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6.2: Guiding Principles for Supporting Language and Literacy

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    Teachers and caregivers must be responsive to young children’s attempts at communication and language by focusing on meaningful things for them and their families. No single component of any curriculum will have a greater impact on a preschooler’s development than language.

    adult kneeling, talking to a child
    Figure 8.3: Listening to children’s messages (and not correcting their errors) is vital to their language development.[1]

    Here are some guiding principles on how to support children’s language and emerging literacy:

    • Language and literacy work together. They often occur in the same context. Well-developed oral language contributes to later success with more formal reading and writing.
    • The more language children hear, the more their language grows.
    • Providing children with rich models of speech, communication, reading, and writing is essential.
    • Opportunities to learn language and literacy are everywhere.
    • Children learn best from engaging, informative, and enjoyable experiences. These include silly songs, poems with surprise endings, and interesting and informative books.
    • Celebrate and support the individual. Temperament, prior experience, and disabilities affect children’s starting points in language and literacy.
    • Connect with families. Providing them with materials and strategies to support their children’s language and literacy development benefits children’s learning.
    • Create a culturally sensitive environment. Some children have been encouraged to speak up more than others.
    • Encourage children to use language to negotiate with other children, ask for what they want, and express their emotions.
    • Create numerous opportunities for children to engage in conversation. Ask open-ended questions and model engaging in conversational back-and-forth.
    • Make thoughts more explicit to children by thinking out loud.
    • Support curiosity and confidence. Children should freely use “Why? and “How come?”
    • Create well-organized, literacy-rich environments, both indoors and outdoors.
    • Observe how children engage with language and literacy to meet each child’s needs.[2]

    References

    [1] Image by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is licensed by CC-BY-2.0

    [2] The California Preschool Curriculum Framework, Volume 1 by the California Department of Education is used with permission

    This page titled 6.2: Guiding Principles for Supporting Language and Literacy is shared under a mixed license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by .