Metodología planificada para el lenguaje: la serie de los cinco factores importantes

(En inglés)

Focus on Background Knowledge: Planned Language Approach Big 5

Deborah Mazzeo: Hello, and welcome. Thank you for joining us today for the second Planned Language Approach Big 5 webinar with a focus on background knowledge. Last month, we talked about alphabet knowledge in early writing, and this month we're focusing on the next Big 5 skill, which is background knowledge.

As a reminder for those who may not have been on the first webinar, the Big 5 is one of the five components of the Planned Language Approach. They are the key skills that are critical for later school success, including grade-level reading. I want to be sure that you join us again in March on the 21, at the same time for a webinar on the third Big 5 skill, which is book knowledge and print concepts.

My name is Deborah Mazzeo, and I am the Cultural and Linguistic Practices coordinator at the National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching, and Learning, and you can see on the screen my two very dear colleagues, Jan Greenberg, who's the senior subject matter expert on child development, and Karen Nemeth. She's the senior training and Technical Assistance specialist for dual language learners, and I'm happy to be able to co-present with them today, and you'll be hearing their voices shortly as we proceed through the slides here. Before we begin, I'll just take a moment to go over some information regarding the webinar in case there are any new folks that are on. We'll be using some of the features of this webinar platform to help us interact. At the bottom of your screen, you'll notice some widgets.

If you have any questions during the webcast, you can submit them through the purple Q&A widget. We'll try to answer these during the webcast, and please know that we do capture all the questions. If you have any tech questions, please answer or enter them there as well. A copy of today's slide deck and additional resources are available in the resource list, which is the green widget. We encourage you to download any resources or links that you may find useful. Throughout the session, we'll be using the blue group-chat widget to engage with each other, and I appreciate those of you who have already contributed to the chat. You will find additional answers to some common technical issues located in the yellow help widget at the bottom of your screen if you run into any problems. Each of the widgets are resizable and movable for a customized experience. You just click on the widget, and you move it by dragging and dropping and resizing with the arrows at the top corners.

And finally, if you have any trouble, just try refreshing your browser by pressing F5. Be sure to log off of your VPN and exit out of any other browsers. So, I also want to mention that this is DLL Celebration Week. During this weeklong event, we are highlighting resources. We're hosting live chats. Hopefully, you're seeing the social media announcements on Twitter or Facebook, and we've been delivering webinars of which this is one. Hopefully you or someone you know has received a DLL Week Celebration box that you can see there on the slide, and hopefully they've shared the contents with you, but if not, you can download the resources from the website that is in the resource list, and I believe Jan just posted it in the chat for you, so if you scroll down to the bottom, it'll say, "Download the zip file," and that's where you can
find all of the resources that were on a flash drive in the boxes.

We just want you to know to participate in tomorrow's live chat that's happening in the Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Practices community. That's the CLRP, MyPeers Community, at 1 o'clock p.m. Eastern Time, or if your preferred language is Spanish, join the live chat in [speaks Spanish] community on MyPeers, and we'll have them simultaneously in English, and in Spanish, and you'll see that tomorrow's focus is on the research that powers our work with DLL, so that's what we'll be chatting about in the live chat. I also want to mention for those of you who are working in tribal programs I encourage you to join our partners on the AI/AN Language and Cultural Community on MyPeers. We're doing a lot of cross-posting this week because today is International Mother Language Day, and the focus of UNESCO is on tribal language this year. 2019 is the Year of Indigenous Languages.

And then finally we also invite you to create and post on social media using the hashtag #BrilliantDualLanguage Learners. And we're interested in knowing, have any of you participated in any of the DLL Celebration Week activities yet this week? So, if you'll take a moment to respond just with a quick yes or no and be sure to hit submit, and I'll be interested in seeing the responses to that. If you haven't yet participated, you know, tomorrow, again, I encourage you to enjoy MyPeers and participate in our live chat. Share the pictures or different ideas with the community on MyPeers on what you're doing to support children who are DLLs and their families in your programs. I'm going to give it another second to see. So, far, it looks like there's about 68 persons who have not yet participated, so we hope that that changes for tomorrow. All right. I'm going to go ahead and push this result out to the audience here.

All right. So, it says, "Seventy percent have not yet participated, and 30 percent have," so I hope those of you who have, have really found the information and resources that have been shared valuable and thanks for your contributions, and we hope the rest of you will start to chime in so thanks for that. All right. So, here is what we're covering today. The topics are all interwoven and connected throughout the presentation. I also want to bring your attention that you may have noticed in the resource list that there is a multi-paged PDF titled "Background Knowledge." You all are the first to receive this newly updated document, which is the basis for today's webinar. There is also a link to the new background-knowledge web page on the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center, or we call it the ECLKC or "E-Click" for short. 

As many may have heard me say before, there is now a page for each of the Big 5 skills, so if you're used to how the PLA used to look, there's been a little bit of a different formatting now on the webpage. So, at the end of this presentation, we're hoping that you'll be able to understand the connections to a Planned Language Approach, the connections to coordinated approaches and then also the connection for background knowledge to the Early Learning Outcomes Framework. We're also hoping that you'll be able to explain what the research says about background knowledge. We'll cover the development trajectory from birth to age 5 and identify strategies to support children who are dual language learners, so, hopefully you'll be able to describe and identify those and then finally identify effective practices for supporting each skill in different early-learning settings. So, when we talk about background knowledge, we include the points you see on the sky. First is information that children learn and store in their memory: information about themselves, other people, objects and the world around them. So, we know children learn from their experiences, and often those begin with the experiences within their families, right? So, for example, they learn about animals from having pets, or maybe they live on a farm with livestock. They learn about transportation by riding in cars or buses or trains. They learn their family's way of doing things, their languages, their routines, their cultural beliefs, in different settings such as at home or in stores or restaurants and places of worship, and children begin to make connections between what they see and hear in these places, and so that fills their background knowledge. 

Background knowledge also includes beliefs, values, rules and expectations in children's cultures, environments and languages, so even very young children begin to understand the routines of their lives and the words people say to them. They learn when and how to eat, play, walk, run. They also learn how people interact with one another, what people wear, what different objects are called and how we use them in our languages. Children use this background knowledge as they begin to talk and write and use books and other print materials, so that's why it's one of the key language and literacy skills. Children may develop this knowledge in one or more languages, and then it transfers to the other language. As children grow and they have meaningful interactions with new people and new environments and their new languages, they continue to build on this prior knowledge. So, I won't spend too much time on this because many may know from last month's webinar that the implementation of the Big 5 involves a coordinated approach. All of these activities listed on the slide involved implementing a coordinated approach: supporting background knowledge as part of the
curriculum, assessing children's learning of background knowledge and supporting families to develop background knowledge.

So, our conversation on background knowledge today is only one slice of that pie, the PLA pie. It's part of that Big 5 for all, but all of the other pieces are important, too. You can see that little image, that pie image, on the screen. The five pieces of the PLA are aligned to sections of the DLLPA, the Dual Language Learner Program Assessment, which is a wonderful resource for assessing your own systems and services for supporting children who are DLLs and their families. If you're implementing a Planned Language Approach, you're implementing a coordinated approach to serving DLLs, and just know that a coordinated approach is required by the Head Start Program Performance Standards for serving children who are DLLs and their families.

All of the Big 5 skills and our conversation today on background knowledge are supported by research and connected to the Language and Literacy domain of the ELOF, the Early Learning Outcomes Framework, and while we're here showing the ELOF goals, child care programs will see that background knowledge will also align with state early-learning-and-development standards. This slide focuses on the infant-and-toddler goals associated with background knowledge, and those appear under the Language and Communication domain, and three subdomains, which you can see on the slide here, are attending and understanding, communicating, and speaking, and the third one is vocabulary.

For preschoolers, the goals associated with background knowledge also appear under Language and Communication and those same three subdomains: attending and understanding, communicating and speaking and vocabulary. Now, these goals are relevant for children in classrooms, family child care, and home-visiting settings. I'll note here too that it's important to know what's happening throughout the birth-to-5 spectrum. Children grow and develop so quickly, so it's important to not just focus on the age group that you teach but also to know the entire spectrum to be able to meet children where they are and be able to scaffold from there. So, with that, I am going to turn it over to my colleague, Karen, and, Karen, I will let you take it away.

Karen Nemeth: Well, thank you, Deb. My favorite part, talking about the research that is behind all of the sophisticated guidance that we get from Head Start. We have the Program Performance Standards. We have the Planned Language Approach document. We have the Early Learning Outcomes Framework, and Head Start communicates all these expectations for what should be happening in our programs, but it's really kind of amazing how clearly all of that guidance connects to current and compelling research, and that's what I'm going to be talking about, so, you know, we are saying some of the same things here that you hear a few minutes ago, but now we're going to talk about how the research supports these things like the idea that children connect information they're learning to the familiar concepts or schema that they
have in their brains that they start building from birth, and that means that that information comes from their experiences, particularly the experiences that are related to  their life at home and in the context of the culture.

We know that gaps in children's background knowledge may make it harder for them to understand what they read and hear. The more they know, the more foundation they have that they can connect new knowledge to. If they have less knowledge, there's less for the new words to connect to, so I like to explain it like background knowledge is kind of like fuel, right? Like, you need to fill the car up with fuel if you want it to go, but you can't just fill the car up with fuel and then sit there and wait for something to happen, right? You have to turn on the engine, and the engine has to use the fuel. Well, it's kind of the same thing, what the research says about children. You have to fill them up with as much knowledge as possible, but it doesn't really do much for them until they act on that knowledge, until they use that knowledge, so they make those connections. They do hands-on activities. They talk about it, and that's where all this guidance that you see on the ECLKC and in the standards and the ELOF comes from that research about building and construction those connections.

So, we know that children have similarities and differences in their background knowledge, things that they all share in common and things that are unique to each child, because each child has their own fund of knowledge, their own collection of knowledge that they've gained for everything that happens in their life, at home, in the community and wherever they go and also at school, so we want to really focus not on just what we tell children but what we give them as fuel that they can use, right? So, we want to know, for example, that language is something that's constructed. It's not just received and soaked in. It's constructed by the child's brain. They have to make sense out of it and figure out how to use it. Each new word is attached to prior knowledge, and language is built on those connections, so we need strong platform of prior knowledge. A lot of that fuel has to be in there.

Home-language learning builds stronger content knowledge. When you support children's home language, we actually give them more that they can understand. The more they understand, the more knowledge they get, so when they learn new words in a new language, they got all of this knowledge to connect to because we've helped them understand things by supporting their home language. And also when you observe a child at play, you can see how they reveal their interests, and when a child shows you their interests, they reveal things they have background knowledge about. You know, a child that is always interested in digging up bugs out in the yard of the school is a child who shows you he probably has some thoughts and some knowledge and knows some things about those bugs, and whether it's in a home language or in English, you can build on that because you see what connections are going to work for that child, right? So, we want to make sure that we keep capturing this idea. 

You know, for children who are dual language learners, this can be especially important because they're not only learning new information but whole new language as well, so we want to support their home language as a way of supporting how much they understand, right? It's not just a nice thing to do for children. It actually is critical to their comprehension, and that helps them build that background knowledge, and that is what helps them then to better as they learn English. We can learn about a child's background knowledge even if they speak a language you don't know if you take the time to just be with the child and observe their play, observe their activities. You'll start to see, what are the things that they gravitate to? What are the things that are familiar to them? And when you observe those things, you'll see how you can make connections that build both their home language and their new language in English. So, following a child's interest is an important component of the research, and you have a video clip now that's going to show you about how this can happen at home, and I think you might be watching.

[Video begins]

Boy No. 1: I love that one chocolate.

Man No. 1: [Indistinct]

Woman No. 1: There's the chocolate. I didn't see that. It's inside the cake.

Man No. 1: [Indistinct].

Woman No. 1: Yeah, that's our favorite part.

Boy No. 1: I love my [Indistinct] cake. I love my food.

Woman No. 1: I love food too, especially...

Boy No. 1: I love [Indistinct] food.

Woman No. 1: Like that big food? Do you like the...

Boy No. 1: I love my snacks here.

Woman No. 2: Hey.

Boy No. 1: And I'm 4?

Woman No. 2: Yeah.

Boy No. 1: I'm 4?

Woman No. 2: 4.

Boy No. 1: Me — me M?

Woman No. 2: Yeah, no, you are 4.

Boy No. 1: Me 4 like [Indistinct]

Woman No. 2: [Speaks native language]

Boy No. 1: I love my N. I love my four.

Man No. 1: Oh, you love—you love your M and your four.

Boy No. 1: I love my four.

Man No. 1: Okay. We look for three with you.

Boy No. 1: I love three. Amila is 3.

Woman No. 2: Yeah, Amila is 3.

Man No. 1: Ah, Amila is 3. Yes.

Woman No. 2: Yeah.

Amila: [Indistinct]

Woman No. 2: Look.

Boy No. 1: I love my [speaks native language].

Boy No. 1: I want to go eat.

Man No. 1: In Arabic [speaks native language]

Woman No. 2: [Speaks native language] Yeah.

Man No. 1: [Speaks native language]

Woman No. 2: In English, magnet.

Man No. 1: [Speaks native language] [Speaks native language] magnet.

Boy No. 1: Magnet.

Man No. 1: Magnet [speaks native language]. In Arabic, what is that?

