhelming to implement developmentally appropriate language and literacy activities while meeting the demands of everything else that you are required to do.

This is why we wanted to come here today and share what we have learned about language and lit literacy acquisition, talk about the connections to foundations and look at how we can make learning fun and meaningful for everyone.

We are also really excited to learn and hear from you as well.

Over the next few slides, we will discuss different aspects of language and literacy and how you as a parent, caregiver or educator, can implement language and literacy into your daily schedule in engaging, fun and developmentally appropriate ways.

- So, excuse me.

This graphic shows the relationships between the key components of early language and literacy development.

One of the guiding principles in North Carolina Foundations says that development occurs in predictable patterns, but an individual child's development is often uneven across different stages and across developmental domains.

This is true for early language and literacy development as well.

So these foundational areas, oral language, phonological processing, and print knowledge are strongly predictive of how well children will learn to read.

You can see that these areas develop in a predictable pattern, but children will continue to make progress across these areas in different ways throughout their early childhood years.

- The first aspect of language that we are going to look at is oral language.

We are excited to share with you the crosswalks that our team has created.

Each crosswalk highlights the connection between a language and literacy skill, the North Carolina Foundations for Early learning, the North Carolina Teaching Standards and Teaching Strategies Gold.

As you can see, oral language is made up of five stages.

I want you to take just a few minutes to read through the five stages.

- In the phonological awareness stage, children begin to develop an awareness of words and sentences or syllables and words.

When it comes to syntax, I want you to think about how this stage might be more difficult or challenging for your dual language learners or non-native English speakers.

When we look at semantics, we talk about expressive vocabulary and receptive vocabulary.

Expressive vocabulary represents the words a student actively uses when talking, writing, or otherwise communicating.

Receptive vocabulary represents the words that a student understands based on context and background experiences.

I want you to again think about your dual language learners and how vocabulary acquisition might look differently for them.

With morphology, we also have to consider our dual language learners and be sensitive to their home language and the structure of their language.

When thinking about pragmatics, we must be mindful of students' background and experiences.

They may not understand group dynamics based on cultural differences or lack of experiences.

Understanding a variety of situations prepares students for more successful comprehension at later stages, including both listening and reading.

As you can see, understanding a student's background plays an important role in oral language acquisition.

We are going to take a few minutes after each crosswalk slide to generate ideas of how we can support children's acquisition of the language and literacy concepts that we are discussing today.

What we would like for you to do is to generate one idea for home that parents and caregivers can do, and one idea for school that you could implement that would support children's acquisition of said skill.

Please use the QR code shared at the beginning to access the Jamboard.

After you have added your ideas, please turn and talk with a neighbor.

If you have ideas for modifications or adaptations that support dual language learners and or children with special needs, please add those to your notes as well.

We're going to give you about five to six minutes for the activity, and then you can go back and look at it on your own later.

We don't really have time to go through and explore it with you guys.

And then on this next slide, you're going to see just a few ideas of how we can promote oral language skills at home and at school.

Feel free to expand on these ideas posted or generate completely new ideas on the Jamboard or your sticky notes if you have them.

[no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] - I love all this deep reflection and thinking going on.

You can feel free to talk to the person next to you.

Just know we're gonna be contributing to the Jamboard throughout the presentation.

So if an idea comes to you later on while we're in a different section, that's totally fine.

And then that way you'll be able to take these ideas with you back to your settings.

So while you guys are thinking and starting to chat a little bit, we're gonna head on to the next section, which is phonological processing.

So we know that young children need to be able to mentally process the sounds of speech in order to read and write.

Strong phonological processing gives them the ability to understand and use the sound system of a language.

Children use these skills to remember words, recall known words, differentiate between words that sound similar, and identify the sound structures of words.

But what does all of that mean?

For our presentation today, we're gonna focus on a couple of basic phonological skills that children use to manipulate the syllables and individual sounds of words.

These are the skills that are the most strongly related to literacy development, because as we know, written words correspond to spoken words, and readers must have an awareness of the speech sounds that letters and letter combinations represent in order to read.

So we're first emphasizing interactions that support children to tune into the sounds that they hear in language instead of identifying letters, because children need to be able to distinguish the differences in sounds before they can connect sounds with specific letters and letter combinations.

But this is gonna require kind of a shift in thinking for some early childhood educators and families who for years have prioritized teaching the alphabet and letter recognition.

