Child will develop the ability to speak and/ or sign in increasingly complete, complex, precise, and varied ways.
What educators might observe
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Asks questions such as “ ¿Quieres jugo? ” (“Do you want juice?”) along with “when” and “how” questions
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Answers “who,” “what,” “where,” and “when” questions in preferred language (e.g.,“ Vivo en Nueva York. ” [“I live in New York.”])
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Uses some pronouns correctly, such as “I,” “you,” “me,” “he,” and “they”
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Uses some plural words, like “toys,” “birds,” and “buses”
What educators might observe
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Uses past and future tenses (“Yesterday we went to the park, where I’m gonna have my birthday party!”)
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Talks about a variety of topics for different purposes
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Demonstrates more complex sentences and precise vocabulary in areas of interest, explaining, for example, “No, that’s not a digger, it’s an excavator!”
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Emergent multilingual learners may ask to participate in activities using short sentences or approximations, for example, “Can I play?” or “I play?”
What educators might observe
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Initiates and maintains a conversation with peers for exchanges over longer periods of time
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Talks about language, as in “I know Spanish,” or “I think that is what you said.”
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Responds to the question, “What did you say?”
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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.”)
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Talks in different ways depending on place and listener
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Tells simple stories
Child will develop their ability to listen and understand complete, complex, precise, and varied language.
What educators might observe
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Answers questions that show knowledge of events
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Asks questions that show attention to activities (e.g., “Why did the boy run away?”)
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Follows two-step directions (e.g., “Please put the blocks away, then sit on the rug.”)
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Begins to understand opposites (e.g., hot and cold, stop and go, up and down)
What educators might observe
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Answers open-ended questions
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Follows directions that involve a twoor three-step sequence of actions, which may not be related (e.g., “Please pick up your toys, and then get your shoes.”)
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Extends/expands the thought or idea expressed by another
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Engages in conversation that develops a thought or idea (e.g., talks about a past event)
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Listens to others in a group discussion for a short period; gains information through listening
What educators might observe
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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.”)
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Observes and interprets details about environment, events, or speakers
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Understands words for time, like “yesterday,” “today,” and “tomorrow”
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Role plays familiar events described by others, such as a friend’s story
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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
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Asks questions about the current activity (“Can I have a brown crayon?”)
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Begins to take turns during conversations
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Makes formal requests or responses, such as “May I please...” and “Thank you.”
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Recognizes what rising and falling speech sounds mean and attempts to answer questions
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Acknowledges a partner’s message using fillers, such as “yeah” and “ok.”
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Begins code-switching and uses simpler language when talking to very young children
What educators might observe
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Adds to a conversation by retelling a similar experience (“I love ice cream too, and I had some vanilla yesterday.”)
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Initiates an exchange to provide information or to clarify (“My teacher said today is Monday. On Mondays I go to karate!”)
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Takes turns on topic in an extended exchange, and shows knowledge of the speaker/listener role
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Switches language or mode of communication as appropriate with family member or person with whom they are speaking
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Tells stories with chains of events and actions
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Uses terms that have meanings that are dependent on context, such as “this,” “that,” “here,” and “there”
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Experiments with the effects some words (such as “Poo-poo head”) can have on others
What educators might observe
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Pays attention to speaker in a conversation
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Takes turns during group conversations, raising hand to speak, with reminders
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Emergent multilingual children gauge and then speak in the dominant language of communication used by the person with whom they are speaking
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Provides additional information to clarify when listener does not understand the child’s meaning
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Uses language to persuade or to state an opinion
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Uses body language, facial expressions, and tone to predict behavior
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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
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Makes connections between their experience and the experience of a character in a story or text (e.g., telling a friend at the park, “I’m planting seeds, just like Harold.”)
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Delights in stories and texts (e.g., looks at books independently, laughs at a humorous story, has a favorite book of poems, or treasures a birthday party invitation)
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Demonstrates emergent reading behavior (e.g., holds a book and reads aloud to dolls or stuffed animals; shows pictures or repeats memorized part of text)
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Turns pages of a familiar book in the direction that print follows in their home language
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Demonstrates understanding of narratives by telling and retelling stories nonverbally and/or verbally
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Asks and answers “what,” “where,” “who,” and “why” questions about books and during read-aloud sessions
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Uses background knowledge to connect with culturally relevant stories or pictures
What educators might observe
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Looks for and finds texts that are enjoyable to look at or read from a library
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Participates in dialogue about stories, images, or texts in preferred language (e.g. says, “ También me gusta .”)
