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What Early Childhood Teachers Need to Know about Language

Early childhood educators play an important role in a child's language development. Recent in brain research shows us that children acquire language best in meaningful contexts, through conversational interactions, and through encounters with written language.

In the 2000 paper entitled: "What Teachers Need to Know About Language" Dr. Lily Wong Fillmore (UC Berkeley) and Dr. Catherine E. Snow (Harvard) identify five teacher roles that are relevant to working with young children.

The following descriptions are taken from an ERIC Digest summary of that paper by Brenda DeKamp. (Source: http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/0007bredekamp.html)

Communicator
The role of conversational partner is especially important in the preschool years when children are just beginning to acquire language. Young children develop their language skills through interactions with more accomplished speakers of the language, such as parents, family members, and teachers, as well as other children. When children are served in groups, the teacher's role as interlocutor is very complex. Often children whose language is more advanced are spoken to more often by adults. Thus children whose language development is lagging receive less language interaction than they need, and those who need less actually get more.

Although most early childhood teacher preparation programs address language development, little emphasis is given to the role of experience and learning, especially within the social and cultural context. Because this dimension of language acquisition is overlooked, many teachers do not know how to support children's language learning at various levels of development nor recognize when language development does not proceed as expected. Early childhood teachers need to talk with children in ways that ensure that their language continues to develop, their vocabulary increases, and their grammar becomes more complex.

Educator
Teachers are responsible for selecting educational materials and activities at the right level and of the right type for all of the children in their classes. This requires a reasonable basis for assessment of student accomplishments and the capacity to distinguish between imperfect knowledge of English and cognitive obstacles to learning. In order to teach effectively, teachers need to know which language problems will resolve themselves with time and which need attention and intervention. In other words, they need to know a great deal about language development.

Evaluator
More and more, early childhood teachers are thrust into the role of evaluators of children's language. This has always been a difficult role, because it involves attempting to identify children who may have developmental delays or disabilities. When young children are in the early stages of acquiring language, it is especially difficult to obtain valid and reliable data on their capabilities. Is performance variance attributable to normal, individual variation in rates of development, to experiential variation that is relatively easy to remediate, or to an actual delay? For teachers of students who speak a language other than English at home or who speak a vernacular dialect of English, this role is even more complex.

Educator and educated human being
Teachers of young children need to be generalists in their knowledge of the world, because children are interested in just about everything that goes on around them. This does not mean that early childhood teachers must have every fact at their disposal, but it does mean that they need to have the extended vocabulary, curiosity, and skills to find out what they want to know.

Agent of socialization
By school entrance, the processes of socialization and language development are well under way. When children are served in programs outside of the home beginning as babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, socialization occurs simultaneously in two environments. It is especially important to respect students' home languages and cultures.

(Source: What Early Childhood Teachers Need to Know About Language http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/0007bredekamp.html)

A Comprehensive Literacy Program (K-3)
What Early Childhood Teachers Need to Know about Language

The following chart was prepared for the Comprehensive Reading Course developed by the Department of Education and the University of Alaska Southeast in 2001.

Six dimensions of reading in grades K-3
The Reading Excellence Act's (REA) definition of reading, is as follows:
"The term 'reading' means a complex system of deriving meaning from print that requires all of the following:

1. The skills and knowledge to understand how phonemes, or speech sounds, are connected to print.
2. The ability to decode unfamiliar words.
3. The ability to read fluently.
4. Sufficient background information and vocabulary to foster reading comprehension.
5. The development of appropriate active strategies to construct meaning from print.
6. The development and maintenance of a motivation to read." Section 2252 (4)

The REA requires schools that receive REA funds use rigorous research when selecting reading instruction, content and strategies. "The term 'scientifically based reading research'
(A) Means the application of rigorous, systematic, and objective procedures to obtain valid knowledge relevant to reading development, reading instruction, and reading difficulties.
(B) Shall include research that-

• Employs systematic, empirical methods that draw on observation or experiment;
• Involves rigorous data analyses that are adequate to test the stated hypotheses and justify the general conclusions drawn;
• Relies on measurements or observational methods that provide valid data across evaluators and observers, and across multiple measurements and observations; and
• Has been accepted by a peer-reviewed journal or approved by a panel of independent experts through a comparatively rigorous, objective, and scientific review." Section 2252 (5)

This does not require selection of specific program models. In fact, most funded grantees in FY 1999 did not propose to select comprehensive models developed by others. Instead, funded states, districts, and schools will assess the reading research and identify specific content and instructional strategies to implement in grades K-3, with supporting family literacy activities for preschool and early elementary grades.

(Source: http://www.ed.gov/index.jhtml Reading Excellence Program, U.S. Dept. of Education, 2003 http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/REA/overview.html)