Boy No. 1: [Speaks native language]

Man No. 1: [Speaks native language]

Boy No. 1: [Speaks native language]

Woman No. 2: Very difficult, huh?

Amila: Mama [Indistinct]

Man No. 1: [Speaks native language] like Moroccan [Speaks native language]. [Speaks native language]

Boy No. 1: [Speaks native language]

Man No. 1: [Speaks native language]

Woman No. 2: Yeah.

Man No. 1: Okay, [speaks native language]? Okay, [speaks native language]?

[Video ends]

Karen: Okay. Now you could see that that family was speaking several languages. They typically speak Moroccan, French, and Arabic at home, and they're all also learning English, so they use English in this video, but could you notice a strategy that they use to help the child make connections? They didn't just wait for connections to happen. They did something to help that child make connections, so if you noticed that, type it in the chat box. What do you think those parents actually did, and isn't it interesting that building those connections between prior knowledge and new knowledge can happen at home and at school? And we can really benefit from partnerships with families that... to support what they do at home as much as we support how... what we learn from them can help us in school. So, see if you notice any of the strategies that the parents used and type them into the chat box to share with each other. 

And while you're thinking about that, I'm also going to ask you, what do you think the child showed us about what he already knows? How did the child show what he already understands? And by giving the child plenty of chance to do the talking, the parents were able to see what he understood and where he might have had something wrong, and then they could discuss it, but they didn't just talk at him. They talked with him, and they listened when he talked too, so it really is fun to see, and so one of the things that really is noticeable, I see Sylvia says, "They got down on his level." Yes, they're really having a conversation with him and engaging him so that his brain can process that information, and they had actual items, and then I see Yvonne is saying that the dad also encourages the child to repeat the words in English, and then the dad said, "And here is how we say it in Arabic, and here is how we say it in Moroccan," and so he didn't just hope the child noticed, but he specifically explained, what did the words mean, and how were the words connected? So, powerful, and we can all do that, can't we? All right.

So, we also want to share a couple of other resources here that are available for you today and on the ECLKC. This is a resource called Gathering and Using the  Language Information Families Share, lots of great questions that you can engage with families to help you understand a child's background knowledge and experiences, and we offer these resources that are for teachers and for families, and this is called, The Importance of Home Language Series, and it has... And it's available in multiple languages. Okay, and now we're going to hear a little bit about how the developmental progression of these skills and background-knowledge learning comes from infants on up, and we're handing it over to Jan, so, Jan, are you ready?

Jan Greenberg: I am ready, so thanks, Deb and Karen, for the great background information about background knowledge, and so, yes, now we're going to go from that big picture to starting our conversation about background knowledge and development progressions, and we're going to start that with babies, and so thinking about what Deb and Karen have already shared about what background knowledge is and how children get it and having that connection to language, we know that babies begin to learn about the world around them even before they're born. We know that with every interaction that babies and young children have with their environment and people in them they begin to learn about how things work, how people respond, what it feels like to be hungry or full or wet or dry or sleepy or alert, and we know that babies develop background knowledge primarily from all of their various experiences in their world and by interacting with adults who will help them make sense of all those experiences, so here is one short example to reflect what's in the developmental progression for the goal that you're looking at. Child learns from communication and language experiences with others.

So, 8-month-old Juanita touches a soft stuffed animal that her mother has given her, and then she touches the hard floor, so her mom describes what she's touching and how what she's touching feels in Spanish, and so her mom is helping Juanita develop knowledge of textures, new vocabulary words and also how to make sense of what she's feeling, so now when Juanita comes to the infant classroom, she now notices that there are hard and soft surfaces, and her teachers do the same thing that her mom was doing. They describe the surfaces and how the different surfaces feel in Spanish, and so Juanita's teachers are helping her build on knowledge and language that she's developing at home, so there's one quick example about a progression in action.

Okay, so how do we support babies to develop and build on the background knowledge that they come with? And actually before I go into these strategies and practices that you're looking at on the slide, I want to note a difference between strategies and practices and specific learning experiences for activities. We sometimes get questions from people about wanting more information about specific learning experiences or specific activities, and one answer that will give you is that your curriculum has lots of those, lots of specific learning experiences and activities, so you can think about those experiences and activities as the vehicles for using different strategies and practices, and the wonderful, lovely thing about strategies and practices is that they can be used across different experiences, different activities, routine, transitions and everything else that happens during a baby's day, and so with that, here are some strategies that support babies, and I'm guessing if you're looking at them you're thinking, "Wow, these possibly look kind of familiar to me and think that maybe I'm even using some of these strategies and practices already when I'm interacting with infants and toddlers, when I'm supporting adults to interact with infants."

I do want to point out that first one: Notice when babies are alert and interested. You might think that's an interesting strategy for building background knowledge, but when babies are alert, it means they're available to what you have to offer, so when you notice they are alert and interested, take advantage of those moments to interact, so talk to them about their daily routines like feeding and stifling and swaddling and tummy time. 

Use their home language if you know it. When they are alert, offer them safe toys and objects with a variety of textures. Why a variety of textures? Because that gives you something to talk with them about. You can tell them about smooth, bumpy, soft. Intentionally use words in children's home language or use sign language as you are talking with them and describing what they are experiencing with all of the sensors that they're using to experience them, and engage babies in conversations, and I love this one. You can watch them for their responses, and you can respond in kind with different facial expressions, gestures, words, signs. Each time a baby babbles and coos or gives you an expression or a gesture, make sure that when you are having that back-and-forth conversation with a baby you give that baby time to respond. 

Sometimes, they just need time to process what you've said or what you've asked, so give them time. Model the give and take of a conversation. Providing and reading a variety of culturally and linguistically appropriate books, hopefully you've got books with interesting photos and illustrations of objects, animals and people to point to and talk about. These are things that — that may be familiar to children or may be new to children, so, it's a great way for building background knowledge and building on background knowledge, and finally take babies out into the community, and maybe you're doing that in a variety of ways, whether you're in a center-based program, a family child care or you're a home visitor working with families at home and during socialization, but when you're getting babies out in the community, talk to them about what they're seeing and hearing and smelling and touching and pacing. Again, these are all ways to build background knowledge.

So, okay, so the next thing that we're going to see is a video, and I want to give you just a little setup for this. So, the video you're about to see takes place during indoor play, and you'll see two female teachers and two infants. One is a non-mobile infant, and the other one is a mobile infant, and I'll ask you to pay attention to the teacher who's wearing the red sweater, and as you are watching this video, look for strategies that you see the teacher using. What is she doing to support children's development for background knowledge, and then maybe what do you see the child or children doing as she's interacting with them? And as you're watching, go ahead and post responses in the chat box.

[Video begins]

Woman No. 3: Oh, you're choosing the shaker with the bells. Come on, Mia. You want to come? You want to come see our toys? You're still waking up, huh? Okay. Let me help your friend, Mia. I think she's feeling a little shy. Ms. [Indistinct], can I trade you? [Chatter] Mia, come here. How are you? Huh? Have you seen the friends in our classroom, hmm? Yeah? We have some friends in here, huh? Do you want to play? What do you want to play with? Look who we have here. Let's see.

Woman No. 4: Is it good? [Indistinct]

Woman No. 3: What do you choose, huh?

Woman No. 4: [Indistinct].

Woman No. 3: Have the purple ring.

Woman No. 4: Yeah?

Woman No. 3: Oh, you're going to use the ladybug? Huh? [Lyrics] ♪ Ladybug, ladybug Shake, shake, shake ♪ ♪ Ladybug, ladybug Shake, shake, shake ♪ I see you. I'm still here. Yes. I had to go and get your friend, Mia. She was feeling a little shy. Yes. What's this one? [Speaks Spanish] Shake, shake, shake. Shaky, shake, shake. Shake, shake, shake. You're making sounds, Mia. When you shake it, it makes a sound, huh?

Woman No. 4: [Indistinct]

Woman No. 3: Uh-oh. Oh. Shaky, shake, shake, shake.

[Video ends]

Jan: Okay. I'm going to stop this video now. And so what strategies did you see the teaching using? How is she building children's background knowledge? Okay. "Describing everything to the child, encouraging play with options." Okay. "The teacher never quits talking." Well, she was talking to them about what they were seeing and doing, and, yes, she was possibly using the children's home language although I did love that she used the word [speaks Spanish], which might have been a familiar word to Mia. "She was comforting. She was narrating." Yep, she was narrating what children were doing. "Assisting the child in feeling more secure before working on the language, source of information, labeling words to describe items, parallel talk with children."

These are great. These are great responses. When she was interacting with the infant, she was noticing when the infant was ready for an interaction, and so she knew that that child was alert and ready. Yeah, she used descriptive words, mapping action, using neutral sounds, child's language. She offered interesting toys for the child to play with, and then she could describe what those toys were like, what the characteristics of the toys were like, and she was engaging with some back-and-forth exchanges with the two children so, you know, kind of having little mini conversations with them, and all of those strategies and all of the ones that you're posting help babies learn about how things work, how people respond, how they're—you know, what kind of space they're in, including feeling shy when there are strangers in the room who are videotaping them, so all of those things sound like simple strategies, but they're incredibly powerful for building babies' background knowledge.

Okay, so that is about babies, so now we've got another goal: Child initiates nonverbal communication and language to learn and gain information. And we're going to use this now to talk about toddlers, and, you know, I would say that we're continuing using similar kinds of practices to build toddlers' background knowledge because we know they build it through interactions with others and with guided opportunities to safely explore their world. Adults provide toddlers with lots of meaningful hands-on experiences. They describe what toddlers see, hear, smell and touch and why they do or not do certain things, and we know that toddlers learn words in the languages they hear, so it's so important that they hear lots of languages during this incredibly exciting time of development, and so, wow, lots of strategies for supporting toddlers, and if you take a moment to look at them, you'll notice some similar strategies to ones that I just shared about supporting babies, so I'm just going to touch on a couple of them here. So, we want to help children safely explore their world. 

They're much more mobile now. They are into and want to be into everything. They're incredibly curious about the world around them, so do things like turning over rocks to look to see whether there are insects there or feed birds or draw pictures in the dirt with sticks or collect interesting objects when you're out on walks with children and describe all of those things that they are doing and seeing. Teach them new and interesting words and concepts, and again, you know their home language. Use it. You can talk to them about things like how seasons change or what kind of weather is happening during the day or how things grow, and you can use really interesting words because they will learn them, and they will build them up. As you're providing and reading books to them, toddlers can now listen to books with simple story lines, and that gives you something more to talk with them about, and build on what they know by stretching and expanding that knowledge, so say you're looking at a book, or maybe you actually have some frogs, some pictures of frogs, or you're actually looking at frogs, and you could say something like, "Remember when we saw the ducks swimming with their webbed feet? Well, frogs have webbed feet too, and those spots of skin between their toes help them to swim fast," so connecting what children already know to something new that you are introducing them to.

So, more strategies here, so, you know, respond to the questions that they have. Provide more information. Sometimes, depending on the question, you could say something like, "That's a good question. Let's think about how we could find out the answer," and that gives you a little bit more opportunity to engage in a language interaction about their question. Give them feedback that helps them learn more about the world so going back to the example of the duck, so maybe you're looking at a book, and there's a picture of a swan, and the child says, "Duck," and you could say, "Well, yes, it's a type of duck, but it's a swan. See how it has a long neck," so you're adding more information. You can talk about objects and animals and their categories, so you can say things like, "Cows, chickens and sheep live on farms. They are all farm animals," or you could say, "Here is a knife, a fork and a spoon. They are all silverware," or you could really blow their minds with an interesting word by saying, "Here is a knife, a fork and spoon. They are called eating utensils." You can share interesting words like that with children.

Make sure you're encouraging and supporting imaginary play in all kinds of ways and with all kinds of materials, including things like empty cardboard boxes, and you can say, "Look at this box. We can pretend it is a car, a boat or a fire truck." Encourage them to show what they know in a variety of ways. They can paint. They can draw. Children who are beginning to scribble and write, that's another way of showing what they know, and talk to them about what they are creating. And then finally if you have children who are using assistive technology as identified on their ISFP, encourage them. Support them in using that to communicate what they know about people and objects and what's going on in their environment and to ask and to respond to questions so, again, lots and lots of strategies for building toddlers' background knowledge.

Okay, so another video, again, I want to set it up first, so this one takes place during a group socialization, and you'll see two female home visitors, a mom and two toddlers, and again watch for what the adults are doing to support children's background knowledge and then how the child responds.

[Video begins]

Woman No. 5: ...water on there. Can you water the flowers?

Woman No. 6: That a boy.

Woman No. 5: Can you do it?

Woman No. 7: Are you tangled together?

Woman No. 8: I know it. Yeah, he's getting ready to take a drink. Hey, look! Look! Watch! He's like, "Let me have a drink first, and then maybe we'll talk."

Woman No. 7: Did you say anything or...

Woman No. 8: Good job, bubba. I like that you drink water so good.

Woman No. 7: Stack it on up!

Woman No. 5: Can you put some on the flowers? They're thirsty, too. Yeah. There you go. Oh, good job, bubba. Ooh, look.

Woman No. 5: Yeah.

Woman No. 7: Come here so they can water the flowers.

Woman No. 5: That might have been a little much.

Woman No. 7: Dump them in there.

Woman No. 5: There you go. You going to have some more?

