Books and Activities for Primary Aged Children
Books for Primary Aged Children:
1. "The Owl Who Was Afraid of The Dark" by Jill Tomlinson
2. "All the Wild Wonders" by Windy Cooling
3. "What Was the March on Washington?" by Kathleen Krull
I chose these books for primary aged children because a wide range of genres should be provided such as fiction, non-fiction, poetry, fairytales, etc. Chapter books are also appropriate for this age group, but it is still important for books to have frequent illustrations because they provide important contextual information about the concepts presented in the books.
Activities for Primary Aged Children:
1. Word families: Word family activities may focus on onset and rime. In these activities, children sort words (written on cards) from two or more word families, such as hop, stop, mop, map, tap, and cap. Initially, the teacher guides the sorting process. Later on, children can work in pairs or alone. After sorting, words are written down in categories, and children are encouraged to add more words to each category on their own. When children can quickly and correctly read and spell the selected word families, the focus can change to new word families. Word family activities enhance learning knowledge by encouraging children to identify and manipulate words, which enhances their phonetic knowledge of oral and written language.
2. Shared Reading: In shared reading, children take turns reading to each other from individual copies of either basal readers or trade books. At the first grade level, reading pairs are more effective than larger groupings. In second or third grade, children may be able to have shared reading in groups of three or four. The purpose of shared reading is to provide opportunities for children to read orally in an informal setting. Through repeated opportunities to read texts at their appropriate level of reading, children develop reading fluency.
3. Group Projects: A wide variety of language skills are enhanced through group projects. In these projects, students use listening, speaking, reading, and writing to explore, create, and solve problems. By working together on a project, children are encouraged to reflect on their thinking. The development of this "critical reflectiveness" contributes to literate thinking. Group projects require social and interaction skills that students may need to acquire over an extended period of time. Teachers may need to introduce collaborative projects one step at a time, providing a supportive environment in which students can gradually assume more responsibility for planning and conducting their own projects.
Monday, December 7, 2015
Books and Activities for Kindergarteners
Books for Kindergarteners:
1. "A Bad Case of the Stripes" by David Shannon
2. "Alexander and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" by Judith Viorst
3. "Pancakes for Breakfast" by Tomie DePaola
I chose these books because at the kindergarten level is is important to have wordless picture books as well as books with printed text. Compared to the books used at the preschool level, books selected for a kindergarteners should have a more complex story plot and more text on each page. Supportive, complementary illustrations that enhance children's comprehension of the story or nonfiction content are still essential.
Activities for Kindergarteners:
1. Story reenactment: Children's language competencies are enhanced by opportunities to reenact a familiar story through dramatization. This may take several forms. The teacher may begin by reading the story and having children act out different events nonverbally. Gradually, children's verbal participation can be increased to include unison responses, dialogue segments, or whole conversational interactions.
2. Creating morning messages: Using a "morning message" activity provides opportunities to focus on both oral and written language. This activity is based in a letter you would write to your students each day about the upcoming events in your classroom, the weather, school events, or an experience you have had. This letter provides the basis for focusing on the sounds of words as well as the way words are written.
3. Story-telling through dictated writing: Opportunities to dictate stories encourage children to use their oral language competencies in creating a text. Because children are not constrained by the writing process, their stories have more elaboration and structure than their stories would if they were writing them down themselves. As the children dictate a story, the teacher writes it on a chart paper or on chalkboard. Each child contributes a sentence or a thought. The teacher is careful to preserve the sentence structure or dialect of each child. After the story is completed, the teacher reads it back to the students, pointing to each word as it is read. Then the story is read a second time, with the children encouraged to join in unison or by reading their own sentences.
Books for Kindergarteners:
1. "A Bad Case of the Stripes" by David Shannon
2. "Alexander and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" by Judith Viorst
3. "Pancakes for Breakfast" by Tomie DePaola
I chose these books because at the kindergarten level is is important to have wordless picture books as well as books with printed text. Compared to the books used at the preschool level, books selected for a kindergarteners should have a more complex story plot and more text on each page. Supportive, complementary illustrations that enhance children's comprehension of the story or nonfiction content are still essential.
Activities for Kindergarteners:
1. Story reenactment: Children's language competencies are enhanced by opportunities to reenact a familiar story through dramatization. This may take several forms. The teacher may begin by reading the story and having children act out different events nonverbally. Gradually, children's verbal participation can be increased to include unison responses, dialogue segments, or whole conversational interactions.
2. Creating morning messages: Using a "morning message" activity provides opportunities to focus on both oral and written language. This activity is based in a letter you would write to your students each day about the upcoming events in your classroom, the weather, school events, or an experience you have had. This letter provides the basis for focusing on the sounds of words as well as the way words are written.
3. Story-telling through dictated writing: Opportunities to dictate stories encourage children to use their oral language competencies in creating a text. Because children are not constrained by the writing process, their stories have more elaboration and structure than their stories would if they were writing them down themselves. As the children dictate a story, the teacher writes it on a chart paper or on chalkboard. Each child contributes a sentence or a thought. The teacher is careful to preserve the sentence structure or dialect of each child. After the story is completed, the teacher reads it back to the students, pointing to each word as it is read. Then the story is read a second time, with the children encouraged to join in unison or by reading their own sentences.
Books and Activities for Pre-schoolers
Books for Pre-schoolers:
1. "The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein
2. "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" by Bill Martin
3. "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" by Laura Numeroff
Books for preschoolers should be familiar and colorful. I chose these because they contain colorful pictures and include poetry, narratives, and the alphabet. This range provides children with exposure to a wide variety of language structures and vocabulary. The children's vocabulary is also enhanced due to the clear illustrations that are related to the books.
Activities for Pre-schoolers:
1. Painting with Celery/Art activities: Art activities provide an opportunity for children to explore independently the various mediums of artistic expression. Although art activities are visually expressive and communicative by nature, they also provide opportunities to enhance language development. Language goals for art activities focus on encouraging children to develop conceptual knowledge related to art and to be able to verbally describe the colors, textures, or shapes with which they are working with.
2. Educational Computer Games: Research as well as practice indicates that computers can serve as catalysts for positive social interaction and emotional growth. The language goals associated with a preschool computer program include enhancing children's receptive and expressive competencies related to oral and written language. Software that involves interactive or animated stories will enhance children's listening comprehension and encourage them to talk about the stories they hear and view.
