9 easy ways to expand preschoolers' language every day
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See the elements of one full week's lesson from Building Language in this Week 1 lesson plan on School Days |
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Teachers can create a rich literacy experience for their students by carefully choosing the language they use themselves. To help your students from less language-intensive backgrounds build the skills they'll need to be successful in kindergarten and beyond, try these specific language techniques, adapted from Building Language Throughout the Year's "Teacher's daily commitment to intentional language use."
1. Use the repeat-model-expand technique
With this technique, teachers insert their own language to expand a child's utterance. When a child makes a comment, the first step is to repeat exactly what the child has said, using the child's words. Then, the teacher models a longer sentence, expanding on the original thoughts:
Child: That's green.
Teacher: Yes, that's green. The green frog is sitting on a green lily pad.
2. Promote preliteracy and phonemic awareness skills by
- providing exposure to lots of different books (story reading at least once a day, reading 5–10 different books each week)
- taking dictation of student-generated stories, art descriptions, class books
- talking to the children about the alphabet letters and the sounds they make
- giving the children opportunities to write their names and practice forming letters
- pointing to the words as they read
- posting words around the classroom and referring to them frequently
- talking about rhyming words
- incorporating learning songs and rhymes into the daily routines
3. Use open-ended questions by
- prereading books and deciding questions to ask in advance
- when talking about children's projects, intentionally use questions that encourage the children to express their thoughts such as What might... or How could...
Open-ended requests help children listen, attend, and understand important vocabulary and concepts. They can promote thinking before a response, problem solving, critical listening, and categorization of attributes. For instance, when a teacher says, Let's find all the things that are blue, students will be able to see the connection among all the blue objects. In contrast, asking What color is this? just quizzes a student's knowledge about one item, without allowing for connections among many things.
Any questions that engage children with basic concepts of color, shape, size, location, quantity, or quality promotes listening and problem-solving skills. Using these techniques, every early childhood interaction can be a teachable moment.
4. Build associations (categorization) by
- helping children connect things they are learning about in books with their own experiences; for example, use phrases such as Remember when..., This reminds me..., Do you remember..., or Chloe, you talked about...on Monday
- helping children connect words and ideas they are learning in the classroom with their own environment; for example, as children play with blocks, use words such as rectangle, larger, smaller, tippy, growing, towering, huge, and tiny
- providing children with the language to talk about how things are the same or different
5. Use think-alouds by
- describing your thought processes aloud to the children while you are completing a task. For example, "think-aloud" as you prepare food, set tables, arrange art project materials, transition from one activity to the next, arrange dramatic play
During daily activities, teachers share their own personal thoughts about what is happening in the classroom. For example when working on a unit on How to solve classroom situations, the teacher may reflect aloud, "Sometimes I find it really hard to share things that I like. I don't want to let others have my things, because I'm scared they might break or get lost. Do you all feel like this sometimes?"
Children can use the teacher's model to organize their problem solving skills, comprehension, contextual relationships, social language, and oral narratives.
6. Use talk-alongs by
- providing children with the words and phrases to describe what they are doing. Find opportunities to use the enrichment vocabulary for the week to describe what children are doing, the pictures in books, and social and play interactions
7. Reinforce basic concepts by
- watching for opportunities to comment on colors, shapes, time (yesterday, tomorrow, next, later, after), size, quantity (some, many, all, more), location (in, on, off, over), and quality (soft, furry, ugly, sticky, clean)
8. Individualize language and curriculum opportunites by
- providing one-on-one interaction with each child on a daily basis
- developing an organized portfolio for each child that includes weekly written observations, direct classroom behavior sampling, parent reports, and artwork, and summarizing their strengths and weaknesses from the information in the portfolios
9. Incorporate dramatic play effectively by
- providing classroom time/opportunities for dramatic play 3–5 times per week
- familiarizing the children with props and scenarios
- ensuring that dramatic play scenarios are related to weekly classroom themes
- selecting props that are age-appropriate and symbolic, and help facilitate play
- stopping by the dramatic play area frequently and helping reenergize play by providing ideas, suggestions, and language
Teachers can use opportunities built into the curriculum to create teachable moments throughout the day, as children arrive, during circle time, art, music, gross motor, dramatic play, snack and lunch, with parents, and as children end their day.
Adapted from Building Language Throughout the Year: The Preschool Early Literacy Curriculum by John Lybolt, Jennifer Armstrong, Kristin Evans Techmanski, and Catherine Gottfred.
