Experiences in Language Arts

Welcome everyone!

This course will show you how we can help ALL children start off on the right foot toward later success in school and in life! As educators, you will learn about:

• How to help children communicate and express themselves;

• How important your role is;

• How much of a difference you can make;

• How easy it is to make this difference;

• Why this matters; and

• How to create joyful language and literacy experiences!

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The first thing that you will learn is that reading and writing is just speaking and listening put on paper. The more we support children's early language (speaking and listening) development, the easier it will be for them to understand what they read and how to write later on (ILA, 2018).

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The next thing you will learn is that the way you interact with children matters. We are going to learn that what we think about our job as an educator affects how we feel about our role, and this affects how we act with the children in our care.

One of the most important ingredients in high-quality child care is warm, responsive, and engaging relationships. Your body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, and interactions matter (Think, Feel, Act, 2013).

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And finally, you are going to learn that in order for children to succeed with reading and writing later on, they need some core skills that will help them eventually be able to sound out words well so that they will be able to spend most of their time enjoying and thinking critically and creatively about what they read & write (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008, National Reading Panel, 2000).

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To help us sort all of this out, we will be playing a little sorting game with Clicky Ricky (see "Click-a-Stick"). We are going to learn about the things that we can do to support children's later language and literacy development by sorting preschool language and literacy skills sticks into one of three "jars":

1. Things that help us decode later on;

2. Things that help us understand, enjoy, and think critically and creatively about what we read later on; and

3. The quality of relationships that make all of this possible.

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NEXT STEP: Go to "Click-a-Stick" at the top and follow the instructions.

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References

International Literacy Association. (2018). What effective Pre-K literacy instruction looks like. Retrieved from

https://www.literacyworldwide.org/docs/default-source/where-we-stand/ila-what-effective-pre-k-literacy-instruction-looks-like.pdf

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National Center for Family Literacy (U.S.), & National Early Literacy Panel (U.S.). (2008). Developing early literacy: Report of the national early literacy panel.Washington, D.C.: National Institute for Literacy. Retrieved from https://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/NELPReport09.pdf

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National Reading Panel (U.S.), & National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S.). (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction: Reports of the subgroups. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health. Retrieved from https://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/nrp/smallbook

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Ontario Ministry of Education (2013). Think, Feel, Act: Lessons from research about young children. Toronto: Author. Retrieved from http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/childcare/researchbriefs.pdf