And of course, there is an important place for that in your classroom and home.

So make sure you hear me say that we're gonna talk about that later on.

But we just wanna encourage you to start with sounds in your instruction and your interactions before you move on to letters.

So we're gonna first start out by talking about segmenting and blending.

So simply put, segmenting is the ability to pull apart words and syllables into sounds.

And blending is the ability to combine syllables and sounds together into words.

Syllables are easier to identify in words.

So think about starting with building children's awareness of syllables first.

Fluent readers are able to do this subconsciously.

So take a look at the pictures on the left hand side of the slide and say the name of each one to yourself.

Cow, clock, bed, muffin.

Now segment out the syllables of the name of the first picture.

How many syllables in cow?

You can shout out or show me with your fingers.

Okay, thank you, one.

One syllable.

Now how many sounds?

K-ow.

Two, awesome.

All right, let's look in the clock.

Cause we actually had some discussion about this right before the session.

So let's do clock.

How many syllables and clock?

One.

How many sounds?

Oh, it's tricky, it's tricky.

K-l-ah-k. Four.

Okay, let's do muffin.

- We actually had that discussion before.

- We had a discussion about C L. - Because C L, it's a blend.

But in this particular case, we looked it up and it's not.

- It's different phoniums.

- Yep.

- Tricky, it's tricky one.

All right, let's move on to muffin.

How many syllables?

Yes, thank you.

Two.

How many sounds?

Mm, uh, ff, ih, nn, five.

So there's way more sounds than syllables to tune into with those examples.

In fact, the English language has 44 phoniums or individual sounds.

So if you can help your child begin to build their awareness of hearing syllables and later sounds, you're really laying a strong foundation for them to be able to recall those sounds when it's time for them to start matching them to letters and letter combinations.

So now let's think about how we can support building these skills into our regular routines and activities, 'cause we know that's really the most effective way to instruct with young children.

One thing you might consider doing is talking like a robot.

That's my best robot hands.

Your kids will think it's hilarious, like you guys thought it was for me.

And you're building their awareness of the syllables in your words.

So you can use this when you're excusing them from group time and have them talk back to you the same way as they tell you what center they're going to.

So you could say, "Where are you going to play?"

And they would say, "I'm going to dramatic play."

Thank you.

At home you could play I Spy while you're giving your kiddo a bath.

You could say, "I spy with my little eyes "something that starts with wa."

And they could reply water or washcloth or window.

So we're gonna take a few seconds to bring you back to the reflection activity.

These are some things that you can be thinking about as you're considering how you could build segmenting and blending into your own context.

Whether you work with children directly at home because they're your own kids or in your classroom.

If you want to, you can respond on the Jamboard.

If you want to, you can talk with the neighbor.

If you add 'em to the Jamboard, then other people who view this session later can learn from your good ideas.

So I'm just gonna put that little plug in.

And while you're doing that, we're gonna move forward to rhyming.

So the next skill we're gonna talk about is rhyming.

Rhyming is the ability to match and produce words with the same ending sounds.

It's actually one of the first phonological awareness skills that children display.

So typically children first develop the ability to detect rhyme.

They can recognize it when they're hearing somebody else use rhyming words.

Then they can produce a single rhyming word when they're given a prompt, and eventually they can generate a string of rhyming words on their own.

Rhyming is important because it helps children develop knowledge about word structure.

When you're working with a child on rhyming, it's best to start with words they know and have large word families.

This was a new term to me.

What is a word family?

You guys probably already know, but I had to learn it.

When I say go, I want you to think of and keep track of the number of words in your head that rhyme with bat.

Ready, go.

Okay, stop.

I didn't think of 10 words.

I was counting to 10 on my fingers, just so you guys know.

Okay, you have your number.

Let's do the same thing now with the word crown.

Go.

Okay, stop.

Which group had the most rhyming words for you?

Bat or crown?

Bat, yeah.

Bat is a common word and it's a part of a large word family.

There are many words that rhyme with bat.

Crown is a common word too, but the word family may not be quite as big.

So again, try to start with words that are meaningful to children and have large word families, but as they develop stronger rhyming skills, you can move toward words that may be less familiar or have smaller word families.

Singing songs is a great way to build children's awareness of rhyming words, because we know that music is a sticky strategy.

It helps information stick in their minds.

With familiar songs you can pause to let the children fill in the blank or even make up a new rhyming word.