3. Sandbox's or other outdoor activities: Outdoor play provides many opportunities for exploratory activities. Language goals for outdoor play focus on enhancing children's communication with each other and with teachers as well as developing concepts through direct experiences. Children can be encouraged to describe natural events such as rain, snowfall, and wind. You can also encourage children to describe their experiences and the events they see and to ask questions about what they experience or see.
Books for Pre-schoolers:
1. "The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein
2. "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" by Bill Martin
3. "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" by Laura Numeroff
Books for preschoolers should be familiar and colorful. I chose these because they contain colorful pictures and include poetry, narratives, and the alphabet. This range provides children with exposure to a wide variety of language structures and vocabulary. The children's vocabulary is also enhanced due to the clear illustrations that are related to the books.
Activities for Pre-schoolers:
1. Painting with Celery/Art activities: Art activities provide an opportunity for children to explore independently the various mediums of artistic expression. Although art activities are visually expressive and communicative by nature, they also provide opportunities to enhance language development. Language goals for art activities focus on encouraging children to develop conceptual knowledge related to art and to be able to verbally describe the colors, textures, or shapes with which they are working with.
2. Educational Computer Games: Research as well as practice indicates that computers can serve as catalysts for positive social interaction and emotional growth. The language goals associated with a preschool computer program include enhancing children's receptive and expressive competencies related to oral and written language. Software that involves interactive or animated stories will enhance children's listening comprehension and encourage them to talk about the stories they hear and view.
3. Sandbox's or other outdoor activities: Outdoor play provides many opportunities for exploratory activities. Language goals for outdoor play focus on enhancing children's communication with each other and with teachers as well as developing concepts through direct experiences. Children can be encouraged to describe natural events such as rain, snowfall, and wind. You can also encourage children to describe their experiences and the events they see and to ask questions about what they experience or see.
Books and Activities for Infants/Toddlers
Books for Infants/Toddlers:
1. "Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes" by Mem Fox
2. "Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What do you see?" by Bill Martin Jr.
3. "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle
I chose these books because it is important to chose books that have clear, colorful illustrations of familiar objects and events for the infant/toddler age group. These books have a patterned text which are enjoyed by their rhythmic language and becomes memorable to infants/toddlers. These books include simple plots or story lines that kids these ages enjoy.
Activities for Infants/Toddlers:
1. Crib Toy/Crib Activity: Crib activities typically provide a variety of activities that stimulate visual, tactile, and auditory perception. Crib activity centers are designed to be manipulated safely by infants. When infants are interacting with an activity center, teachers may occasionally mediate infants' interactions. When labeling or talking about an item, a teacher should touch the item in question and check to be sure the child is also focusing on the item, engaging in shared reference.
2. Balls and push-pull toys: Toys that move when touched or pulled encourage infants to move with or after the toys. These toys also encourage children to use their hands to move the toys. This helps children learn cause-and-effect relations and figure out how to repeat actions to create the same results. Teachers' verbal mapping and affective responses to children's actions stimulate conceptual development and encourage verbal (pre-word) interactions.
3. Blocks and manipulatives: Blocks and other manipulatives provide unlimited opportunities for symbolic play. A teacher should be available to monitor this area and enhance children's social-verbal relationships through mediation and by participating in child-initiated dialogues. Because toddlers may simply want to explore how blocks are stacked and manipulated, it is important that teachers carefully observe the block play and determine when it is appropriate to engage the child in conversation about his "building" or to mediate his interaction with others.
4. Book sharing: Book sharing with toddlers can enhance development of each of the aspects of language knowledge: phonological, semantic, syntactic, morphemic, and pragmatic. Two key factors in successfully engaging toddlers in book sharing are selecting appropriate books to share and using specific interaction strategies during book sharing. It is also important to remember that the focus of this activity is on exploring the book rather than reading the text in the book.
Pragmatic Knowledge
What is Pragmatic Knowledge?
Pragmatic Knowledge is the knowledge of different ways in which language is used in different settings and for different purposes. An example of this is how you would speak more casually with your best friend than with your best friend's parents. Characteristics of normal development relating to this aspect include, dialogic turn taking, role playing, and things are communicated in a variety of ways using different levels of pitch, loudness, and tempo as well as nonverbal behaviors.
Pragmatic Knowledge in Infants/Toddlers:
Infants' expression of communicative intent first appears in nonlinguistic forms, such as facial expression, gaze, and gesture. During later infancy, children appear to use gestures to express two types of intent. Pointing gestures are used to indicate or draw attention to an object or entity, while reaching gestures are associated with requests. Having established this shared reference, the response of the adult to the child's gesture sets up a turn-taking or communication loop. Representational/symbolic gestures are consistent actions used by a child in referring to events or objects. For example, a child might use a "sucking" action to refer to her pacifier or a dancing action to request that a radio be played. These gestures are used similarly to the way words are used- that is, a gesture is used in different contexts to refer to the same object, event, or request. It is important to remember that infants' use of gestures and the development of symbolic gestures take place in social interaction with their families and other in their environment. As with all verbal communication with young children, nonverbal communication is successful only if the people involved in the interaction are engaged in eye contact and shared reference. Social routines involving greetings and farewells and ritualized games of peek-a-boo and pat-a-cake also contribute to infants' development of pragmatic knowledge of language. As infants interact with those around them, they begin to participate in dialogic turn taking. This dialogic turn taking contributes to children's awareness of how language is used for different purposes or intents in a specific context.
When they are toddlers, children begin to respond more verbally in conversational settings and take a few turns in maintaining the interaction. Older toddlers introduce or change the topic of conversation. In addition, toddlers may use some attention-getting words and gestures. Gestures are used to increase the semantic content of what is said; however, as children's productive vocabulary increases during toddlerhood, they begin to rely less on gestures and gesture less during conversations. In literate cultures where children interact with print and texts, their behaviors may indicate that they are becoming aware of certain ways in which written language is used to communicate intent or purpose. Teachers and parents who engage in storybook sharing with both infants and toddlers provide opportunities for children to experience that way in which books communicate meaning. Storybook interactions with toddlers may continue for only a few minutes due to the limited attention span and distractability of toddlers. Toddlers' responses to print may indicate an awareness that print is different from pictures and is associated with meaning in a particular way. For example, a toddler who indicates that her wavy-line scribble says her name is indicating this awareness, as is a toddler who hums when she sees a page with music printed but talks only on a text page.
