Child will develop the ability to speak and/ or sign in increasingly complete, complex, precise, and varied ways.
What educators might observe
-
Initiates and maintains a conversation with peers for exchanges over longer periods of time
-
Talks about language, as in “I know Spanish,” or “I think that is what you said.”
-
Responds to the question, “What did you say?”
-
Uses increasingly complex sentence structure to express thoughts (“I am going to the hospital, but I’m pretending. I’m not going to have the baby. The mommy is going to have the baby.”)
-
Talks in different ways depending on place and listener
-
Tells simple stories
Child will develop their ability to listen and understand complete, complex, precise, and varied language.
What educators might observe
-
Responds to multi-step directions or requests (e.g., “First, wash your hands. Then bring me the green towel, and then we will have snack.”)
-
Observes and interprets details about environment, events, or speakers
-
Understands words for time, like “yesterday,” “today,” and “tomorrow”
-
Role plays familiar events described by others, such as a friend’s story
-
Understands forms of social speech from their family, culture and community
Child uses language to relate to others according to the social expectations of their family, community, and culture.
What educators might observe
-
Pays attention to speaker in a conversation
-
Takes turns during group conversations, raising hand to speak, with reminders
-
Emergent multilingual children gauge and then speak in the dominant language of communication used by the person with whom they are speaking
-
Provides additional information to clarify when listener does not understand the child’s meaning
-
Uses language to persuade or to state an opinion
-
Uses body language, facial expressions, and tone to predict behavior
-
Tells stories with characters and a more complex sense of structure to events and actions
Child enjoys, attends to, understands, and makes meanings from spoken and written language of storytelling and books.
What educators might observe
-
Expresses an opinion about a story
-
Compares stories with one another (e.g., “In all the Skippy Jon Jones books, Skippy goes on adventures in his closet.”)
-
Asks questions about the stories and texts
-
Makes predictions about what will happen in stories or texts based on adult modeling
-
Responds to stories or texts by incorporating characters and narratives from them into dramatic play
-
Uses books to learn more about topics of interest (e.g., creates a map of the subway system based on text and their lived experience)
Child develops the ability to recognize and manipulate the different sounds in spoken language(s).
What educators might observe
-
Demonstrates awareness that spoken language is composed of smaller sound segments (e.g., labels a drawing using initial sounds)
-
Shows word awareness by isolating a single word from a sentence
-
Produces one or more words that rhyme with another word (e.g., “What rhymes with log?”)
-
Provides a word that fits with a group of words sharing an initial sound (e.g., “Sock, Sara, and Song all start with the /s/ sound. What else starts with the /s/ sound?”)
-
Produces the sounds made by many letters
-
Uses initial and some final sounds in invented spelling (e.g. writes, “IATK” For “I ate cake”)
-
Emergent multilingual children show awareness of sounds from home language(s)
Child uses materials and/ or language to make meaning for themselves and/or an audience.
What educators might observe
-
Collaborates on shared writing (e.g., contributes a sentence to a class letter thanking the custodial staff)
-
Uses drawing and invented spelling to tell an original story of connected events or related ideas on a topic
-
Shares expertise about a topic of interest though a verbal presentation, drawing, and/ or writing
-
Collaborates with peers to recount an event, each child adding to the story
-
Plans and extends dramatic and symbolic play with peers
-
Develops characters and settings within dramatic play
-
Composes messages that approximate the features and qualities of scripts in more precise ways (e.g., writes more recognizable letters; writes from left to right in English)
Child views, creates, and makes meaning of visual communication and multimedia documentation, which includes drawings, collections, photographs, videos and displays.
What educators might observe
-
Plans to use multimedia documentation to record and extend their work in the learning environment
-
Reflects on accuracy of visual documentation (e.g., looks at a picture of a dinosaur and says, “I think they were even bigger than that.”)