Woman No. 7: This is my water bottle.

Woman No. 5: Well, it's the kind of water I drink. So, he sees Smartwater, and he's —

Woman No. 7: Well, we'll just give that to you, okay?

Woman No. 5: It's a good job. Can I get a high five? No?

Woman No. 8: Yeah, let him water his flower.

Woman No. 5: Oh, yeah, there you go. Water them more.

Woman No. 8: You're sharing?

[Video ends]

Jan: So, what did you notice? Oh, what? Let me stop. So, what did you notice about what the adults were doing to support that child's background knowledge? You can type that in the chat box. As we're waiting, I — Yes. Oh, there we go. "Follows..." Okay. "Followed the lead of the child. She labeled relatable experiences from the home. He knows that this is the type of water that I drink. She used familiar language. Relating his thirst to the flowers being thirsty." Yep, yep. "Engaging in the activities with the child. He was familiar with the brand because his mother drinks it." Yep, yep. "Again, mapping out the child's actions and adding to what he knows about drinking water and being thirsty, yeah, so spoke about how the mom drank the water, so he's mimicking." Okay. These are all really great. Yes. "Expanded vocabulary."

All right. So, yeah, you definitely get the idea about using various strategies for supporting toddlers' background knowledge, and I just want to draw your attention to the questions that are now on the slide. We're not going to answer these here, but these are some questions for you to consider and answer as you're in your programs, implementing strategies that support and build children's background knowledge. We know that parents and families are key here because what children know and learn about the world around them starts at home, so after this webinar, take some time to answer the questions either on your own or with others in your program, and I am now going to turn this over to Karen to talk to us about supporting preschoolers' background knowledge. Karen?

Karen: Well, my goodness, Jan, you said so many times, "Let the child show you what they know," ways for the child to show you what they know, and I want to know why. Why, Jan? Why were you so focused on asking the child to show you what they know? Because when they express what they know, that's how we see the sign of where we can build that connection and grow their background knowledge, right? So, that starts with babies and in toddlers who are getting more active and learning more, but the big change that comes between toddlers and preschoolers is, by the time we get to the preschool child, they've got a lot of knowledge, and some of it's right, and some of it might not be right, but they have a lot more knowledge, so we need to give them even more time to express, and we shift away from that focus of babies and toddlers where we're doing so much of the talking, and as they get older, we do less of the talking, and we encourage the child to do more of the talking, and then we have got... 

Talking is an action they perform to process the knowledge that they're learning and make those connections, and that's how we know how they're doing with those connections, right? When children talk to you, they show you what they're getting and what they're not getting, and, like, I had a preschool child once who heard about blackouts, and she explained to me that the black comes out and comes up to your door and turns off your light. Well, that's very sophisticated, but it's not correct, but if she didn't tell me, I would have no way of helping her fine-tune her background knowledge. I had to let her talk. I can't just tell her what a blackout is and walk away, right? That's what these components of the developmental progression really help us understand.

We want children to develop that knowledge in their English and their home language. We can acknowledge what's culturally meaningful to them as well as new things they learn in school to build those funds of knowledge, so we have an example of a 4-year-old named... a group of 4-year-olds who are tending to their little plants that they're growing in the community garden near their family child care home, and they make sure that the sprouts get Sun and water, and as two of the children are learning about the plants and the water cycle and where food comes, they all get something different out of that experience.

One of the children eats an apple for a snack, and he tells the family child care provider that his dad said apples were also plants, and they need Sun and water, so he's making new connections to the existing knowledge he already has, and he's making his own connections between what he learned at home and what he learned in the program.

So, the family child care provider responded that he is continuing to develop his background knowledge of plants, so that helped her make a plan. She chooses a story that has to do with plants, and then she collects some nonfiction books to put out on display about plants because she's seeing that these children have this interest. She's going to use it to grow their knowledge, and that means if I'm going to choose a counting activity, I could choose anything to count. Why not choose something to count that has to do with plants? So, I'm connecting and helping those children grow their background knowledge.

So, these are the strategies that we talked about or the practices that we talked about for supporting preschoolers. We want to show our own curiosity and interests, but we also want... We don't want to plant our interests on children. We don't come in every morning and say, "Here is what I think children will be interested in." We come in saying, "I want to learn what each child is interested in," and share age-appropriate nonfiction and fiction texts and give them more information and something to talk about. Use rich, conceptual talk with real information. Like, we don't say, "Pick that up." We say, "Would you please pick up that purple ball?" Right? And give them lots of information to add to their fuel. We like to pursue projects or scenes or explorations that give children extended opportunities to build their background knowledge and experience what's in their environment and engage children in concrete meaning-making activities, things that are meaningful to each child, so, you know, you might read the story of Goldilocks and the three bears, and couple of the kids are just really worried that the Goldilocks broke the baby's chair, but a couple of others will be asking you, "Well, what is porridge?" And somebody else might want to practice growling like a bear. 

One story connects with different kinds of background knowledge, different interests for each child, and we can use our plans and activities to make those connections in ways that are responsive and that encourage children to do that talking and express their knowledge. And so now here is a slide with a lot more on practices, and some of them we've already talked about, but we want to make sure that you ask questions that encourage thinking and reasoning about everyday experiences, so, you know, one example might be if you might... A teacher might ask, "Why do you think the police siren makes such a loud noise?" That's a very practical question that would get a child thinking, but if you have children in your classroom that speak a variety of languages, you might also learn questions that are general questions in the children's home languages. Like, you might ask, "Why did that happen?" and learn to say that in the home languages of the children. If you say, "Why did that happen?" you could use that question in a lot of different areas and get children talking and processing. And you know what? It's okay if they tell you things in their home language that you don't understand. We're not trying really to build your background knowledge, right? We're trying to let the child process and think critically and express themself, and if you take notes or record what they're saying, you can translate it and grow from there, okay?

We also want to provide gentle but accurate feedback when a child is confused or they misunderstand, right? I had to tell that child, "No, no, the blackout is not a black thing that comes to your house and turns your light off," right? We want to have daily conversations about topics of interest. Do you? Do you have conversations with each child on a regular basis? And then talk about items and categories, how things go together, how they compare, and then support children's use of assistive technology just as Jan said, which will now be more clearly articulated as they have a detailed IEP plan in preschool, and that's something that you could follow using technology to help.

So, we're going — before — Oh, this video clip is showing, so I will explain it to you after it's over. It's real quick.

[Video clip begins]

[Speaking Spanish]

[Video ends]

Karen: Okay. Because we're getting close to the end, I cut that slide off, but I wanted to remind you that that video and the video that I showed earlier with the family talking about the snacks in Moroccan and French and Arabic, those videos we borrowed from our colleagues at Teaching at the Beginning, which is a website and a YouTube channel where they've collected a — a lot of videos demonstrating early childhood first and second-language learning, and you can see from that example how many ways encouraging a child to do the talking helps you learn what they know and where to go next and that it's not just about teachers, but it could be family members supporting that background knowledge just as well, so we're coming to the end now, and I'm going to hand it back to Deborah, and I want to thank you all for your comments and questions and hope we'll see you at our next video, I mean, our next webinar. Deborah? 

Deborah: Thank you so much, Karen. So, I believe now we'll just advance the slide and encourage you to reach out to us if you have any other questions, and you will see the evaluation link, and we appreciate any feedback that you can provide us. We'll take it into account as we prepare for the next webinar, and we thank you so much for your time, and we apologize for the technical difficulties at the beginning with accessing the slides, so thank you all so much. Have a lovely afternoon, and we hope to be back on with you again in March.

So, thanks so much. Bye-bye.

(En inglés)

Planned Language Approach Big 5: Focus on Book Knowledge and Print Concepts

Deborah Mazzeo: Hello and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for this third Planned Language Approach Big 5 webinar with a Focus on Book Knowledge and Print Concepts. So far, we have talked about alphabet knowledge and early writing, and last month background knowledge, and so this month, we're focusing on the next Big 5 skill which is book knowledge and print concepts.

A quick note for those who may not have been on the two prior webinars: The Big 5 is one of the five components of the planned language approach. They are the key skills that are critical for later school success including grade level reading. Be sure to join us again in April on the 18th at the same time for a webinar on the fourth Big 5 skill which will be oral language and vocabulary. Just so everyone is aware, know that all of these webinars are recorded, and in case you missed the first two or want to listen again, they will all get posted to the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center, or ECLKC for short, but it won't be available immediately, so in the meantime, we'll post the link to the recording on MyPeers which is one of the online platforms that we use, and we encourage you to join if you're not already a member, and we encourage you to join specifically the CLRP which stands for the Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Practices community, and you'll find more information on MyPeers in the resources section of the platform here.

So, my name is Deborah Mazzeo, and I am the cultural and linguistic practices coordinator here at the National Center on Early Childhood Development Teaching, and Learning, and I am joined today by my dear colleagues, Jan Greenberg, who is the senior subject matter expert in child development, and Karen Nemeth, who is the senior training and technical assistance specialists on DLLs, dual language learners, so you'll be hearing their voices momentarily.

Before we begin, I'd like to go over some information regarding the webinar. We'll be using some of the features of this platform to help us interact, and at the bottom of your screen, you'll notice these widgets. If you have any questions during the webcast, you can submit them through the purple Q&A widget. We'll try to answer these during the webcast and please know that we do capture all of your questions. If you happen to have any tech questions, please enter them here, as well. A copy of today's slide deck and additional resources are available in the resource list which is the green widget. We encourage you to download any resources or links that you may find useful.

Throughout this session, we'll be using the blue chat widget to engage with each other, and I see many of you have been responding, sharing with us where you're from, so that's great and what kinds of environmental prints children come into your programs knowing. You can find some additional answers to some common technical issues located in yellow help widget at the bottom of your screen. You can also find the closed captioning widgets in both English and Spanish. This is a new feature that we're so excited to be able to offer this time.

Each of these widgets are resizable and movable for a customized experience. Simply click on the widget and move it by dragging and dropping and resize using the arrows at the top corners. Finally, if you have trouble, try refreshing your browser by pressing F5. Be sure to log off your VPN and exit out of any other browsers. So, with that, here is what we're going to be covering today. I'll be starting out with a brief introduction and will explain some of the research around book knowledge and print concepts. We'll talk about the development progression from birth through age 5.

We'll be sharing effective practices through that spectrum and sharing examples of supporting book knowledge and print concepts in various early learning settings, so these topics are going to be interwoven and connected throughout our time together, and I did want to bring your attention to the multipage PDF in the resource list titled "Book Knowledge and Print Concepts." You all are the first to receive this newly updated document which is the basis for this webinar. There is also a link to the new book knowledge and print concepts web page on ECLKC, and as many may have heard me say before, there is a page for each of the Big 5 skills on ECLKC, or the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center.

So, at the end of this presentation, you should be able to understand the connects to a planned language approach, or PLA for short, coordinated approaches and the ELOF, or the Early Learning Outcomes Framework. You should be able to explain what the research says about book knowledge and print concepts, describe the development trajectory from birth to age 5, identify strategies to support children who are dual language learners and identify effective practices for supporting each skill in different early learning settings. So, when we talk about book knowledge and print concepts, we include the points that you see here on the slide. It is the understanding that print is speech written down. It's learning the various purposes of print which include communicating with others, finding information, recording our ideas or documenting information and providing pleasure or entertainment. It also includes recognizing common signs, symbols and logos.

We just talked about environmental print in the chat. It involves having experiences with different types of print materials such as books and pamphlets and lists, letters, journals, all those different types of print materials, and knowing how to use books appropriately including how to hold the book and turn the pages, and this list continues on here to the next slide as well. It includes asking and answering questions about what is read such as during a shared reading or other experiences with print. It involves identifying basic story elements like characters and sequence, main events, the setting. It involves understanding that some books provide information rather than tell a story. It includes enjoying books and other experiences with prints like having a favorite book, and we know that children love requesting that their favorites be read over and over again and then lastly here, pretending to read books, or we also call that emergent reading.

So, I won't spend too much time on this because many may know from our previous presentations that implementing the Big 5 involves a coordinated approach, and all of those activities listed on the slide involve implementing a coordinated approach, and so our conversation here today on book knowledge and print concepts is only one slice of the pie, which you see the pie image there on your screen. It's part of the Big 5 for all slice, but all of the other pieces to that pie are important, too. Those five pieces of the PLA are aligned to sections of the tool, the DLLPA, the dual language learner program assessment, which is a wonderful resource for assessing your own systems and services for supporting children who are dual language learners and their families. I encourage you to download that if you have not seen it yet before, and if you're implementing a planned language approach, you're implementing a coordinated approach to serving children who are DLLs which is required by the Head Start program performance standards.

Now all of the Big 5 skills and our conversation today specifically on book knowledge and print concepts are supported by research and connected to the language and literacy domain of the ELOF. While here we're showing the ELOF goals, childcare programs will see that book knowledge and print concepts will also align with states' early learning and development standards. For infants and toddlers, the goals associated with book knowledge and print concepts appear in the emergent literacy subdomain of language and communication, and then for preschoolers, all goals associated with book knowledge and print concepts appear in the literacy domain and two subdomains, the first being print and alphabet knowledge and the second comprehension and text structure, and these goals are relevant for children in classrooms, family childcare and home visiting programs. And with that, I will turn it over to my colleague, Karen.