Pragmatic Knowledge in Pre-Schoolers:
During the preschool years, children begin to use language for a wider range of purposes than they have in the past. Children begin to use language to request permission, to invoke social rules, to express emotions, and to make judgements. Language may also be used for jokes and teasing or to make an indirect request. Preschoolers gradually develop conversational competencies, increasing the number of conversational "turns" as well as a stronger topic focus. The particular way the child communicates the message and the resultant success of the message further develop the child's pragmatic knowledge of language. Throughout frequent interactions with others, children gain experience in using language differently in different settings. Dramatic play activities can provide a further look at children's developing pragmatic knowledge as they negotiate and assume various roles and communicate with each other. In assuming a specific role, a child may use a specific variation of language or register. Additional evidence of preschoolers' developing pragmatic knowledge is found in research focusing on block play and pretend telephone conversations. Research on the development of storytelling among young children provides a picture of how children develop language competency in using language to create monologues. Prior to the preschool years, children's linguistic behaviors occur in predominately dialogic interactions or short conversations with adults providing a structure or linguistic scaffolding within which the child participates. Preschoolers gradually begin to engage in monologues, or settings where they are the main speaker to a listening audience. This shift between dialogue and monologue represent's a significant change in the way language is used.
The pragmatic component of language development involves knowledge of the ways in which written language is used to communicate in different contexts. As children interact with written language in their world, inside and outside school settings, they learn how written language is used for various purposes. Pragmatic knowledge of written language builds on children's pragmatic knowledge of oral language. Children are active explorers in this process. Children's interaction with written language occur in three ways: as observers of how written language is used in their environments, as questioners of adults who are engaged in literacy-related tasks, and as active explorer-experimenters with written language. In homes where literacy-related events occur frequently, children's observation of how written language is used may begin in infancy or toddlerhood. Preschool children's curiosity about written language is evident when they see print in their environment and question their parents or teachers about it. Preschool children's early writing also provides evidence that children are learning about the different ways in which written language is shared for different purposes. Children's early explorations of writing often involve creating some writing and then giving it to an adult to be "read." Such requests indicate that the child is aware that writing has a purpose. Through preschoolers' experiences as observers and participants in shared book interactions, they develop knowledge of how written language is used in books. They gradually become aware of the left-right, top-down progression of texts. They learn how to orient a book and proceed through the book from the front to the back. They also become aware that the print, rather than the pictures, carries the real message of the story. Children with frequent storybook experiences also learn that the text is stable; they expect that what it says one day, it will say the next day. Parents and teachers often find this out when they do not read the text exactly the same way or with the same intonation during repeated readings. Their preschoolers will stop them, letting the adult reader know that what was said was not "right." Through understanding the significance of children's early explorations and experimentation in reading and writing, teachers will have a better awareness of the complex ways in which children's language knowledge is developing. Teachers can enhance children's further development by being available to answer preschoolers' questions and to welcome preschoolers' participation in literacy-related events throughout classroom activities.
Pragmatic Knowledge in Kindergarteners:
In many respects, pragmatic knowledge will determine a child's competence in communicating and in participating in various social situations. Kindergarteners use language for a wide variety of purposes. They use language to tell stories, direct peers, express pride, role-play, engage others as a resource for help or information, and gain and hold others' attention. Language may also be used indirectly to request help or regulate another's behavior. Teacher can expect to see differences between kindergarten-age children in their awareness and use of pragmatic knowledge for oral and written language. Children's pragmatic knowledge of language is influenced by not only the variety of social settings they experience but also the frequency of those opportunities and their interactions as listeners and speakers. The various social settings that children encounter during their kindergarten year can enhance acquisition of pragmatic knowledge. Children can learn how to respond during verbal interactions with their teachers and other school staff, such as the principal, assistant principal, janitors, secretaries, older children, teachers' aides, and guest speakers. Pragmatic knowledge involves not only knowing when one can speak and to whom but also the appropriate topics of conversation and cultural expectations for initiating, maintaining, and ending conversations. Kindergarten children's pragmatic knowledge of written language is evident in the different ways they use language when telling a story and when they are dictating a story for someone to write down. Children's competencies in dictating stories or narratives are another component of pragmatic knowledge. Dictated stories provide children with an opportunity to use language to share personally important events and experiences.
Children's listening and speaking competencies will influence the way they will interact with you as their teacher and with their peers. For example, does the child establish eye contact and engage in a turn-taking conversation with you as well as with other children? Does the child speak clearly? Does the child listen attentively at group time? While children's phonological awareness is related to their attempts in using written language to create stories and other writing, their understanding of the ways in which print functions in different settings and their early reading or reading-like behaviors represent further language knowledge and competencies related to school success.
Pragmatic Knowledge in Primary Age Children:
During the primary years, children may have increased opportunities to participate in a wider variety of activities and experiences. These may include opportunities to participate in sports or other extracurricular activities in the community, going on family vacations, visiting museums, and attending sporting events or religious based events. In each of these activities, there may be specific ways in which language is used in terms of vocabulary, conversational patterns, and the use of an informal dialect or home language. In addition, the curriculum present in children's school classrooms during the primary years typically places a strong emphasis on becoming more metalinguistically aware of specific features of language. During the primary years, children begin to make specific requests for clarification and become increasingly more competent in conversations. They are better able to take into account what their listeners know when engaged in conversation. They're pragmatic knowledge of how to use language in different situations can facilitate resolving conflict. This flexibility in using language differently in different situations helps them work through conflict and express themselves more clearly. Primary children are able to reflect more on their actions as well as others' actions. Due to their increased thinking skills, children are now also able to generate different ways of solving problems. Teachers can provide opportunities in the classroom for children to develop a vocabulary as well as specific communication strategies for resolving conflict and maintaing friendships. Children's awareness of the pragmatic aspects of written language is influenced by the contexts surrounding them. During the primary years, a good part of each day is spent in a school setting. The ways written language is used and the opportunities for children to participate in a wide range of contexts influence the development of children's pragmatic knowledge. Children will show this awareness when they are given opportunities at home and at school to use writing in a variety of ways. Teachers who carefully observe the ways children engage in reading and writing can use these observations and new understandings to better develop and implement curricula.