My kids, they're four and six, they love to do this with "Down by the Bay".

You can even let them make up a silly or nonsensical word, because they'll get a huge kick out of it making up words.

Okay, so we have some thoughts to guide your reflection as you're thinking about what are some effective ways to integrate writing into my classroom or at home when I'm working with my own child.

And if you have some really awesome ideas, we'd love to hear them.

And the way we can hear them is either you come share at the microphone or you add to the Jamboard.

Totally up to you.

All right.

So now we are going to head into print knowledge.

- Print knowledge is a child's earliest introduction to literacy.

Children with print awareness understand that print has different functions depending on the context in which it appears.

For example, menus list food choices.

A book tells a story, a sign can announce a favorite restaurant or worn of danger.

Print knowledge is understanding that print is organized in a particular way.

For example, knowing that print is read from left to right and top to bottom, it is knowing that words consist of letters and that spaces appear between words.

On the padlet that we shared with you, you also have access to the North Carolina Foundation's digital copy.

You don't have to do it now, but when you have some time, I'd love for you to go and look at page 106 in the manual.

And it reminds us that print conventions may differ based on an individual's home language.

Dual language learners may learn how print look works in more than one language.

I know I've talked a lot about dual language learners today, but with all of the concepts that we're talking about, it's really important that you're honoring those students and their home life as well.

Children from the ages of three to five rapidly develop print awareness when adults engage in activities to build their early literacy skills.

Without print awareness, children will not develop letter sound correspondence, word reading skills, or the ability to read and understand text.

The term alphabet recognition seems self-explanatory, doesn't it?

You see a letter, you automatically know the name of that letter.

But there are some pre-req skills that children need before this happens.

We are going to touch on two of those skills right now.

The first skill needed is visual discrimination.

This is the ability to detect differences in and a ability to classify objects, symbols, or shapes.

And pre-K classroom teachers sometimes involve children in sorting letters based on straight lines and curves.

This helps them visually discriminate.

Working memory is the second skill needed.

It allows us to work with information without losing track of what we're doing.

Think of your working memory as a temporary sticky note in your brain.

On this slide, we're going to continue to use the crosswalks to better understand alphabet recognition, developmentally appropriate practice, the correlation between foundations, the North Carolina Teaching Standards and Teaching Strategies Gold, and how to make meaningful connections for children.

When we look at Foundations, it guides us to first teach children that letters are made up of different shapes.

As you can see on the visual, all letters have either lines, or curves or both that represent letters and different sounds.

We should first expose children to letters that have a meaningful connection to them.

This can include but is not limited to their names, the people that are close to them, special objects or special places and so on.

Teaching children letters in alphabetical order has been shown to promote rote memorization skills and does not actually indicate that children know and recognize letters, letter names and sounds out of order.

It is important to teach children their letters out of order, starting with letters that have meaning to each individual child.

It is important to teach children letter sounds, shapes, and names, because these are foundational skills that are needed for lifelong reading and writing skills.

On this slide, you're going to see a few ideas again of how we can promote alphabet recognition skills at home and at school.

Again, feel free to expand on these ideas or generate completely new ones on the Jamboard.

- Finally, they're going to let me talk.

[all laughing] Guess you were wondering why I was up here.

Being able to read is print awareness.

But before children learn to read, there are other indicators that they're gaining an understanding of print.

The definition of print awareness includes concepts of how print is organized and used to convey meaning.

In simple terms, being aware and beginning to understand print.

Let's look at some of the behaviors children display that show an awareness of print.

Print awareness can be a concept of print related to books.

If a child holds a book correctly and turns the pages, they have some understanding of print or book awareness.

The image on your screen shows the boy holding the picture, sorry, the boy holding the book.

He's pretty young, but he may be even saying some of the words from memory.

So let's assume that he is holding the book correctly and he's flipping the pages back and forth in random order.

What would likely be the next stage in development for him?

Anybody.

So most likely he would start to start at the front of the book and turn the pages from front to back in order.

He might even start pointing to some of the words.

He might even retell part of the story from memory.

Another form of print awareness is recognizing symbols to show that they have an understanding of their meaning.

For example, when children place toys in the correct container based on the picture and or the words in the container.

So cleaning up, that is print awareness.

Also understanding that print can tell people what to do.

So stop signs, directional signs in public places.

Have you ever noticed how very small children can read signs like Taco Bell, Walmart, or Food Line?