Karen Nemeth: Okay, and so in your brief introduction about book knowledge and concepts of print, you listed a lot of factors which is so important because it seems so simple as if, "Well, all children need to do is know about books and know about print, and [Inaudible] can check this off their list," but there really are so many components as part of this whole topic area, and the research has a lot to say about it, so let's see what we can learn from the research. It won't be surprising, but it will be affirming of all of the great work that we're doing and give us some details, so for example, we know that reading-related behaviors actually prepare children for later reading and writing. Book handling, language comprehension, emergent reading all lead to the actual reading progress that children make later in childhood, so helping very young children engage with print and learn as much as possible about all the different forms and functions like Deb has just described will really make a difference in easing the child's transition into reading and writing. When adults show an interest in books, research shows that makes a difference, too.

The amount of time that we read in the presence of children, when we read things that we enjoy, or we read things that we use, it makes a difference in their understanding of – of the enjoyment of reading and the value of reading. We need children to notice the differences between print and pictures. That came up in the chat as you were talking about things they know when they come into the classroom. Developing children's later reading and writing skills depends on their ability to pick out those little differences between symbols and signs even before they read. Research also shows that when children who are dual language learners have opportunities to learn in both of their languages, their print knowledge in addition to other skills increases, so book knowledge and print concepts developed in any language can support a child's knowledge of how books and how print works in English.

The central insight is that print is speech written down and can happen in any language and transfer from one language to another, so for example if a teacher is reading "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" in her home language of the children in the classroom, that helps these children better understand the print concept that she's, you know, looking at words on the page and saying those words and how the book works, and if she does that in their home language, then they understand how it works. They can transfer that knowledge also to English, but children may develop knowledge of print and how books work in their home language with a written form that's different from English, and so children may expect that English-language books look and work like the books in the home language, but they might be different, so that's not wrong. Their prior knowledge in their home language actually helps them begin this understanding, and once they understand how print works in their own language, it's easy to understand the changes they need to understand it in English, so that's where we have some of these examples. Some languages are read from right to left or left to right.

Some are read from back to the front and others from front to the back which is kind of funny because we say the front of the book because we are English speakers, and what's front to us is really the back to somebody else. It's not really the front or the back. It's just which side you start on depending on your language and culture, so some languages are read horizontally, and some are read up and down vertically, and some languages have no written form at all, but we can still develop that concept of recording information and thoughts and feelings and stories with pictures on the pages of books. In addition, we know these things about – Some of the research about the importance of how we use books with children. We have different ways of using them with infants and toddlers with – and with young children. With infants and toddlers, we're more likely to have that child, you know, sort of crawl into your lap and look at the pictures and touch the book and turn the book around, and so when reading "Goodnight Moon," for example, a home visitor could model to the parents how she points out that there's two kids playing in the picture and the green blanket and the blue books on the shelf and how she can talk through the book even if the toddler isn't ready to hear the whole story.

When you read books to young children, you might also choose wordless books that allow [Inaudible] to tell any story in any language while focusing on what's in the picture. Children's books are often colorful and engaging, and adults and children enjoy reading them together, so adults typically read infants and toddlers who are sitting on their lap to support that warm, engaging interaction, and so it's important to remember that it's not just about the physical book but the whole experience of the concept of book reading and how we interact and respond with children. When children get a little older, we might see adults reading to preschoolers one-on-one in pairs or small groups to continue to allow for a lot of interaction about the book. Sometimes adults read to preschoolers in large groups if the book is short and the topic is very interesting to the children, but books should be on topics that – that really connect with the children and draw from a variety of cultures including the cultures represented in the classroom.

We need to, according to the research, be very focused on engaging with children while reading the books, not just presenting the book but using the book as a tool for interaction and keeping the session short and having opportunities beyond a large group where children can engage one-on-one with an adult and a book or small groups to have those conversations, and so we have one teacher provided an example of reading the story "The Mitten" by Jan Brett, that Ukrainian folktale, and she had the children pass around wool mittens to feel and hold and to talk about what they thought the world was and where it came from, and she also put a blanket in the middle of the circle, and the children took turns pretending to be the different animals and climbing into the blanket, and so she used props to further engage the children, and this is the kind of activity that's really supported by the research to go beyond that basic idea of book knowledges, that you know what a book is, but really all of these different factors coming together. We have a lot of research about using dialogic reading strategies, and I wonder if any of you have tried using dialogic reading strategies.

Some people are very familiar with that idea, and others are not, something you can read more about in the documents that we've attached for today's webinar about specific kinds of questions that you can ask to build children's knowledge and interaction about a book.

We also engage children in shared reading, read-alongs, choral reading where people – where the children join in saying parts of the story and pointing to the words on the words on the page as they say the words. Even before they learn to read, they, you know, know by recognizing the pictures that a certain sound happens on the page, or, you know, when they – when they see the picture of the fireworks, they know that that big word on the page says, "Boom," and they can point to it and say, "Boom," that's the beginnings of reading, and research shows that that action is really very helpful, and now the next thing we're going to do is look at a video that shows a child, or two children I guess, using a felt board, and I want you to look at this video and get an idea for something you can type in the chat box.

What – You're not just seeing what's in the here-and-now, but what do you think that the teacher did to make it possible for these children to have this rich interaction? What do you think happened in that classroom before the video that makes it possible for these children to engage in their experience of book knowledge when you see the – the video, so is everybody ready?

 [Video clip begins]

Children: ♪ Black sheep, black sheep, what do you see? ♪

♪ I see a goldfish looking at me ♪

 ♪ Goldfish, goldfish, what do you see? ♪

 ♪ I see a mother looking at me ♪

♪ Mother, mother, what do you see? ♪

♪ I see beautiful children looking at me ♪

Girl: ♪ Farmer, farmer, farmer, farmer ♪

 ♪ Farmer, farmer, what do you see? ♪

 I see a boy.

Girl 2: No. Pig.

Girl: Pig.

Girl 2: Pig, pig, what do you see? I see a pig, another pig. Pigs, pigs, what do you see? I see a horse. What do you see? I see a...

Girl: Cow. Cow.

Girl 2: Pig. Pig.

Girl: Cow. Cow, cow, what do you see?

Girl 2: Horse.

Girl: No, cow. What is that?

Girl 2: Pig. Huh?

Girl: What is that?

Girl 2: [Speaking Spanish] I see the...

Both: Pig, pig, what do you see? I see a...

Girl: Horse.

Girl 2: Horse, horse.

Girl 2: [Speaking Spanish] Horse, horse.

Girl: No, no. [SpeakingSpanish]

Girl 2: Food, food, what do you see? I see [Indistinct speaking].

Girl: No, [Indistinct speaking], no. [Speaking Spanish] I see a car, car looking at me. I see a car. [End video clip]

Karen: Okay. That was the – The video will stop playing.

Girl: [Speaking Spanish] what do you see?

Karen: I wonder if there's a delay because I can still hear video even though I don't...

Children: [Speaking Spanish]

Karen: So, thank you. Okay.

Children: [Speaking Spanish]

Karen: I still hear the video playing in my sound while I'm trying to talk, so [Inaudible].

Children: [Speaking Spanish]

Karen: Now I am getting some instructions.

Girl: Dogs, dogs, what do you see? I see a mommy looking at me.

Karen: Okay. Let's see if this works.

Girl: What do you see? I see cow.

Karen: Nope, didn't work.

Girl: Cow, cow, what do you see?

Karen: So, I've still got it playing in the background.

Girl: I see a cat. Cat, what do you see?

Karen: And I think I'm going to have to – I'm going to ask for Jan to get back [Inaudible] if I'm going to have – if we're going to have these technical issues, so just, I'll step back in if you could step up, and I'll work on this. Thank you. Okay. I don't – I don't hear Jan, but I also don't hear the video.

Deborah: Karen? Hey. This is Deborah. Yep, this is Deborah, so I think the video has ended. You can go ahead and proceed with the slides or with the questions pertaining to the video.

Karen: What? Okay, well, we'll ask our tech people in the background to take a look at... Because we have a couple other videos about how to make sure they stop when we move onto the next slide so we don't have that audio. That will be a big help, and so now I'm interested to know if people chatted about they saw the teacher doing in that video, or not just the teacher, what they thought that the teacher did to set it up so that there was this rich interaction that the children got from their prior experience of reading the story.

And, yes, it was a great example of English-language learning and not just using one language but using both of their languages so that they can have this rich, engaging conversation about the content by pulling words from their home language and English together and – and that they – Oh, I see that Carrie is saying they were teaching each other. Isn't that great that they were teaching each other? And – And so that's a question. What might a teacher do to encourage and prepare children so they know how to teach each other and that they feel comfortable teaching each other that they can experience books and print knowledge and the information they get that way with their peers and not always with an adult making it happen? So – So thanks for your patience about the technology.

That is certainly something we have to work on, and now I – I want us to take a moment to say that one of the important things to watch for is what are the prior experiences that children brings to the classroom, what happens at home in terms of books and print knowledge, and – and you can find that out by using this great resource that's called Gathering and Using the Language Information Families Share, has some great topics for conversation with families that you can use on a home visit or when you meet up with the families. You can use it as a whole experience, or you can just look at the document and pull up your questions to ask at certain times to get to know the family and what is happening in their home in support of book knowledge and print concepts and how you can incorporate what they do and how you can help them build on what they do and expand on it, so that connection with family is very important, and in the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge – Knowledge Center, there are several resources designed specifically for families. One of these is called the Importance of Home Language series, and we also have the Big 5 strategies with handouts specifically made for families available in both English and Spanish, so all of these things that we recommend today we've tried to also provide connections that you can use to bring them to families.

Okay. Now... this is a poll, and so we're seeing now if you can answer this poll question. And let's see how things are going. Are you able to answer the poll question? Yes, we're seeing people now starting to answer the poll. Click on your screen which choice – which answer choice you choose. It says, "What strategies have you used to support parents to build their children's knowledge of books and print concepts?" Choice one, "Send books home or have a class library or program lending library." The next choice is, "Hold literacy workshops for families." Another choice is, "Sending tips and questions for parents via a text message, post videos with ideas for home literacy," or you have another idea, you can type in the chat, so these – that's our poll. And let's see.

We have quite a few responses, and so let's see where we're at. Okay. You can see that 88 percent of you said you have some kind of program where you send books home to families. That's a pretty big deal. Almost half of you hold literacy workshops for families. Twenty-two percent say they send text messages home. That's pretty significant number that actually text message, but a very few use the strategy of posting videos, and I see that some of you are also typing your ideas in the chat box, so that's a good place for you to – to access some interesting thoughts that you can use, and now we just want to ask you a couple of questions for thinking that you can answer now in the chat box so that you can bring back to your programs as a topic for discussion with your colleagues. For example, how do you support parents specifically on building book knowledge and print concepts understanding? What languages are spoken by the children, and how does that affect your support?

So, you have some specific strategies to meet the needs of dual language learners in your program, right? And how do you incorporate families' funds of knowledge? What – What assets the families bring, what interest and talents and traditions that families can share to help you connect your learning environment to the child's culture, so those are some interesting questions that you can answer in the chat box to share with each other and also to think about using as discussion questions after you view the webinar when you go back to your programs and talk about what, you know, what we've shared today, so now we're going to talk about the development progression and share some examples of book knowledge and print concepts according to the age ranges, and Jan is going to start with that.

Jan Greenberg: Okay. So, Karen, thanks. You know, this is our third PLA Big 5 webinar together, and I just continue to appreciate the thoughtful context that you and Deb provide about the whats and the whys of these important literacy practices.

Karen: Mm-hmm.

Jan: So today, you've provided the what and why about book knowledge and print concepts, and now we're going to get into some of the how to support children in learning and developing these important skills and concepts, and in fact, we've already started identifying some of those strategies and practices, and so we are going to start with babies as we have for the last couple of webinars, and we're going to use this goal from the ELOF, "Child comprehends meaning from pictures and stories," and it shows the development progression of that concept and skill from birth all the way up to 36 months, and – and so we know that babies and young children are learning important information about books and print that they are going to need to become readers, so they watch how adults hold books and turn the pages.

They notice that pictures change when they do so and especially if adults are pointing that kind of thing out to them. They notice the rhythm of words in a story, and they notice how the reader's voice – voice rises and falls, and in fact, when babies are read to often, adults may observe them book babbling. I love that phrase, book babbling, which involves babbling in a way that mimics a reader. Book babbling is different from other forms of babbling, and it's what babies do when they're beginning to understand that book reading is different than talking. We know that when infants and toddlers are engaged in a book-sharing experience, they will look at the book. They'll touch it. They'll look at the adult.

They might switch their gaze from the adult to the book. They'll seem content and interested. We also know that children will signal when they're ready to stop reading by looking at something else, or they'll squirm and fuss, or they'll turn the pages to – to get to the end, so when it's time to end the book-reading experience, you can turn the page. You can put the book down, and you can cuddle them, tickle them and let the children crawl, walk and play and so okay, so what do we do to support babies in beginning to develop book knowledge and print concepts? Well, we can share stories, poems and songs in the children's home language. We can cuddle up and read books with them as Karen mentioned earlier, and as you're reading, you're labeling what's in the book. You're describing the pictures. You're describing what – what animals or characters in the book are doing. You can look in the direction where children point or follow their gaze to support their language development, and again, you're labeling and describing what you think they're looking at, so for example, if you're looking at a book about different transportation vehicles, you could say, "Yes, that is a truck," but you don't stop there. You say, "It's a dump truck. See that big pile of dirt in the back?"