An important part of pragmatic language knowledge that is developed in the primary grades is an awareness of academic English as well as beginning to use academic English in learning contexts. Academic English involves pragmatic as well as semantic, morphemic, and syntactic features. For example, academic English is used in summarizing and making inferences when reading and interacting with hands-on materials. Academic English is also used metacognitively when children use language to plan, monitor, and evaluate their own learning. In addition, academic English is used during times when children are engaged in instructional conversations as they ask and respond to questions as well as when they interact with classmates during collaborative projects. To be a successful learner in settings where academic English is used, children need to develop an awareness of the specific ways in which academic English is used in cognitive, metacognitive, and social-affective strategies as a part of the learning process. This also includes responding to writing assignments where informational text and narrative text are assigned.
Tips for Parents:
1. One idea is that you can role play conversations. Pretend to talk to different people in different situations. For example, set up a situation (or use one that occurs during the course of a day) in which the individual has to explain the same thing to different people, such as teaching the rules of a game, or how to make a cake. Model how the person should talk to a child versus an adult, or a family member versus a friend of the family.
2. If your child responds in an incorrect way, respond to the intended message rather than correcting the pronunciation or grammar. Be sure to provide an appropriate model in your own speech. For example, if an individual says, "That's how it doesn't go," respond, "You're right. That's not how it goes."
3. Encourage the use of persuasion. For example, ask the person what he or she would say to convince family members or loved ones to let him or her do something. Discuss different ways to present a message:
What is Pragmatic Knowledge?
Pragmatic Knowledge is the knowledge of different ways in which language is used in different settings and for different purposes. An example of this is how you would speak more casually with your best friend than with your best friend's parents. Characteristics of normal development relating to this aspect include, dialogic turn taking, role playing, and things are communicated in a variety of ways using different levels of pitch, loudness, and tempo as well as nonverbal behaviors.
Pragmatic Knowledge in Infants/Toddlers:
Infants' expression of communicative intent first appears in nonlinguistic forms, such as facial expression, gaze, and gesture. During later infancy, children appear to use gestures to express two types of intent. Pointing gestures are used to indicate or draw attention to an object or entity, while reaching gestures are associated with requests. Having established this shared reference, the response of the adult to the child's gesture sets up a turn-taking or communication loop. Representational/symbolic gestures are consistent actions used by a child in referring to events or objects. For example, a child might use a "sucking" action to refer to her pacifier or a dancing action to request that a radio be played. These gestures are used similarly to the way words are used- that is, a gesture is used in different contexts to refer to the same object, event, or request. It is important to remember that infants' use of gestures and the development of symbolic gestures take place in social interaction with their families and other in their environment. As with all verbal communication with young children, nonverbal communication is successful only if the people involved in the interaction are engaged in eye contact and shared reference. Social routines involving greetings and farewells and ritualized games of peek-a-boo and pat-a-cake also contribute to infants' development of pragmatic knowledge of language. As infants interact with those around them, they begin to participate in dialogic turn taking. This dialogic turn taking contributes to children's awareness of how language is used for different purposes or intents in a specific context.
When they are toddlers, children begin to respond more verbally in conversational settings and take a few turns in maintaining the interaction. Older toddlers introduce or change the topic of conversation. In addition, toddlers may use some attention-getting words and gestures. Gestures are used to increase the semantic content of what is said; however, as children's productive vocabulary increases during toddlerhood, they begin to rely less on gestures and gesture less during conversations. In literate cultures where children interact with print and texts, their behaviors may indicate that they are becoming aware of certain ways in which written language is used to communicate intent or purpose. Teachers and parents who engage in storybook sharing with both infants and toddlers provide opportunities for children to experience that way in which books communicate meaning. Storybook interactions with toddlers may continue for only a few minutes due to the limited attention span and distractability of toddlers. Toddlers' responses to print may indicate an awareness that print is different from pictures and is associated with meaning in a particular way. For example, a toddler who indicates that her wavy-line scribble says her name is indicating this awareness, as is a toddler who hums when she sees a page with music printed but talks only on a text page.
Pragmatic Knowledge in Pre-Schoolers:
During the preschool years, children begin to use language for a wider range of purposes than they have in the past. Children begin to use language to request permission, to invoke social rules, to express emotions, and to make judgements. Language may also be used for jokes and teasing or to make an indirect request. Preschoolers gradually develop conversational competencies, increasing the number of conversational "turns" as well as a stronger topic focus. The particular way the child communicates the message and the resultant success of the message further develop the child's pragmatic knowledge of language. Throughout frequent interactions with others, children gain experience in using language differently in different settings. Dramatic play activities can provide a further look at children's developing pragmatic knowledge as they negotiate and assume various roles and communicate with each other. In assuming a specific role, a child may use a specific variation of language or register. Additional evidence of preschoolers' developing pragmatic knowledge is found in research focusing on block play and pretend telephone conversations. Research on the development of storytelling among young children provides a picture of how children develop language competency in using language to create monologues. Prior to the preschool years, children's linguistic behaviors occur in predominately dialogic interactions or short conversations with adults providing a structure or linguistic scaffolding within which the child participates. Preschoolers gradually begin to engage in monologues, or settings where they are the main speaker to a listening audience. This shift between dialogue and monologue represent's a significant change in the way language is used.
The pragmatic component of language development involves knowledge of the ways in which written language is used to communicate in different contexts. As children interact with written language in their world, inside and outside school settings, they learn how written language is used for various purposes. Pragmatic knowledge of written language builds on children's pragmatic knowledge of oral language. Children are active explorers in this process. Children's interaction with written language occur in three ways: as observers of how written language is used in their environments, as questioners of adults who are engaged in literacy-related tasks, and as active explorer-experimenters with written language. In homes where literacy-related events occur frequently, children's observation of how written language is used may begin in infancy or toddlerhood. Preschool children's curiosity about written language is evident when they see print in their environment and question their parents or teachers about it. Preschool children's early writing also provides evidence that children are learning about the different ways in which written language is shared for different purposes. Children's early explorations of writing often involve creating some writing and then giving it to an adult to be "read." Such requests indicate that the child is aware that writing has a purpose. Through preschoolers' experiences as observers and participants in shared book interactions, they develop knowledge of how written language is used in books. They gradually become aware of the left-right, top-down progression of texts. They learn how to orient a book and proceed through the book from the front to the back. They also become aware that the print, rather than the pictures, carries the real message of the story. Children with frequent storybook experiences also learn that the text is stable; they expect that what it says one day, it will say the next day. Parents and teachers often find this out when they do not read the text exactly the same way or with the same intonation during repeated readings. Their preschoolers will stop them, letting the adult reader know that what was said was not "right." Through understanding the significance of children's early explorations and experimentation in reading and writing, teachers will have a better awareness of the complex ways in which children's language knowledge is developing. Teachers can enhance children's further development by being available to answer preschoolers' questions and to welcome preschoolers' participation in literacy-related events throughout classroom activities.