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Talks about characters in stories or texts, such as something funny that characters said or did
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Retells a favorite story or text in play, imitating the rhythm or structure of the story/text (e.g., creating a coconut tree from a paper towel roll and using letter magnets to retell the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom )
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Asks and answers open-ended questions about the meaning of pictures or texts (e.g., “How do the colors that the illustrator used make you feel?”)
What educators might observe
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Expresses an opinion about a story
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Compares stories with one another (e.g., “In all the Skippy Jon Jones books, Skippy goes on adventures in his closet.”)
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Asks questions about the stories and texts
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Makes predictions about what will happen in stories or texts based on adult modeling
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Responds to stories or texts by incorporating characters and narratives from them into dramatic play
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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
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Repeats simple familiar rhymes or sings favorite songs
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Shows enjoyment of rhyme and alliteration (e.g., sings to themself, “Mee, gee, fee, tee”)
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Participates in a read-aloud with a rhyming pattern, filling in the missing rhyming word
What educators might observe
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Demonstrates rhyme recognition, such as identifying which words rhyme from a group of three like hat, log, and cat
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Recognizes phonemic changes in words, such as noticing the change in “Old Mc- Donald had a charm”
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Provides a rhyming word such as “clay!” when given the clue “I’m thinking of something like play dough that we have out at the art area that rhymes with play.”
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Notices and identifies words that start with the same sound
What educators might observe
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Demonstrates awareness that spoken language is composed of smaller sound segments (e.g., labels a drawing using initial sounds)
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Shows word awareness by isolating a single word from a sentence
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Produces one or more words that rhyme with another word (e.g., “What rhymes with log?”)
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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?”)
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Produces the sounds made by many letters
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Uses initial and some final sounds in invented spelling (e.g. writes, “IATK” For “I ate cake”)
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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
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Uses stuffed animals or small figures to recreate events from their lived experience or from media
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Draws to represent an idea or experience; drawing may not be recognizable
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Scribbles, or draws letter-like shapes and says they are writing
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Dictates a short story to be read aloud and acted out (e.g., “Daddy came home and made dinner. Batman ate dinner too.”)
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Plans dramatic play with peers (e.g., “You be the baby and I’ll be the mommy. And I’ll go to work, ok?”)
What educators might observe
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Uses visual art materials (e.g., drawings, paintings, sculptures, and collages) to express ideas, knowledge, and feelings
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Begins to form letter shapes that resemble the script of their home language
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Attempts to write own name
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Combines drawing and emergent writing (e.g., child draws their friends and labels them with rows of scribbles and shapes that resemble home language or English)
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Narrates a storyline that involves multiple characters and actions that occur in a specific setting (e.g., pretend family takes a trip to the beach)
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Dictates a story to an adult to transcribe in their home language
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Uses environmental print to communicate (e.g., draws orange circle with an “M” inside to tell about their trip to the Met’s game)
What educators might observe
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Collaborates on shared writing (e.g., contributes a sentence to a class letter thanking the custodial staff)
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Uses drawing and invented spelling to tell an original story of connected events or related ideas on a topic
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Shares expertise about a topic of interest though a verbal presentation, drawing, and/ or writing
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Collaborates with peers to recount an event, each child adding to the story
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Plans and extends dramatic and symbolic play with peers
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Develops characters and settings within dramatic play
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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
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Collects and shares objects with others (e.g., on a nature walk collects acorns and leaves to show educators and peers)
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Makes connections between documentation boards, drawings, and charts and past events (e.g., the child looks at a documentation board of the class trip to the fire station and says, “We saw the big hose.”
What educators might observe
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Uses documentation of previous experiences in the learning environment to plan their play (e.g., looks at a photograph of a block building from the day before and tries to recreate the building)
What educators might observe
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Plans to use multimedia documentation to record and extend their work in the learning environment
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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.”)