And so you both label, and then you actually extend their – their language learning. You provide cloth and board books, and why cloth and board books? Because we know that one of the ways babies explore their environment is to put objects in their mouth, so this is one way that they're beginning to develop the concept of book and what makes up a book and, you know, what you do with a book, and again, you're talking about what they're looking at and seeing in the book, and you're engaging them in a conversation by getting their attention, and you ask them a question, and then you wait for them to respond, and they might do body movements or gestures or facial expressions. They might coo. They might babble. They might have other vocalizations, and you interpret what those responses are, and you provide the language, so for example, you might say, "What do you see? A cat? That's right. I see a cat, too. It's a little white cat with a black nose," so you label and extend, and you can play games such as peekaboo and pat-a-cake, or you can invent games like can you find a ball, and again, these kinds of things build children's interest in language, and that's one of the reasons that you're reading books to them, too, is you're getting them interested in language.

They're exposing them to – to words and new ideas. Okay, so we are going to take a look at a video, and you'll see in this video there are two female teachers, and they are doing the "Where Is Thumbkin?" finger play with five infants, so as you watch this video, post in the chat box what strategies do you see teachers using, and what are they doing to support children's development of book knowledge and print concepts and then maybe what do you see the children doing in response, so here we go. [Video clip begins]

Teachers: ♪ Pointer, where is pointer? ♪

♪ Here I am. ♪ ♪ Here I am. ♪

♪ How are today, sir? ♪

♪ Very well, I thank you. ♪

♪ Run away. ♪ ♪ Run away. ♪

♪ Where is tall man? ♪ ♪ Where is tall man? ♪

♪ Here I am. ♪ ♪ Here I am. ♪

♪ How are today, sir? ♪

♪ Very well, I thank you. ♪

♪ Run away. ♪ ♪ Run away. ♪

[End of video clip]

Jan: Okay, so in the short clip, we saw two teachers singing "Where Is Thumbkin?" with a group of possibly mobile infants here, and so what strategies did you see teachers use, and how did they relate to developing children's knowledge of book and print, so what did you see? You can post your responses in the chat box. Okay, song and music with touch, okay.

They're using – Okay, so they're – they are using a visual. They're using a song. Song has language. They're tapping children with their fingers. They touch the children, close proximity, using props, using fingers as their props, looking at children as they were singing. Okay, so lots of – of similar responses. Yeah, close-proximity singing – We might add to this, so they were sharing a song. We might think that they're sharing a song in the children's home language, so in this case, we might think that the children speak English at home, but if some don't, then we could say that teachers are exposing children whose home language is not English to English, and this would be in keeping with Head Start program performance standards related to infants and toddlers who are dual language learners.

Yeah, they're – they're using the song, and they're using movements to interest children in language which is an important foundation for interest in books and print, and so – and so your responses definitely mirrored – mirrored that, so we've just talked a little bit about babies, and now we're going to talk about toddlers, and we're going to springboard that using this goal from the ELOF, "Child handles books and relates them to their stories or information," and so we know toddlers learn about their world through observing and listening and touching everything in reach and by having their questions answered in the languages that they know. We've already talked about using...

We've talked about using environmental print as a way to help children learn about print concepts and uses of print, so talking about that environmental print or using sign language to describe print at home and out in the community helps toddlers begin to understand that print is meaningful and important, and as for – as books are concerned, many toddlers are interested in books, and they will ask to have their favorites read over and over and over again. Some may even begin to pretend read on their own. We do know that some toddlers may only listen to a few words before they drift away, and we know that some others will develop an interest in books later on, but – but despite all those differences, we know that caring adults should continue to provide opportunities for toddlers to discover the joy of story reading by reading and talking about books, and so what are some of those strategies?

And, oh, my. We've got a whole bunch of strategies here, and we've actually already talked about some of these. We've talked about environmental print. We've talked about sharing stories, poems and songs in home languages as well as in English. Some of the strategies that Karen mentioned earlier are ways to make story time fun, and I am sure that your curriculum has some specific strategies for doing that, but I would say that I think one of the most important strategies for making it fun is to demonstrate your own enthusiasm and engagement in the story. Children will see that, and they will watch and model what they see you doing. We've talked about reading and rereading and rereading favorites of children, and so it's important to just maintain your enthusiasm when you're reading the same story for the thirtieth time to children. Repetition is really important for them.

We've talked about talking or signing about books and asking questions during and after story reading, and make sure some of those questions are open-ended that give children a chance to use the language that they're learning to answer a question and just like with infants, wait for a response and then respond to them. One of the great things you can do when you're reading is to help them understand unfamiliar words, so for example, if you're reading a book about trains, you can point out the engineer and say, "That's the engineer. He drives the train. Can you say engineer?" So, it's – it's very good and useful to provide simple definitions of unfamiliar words. It's a great way to build their vocabulary. We've already talked again about print, signs and logos. You know, respond to children when they're asking you questions about what those things mean and go the extra distance, so, you know, if they say – If they ask what the sign says, you could say something like, "That says push, so we need to push this forward to get it open," so, you know, label and expand. You can point out and name meaningful letters of the alphabet such as those that are in a children's name, and you can do that with any print that you're looking at with a – with a child. Just like with infants and toddler – just like with infants, you want to provide, you know, durable books that will hold up well to active explorations.

You want to try to create a comfortable space where books are attractively arranged and easy to read, so you might use shelves, or you might use baskets, and you want to try to store some of those books in a way that toddlers can see the cover rather than the spine because that will help them self-select favorites, and hopefully that minimizes their need to pull all of the books off the shelf, and again, you can model how to use books appropriately, so you show them how to open them, how to turn pages carefully and how to return them to shelves or a basket, and you can use all of these strategies if you're working directly with children and if you're working with parents and families such as during home visits or socializations, you can talk with them about these strategies and then work with them to identify and adapt what would work best for them in their home environment, so okay, so that's lots of strategies, and we have another video to show, and again, I'll ask you to watch the video and then post in the chat box about the strategies that the adult uses and what you see the child doing, and in this video, you're going to see an adult reading a book to a toddler, and here we go.

[Video clip begins]

Teacher: Choo-choo.

Child: Train.

Teacher: Train.

Child: Train.

Teacher: That's the choo-choo train. That's the red one, red. Yes. No, that has – that has coal in there. You see it? Choo-choo.

Child: Choo-choo. [Inaudible] up.

Teacher: They're going up.

Child: Up.

Teacher: Up.

Child: Up and down.

Teacher: Up there, we see blue.

Child: Blue.

Teacher: There's the blue one. There's purple. Zebra – Oh, back to the train.

Child: Choo-choo train.

Teacher: Choo-choo train. Back to the zebra. Elephant, elephant, oh, choo-choo train.

Child: Choo-choo train.

Teacher: Choo-choo train. You see the yellow one?

Child: Choo-choo train.

Teacher: Choo-choo train.

Child: Up and down.

Teacher: Up and down, that's right, up and down.

Child: Up and down.

Teacher: Up and down. That's the yellow one.

[End of video clip]

Jan: Okay, what's happening in – in – in that clip, so what did you see? What are some of the strategies the adult was using with the toddler, and what was he doing? What are – What are your thoughts about this? What did you see? You can post that in the chat box. Child-focused and point and make sounds [Inaudible] simple words. It did. Yes, I agree. That is a great interaction. Great use of following the child's lead with the story. Yes, this is all about the child and where the child wanted to go with the book, absolutely. Interacting with the story as well, yes, there was some repetition. She pointed out. She expanded. She was letting him manipulate the book, allowing – allowing the child some autonomy, so yep, lots of – lots of modeling. She definitely follows his lead, so great, so yeah, you picked out some really great strategies that this adult was using with this toddler, and so we are going to continue the conversation about the how and our developmental progression with preschool, and I'm going to turn this over to Karen now. Karen, take it away.

Karen: Oh, thank you, and so now I'm going to talk about what we expect to see and provide for preschool children in a few minutes knowing that if we were all at an event together, we could probably talk about this for hours because as children get to be preschoolers, the many ways that they experience books and print for so many different purposes and the amount of their own experience and knowledge they bring to those experiences makes them increasingly sophisticated, and so we're going to talk about some strategies, but I do want to take a moment to say that in that first video with the felt board and the children talking at the felt board in English and Spanish was from a collection of videos provided by Teaching At the Beginning, and they have – You can access those videos on their YouTube channel by just looking up Teaching At the Beginning YouTube. There's about 20 videos, free videos, there like the one we saw, and we want to thank them for letting us use that.

Also, we're going to share a couple of – not a couple, a few quick strategies here about supporting preschoolers, and – and a lot of these we've mentioned before, and I'm just going to add a little detail because these are the things that were supported by the research that came up at the beginning of this webinar, and the variety of kinds of print and the kinds of books gets to be more and more important with preschoolers. They need to see all of the ways that we use writing and stories and books and lists and labels and instruction sheets, etc, and we need to make sure that those things are available in home language as well as English. We really need to focus on setting aside time to read to children every day, you know, throughout the preschool year. Read and reread stories multiple times, so this is something you could type in the chat room. On average, how many times do you – do you think a child wants to hear a story repeated? You'll also want to read informational text.

Having books and materials around the classroom or the environment that give information about the activities or about things that are happening in the world and also want to begin to really model how to care for books and store books and to discuss what's in those books, and we – we want to talk about how print is used for different purposes, so, like, when a child reminds you or something or asks you something, and you say, "Oh, I'll try to do that tomorrow," how about getting out a piece of paper, writing yourself a note and then showing the child that you wrote yourself a note so that you can remember what to do or making lists so the child can see it, etc. Draw child's attention to the letters, the words, the signs that are in the environment. So, the labels that you have in your classroom, the labels on the different areas, the label on the table that says table, how about using those labels to start a conversation and actually talk about the words that exist in the room that may seem boring, but to a child, they're new and interesting. Model using different kinds of books and magazines, digital texts, you know, stories on websites and apps and books that reflect the languages and cultures of the children and including print and writing materials not just in the writing area.

Well, it is good to have a writing area, and I'll ask you now. You might type in the chat box. What are some of the things you have in your writing area? But how about extending those writing supplies to other areas like having some paper and pencils in the block area so children can pretend to write down their designs and their list of blocks they use and that kind of thing to really build that knowledge, so what we're going to have now is another video, so this is a test of my video skills. It's going to give us some examples of reading in the home.

[Video clip begins]

Adult: [Speaking Spanish] Because they were afraid there were coyotes. It was a bad very bad coyote. When Suddenly – The rabbits...everybody was helping. the bears. Of a feather? ...they made their house even bigger.

Child: [Speaking Spanish] Si. 

Adult: [Speaking Spanish]

Child: [Speaking Spanish]

Adult: [Speaking Spanish]

Child: [Speaking Spanish] But if all were like this nobody could blow it down.

Adult: No, they could not blow it down.

Teacher: You're reading every day at home with them somehow.

Adult: [Speaking Spanish] Every night, one book is read before going to bed.

Child: Oh! He was sleeping. He was sleeping. He was sleeping. He was sleeping. He was sleeping.

Adult: Uh-huh. [Speaking Spanish]

Child: He began eating.

Adult: What were they serving?

Child: Corn Fakes.

[End video clip]

Karen: Okay, so that was a video with a lot of wonderful examples. It's a small moment of reading with a lot happening, so – so we want to shared those examples with you, but in finishing up our discussion about strategies, I'm just going to ask you to really think about all of the strategies we talked about today on the webinar and think about, what are the strategies you are using to promote preschoolers' book knowledge and print concepts, and type them into the chat, and I realize I said that too quietly. I repeat: Can you please write into the chat box thinking about all of the things, all of the strategies that we talked about today, what are the strategies that you plan to use with your preschoolers to support book knowledge and print concepts? And this is our chance to take another look at all of the great ideas that our colleagues are sharing with each other in the chat box that we will have this opportunity to really collect all these great ideas from each other as well as from the videos that we've shown today, so – so we'll keep an eye on all your great ideas that are flowing through that chat box, and I will now hand the presentation back to Deborah.

Deborah: Thank you, Karen. So, as we conclude our webinar here, I wanted to show this slide, and you'll see the image of the globe with the hands around the world. That is the icon for the CLRP community on MyPeers. You might recall from the very beginning and opening of this webinar that I talked about, this is where you can get the link to the recording in case you're wanting to hear it again or share it with others.

With this webinar, it will be – We'll be continuing the conversation on book knowledge and print concepts tomorrow on the MyPeers platform, and we'll – we'll plan on doing that for the following two webinars as well, the one on oral language and vocabulary that'll be happening in April and then the one on logical awareness happening in May, so tomorrow on MyPeers based on the questions and the ideas that have been shared today in the chat, we'll follow up with you on this platform and encourage you to post and contribute to the conversation on book knowledge and print concepts, and so here you can see a list of the resources that will support this skill development, and we just want to thank you for your time and attention today, and we ask that you please complete the evaluation. You'll get a certificate at the end after you submit that, and we really do value your input and use it in the – in the following webinar, so here is the link, and again, I thank you, and I wish you all a lovely rest of the day.

Thank you so much.