Pragmatic Knowledge in Kindergarteners:
In many respects, pragmatic knowledge will determine a child's competence in communicating and in participating in various social situations. Kindergarteners use language for a wide variety of purposes. They use language to tell stories, direct peers, express pride, role-play, engage others as a resource for help or information, and gain and hold others' attention. Language may also be used indirectly to request help or regulate another's behavior. Teacher can expect to see differences between kindergarten-age children in their awareness and use of pragmatic knowledge for oral and written language. Children's pragmatic knowledge of language is influenced by not only the variety of social settings they experience but also the frequency of those opportunities and their interactions as listeners and speakers. The various social settings that children encounter during their kindergarten year can enhance acquisition of pragmatic knowledge. Children can learn how to respond during verbal interactions with their teachers and other school staff, such as the principal, assistant principal, janitors, secretaries, older children, teachers' aides, and guest speakers. Pragmatic knowledge involves not only knowing when one can speak and to whom but also the appropriate topics of conversation and cultural expectations for initiating, maintaining, and ending conversations. Kindergarten children's pragmatic knowledge of written language is evident in the different ways they use language when telling a story and when they are dictating a story for someone to write down. Children's competencies in dictating stories or narratives are another component of pragmatic knowledge. Dictated stories provide children with an opportunity to use language to share personally important events and experiences.
Children's listening and speaking competencies will influence the way they will interact with you as their teacher and with their peers. For example, does the child establish eye contact and engage in a turn-taking conversation with you as well as with other children? Does the child speak clearly? Does the child listen attentively at group time? While children's phonological awareness is related to their attempts in using written language to create stories and other writing, their understanding of the ways in which print functions in different settings and their early reading or reading-like behaviors represent further language knowledge and competencies related to school success.
Pragmatic Knowledge in Primary Age Children:
During the primary years, children may have increased opportunities to participate in a wider variety of activities and experiences. These may include opportunities to participate in sports or other extracurricular activities in the community, going on family vacations, visiting museums, and attending sporting events or religious based events. In each of these activities, there may be specific ways in which language is used in terms of vocabulary, conversational patterns, and the use of an informal dialect or home language. In addition, the curriculum present in children's school classrooms during the primary years typically places a strong emphasis on becoming more metalinguistically aware of specific features of language. During the primary years, children begin to make specific requests for clarification and become increasingly more competent in conversations. They are better able to take into account what their listeners know when engaged in conversation. They're pragmatic knowledge of how to use language in different situations can facilitate resolving conflict. This flexibility in using language differently in different situations helps them work through conflict and express themselves more clearly. Primary children are able to reflect more on their actions as well as others' actions. Due to their increased thinking skills, children are now also able to generate different ways of solving problems. Teachers can provide opportunities in the classroom for children to develop a vocabulary as well as specific communication strategies for resolving conflict and maintaing friendships. Children's awareness of the pragmatic aspects of written language is influenced by the contexts surrounding them. During the primary years, a good part of each day is spent in a school setting. The ways written language is used and the opportunities for children to participate in a wide range of contexts influence the development of children's pragmatic knowledge. Children will show this awareness when they are given opportunities at home and at school to use writing in a variety of ways. Teachers who carefully observe the ways children engage in reading and writing can use these observations and new understandings to better develop and implement curricula.
An important part of pragmatic language knowledge that is developed in the primary grades is an awareness of academic English as well as beginning to use academic English in learning contexts. Academic English involves pragmatic as well as semantic, morphemic, and syntactic features. For example, academic English is used in summarizing and making inferences when reading and interacting with hands-on materials. Academic English is also used metacognitively when children use language to plan, monitor, and evaluate their own learning. In addition, academic English is used during times when children are engaged in instructional conversations as they ask and respond to questions as well as when they interact with classmates during collaborative projects. To be a successful learner in settings where academic English is used, children need to develop an awareness of the specific ways in which academic English is used in cognitive, metacognitive, and social-affective strategies as a part of the learning process. This also includes responding to writing assignments where informational text and narrative text are assigned.
Tips for Parents:
1. One idea is that you can role play conversations. Pretend to talk to different people in different situations. For example, set up a situation (or use one that occurs during the course of a day) in which the individual has to explain the same thing to different people, such as teaching the rules of a game, or how to make a cake. Model how the person should talk to a child versus an adult, or a family member versus a friend of the family.
2. If your child responds in an incorrect way, respond to the intended message rather than correcting the pronunciation or grammar. Be sure to provide an appropriate model in your own speech. For example, if an individual says, "That's how it doesn't go," respond, "You're right. That's not how it goes."
3. Encourage the use of persuasion. For example, ask the person what he or she would say to convince family members or loved ones to let him or her do something. Discuss different ways to present a message:
- Polite ("Please may I go to the party?") versus impolite ("You better let me go")
- Indirect ("That music is loud") versus direct ("Turn off the radio")
- Discuss why some requests would be more persuasive than others
Sunday, December 6, 2015
Morphemic Knowledge
What is Morphemic Knowledge?
Morphemic knowledge is the knowledge of word structure or how words are composed of one or more meaningful linguistic units. In summary, it is a form of spelling knowledge that focuses on the meaning of words in its smallest form (morphemes) and how they change when making compound words or using suffixes and prefixes. Characteristics of normal development relating to this aspect include, pronoun usage, using plural forms of nouns, overgeneralization (usage of morphemic rules for words that are not regular), using verb tenses, etc.
Morphemic Knowledge in Infants/Toddlers:
The development of the morphemic aspect of language knowledge is influenced by phonemic awareness. The ability to perceive sound distinctions associated with inflectional morphemes is necessary for the development of morphemic knowledge. As infants listen to language around them, they begin to develop receptive knowledge of the meaning-changing aspects of morphemes. For example, "You may have one cracker" versus "You may have these crackers" signals significant differences for the young child. The development of morphemic knowledge becomes more evident as children begin to produce language during the toddler years.
