Final Exam Review (Language and Literacy)

What are some ways early childhood students can respond to literature?

Through retelling: Creative dramatics- children act out the story without a script. Story drama- structured reenactment of book, with the teacher acting as narrator. Puppets- help shy children dramatize the story. Through art projects and writing.

What are some effective uses of assessment?

To inform instruction, to share assessment results with parents and families, and to include the child.

listening comprehension

understanding what one hears.

Wordless Picture Books

A book that portrays a story through illustrations only. These books encourage children to create their own stories from the pictures.

What is a think-aloud and what are some think-aloud prompts teachers can use?

A think-aloud is when the teacher voices something that they are thinking a as they read. These think-alouds provide examples as to the types of things students should also be thinking about. An example... "I notice that the character looks sad. Maybe he is upset that he lost his favorite toy"

What happens in the following elements of an assessment model: assess, plan, teach, and reflect?

Assess where your students are in the material you are going to present. Get some prior knowledge. Plan your lesson based on what the students already know. You might have to re-teach something and maybe you can skip some other things. This is also where you practice what you plan and make a beginning, middle, and end. There should also be some standards included in this. Teaching it to the class is the next step. Present your lesson plan to them and get their feedback afterwards on their understanding of the material. Reflect after the lesson to see how it went. Maybe take note how you would teach it differently for the next year, if they need to go over material again or if the lesson went very well and you would not make any changes.

What are some strategies early childhood teachers could employ to develop students' oral language skills.

Children benefit from a large environment that provides many opportunities for them to expand their grammatical awareness and the usage of compound and complex sentences Engaging in stimulating talk Storytelling and story reading are two productive contexts for developing children's oral language comprehension skills Use turn and talk as it offers opportunities for children to develop speaking and listening skills they will need to meet school expectations.

What does the research say about early writing?

Children first learn about writing's purpose through real life experiences Context plays an important role in determining how young children write Children understand the purposes of writing before they can produce conventional forms of writing Adults play an important role in children's development as writers Children learn about writing through explicit and implicit instruction Children need many opportunities to write

How does our textbook define early writing / emergent writing?

Children's skill at putting marks on paper (or wall, whiteboards, sidewalks, etc.), their knowledge that these marks mean something, and their development understanding of how written language words (orthographic knowledge)

How can you encourage students to publish their writing?

Class Newspaper Podcasts Family Poetry Night Display writing in library, hallway or bulletin boards Students create stories for classroom library Student portfolio to share with parents at student led conferences

What are the elements within the CROWD prompt, and how would you use the CROWD prompt when sharing a children's picture book with a class?

Complete prompts: Leave a blank at the end of a sentence for children to fill in. (ex: Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch a pail of _______ .) Recall prompts: Encourage prompts to remember what happened. (ex: The little red hen went to make some bread. Do you remember what happened when she asked for some help?) Open-ended prompts: Focus on the pictures in the book. (ex: Its your turn to read the story: What is happening on this page?) What, where, when and why prompts: These questions focus on the pictures in books. (ex: What's this? Why do you think the puppy is sad?) Distancing prompts: Guide children to make connections between the book and their experience. (ex: Do you have a goldfish at your house? Does your goldfish have a name?) Encourages dialogic reading and student responses. You would use these prompts to re-engage students and check for understanding of the shared reading.

Explain the difference between the direct instruction model and the play model.

Direct Instruction- is a model that does not leave learning to personal discovery or change. It helps children to learn step by step, helping them progress toward a learning goal. Using this method, teachers explain exactly what children will learn, model steps, and provide guided practice until children can demonstrate understanding and skills on their own Play-Based Method- method grounded in vygotsky's idea that play in preschool aged children provides a zone of proximal development.

How can early childhood teachers display student writing?

Display writing in library, hallway or bulletin boards

Please be able to name and identify writing samples that fit into the broad categories of early writing.

Drawing as writing, scribble writing, letterlike forms, non phonetic letter strings, copying from environmental print, invented spelling, and conventional writing.

What are the components of a writing workshop? What happens in each of these components?

Focus Lesson (5 minutes) Teacher provides a lesson to teach students about a particular facet of writing. Teachers can use mentor texts or example texts to demonstrate a particular skill. Teachers can also use their own writing here to show students that they too are writers. Writing (10-15 minutes) Students have time to write and share with peers. Teachers conference with writers during this period. Teachers can also write during this time. Group Share (10 minutes) Students share their writing with the whole class. Teachers can also share during this time.

What are the differences between formative and summative assessments?