(En inglés)

Planned Language Approach: TB5: Focus on Phonological Awareness

Deborah Mazzeo: Hello and welcome, everyone. Thank you, so much for joining us today for this fifth and final Planned Language Approach Big Five webinar, with a focus on phonological awareness. So far, we have talked about alphabet knowledge in early writing, background knowledge, both knowledge and print concepts and oral language and vocabulary. And this month, we're focusing on the last of the Big Five skills, which is phonological awareness. So, glad you could be here with us today.

As a reminder for those who may not have been on the prior webinars, the Big Five is one of the five components of the planned language approach. They are the key skills that are critical for later school success, including grade level reading. Just know that all of these webinars are recorded in case you missed one, or would like to listen again. They all will get posted to the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center, or the ECLKC, for short. That's how we call it.

But it won't be available immediately.

So, just know that in the meantime, we'll be posting the link on MyPeers, and we encourage you to join. If you're not already a member of the CLRP, or the culturally and linguistically responsive practices community, more information on joining can be found in the resources section of this platform.

And since this is our final webinar in the series, we'll be staying on about 15 minutes past the hour mark to answer any questions, but know that for those of you who do have to go at the hour, we'll provide the evaluation link in the chat so you can be sure to complete it and get your certificate.

Alright.

With that I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Deborah Mazzeo. I'm the cultural linguistic practices coordinator here at the National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching, and Learning, and I am joined today with my colleagues who have also been on the prior webinars with me. Jan Greenberg is the senior subject matter expert in child development, and Karen Nemeth is the senior training and technical assistance specialist for dual-language learners.

Before we begin, I'd like to go over some information regarding the webinar platform. We'll be using some of the features of this webinar platform to help us interact. So, at the bottom of your screen, you'll notice these widgets. If you have any questions during the webcast, you can submit them through the purple Q&A widget. We'll try to answer these during the webcast, and please know that we do capture all questions. If you have any tech questions, please enter them there as well.

A copy of today's slide deck and additional resources are available in the resource list, which is the green widget, and we encourage you to download any resources or links that you might find useful. Throughout this session, we'll be using the blue group chat widget to engage with each other, and many of you have already been entering some of your creative ideas for fostering phonological awareness, and we appreciate that.

You can find additional answers to some common technical issues located in the yellow help widget at the bottom of your screen. You can also find the closed captioning widget in both English and Spanish. Each of these widgets are resizable and movable for a customized experience. Simply click on the widget to move it by dragging and dropping, and resize using the arrows at the top corners. Finally, if you have any trouble, just try refreshing your browser by pressing F5 and be sure to log off your VPN and exit out of any other browsers. 

So, here is what we're covering today. These topics will be interwoven and connected throughout our time together. You may have noticed that in the resource list, there is a multipaged PDF titled, "Phonological Awareness," and you all are the first to receive this newly updated document, which is the basis for this webinar and contains these major sections that you see as part of our agenda today. There is also a link to the new phonological awareness web page on ECLKC. And as many may have heard me say before, there is a page for each of the Big Five skills.

Towards the end of today's webinar, I'm going to be doing a virtual tour of the PLA Big Five web pages, so we hope you'll be able to stay a few minutes extra as we give the virtual tour and have that opportunity to engage in some Q&A -- some questions and answers. So, be thinking about what those questions might be.

And here we have our session objectives. So, at the end of this presentation, we hope you'll be able to understand the connection to a PLA, which is a planned language approach, connections to coordinated approaches, and to the ELOF, the early learning outcomes framework. You should be able to explain what the research says about phonological awareness, describe the developmental trajectory from birth to age 5, identify strategies to support children who are dual-language learners, and identify effective practices for supporting phonological awareness in different early-learning settings.

So, let's start out with this definition. When we talk about phonological awareness, we include the points that you see on this slide. It involves noticing and listening to the meaningful sounds of language. So, there is a connection between the sounds of words and the meanings of words, and that underlying research for all the points on this slide is that children learn all of this in the context of words that they understand. So, keep that in mind.

Next, we have play with sound patterns, and that includes repeating sounds, rhyming words, singing, or chanting. Next is identifying sounds of words that sound the same. For example, at the beginning of "airplane" and "airport," we hear the same sounds, right? Manipulating sounds of words, such as blending. So, for example, blending "air" and "plane" into "airplane," or manipulating sounds and saying things like "pancake," "lambcake," "mancake." And then also breaking up sounds or segmenting, such as breaking today into "to" and "day." So, these are what encompass phonological awareness, and I invite others to feel free, if there's anything else that comes to mind when you think of phonological awareness, go ahead and share that in the chat.

So, implementing the Big Five involves a coordinated approach, and all of these activities bulleted on the slide here involve implementing a coordinated approach. Supporting phonological awareness throughout the day as part of the curriculum. Assessing children's learning of phonological awareness. Supporting families to develop children's phonological  awareness. Our conversation on phonological awareness today is only one slice of the pie -- the Big Five for all.

All of the other pieces are important, too, and so that's the pie image that you see on the slide here. The five pieces of the PLA are aligned to the sections of the DLLPA. That's the dual language learner program assessment. Hopefully, you've had the chance to either Google it and access it on ECLKC, and it's a wonderful resource for assessing your own systems and services for supporting children who are dual-language learners and their families. 

If you're implementing a PLA, or a planned language approach, you're implementing a coordinated approach to serving children who are DLLs, which is required by the Head Start program performance standards.

So, all of the Big Five skills, and our conversation today on phonological awareness are supported by research and connected to the language and literacy central domain of the ELOF.

While here, we're showing the ELOF goals, child care programs will see that phonological awareness will also align with state's early learning and development standards.

So, for infants and toddlers, the goal associated with phonological awareness appears in the language and communication domain, under the emergent literacy sub domain. And for preschoolers, the phonological awareness goal is in the literacy domain and the phonological awareness sub domain. And these goals are relevant for children in classrooms, family child care, and home visiting settings. And next, I'm going to turn it over to Karen to talk about the research. Karen.

Karen Nemeth: Well, thank you very much. And we do have a fair amount of research about supporting the development of phonological awareness in infants through toddlers and also for children who are dual-language learners and how phonological awareness develops in their home language and in English.

So ... As Deb said, we were looking at the ways we help children understand how we communicate by manipulating the sounds, right? That speech is made up of words; words are made up of syllables. Syllables are made up of individual sounds or phoneme. And as children hear people talk, they start to make sense out of that. And so, you notice that even before a baby can talk, they know the difference between, "take this cookie," and, "break this cookie."

And they show you by their behavior that they can hear the difference. And then, as they get older and they begin to talk, the development of their understanding, their awareness, of phonological awareness really depends heavily on how well they use words and how many opportunities we give them to practice the words in their play and interaction. So, it's about hearing the words and about using the words.

And so, in classrooms where there's a lot of child talk, we know that children are getting a lot of experience that helps them practice their phonological awareness. We want them to have word awareness, so they gradually begin to know the difference in words. Rhyme awareness,  which is a great source of amusement for young children when they start catching on.

But you know that the children you see developed that awareness at different times. A preschool teacher can't come in and say, "On Tuesday, everyone is going to learn writing.

"Some children are ready; some children are not. Some children notice other parts of words before they learn rhymes. Some children are ready to learn about speech sounds in the home language before they learn them in English. So, there's a fair amount of variation among children about when and -- and in what order they learn these things and a fair amount of variation in terms of how the teacher has to be prepared to support each child as they're moving along.

We want children to develop symbol awareness, like some words have one syllable, like "leap" or "last." Some words have two syllables like, "sleepy" or "laughing," and three syllables like, "banana" or "dinosaur" and more. And we have to help children, not only hear those things, but 
be able to recognize what they hear and to identify that those are separate syllables. And then we will also focus on phonemic awareness, and phonemes are the smallest sound involved in... 

The small units of sound involved in making up the meaning of words, right? So, we find that children start to notice the beginning sounds of words. So, they might notice what is the beginning sound of their own name. Maria starts to learn that "M" is the sound of her name. And then Maria might start noticing, "Hey, market -- that has my letter 'M.' Market, Maria," and so forth. And we have some specific knowledge about supporting dual-language learners in phonological awareness, and one of the things that's important to remember is that phonological awareness is an understanding of how the sounds in a language work.

So, if a child can learn about how the sounds work in their own language, then that means they understand the role of sounds in making words and in communicating. So, if they understand how it works, it becomes easier then to learn the sound in a new language and another new language.

But the beginnings always are strongest when children make those sound and meaning connections in language it's most familiar to them. And so, as Deb said earlier, it's really important that we use words that mean something to the individual child, and that's how they make the connection with the sounds that shape that meaning. 

So, for dual-language learners, a lot of times, that is a good place to use their home language, in the beginning, until they catch on to where the syllables change, or how many syllables are in a word in their home language. That means they understand what syllables are and then they can 
learn the same concept of syllables in English.

So, for example, Korean is a phonetic language that matches letters and sounds, and researchers have found that Korean-English bilingual children can perform the tasks that require phonological manipulation more easily even than their Korean monolingual peers because they'd gotten that practice in two different languages. So, they're perceiving the differences in those syllables more clearly because they have to pay attention when they're listening to someone who speaks to them in Korean versus someone who speaks to them in English.

Other languages are tonal languages. So, the language in Laos depends also on the tone of the voice in addition to the syllables and phonemes. But in English, for the most part, sounds occur one at a time, and each letter's sound is like a phoneme. And English does have some sounds that other languages do not have. So, we may be trying to get children to pronounce a sound that doesn't actually exist in their home language, and that takes a little bit more practice. 

But dual-language learners will not make those connections to sound in words that they don't understand. So, rhyming words that they know is helpful. Chants and rhymes with nonsense words don't help dual-language learners because they don't know what to listen for because it doesn't have meaning for them, okay?

So, we have a poll here. Can children who are deaf or hard of hearing benefit from phonological awareness instructional practices? That's a yes-or-no question. So, this is your time to answer. 

It's not a quiz. It's a poll. So, you don't have to worry about being right or wrong. Just give it a try and let's see what people think. I see some people are answering.

So far ... Looks like a lot of people are putting in the same answers. Let's see if there's any variation. Now we're seeing a bunch of more answers. Okay. I'll just give you about 10 more seconds. It's a yes-or-no question. Okay. Wait 'til you see how this turned out. 97.2 percent said yes. Explicit instruction about phonological awareness helps children who are deaf or hard of hearing, and the research supports that. Although it's a pretty reasonable question, isn't it?

So, for those of you who said no, there are some kind of concerns you might have about, "How does this work?" The research shows that explaining, actually describing the phonological components of words helps children, even if they have very limited hearing, to know what they're listening for or to understand how to recognize, even if they're lip reading, right? 

So, adults who work directly with children who are deaf or hard of hearing, or their families can benefit from working with specialists in speech and language or deaf education to help them understand which aspects of phonological awareness can be successful, working with a particular child at a particular stage of development. Okay? So, that was an interesting question. And now we're going to start talking about the developmental progression, starting with infants and toddlers. And here's where Jan takes over.

Jan Greenberg: Okay. Thanks, Karen. And actually thanks to Deb and Karen for giving us a great picture, context for phonological awareness -- what it is and why it's important. And so now we're going to get into the how. These are strategies to support children in developing this very important literacy skill, and we're going to start with a baby. 

And as Deb mentioned when she was talking about the ELOF and goals, this is a goal for infants and toddlers in emergent literacy subdomain, and it focuses on paying attention to repeating and using some rhymes, phrases, or refrains from stories or songs. And you see the developmental progression from birth to 36 months.

And so, what do we know about phonological awareness for the littlest kids? Well, we know that babies learn the differences between sounds, like voices or barking dogs and vacuum cleaners, and language as they interact with others and explore the world around them. We know from research that they recognize the sound of their mother's voice from birth, and as they spend time with other caring adults, like teachers or family child care providers or home visitors, they will begin to recognize those voices, as well. And with lots of repetition of words, and songs, and whatnot, babies are also going to begin to recognize favorite songs and poems and stories.

So, what are some of the strategies we can use to help babies support ... Help babies develop phonological awareness? And we have this list of seven strategies, and I'm actually going to start with, "respond to babies' needs" because you might be wondering, what does that have anything -- what does that have to do with phonological awareness?

And it is really simply things like responding to their needs for a diaper change, or they're hungry, and you feed them. And we know that when baby's needs are met, they are more available for the kinds of interactions and learning experiences that would help them develop phonological awareness. So, we want them to be ready and present for what we can offer them.

And so what else can we do? We can sing songs and nursery rhymes in children's home languages. We can also share rhyming books, song books, and storybooks with them, especially if they are board books or cloth books that have those kinds of rhymes and songs in them. We can use child-directed speech or "parentese," and this means speaking in a higher pitch at a slower rate with clearer enunciation in simpler and shorter phrases. And we combine this with gestures and facial expressions and, essentially, what that does is that draws children's attention to the sounds of language that you are making.

We can describe routines and actions, like, "Let's go wash your hands." We always want to wash our hands before we eat lunch, and we could use lots of different words in children's home language. And as Karen had mentioned earlier, one of the types of phonological awareness is word awareness.

So, these are opportunities to be using lots of different kinds of words with infants. And then we can describe voices and the sounds of voices. So, for example, you might say, "Oh, I hear your sister Shane coming. She has a higher voice than your nana. There's Shane." We can also describe the sounds that babies hear, like, "Did you hear that doggie bark? He made a loud sound. Woof! Woof!"