Pronoun usage begins during toddlerhood, with the use of "I, mine, my, it, and me." This is important to the development of morphemic knowledge in the sense that noun-verb agreement in English influences the use of inflectional morphemes. (ex: I go, He goes, We go). Children's production of verbs during the early toddler period is usually expressed in present tense or present progressive (ex: go-going). At the end of the second year, children usually begin regularly using plural forms of nouns. The first grammatical morphemes to appear include present progressive of verbs (go-going), plurality (toy-toys), and possessive (dog-dog's). The sequence of morpheme acquisition does not appear to be influenced by the frequency of parents' use of specific morphemes; instead, acquisition is thought to be related to the linguistic complexity involved in using the specific morpheme.
Morphemic Knowledge in Pre-Schoolers:
The preschool years are a time of significant development in morphemic knowledge. Children first develop knowledge of inflectional morphemes used to indicate plurality, possession, and verb tense. This typically begins between the ages of 2 and 4. Development of derivational morphemic knowledge begins later and takes longer. Derivational morphemes are morphemes added to words that change the part of speech or alter the meaning of the word, such as instruct-instructor, happy-unhappy. Specific variations in the use of morphemes are also acquired by young children as they interact with adults and other children in settings where a dialect variation or different language is spoken. Development of morphemic knowledge contributes to young children's linguistic competencies in providing a way of communicating meaning more precisely. By knowing how to change word structures to change meanings, children can communicate more effectively. Researchers have concluded that children do not learn morphology through simple imitation of adult speech; instead children appear to experiment actively with language to determine how word endings are used to influence the meaning of a sentence. As children develop their morphemic knowledge, their use of morphemes provides evidence that they are learning the general or regular patterns for using morphemes to communicate meaning using grammatical and semantic markers as well as learning the exceptions or irregular patterns.
Children's experiments with language can be observed as they use language to tell stories or in conversations. Overgeneralization occurs when children use their morphemic rules for words that are not regular. For example, the past tense of regular verbs is formed by adding -ed to the word as in walk-walked. When using irregular verbs in the past tense, children may overgeneralize and use falled as a past tense for fall, etc. Preschoolers also being to use comparatives. Children are not yet able to determine which comparatives are regular and which are irregular, so overgeneralization may occur, as in good, gooder, goodest. Evidence of preschoolers' developing morphemic knowledge can be also found in children's narratives.
Morphemic Knowledge in Kindergarteners:
Throughout the kindergarten year, morphemic knowledge increases as children become more aware of morphemes in oral language. Kindergarteners continue to develop their awareness of how to show verb tense by using morphemes. With regular verbs, -ed is added to the word, as in "wanted" and "jumped." More irregular verbs are mastered, such as went, gone, and caught; however, kindergarteners may still overgeneralize. Increasing morphemic knowledge is evident in kindergarteners' use of comparatives and superlatives. Kindergarten-age children appear to be aware that there are two ways of making comparatives and superlatives. One way is to add -er and -est to the root wood; another way is to use more or most in from of the root word. Sometimes, it appears that children are trying out several hypotheses as to how comparatives and superlatives are formed. For example, a kindergartener might use both forms of making comparatives, as in "even more dirtier." By age 5, most children have receptive and productive knowledge of the noun suffix -er. Children know that by adding this suffix to a verb, they can make the name for the person who does the verb action, as in teacher-teacher, bat-batter, etc. They may also create their own words. For example, upon noticing that a toy was broken, Sean told a classmate, "this needs to go to the fixer-upper."
Morphemic Knowledge in Primary Age Children:
During the primary years, children become more consciously aware of inflectional and derivational morphemes that are added to words to change the meaning of a word and/or to change the syntactic function of a word. While many primary-age children will have acquired most of the inflectional morphemes for marking plurality, possession, and past tense, their comprehension and use of derivational morphemes is still developing. Derivational morphemes are bound morphemes used with word stems that change the way a specific word functions in a sentence. For example, adding -ly to an adjective makes the word an adverb, as in quick-quickly. During the primary grades, children begin to form adverbs by using the suffix -ly and may use other derivational morphemes as well, depending on the presence of such morphemes in their oral and written language environments. Children's oral language may not provide evidence of the same use of morphemic knowledge as their written language. When using oral language, such as slang and dialect, children may not observe the same use of inflectional endings as they do when using written language. For example, on the playground, a child might say, "I'm goin' skate-boardin' after school," whereas if the child was writing this in a story for a class assignment, he would write, "I am going to go skateboarding after school." This difference reflects the way in which classroom instruction and exposure to academic English focuses on the use of both inflectional and derivational morphemes. Primary-age children's morphemic knowledge can be observed in their early attempts at encoding their thoughts into words on paper. While this knowledge is related to children's phonemic knowledge, as discussed in an earlier section, it also provides evidence of their understandings of word formation and morphemes. Throughout the primary years, children's morphemic knowledge continues to develop as they are engaged in informal conversations with others as well as in classroom activities that provide opportunities to hear, focus on, and use words containing inflectional and derivational morphemes.
Tips for Parents:
1. You can conduct word sorting activities where you ask your child sort the following words according to their affixes. Then they should guess the meaning of the affix based on their prior knowledge and the patterns they see.
2. Another idea is to make flash cards and ask your child to make as many real words as they can with these cards. Make sure that the cards contain several root words and multiple affixes.
What is Morphemic Knowledge?
Morphemic knowledge is the knowledge of word structure or how words are composed of one or more meaningful linguistic units. In summary, it is a form of spelling knowledge that focuses on the meaning of words in its smallest form (morphemes) and how they change when making compound words or using suffixes and prefixes. Characteristics of normal development relating to this aspect include, pronoun usage, using plural forms of nouns, overgeneralization (usage of morphemic rules for words that are not regular), using verb tenses, etc.
Morphemic Knowledge in Infants/Toddlers:
The development of the morphemic aspect of language knowledge is influenced by phonemic awareness. The ability to perceive sound distinctions associated with inflectional morphemes is necessary for the development of morphemic knowledge. As infants listen to language around them, they begin to develop receptive knowledge of the meaning-changing aspects of morphemes. For example, "You may have one cracker" versus "You may have these crackers" signals significant differences for the young child. The development of morphemic knowledge becomes more evident as children begin to produce language during the toddler years.
Pronoun usage begins during toddlerhood, with the use of "I, mine, my, it, and me." This is important to the development of morphemic knowledge in the sense that noun-verb agreement in English influences the use of inflectional morphemes. (ex: I go, He goes, We go). Children's production of verbs during the early toddler period is usually expressed in present tense or present progressive (ex: go-going). At the end of the second year, children usually begin regularly using plural forms of nouns. The first grammatical morphemes to appear include present progressive of verbs (go-going), plurality (toy-toys), and possessive (dog-dog's). The sequence of morpheme acquisition does not appear to be influenced by the frequency of parents' use of specific morphemes; instead, acquisition is thought to be related to the linguistic complexity involved in using the specific morpheme.