Formative assessment: forming judgements frequently in the flow of instruction Summative assessment: making judgements at some point in time after instruction.

What are some features of formative assessment?

Identifies gaps in student performance Generates feedback loops Help children self-monitor their own learning Facilitates steady progression toward learning goals

What is an informational text, and what are some advantages for using these in the early childhood classroom?

Informative books provide information about a topic Critical source of knowledge building: fact-filled Make important contributions to children's language and early literacy development Promote adults to ask children cognitively demanding questions Expose children to challenging vocabulary Build children's knowledge about the world

How might a teacher develop students' phonological awareness?

Phonological awareness activities focus children's attention on the sounds of words. Word/syllable segmenting: activities that help children segment sentences into words and words in syllables. Onset and rime are families of words that end with the same vowel and consonant cluster (-at: bat, cat, fat, mat) Reading aloud to the students as it can help them to pick up on sounds, syllables, and rhymes

Why is phonological awareness so important? What does the research say?

Phonological awareness is so important because children must not only be able to recite and play with sound units, they must also develop a conceptual understanding that sounds map onto whole or parts of written language. Children must develop code-level skills built from a basic understanding that spoken words are composed of smaller elements of speech. Research shows that the ability to identify sounds heard in spoken words is a strong predictor of reading achievement.

Explain how much time is spent on writing in the early childhood classroom and what type of writing students are doing [in contrast to writing for meaning].

Preschool students spend less than one minute on writing per day. This time was spent on fine motor skills on letter development rather than meaning making

What are the reasons for sharing storybooks with early childhood students?

Promotes love of books, Builds vocabulary and print knowledge, Familiarizes children with complex grammar and decontextualized language, Builds children's knowledge of story grammar, and expands children's conceptual knowledge.

What is the definition between receptive vocabulary and expressive vocabulary?

Receptive vocabulary is what you hear and read. Expressive vocabulary is what you speak and write

Why would a teacher read the same book [repeated reading] to a group of early childhood students?

Repeated readings of favorite books enable children to begin to recognize some of the words in the text. To emphasize a different focus or skill. Books can be used to look at different functions of the book and literacy practices.

What are the differences between screening and diagnostic assessments?

Screening: identifies potential problems in language and early literacy development. Screening assessments are generally quick and easy to administer. (Quick and easy to administer. Identifies potential problems in language development and early lit development) Diagnostics: thorough and comprehensive assessment of early literacy development and/or learning difficulties and delays, disabilities, and specific skill deficits, as well as evaluating eligibility for additional support services (speech and language).

What is a shared book reading, and what are the key steps?

Shared reading uses enlarged print and repeated readings to make whole-class, story-book reading sessions similar to parent-child reading experiences. Materials: big books, predictable text, easel to support the book, and pointer to point to words. Day 1 (Before Reading): Reading the title, author, and illustrator, point to each word as you read. Tell children about each person's role. Show the children the book's cover and ask what you think this story will be about? Do a picture walk-through the book. Make connections to the children's prior knowledge and experiences. Introduce the children to a maximum of five vocabulary words Day 2 (During Reading): Show the children where you will begin reading, the direction you will read, and where you will go after you have read the first line. Read the story, pausing on each page to ask and invite questions. Engage the students in conversations about the selected key vocabulary. Day 2 (After Reading): Connect the story's content to the children's experiences. Compare what happened in the story with what the children thought would happen.

How might a teacher develop students' phonemic awareness?

Sound matching activities focus children's attention on the individual phonemes. (Children are asked which of several words begins with a specific sound) Teachers can use elkonin boxes which is a diagram of three blank squares representing the beginning, middle and ending sounds in a word. Activities that require children to add or substitute phonemes in words Letter-sound matching Word Walls

What is interactive writing, and how does it differ from shared writing?

Students and teacher talk: Students and teachers write This is an extension of shared writing during which teachers give students the writing utensil and allow the students to write some of the letters and words on the chart paper.

What is shared writing?

Students talk: Teacher writes correctly The teacher works with a whole group, small groups or individual children. Children first dictate a story about a personal experience, and the teacher writes it down. The teacher reads the story back to the children and then gives them opportunities to read it themselves. Sometimes the children illustrated their dictated sentences.

What do teachers and students do in an interactive storybook reading?

Teachers and children pose questions throughout the book reading, make comments about the story, respond to others' questions and comments.

What are some advantages to being a teacher-writer?