So, these are just some strategies that you can use. And if you're working directly with children, you can use them with children. If you're working with parents as a home visitor, you can support them in identifying and adapting and trying any of these practices when you're on a home visit or during group socialization. Okay.

So, the next thing we're going to do is look at a video, and in this video you're going to see a family child care provider interacting with one of the babies in her care. And so, as you're watching this video, what are some strategies that you see her using? What is she doing to support the infant phonological awareness development and then what you see the infant doing in response? Okay. So, now we're going to take a look at this video.

[Video begins]

Woman: ♪ How I wonder what you are! ♪ ♪ Twinkle, twinkle ♪ [Laughs] ♪ Little star ♪ ♪ Twinkle, twinkle, little star ♪ ♪ How I wonder what you are! ♪

[Laughing]

Girl: Let's do this. Let's do this.

Woman: ♪ Twinkle, twinkle, little star ♪ ♪ How I wonder what you are! ♪ Huh? [End of video]

Jan: [Chuckles] Okay. So, what did you see the family child care provider do? And what did you see the infants do in response? You could type your responses in the chat box. What did she do? What did the infant do? As she was singing, "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." Alright. She was making hand motion. The child was copying her. Yes. That baby was watching her intently. She changed her tone, yep. She repeated it. Actually, it seemed the child wanted that. Yep. She repeated it several times. Giving the child a chance to hear it several times. She repeated this story. She modeled language. There was some eye contact, hand motion. She smiled. She laughed. She changed her tones. Yes, absolutely. These are great responses.

And so yes, we saw ... It's possibly hard to hear this, but the infant was attempting to vocalize with her. Not just the hand movements, the child was vocalizing. We also saw the family child care provider emphasize the word "are," which rhymes with "star." 

And so, you know, that is another strategy. Putting an emphasis on a word that you want a child to hear. Okay. So, yes. ... Some great responses. And you picked up on a lot of things that I picked up on when I was looking at that video.

So, I do have another question for you. So, are there ways that you integrate parent's and families' traditional songs used in their home languages or cultures? What do you do? How do you integrate traditional songs in children's home languages. or cultures. Type your response in the chat box. What are some things that you do? Waiting for responses. Let me see if we've got some responses here. Okay. So, you might do them during a small group. You ask families to come into your classroom, teach songs during nap time, also during music time. 

Okay. You're inviting families to give you the information about songs, and you're thinking about when you might use these songs or chants or finger plays. Learning parties? I want to hear more about learning parties. Okay. These are great responses. Yes, always ask families if there are songs that they like to sing, and then have them teach you or come in and sing to the babies in your classroom. Okay. So, that was babies.

So, what about toddlers. Okay. So, we see the same ELOF goal for toddlers as we saw for infants and we're giving them more opportunities to pay attention, to repeat, and use some rhymes, phrases, or refrains from stories and songs. And so, what do we know about toddlers? Well, as we've already learned, toddlers, including children who wear hearing aids or have cochlear implants, can and do pay attention to the sounds around them. So, as they listen to language and play with sounds, they show us that they are developing phonological awareness.

And, as you heard from Karen, adults can support children using soundplay and by talking and reading and singing with them, and we know that toddlers who are dual-language learners benefit from hearing their home language, as well as English. So, we're very much still in a word awareness stage and perhaps starting to get into some more discrete soundplay as they move into the toddler years.

So, what are some things we could do to support them? Well, we can share nursery rhymes, and rhyming books, and alliterative texts. And alliterative texts are ones that have a series of words that begin with the same consonant sound, and we can share songs and chants that play with words, including in their home languages, as appropriate for the language. So, for example, in English, we might share, "Willoughby Walliby Woo," and, "Down by the Bay." Or in  Spanish, we might share, "Arrorro Mi Niño," and, "Los Pollitos Dicen." Use the languages you speak fluently with children and play with the sounds of those languages as appropriate for the language. Remember, as Karen said, use words that children understand, that are meaningful for them.

Creating a print-rich environment by labeling shelves and toy bins with words and pictures and creating a library and displaying signs but, more importantly, drawing children's attention to that print, talking about those words and what they mean. That is part of word awareness, as is having one-on-one conversations with children daily and having those back-and-forth exchanges that go on for two or more turns for each child. Again, you're giving them words, and words have sounds, and you're exposing children to all of this richness.

Other strategies you can use: you can point out rhyming words. So, for example, you can say, "You said you have new shoes. Listen! New and shoe. They rhyme." You can encourage children to say the rhyming word at the end of the sentence. So, you could say something like, "Switcheroo. Right foot, right shoe," would be the rhyming word.

Supporting attentional skills is an interesting one. You can say things like, "Jamal is showing us the towers he built. Let's watch him first, and then you can show me the tower that you've built." But why attention? Well, phonological awareness involves paying attention to sounds of language. In other words, listening closely.

So, this is another strategy for helping children focus in on language and what you're saying and what that language sounds like. You can introduce alphabet books and puzzles, and you can talk about the letters in languages children are learning. You can talk about their shapes and their names and their sounds, and you can talk with older toddlers about the names and sounds of meaningful letters, like the letters in their names, and you could say, "Look, there is the letter 'L' just like in your name, Lily." And you can emphasize the "L" in Lily.

And, again, you can help children label and describe pictures and objects in their home language and in English, and, again, that's so much about word awareness. And, again, these are strategies that you can use directly with children, or that you can share with parents during home visits or group socialization, or other opportunities where you are interacting with parents.

So, we have another video to show. And so, the video I'm going to show takes place on a home visit. And right before the clip that I'm going to show you, the mom and the home visitor were doing and singing a fingerplay in English. The language that the mom speaks -- Uyghur -- is spoken in an area in the northwestern corner of China. And it's also spoken in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. And so, let's go to this video. And, again, what do you ... 

[Video begins] Woman: ... song that you sang at play group in Uyghur, in your language.

Woman No. 2: Yeah. It was about star.

Woman: Yeah. Yeah. Will you sing that with us?

Woman No. 2: [Speaking Uyghur] [Singing in Uyghur] [Singing continues]

Woman: Yay! [Both laughing] Clapping. [Video ends]

Jan: Okay. Short, but very sweet video. So, what was mom doing? What was the home visitor doing to support the toddlers' phonological awareness and how was the child responding? 

What did you see? You can post your responses in the group chat. You might have seen some things that are ... similar to the video we saw with the family child care provider and the baby. So, what did you see? You can go ahead and type that into the chat. 

They were singing, assisting in conversation. There was eye contact. Home visitor was mimicking mom's hand movements. Yes. So, mom was clearly leading this interaction with her daughter and the home visitor was supporting her. Absolutely. Child is watching both adults.

Yeah, the child turned around and looked at the home visitor at one point. The home visitor was looking at mom and imitating mom. Absolutely. Mom modeled. And what was lovely is that the home visitor asked mom to sing a song in her home language right after they had sung a song in English.

So, the home visitor is acknowledging the home language, is asking the mom to sing to her child in the language, and so the child is getting the sounds of her home language, as well as sounds of English. All of which is so important to developing phonological awareness and the awareness of sounds in words and meanings in words. And so, with that, I'm going to hand this over to Karen because she's going to continue the  developmental progression with preschool children. Karen.

Karen: Thanks, Jan. You know, every time we do these webinars on the planned-language approach Big Five, we do the same pattern, where we start with it developmental progression for infants and toddlers, and Jan or Deborah handles syllables, and then somebody hands it to me to do the preschool part. And every time, I start with the same remark, pretty much. 

So, much of what you talked about with infants and toddlers, Jan, continues to be important all the way through the preschool years. The big change comes because now the preschool child is developing more and more expressive vocabulary, so we shift the emphasis from just being exposed to sound and hearing sound to now thinking more as a teacher, or a home visitor, or a family child care provider, or a parent. How am I going to encourage my child to use those different sounds?

Now the shift comes where we want to give children more opportunities to actually be in charge of identifying, "Hey, those two words rhyme." And, you know, sometimes, it's not always going to go the way we want. Sometimes, it's going to be that child that notices we have soup for lunch and soup rhymes with poop.

Okay. That might not be, you know, the thing the teacher had in mind, but when we start seeing children using their own initiative, understanding so much about the sounds of words that they point this out, that's when we're really moving forward into those exciting preschool years with those early language and literacy skills.

So, we're really focusing now on adding to all those activities that have to do with listening -- songs, and chants, and rhymes and, and sounds in the environment -- to helping children be in the driver's seat for using different sounds and choosing different words and pointing out syllables and pointing out when somebody makes a mistake with a word. 

And so, we want to really give them plenty of opportunities to do that and continue to draw their attention to those things. And I think it's interesting – the comments that people made showed that the idea of eye contact and drawing the child's attention ... Like, in the chat, that was a theme that was coming up in a lot of the comments, and that's still important in preschool because one of the things we're modeling is that it's fun to notice these cool things about words and how they are alike and how they're different. And that's for your home language or for a new language, in any case, okay? So, we want to continue, as adults, to talk, talk, talk, and talk some more using different kinds of words, noticing when words sound the
same, when there's a rhyme or when two words have the same beginning sound.

Another thing that you'll notice throughout the recommendations for infants, toddlers, and on into preschool is that there's not a big emphasis on teaching these things as lessons. A much greater emphasis on picking up on those teachable moments, wherever they happen, and engaging in noticing words children are using in play and highlighting, "Hey, you know your name is Tommy, and you just made a tower." And therefore, connecting with each child, what's their interest. What's meaningful to them. What's going to capture their interest at any particular time so that it's more child focused, responding to the child's needs rather than a teacher-directed lesson.

You want to do things like encouraging careful listening and attention, and that means, you know, like, listening games where we listen, you know? "Okay, if I play a sound, is that a cat or dog, right?" Or instructions, like, "We look. We use our eyes to see what I'm doing. Use your ears to hear what I'm saying." Right? We read rhyming stories and poems and identify the rhymes, notice them and point them out, okay? Play with fun and interesting words, like, "Oh, this fruit has a name that's fun to say. Cantaloupe. Can-ta-lope," right? Model how to listen to and blend a syllable. "Can you guess whose name this is? Mo-ha-med. Mohammed. That's right."

And also, play games that encourage children to really notice the sounds of words and then blend them together and make a fun game out of noticing the sounds of words. But by responding to each child, what they're playing with or what they're interested in at the time, you have a stronger connection of meaning that helps them to identify those sounds and then use those sounds rather than when we try to have all the children learn the same thing at the same time. In which case, some children may not be ready.

Some children may speak different languages, etc. And I had one participant in my workshop yesterday that said they changed the labels they put by the window. Instead of saying window, now their label has words for things they see outside the window, like, what the children would be looking at outside. The tree, or rain or wind or a squirrel or whatever, and then they use those as conversation starters so the environmental print is actually being used just like you suggested, Jan. So, I thought that was pretty cool.

And ... they have this idea of combining phonological awareness now with alphabet activities because as the children are getting more advanced in the recognition of phonemes and phonological awareness, they are able now to start making those connections with alphabet letters.

You can read and make up alphabet stories, especially those that also use rhyme and alliteration and rhythm. Boy, we don't talk enough about rhythm. But you know those stories that have a predictable rhythm, like, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" We hear those children repeating those stories a lot because of the rhythm. Talking about the letters we see and the sounds we hear while children are playing, modelling how to sort words or objects and encouraging older preschoolers to use invented spelling, and that's always a great time, when you start seeing those children use invented spelling, and we know they are on their way. 

So, we have a video clip, and I'll ask you questions after it's over. 

[Video begins] Woman: Can we do eagle?

Boy: Eagle.

Woman: Eagle. You are good! [Gasps]

Boy: [Speaks indistinctly]

Woman: King crab.

Boy: King crab.

Woman: King crab.

Boy: King crab.

Woman: You are so good. Last one. "T-T" ... Totem pole.

Boy: Totem.

Woman: Totem pole.

Boy: Totem.

Woman: Okay. Good job. We're going to work on the Ts. Ts are hard. [Video ends]

Jan: You saw a really clear example of the strategy that teacher was using in that video. Now I want to ask you, what are some strategies you are using? And I'm already seeing them crop up in the comments before I even ask. See, Lynn is saying that she uses pictures in Spanish to help her hear those words with her children. Oh, and Dana is saying, "clap it out," right? Clapping the syllables in children's names is a great way to start because they're really tuned in to their name. Oh, and Rosalyn has another one. That's a good one for a rainy day when you're stuck inside, Rosalyn, right, to stomp it out and clap it out and use those bodies to have that whole experience of the sounds of words. And Kimberly was saying they use different songs every day that focus on alliteration.

And so there's a lot of ... See, I don't have to talk anymore because all of those examples are starting to flow through in the chat box. You're really sharing with each other. And I think this is so important that everybody has these things on their minds so that you can use all these strategies at a moment's notice, whenever something comes up in the play and learning for those children. And so, now it's time for me to hand this back to  Deborah for some resources.

Deborah: Alright. Thank you so much, Karen. And I'm just really excited to share that we have resources for parents and families available in both English and Spanish. And here you see the sheets for phonological awareness. They're also available in the resources list. Feel free to share these with families to build those home-school connections. They offer suggested daily activities for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers with multiple examples. So, just wanted you to be aware that these are available.