Morphemic Knowledge in Pre-Schoolers:
The preschool years are a time of significant development in morphemic knowledge. Children first develop knowledge of inflectional morphemes used to indicate plurality, possession, and verb tense. This typically begins between the ages of 2 and 4. Development of derivational morphemic knowledge begins later and takes longer. Derivational morphemes are morphemes added to words that change the part of speech or alter the meaning of the word, such as instruct-instructor, happy-unhappy. Specific variations in the use of morphemes are also acquired by young children as they interact with adults and other children in settings where a dialect variation or different language is spoken. Development of morphemic knowledge contributes to young children's linguistic competencies in providing a way of communicating meaning more precisely. By knowing how to change word structures to change meanings, children can communicate more effectively. Researchers have concluded that children do not learn morphology through simple imitation of adult speech; instead children appear to experiment actively with language to determine how word endings are used to influence the meaning of a sentence. As children develop their morphemic knowledge, their use of morphemes provides evidence that they are learning the general or regular patterns for using morphemes to communicate meaning using grammatical and semantic markers as well as learning the exceptions or irregular patterns.
Children's experiments with language can be observed as they use language to tell stories or in conversations. Overgeneralization occurs when children use their morphemic rules for words that are not regular. For example, the past tense of regular verbs is formed by adding -ed to the word as in walk-walked. When using irregular verbs in the past tense, children may overgeneralize and use falled as a past tense for fall, etc. Preschoolers also being to use comparatives. Children are not yet able to determine which comparatives are regular and which are irregular, so overgeneralization may occur, as in good, gooder, goodest. Evidence of preschoolers' developing morphemic knowledge can be also found in children's narratives.
Morphemic Knowledge in Kindergarteners:
Throughout the kindergarten year, morphemic knowledge increases as children become more aware of morphemes in oral language. Kindergarteners continue to develop their awareness of how to show verb tense by using morphemes. With regular verbs, -ed is added to the word, as in "wanted" and "jumped." More irregular verbs are mastered, such as went, gone, and caught; however, kindergarteners may still overgeneralize. Increasing morphemic knowledge is evident in kindergarteners' use of comparatives and superlatives. Kindergarten-age children appear to be aware that there are two ways of making comparatives and superlatives. One way is to add -er and -est to the root wood; another way is to use more or most in from of the root word. Sometimes, it appears that children are trying out several hypotheses as to how comparatives and superlatives are formed. For example, a kindergartener might use both forms of making comparatives, as in "even more dirtier." By age 5, most children have receptive and productive knowledge of the noun suffix -er. Children know that by adding this suffix to a verb, they can make the name for the person who does the verb action, as in teacher-teacher, bat-batter, etc. They may also create their own words. For example, upon noticing that a toy was broken, Sean told a classmate, "this needs to go to the fixer-upper."
Morphemic Knowledge in Primary Age Children:
During the primary years, children become more consciously aware of inflectional and derivational morphemes that are added to words to change the meaning of a word and/or to change the syntactic function of a word. While many primary-age children will have acquired most of the inflectional morphemes for marking plurality, possession, and past tense, their comprehension and use of derivational morphemes is still developing. Derivational morphemes are bound morphemes used with word stems that change the way a specific word functions in a sentence. For example, adding -ly to an adjective makes the word an adverb, as in quick-quickly. During the primary grades, children begin to form adverbs by using the suffix -ly and may use other derivational morphemes as well, depending on the presence of such morphemes in their oral and written language environments. Children's oral language may not provide evidence of the same use of morphemic knowledge as their written language. When using oral language, such as slang and dialect, children may not observe the same use of inflectional endings as they do when using written language. For example, on the playground, a child might say, "I'm goin' skate-boardin' after school," whereas if the child was writing this in a story for a class assignment, he would write, "I am going to go skateboarding after school." This difference reflects the way in which classroom instruction and exposure to academic English focuses on the use of both inflectional and derivational morphemes. Primary-age children's morphemic knowledge can be observed in their early attempts at encoding their thoughts into words on paper. While this knowledge is related to children's phonemic knowledge, as discussed in an earlier section, it also provides evidence of their understandings of word formation and morphemes. Throughout the primary years, children's morphemic knowledge continues to develop as they are engaged in informal conversations with others as well as in classroom activities that provide opportunities to hear, focus on, and use words containing inflectional and derivational morphemes.
Tips for Parents:
1. You can conduct word sorting activities where you ask your child sort the following words according to their affixes. Then they should guess the meaning of the affix based on their prior knowledge and the patterns they see.
2. Another idea is to make flash cards and ask your child to make as many real words as they can with these cards. Make sure that the cards contain several root words and multiple affixes.
Syntactic Knowledge
What is Syntactic Knowledge?
Syntactic knowledge is the knowledge of how words can be combined in meaningful sentences, phrases, or utterances. It involves the way that words are assembled and sentences are constructed in a particular language. Characteristics of normal development relating to this aspect include, telegraphic speech (use of two or three content words in an utterance with no function words), difficulty in pronounce use, speaking in short utterances, and an increase in the number of adverbs used to expand verb phrases (kindergarten).
Syntactic Knowledge in Infants/Toddlers:
Syntactic development during infancy is not readily evident because infants do not begin to use expressive language until the later part of infancy and then only in the form of idiomorphs and single words. However, research with infants has documented their ability to "detect changes in the order of sounds." Children's receptive knowledge of syntax is developing during infancy as they observe and begin to participate in the communicative contexts around them. Children at the one-word stage appear to indicate that words presented in strings are not isolated units but are part of larger constituents. This early awareness facilitates syntactic knowledge development. Children develop receptive knowledge of syntax through speech directed to them and also by being listeners-observers in adult-to-adult interactions. Syntactically, adult-to-child speech is shorter in length and less complex grammatically. It contains repetitions, uses few subordinate clauses, contains fewer modifiers and pronouns, and has more content words and fewer verbs. Older infants' receptive knowledge of syntax is evident in their nonverbal responses to questions or directions such as, "Where is your cup?" or "Go get the ball" or "Where is your nose?" When a child retrieves a cup or ball or points to his nose, comprehension of the question or request is evident. Infants who are involved in storybook interactions with adults are exposed to more complex syntactic structures than those present in daily conversational settings. As infants near their first birthday, they begin to participate verbally as well as nonverbally during storybook interactions. Adults intuitively appear to alter the exact text to fit the comprehension and linguistic competencies of children. They shorten the text, create their own version of the text, increase repetitions, ask questions, and add sound effects. These adaptations encourage more engagement from children.