Exposing young children to environmental print is crucial to early literacy, because it allows them to understand that words and symbols convey messages.

Another huge element of print awareness is names.

Children's names are very important to them.

Recognizing their names and the names of siblings or classmates is often one of the first signs of an interest in print awareness in four and five year olds.

Has anyone out there ever read the same book over, and over and over at the request of a child?

Yes, so many times that you have every word memorized?

Well, you are helping that child develop print awareness.

Children gain confidence when they know what's next and they may see something in the pictures that they didn't notice before.

If you're like me, you can watch a movie over and over for the third, fourth, fifth time and notice things you didn't notice before.

For English language learners, it is important to allow them to actively participate in stories.

Even if they're not proficient in English.

You can ask them to repeat words, to point to pictures or join in a repeating line.

And for all children, talking about the authors and illustrators helps them gain an understanding of how books are created.

So now it's your turn again.

The ideas on the screen will help you get started, and as we've said earlier, you can add those to the Jamboard for others to learn from.

Next we're going to look at print development.

Print development involves writing, but before children learn to write, there are other indicators that they are gaining an understanding and gaining the skills that they need to learn to write.

The definition of print development is the awareness of how print works and includes emerging knowledge about books, print, written language, and how those are used.

Let's look at some signs that children are developing print skills.

Learning to write their names.

When I was in the classroom, I heard children call the first letter of their name, my name, all the time.

My name starts with A.

So A is my letter.

They may even see an A somewhere and say that says Amy.

Another way children develop print skills is when they communicate their thoughts for adults to write.

Sometimes we call that dictations.

A great example of this would be if a child hands an adult a picture and says, this is the trash truck that came today.

An adult could take that opportunity, ask the child if they wanted them to write their words for them and write it right on their drawing or even on a post-it note and stick it on their drawing.

After exposure to letters and sounds, children will begin to make connections between them.

Children might write a letter M and when you ask them what it says, they may say, this is my mommy.

There are lots of different examples of emergent stages of writing, and people give them different names.

The one on the screen gives examples of four stages.

The first one on the top left is scribbling.

Wonder where they got that term?

So this is often where children start when they're first given crayons or any other kind of drawing material.

Across from that is drawings that somewhat represent what the child is trying to draw.

So you have to love those people figures where the arms and legs are coming out of the head.

That just warms my heart.

Then the lower left, another people figure, but Cameron wrote his name, so he spelled his name correctly.

It looks like he was trying to write someone else's name.

He probably got the first letter right, and then somebody made a dictation.

These stages show that children are beginning to understand that spoken words can be written.

The last stage on the image, D in the lower right, more people figures.

But look, there are words there.

This is often what comes next.

The four words that are on there are usually words that children learn to memorize and write first.

Cat, mom, dad, love.

They may or may not go along with the picture they've drawn.

Another common next stage would be children writing the letters that are easy, easiest to hear.

For example, they may draw a picture and when you ask what it is, they may say, baby, and then they write BB under that picture or HS for house.

It's your turn again.

Add some ideas to the Jamboard of ways that you can in enhance or promote print awareness in young children.

- Okay, who remembers their initial memory?

It's been a few minutes.

You got it?

Okay.

So just take a second, look through these questions and think back to your own memory.

If you wanna talk to the person next to you, of course, you're welcome to do that, or you can just reflect on your own, that's fine too.

So as you're thinking about your memory, think about based on these components that we've shared with you, oral language, segmenting, blending, rhyming, print development, print awareness, alphabet, knowledge, recognition, sorry.

Think about what component most closely aligns with your own memory and how you might be able to recreate a similar interaction in your own setting.

Because it's human nature to wanna recreate our special memories with the children in our lives.

So if by the end of this session you're still feeling kind of stuck about how to support early language and literacy development, just start with you.

Whether it was storytelling or maybe listening to the oral history of your family, reading each night with a family member.

Maybe it was reading with confidence in front of your class in school, or visiting the library, or maybe singing a really special song.

Your pleasant positive feelings will be transferred to the child and spark their own excitement and engagement.

So if you're open to it, we'd love to hear about your reflection on the last page of the Jamboard.

So we really appreciate you guys being with us this afternoon.

We hope this information was helpful, that we left you with some resources that you can take back into your own setting with some fresh ideas for supporting the early language and literacy development in your own setting.

So thank you so much for being here.

[audience applauding]