And here on this side, you see the icon for the CLRP community on MyPeers. I had mentioned it early on, at the beginning of the webinar. We encourage you to join the CLRP community to keep the conversation going. It's a great place to share ideas, questions, and resources, and based on questions or ideas that came up on today's webinar, we'll plan to follow up with you on this platform. And we just encourage you to post and contribute to the conversation on phonological awareness. I'll be planning on posting tomorrow.

And we want to put a plug in here for some of the new and upcoming resources that are available. And so, we have the new curriculum consumer report that is available, if you haven't seen it yet. It provides summaries and ratings for home-based, infant and toddler, and preschool curricula on various criteria that are required by the Head Start program performance standards. So, be sure to check that out on the ECLKC.

And we also, for those home visitors that are on today and participating, there is the Home Visitor e-Institute. Hopefully, you've heard about this. It's happening May 28 through the 31. 

So, I encourage you to register, and it will be a series of four micro-learning sessions, which are 10 minutes or less. And so, there is one each day, and you'll get a certificate of completion at the end. So, be sure to register for that, if that is of interest to you. And we have several resources here, so be sure to download the copy of this PowerPoint from the resources widget, and you'll be able to easily access these additional resources through the links. And so, with that, we're going to say thank you for joining this webinar. And I'm going to ask my colleague to place the evaluation in the chat for those who will have to go right at the hour mark. 

And for those who are able to stay a few minutes extra, I'll be starting our virtual tour momentarily, and we'll provide the evaluation link again at the end of the virtual tour and the Q&A. So, those of you who will need to get off right at 4, please note that my colleague, Stephanie, has now placed the evaluation link in the chat, so you can feel free to access it there. And for those of you who can stay an extra 15 minutes or so, this will be great. 

I'm going to share my screen, and we'll do your virtual tour, and I'll address some of the questions that have come up from evaluations of the prior webinars as we're doing the tour, and then, you know, feel free to ... If you have questions that you've been sitting with throughout this presentation, or if you've participated in prior ones and have burning questions, start typing those and sending them to us, and we'll try to get those addressed here ... in this extra time frame.

So, alright. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. And, hopefully, you all are seeing what I have up. This is the landing page for the planned-language approach. "Big Five for ALL." And so, we have our PLA pie graphic. In the prior -- I think it was a prior webinar -- one of the evaluation
questions was, "What are the other five components of the Big Five?"

And so ... Or the other five components ... The other components of PLA, I should say. Sorry about that. And so besides the Big Five, we have the research-base, the home language support, policies, practices, and systems, and then strategies that support DLL. So, this is actually an interactive image. So, anytime I click on any section of the PLA pie, it will take me directly to that section. We are currently at the Big Five for all slice of the pie. There is an introduction document to the Big Five for all, and when I click on that, it opens up a PDF that I wanted to be certain to show you all because there is a really nice alignment chart here of the Big Five skills to the Language and Literacy domains of the ECLKC for infants and toddlers, and then for preschoolers. So, if you hadn't seen that, be sure to check it out.

And, again, I got there by clicking on this link from the home page of the Big Five for all. So, I had mentioned at the beginning that there is a page for each of the Big Five skills, and you can see them here, right? And so, today our focus was on phonological awareness. So, I'm going to go ahead and click on that resource card, and each page of these Big Five skills is pretty much organized in the same manner.

So, we have the brand-new documents that you all received. That was the basis for our webinar today. And then we have the document on how to support parents and families. And then we have the Joan Talks series. Now, just to give a little explanation of what that is, it's a series of resources to support implementation of each of the Big Five skills. And so it's called, "Joan Talks" because Joan is a kindergartner who tells us how she learned each of those Big Five skills. 

And just so you're aware of that.

A question that we often get asked is, "How do I access these documents in Spanish?" And so the way to do that is on the upper right on any ECLKC page, you have to click Español, and when you do that, it converts the page into Spanish. You'll notice here that because this is the brand new document, the "Phonological Awareness," document is in process for translation, So, it's currently available only an Inglés -- in English, but these other documents are available in Spanish. So, when I click on there, you can see that the document for parents and families to support phonological awareness is available in Spanish already. So, we just wanted to bring that to your attention. The Joan Talks is also available in Spanish. Okay? So, I'm going to go ahead and convert it back to English, and I'm going to go out to that landing page for the Big Five for all again.

I wanted to point out this resource card for book knowledge and print concept. So, I mentioned that, you know, the pages are organized in a similar fashion for each of the skills. This page, in particular, has some extra resources on selecting and using culturally- and linguistically appropriate books. So, when I click on this down arrow here, we have several additional PDFs.

There was some questions after we delivered the last -- it was actually the third webinar on book knowledge and print concepts -- there were questions about, you know, "How do I find more book-related resources?" Or, "What are some book suggestions that you might have?" 

And so this is the page that they encouraged folks to go to for some of those suggestions and ideas.

So, I'll go back. So, at the bottom of each page, there's that link that will take you back out to the main page. So, we have the Big Five skills. We have that Joan Talks about the Big Five series.

So, you can actually, if you just click on that resource card, you can find all five of the Joan Talks for each of the Big Five skills together on the one page and this page is actually part of the resource guide. And so, the resource guide is like a how-to on the use of the series for professional development, in coaching and parent learning communities or groups socialization. So, it gives some ideas on how you can use the series for those different purposes. 

So, going to scroll back down again.

Actually, I'm going to go back. I just want to bring your attention to this additional resource card here on screening and assessing the planned language approach of Big Five skills. So, here we have several resources so that your literacy instruction is individualized and culturally and linguistically sensitive. So, be sure to check those out when you have the opportunity. 

And then, last but not least, here we have a card where all of the Big Five webinar series will be housed. And so at the beginning of the webinar, I did mention about ...All of the webinars being recorded. And so the first one, on alphabet knowledge and early writing, is currently available.

So, we're excited about that.

So, you can listen to the recording, the PDF of the webinar slides is available. You can download the transcript, and so, you know, we'll be posting the additional webinars as soon as possible.

And in the meantime, again, I just recommend that folks join the CLRP community and I usually ... I always post the link afterwards in that community until they do become available on ECLKC. 

So, with that, I think I am going to stop sharing my screen here.

And while I've been sharing, I haven't been able to see whether questions have come in. So, let me ... end here. And ... Alright. So, I just want to ask my colleagues now if they'll help me with seeing about any questions that came in since I wasn't able to see. I'm just kind of catching up here and seeing that folks ... There must have been a glitch in the system, and folks haven't been able to get their certificate. So ...

Karen: Right. But they, they came up with that alternative that's open in the chat -- that Stephanie put in the chat. So, if we scroll up, we can see that Stephanie said we'll be sending out the certificate because there was a problem with the link.

Deborah: Oh, no! Okay. Well, as long as folks know that they will be receiving one. I see ... Yeah, several posts. Okay. Alright. Well, so have there been any questions that have come up? So, let me just click on one of these here. And it looks like, Jan, you might have answered Hannah's question about, "Does the Joan Talks have videos?"

Jan: Currently, it does not.

Deborah: Go ahead, Jan.

Jan: No, I did answer that question, but I was actually going to invite Karen to talk about a question that came up about phonological awareness, and children hearing language and accents that people have as they speak. So, Karen, do you want to say more about that question and your response?

Karen: Yes, I tried to type that response, but when interesting questions come up like that, I have so much to say that the system cuts me off and won't even let me finish my entence, which just goes to show you, I try to say too much in those little chat boxes. Thanks for giving me this chance to say a little bit more about that question because it's about really the whole underlying science of developing phonological awareness, which is that the most important thing is focusing on how it works. Children need to know how it works. So, if someone speaks with an accent that's different or they pronounce things that are not typical for your community, then that doesn't prevent the child from learning that their words have syllables and that different sounds mean different things, right?

So, for example, if I'm trying to speak Spanish, and I want to draw a child's attention to, you know ocho is different then "also" in Spanish. Well I'm not going to pronounce it the way a native Spanish speaker will, but a child can still hear how it works, that the sounds -- the middle sound makes a difference in the meaning of the word and that ocho has two syllables. Also has two syllables. Those are the important things that children need to learn about phonological awareness.

And then if they learn how it works, they have that foundation, and then as they hear more and more words and use more and more words in different contexts and different kinds of conversation, they learn to catalogue what is the more commonly-used pronunciation, and they're less likely to use the less commonly-used pronunciation. And so, you know, I use that example.

So, I say "cawfee," because I'm from New Jersey, and that's not really technically correct, but if I say, "cawfee," you still know that has two syllables, and you can later learn to say "coffee" more correctly. And so those ... That's the thing that's important about all phonological awareness, is really focusing on helping children hear how it works and use how it works. And you can add different words to different sounds different pronunciations later as you go on. So, can you add to that Jan or Deb to round out that explanation with the examples you would usually use?

Jan: Karen, I had to, to smile. This is Jan. I had a smile when you used the word coffee and said you were from New Jersey because that's how I used to pronounce it, growing up on Long Island in New York. But I would use similar kinds of examples. Probably "wuter" is another one. 

Karen: [Laughing]

Jan: But it's, as you say, more about the fact that you can hear two syllables, and how those syllables are pronounced can be refined over time. I do see a question that came up. Do you find that dual-language learners are delayed in fluency in two languages? Ooh, who wants to take that one?

Karen: Oh, I'll jump on that now.

Jan: Oh, I know you're going to jump on that, Karen.

Karen: But not literally jump.

Jan: Okay.

Karen: So, what we know from the research is that children who are growing up with two or more languages learn some words in one language and some words in the other language. The total number of words is generally about the same as the total number of words a monolingual child uses, but some of the words are in one language, some of the words are in the other  language. So, on the question of fluency is a little bit tricky because in order to technically measure fluency, you need tools that are available not just a tool in one language and then a tool in the other language, but a tool designed specifically for bilingual children who speak those two particular languages. And you're not likely to find those tools, so it's more a question of really just getting to know the child's skills and the child's level and using -- depending more on observations of that child -- to detect where you think there might be an actual delay that might be interfering with the processing of language or their communication skills, etc. And so we, we actually do have ... Too bad Deb can't go back into the tour because we do have, on ECLKC, a whole resource on screening young children who are dual-language learners in Early Head Start and Head Start. So, that's another thing that you can look for on ECLKC, if you want
more information about getting started and exploring what might be going on with the child.

Deborah: So, actually, Karen, I'm going to jump in because I actually can go back onto the screen share because not only ... Yeah, I'll definitely show where that screening document is, and, you know, there is another question that had come up that I want to show folks, about another resource that's available. 

And while I'm talking, Karen ... There's a question I see here in the chat. We have an issue with children with speech delays, and I'm just wondering if anyone wants to take that while I share my screen. Go to the resource here. Okay. So, hopefully, you all can see my screen. So, I'm back on to the "Big Five for All" landing page, right? I had talked through all of their resource cards here, and remember that there's this resource card on screening and assessing children. I want to point out that the screening dual-language learners resource is right here at the very top. So, that's where we can find that.

And then in terms of children who are experiencing speech delays. What I know to be true from the research is that if they're experiencing a delay, it will be not in one language and not another. It will probably be happening in both languages. So, that's one thing to keep in mind.

And so, Karen, do you want to say anything more about that? Or ...

Karen: Well, I agree with you. And so in that document about screening children who are dual language learners, the document actually gives you steps. Now if the delay .. Is a true delay, it would be happening in both languages. You have to screen them in both languages, and we don't always have those screeners, but the document gives you steps to take of how to collect information and what kind of information to collect.

But if you replay the whole webinar that we did today, you would really see how strong the focus is on individual interactions with individual children, that ... The approaches that we recommend, the approaches that are in the planned-language approach documents are about responding to each child -- where they're at, what they can do, what they need -- and because that's the kind of strategy that's best for supporting phonological awareness, that approach helps children who have speech delays. But, of course, the best thing to do is to partner with the speech therapist and to address any potential issues and share those strategies from their toolkit and strategies from our early childhood toolkit, as well.

Deborah: Thanks for that additional information, Karen. And so we have about one more minute left, and I just want to show one additional resource while I'm here, sharing my screen still, and talk about this question that we often get, which is, "What do you do when many different languages are spoken in one classroom?" Any advice for that?

Karen: Well, one key thing to keep in mind is that all children -- and each child -- needs to understand the words you're using in order to perceive those speech sounds, the phonological components that we talked about. So, if you have multiple languages if you don't have resources in the languages of each child, then at least focus on supporting the largest components of the words and words that children clearly understand what you mean, even if they don't say them yet, but you can see when you say snack time, they run to the snack table.

Then you know, "Okay, I can start with the word snack and maybe some words we use during snack because that's something I know they understand, and then I could start with that, and build out to other vocabulary that occurs in stories, etc." That's just one example, but maybe
y'all have others to add.

Deborah: Thanks, Karen. And I'll just click here on the strategies that support DLLs piece of the pie. I want to point out this resource on creating environments that include children's home languages and cultures as a resource for you all to check out. And so, I'm going to end my screen share.

I see we are at 4:16, actually. And I just want to thank you all for your participation. And we'll plan to follow up tomorrow on MyPeers. So, please join us there, and we thank you so much. 

Have a great afternoon.

Jan: Thanks, everybody.

Karen: Thanks, everyone.

Deborah: Goodbye.