Teachers can use their writing as mentor texts and share their process Teachers know first-hand the obstacles their students will face and what to do about it. When we are the lead writer in the classroom, we can predict the hard spots where students may struggle when we plan mini lessons and respond more thoughtfully in conferences Writing for our students and for ourselves continually immerses us in the fundamentals of the writing craft and process

What do teachers need to consider when thinking about teaching handwriting?

Teachers should provide students opportunities to work on their manual dexterity and fine-motor skills Teachers should provide students with explicit instruction in handwriting and ample opportunities to be engaged with writing throughout the day Use students names to help students learn handwriting and develop reading skills

Why is helping students learn their names so important in the early childhood classroom?

The child's name often functions as the first stable form of print endowed with meaning. Children start to experiment with these letters in their pretend writing and start to notice them in the environment. The name writing research describes how early writing and reading interact in the development of orthographic processing in processing oral and written language skills or sound-letter correspondences that eventually support rapid word recognitions in beginning reading.

How many letters are in the English alphabet? Generally, speaking how many phonemes are there?

There are 44 phonemes but only 26 letters in the English alphabet.

r-controlled vowels

Vowels that change their sound when followed by the letter R (Examples: car, her, sir, for, fur)

What are word-level teaching techniques, and what are some examples of these techniques?

Word-Level Teaching Techniques- are those teaching techniques that focus on how words work and what they say. The instructional goal is to teach children the alphabet letter names, letter-sound relationships, and beginning decoding skills that are forerunners of automatic word recognition in the primary grades Alphabetic Activities (songs, letter charts, print-referencing, alphabet word wall, games)

What does the research say about handwriting?

Writing by hand in the early years appears to support students' development of reading skills. When they write letters, the parts of the brain associated with reading are activated. Children's fine motor skills are strong predictors of children's kindergarten retention and academic success in later years

Diagraph

a combination of two letters representing one sound, as in ch, th, and wh

elkonin box

a diagram of three blank squares representing the beginning, middle, and ending sounds in a word.

substantive conversation

a form of talk adults can use to engage children in extended dialogues.

Sight vocabulary

a set of words that a child can immediately recognize without use of decoding strategies (bank of highly familiar words that can be easily and automatically recognized)

vocabulary

body of words known by a person. Organized into two kinds of vocabulary.

Narrative books

books tell a story

Role play

dramatic technique that promotes language skills. Can begin with real life situations that provide opportunities to practice language in different situations, such as in restaurants, grocery stores, and hospitals.

wordplay

engaging students in the playing with sounds. The reason why early childhood teachers should sing songs, say rhymes, use finger plays, and encourage a little nonsense talk now and then with children.

concept books

ex: rhyming, counting, and alphabet books

syntax

how sentences are constructed (grammar)

Phonemes

individual sounds that make up spoken words

Dialogic reading

interactive, sustained conversation between an adult and children about a book's content.

oral language comprehension

is defined as the speaking and listening skills used for understanding oral language. (Skills represented in listening comprehension in semantics, syntax, inference, and memory.)

Orthographic knowledge

refers to the information that is stored in memory that tells us how to represent spoken language in written form

Interactive talk

small conversations and short discussions between adult and child. Follow the child's lead and create joint attention-most useful with infants and toddlers. Recast child talk to enhance vocabulary and language complexity

language experience approach

teachers use a shared experience to write a text with students.

Phonological awareness

the ability of the reader to recognize the sound of spoken language, including how sounds can be blended together, segmented (divided up) and manipulated (switched around) (awareness of the sound structure of oral language)

blend

the ability to join individual speech sounds together to make words

Phoneme manipulation

the ability to modify, change, or move the individual sounds in a word (Phoneme manipulation is the most advanced form of phonemic awareness. These activities require children to add or substitute phonemes in words)

Phoneme blending

the ability to put phonemes together to create a word

Orthographic processing

the ability to understand and recognize these writing conventions as well as recognizing when words contain correct and incorrect spellings.

Phonemic awareness

the awareness that spoken words are composed of individual sounds or phonemes

Onset

the beginning part of words (c)at

Rime

the end part of words c(at)

alphabet knowledge

the knowledge of individual letter names, sounds, and shapes (ability to name and write the 26 alphabet letters, ability to recognize the letter symbols in print, and distinguish between letter sounds)

Digital play

the play that can come from educational apps and media. Mobile technologies and educational apps create a new context for the development of oral language comprehension abilities and skills.

Phonics

the relationship between sounds and letters in written language

Sociodramatic play

when students engage in play, they are building their oral language skills. The oral language demands of social play are huge and linguistically challenging for most children.

Definitional Vocabulary

where children actually can explain word meanings.