Children's speech during the toddler years is characterized by longer utterances and utterances with specific syntactic features. It is often referred to as telegraphic speech. Telegraphic speech is defined as the child's use of two or three content words in an utterance, with no function words, such as conjunctions, articles, prepositions, and inflections. Simple sentences or utterances involving two or three words are created, such as "Daddy come" and "Mommy coat." Grammatical relations are implied in these two-word combinations. Syntactic knowledge is represented in the word order patterns found in telegraphic speech; however, the word order patterns are closely tied to a child's semantic knowledge. Because we cannot directly ask young children how they decide to combine words in utterances, we must analyze their utterances to see what syntactic patterns are present. Children appear to use this syntactic-semantic knowledge when speaking, using such word combinations as "more juice," "play more," "all gone," "kitty come," etc. Even though children may be using multiple word utterances as toddlers, they may have difficulty with pronoun use. Pronoun use is semantic in the sense that pronouns take the place of nouns in an utterance; however, the way pronoun reference works in a sentence or an utterance involves syntactic structure because a pronoun refers to a noun used earlier in the utterance or sentence, in a specific syntactic position. The acquisition of the pronouns, "I", and "you," is particularly complex for toddlers because the use of these pronouns depends on the role of the listener (you) and speaker (I). When toddlers participate in storybook activities with adults, they are exposed to more complex sentence structure than in everyday conversations. With young toddlers, adults may intuitively continue to adapt story text to fit the toddlers' comprehension and attention span. This adapted text often models simple syntactic structures similar to adult-to-child speech. With older toddlers, parents and teachers may also alternate reading short segments of text with conversational comments that engage a child in talking about the illustrations or a related experience. Teachers and parents may also use a series of questions to encourage children to use more complex explanations instead of responding only by pointing to the picture.
Syntactic Knowledge in Pre-Schoolers:
Preschool children's development of syntactic knowledge is evident in the length and structure of their speech. Children entering the preschool years typically are in the telegraphic speech stage, speaking in short utterances of two to three words. Although the sentence is considered a unit of structure in written language, oral language is often composed of smaller structural units, such as phrases composed of several words, and are referred to as "utterances." The grammatical complexity of preschoolers' speech occurs in significant ways: increasing noun and verb phrase complexity, using negation (no, not), producing interrogative sentences (questions), and beginning to use passive forms of sentences. Each of these new structures contributes to the increasing linguistic complexity of preschool children's language. As children's ability to engage in monologues or extended speech develops, they begin to use more complex syntax when sharing stories and accounts of personal experiences. Noun and verb complexity increases with the use of conjunctions (and) as well as with connectives (because, then, so, if).
Preschool children begin to use the word "no" at the beginning of an utterance; later on, the negative word-element appears within sentences, as in "I no want milk." Gradually contractions such as "don't" or "can't" appear. Preschool children ask a lot of questions. Some children seem to realize that, by asking questions such as "why?" they can keep a conversation going. In summary, during the preschool years, significant changes occur in children's syntactic knowledge. At the beginning, children are likely to use simple two and three word utterances, whereas at the end of the preschool years, children use a wider variety of syntactic structures characterized by greater complexity, having embedded clauses (because...) and conjoined clauses (...and...).
Syntactic Knowledge in Kindergarteners:
Kindergarten-age children can construct basic sentences with little difficulty. The average sentence length for 5-year-olds is five to seven words. Children can comprehend others' speech that is more syntactically complex than the speech they produce. Kindergarten-age children's acquisition of syntactic knowledge continues as they begin to use more complex noun and verb phrase structures. Increases in syntactic knowledge allow children to communicate more complex ideas. Acquisition of more complex noun phrase structures may involve clearer use of pronouns. Most kindergarten-age children have mastered pronoun use for indicating subjects (I, you, she, he, they) and objects (me, him, her, them); however, they are just beginning to master the use of reflexives (myself, himself, herself, etc.). Kindergarten-age children's speech is characterized by an increase in the number of adverbs used to expand verb phrases. Auxiliary verbs such as "have, do, will, was, and could" are also increasingly used throughout the kindergarten year. During the kindergarten year, children typically begin to comprehend passive sentence construction, although they may be able to produce only short sentences using passive voice. Children appear to use passive sentences for specific linguistic or discursive purposes. For example, when Steven approached his teacher and said, "The truck wheel got broke," he was using passive sentence construction that did not mention who broke the truck's wheel. It may be that Steven wanted to take the focus off who broke the wheel, or perhaps he just wanted to focus on the fact that it was broken and appeal to his teacher to fix the truck so he would be able to play with it.
Syntactic Knowledge in Primary Age Children:
Children's use of sentence structure becomes more elaborate and complex in both their oral and written language during the primary grade years. This syntactic development is influenced by language use in home, school, and community settings and by children's semantic language knowledge. Children who have been exposed to more complex language through a variety of genres, such as poetry, drama, nonfiction, and narrative stories, and who have many opportunities to create their own decontextualized texts will develop more elaborate syntactic knowledge. It is also important for children to have opportunities to participate in collaborative projects with their classmates as well as to participate in informal conversations and instruction-based discussions. Classrooms where most of the instruction occurs in teacher-directed large groups or where children work independently offer little opportunity for children to develop the linguistic competencies needed for complex language and literacy tasks. Primary-age children's knowledge of syntax is evident in their creation of both narrative and informational writing. They also continue to develop a clearer understanding of how pronouns are used in oral and written language. When pronouns are used in oral language, their referents are often indicated by the context, the setting, or both, in which the speech occurs; however, in written language, pronoun referents need to be identified through specific syntactic features.
During primary grades, children are more accurate in understanding and producing passive sentences. Passive sentences require a different type of linguistic processing because passive sentences do not follow the expected subject-verb-object sequence. Children appear to use a variety of clues in understanding passive sentences: contextual support, the presence of action verbs, and the presence of a preposition such as "from" or "by," as in "The window was broken by the ball." Teachers can informally observe primary children's syntactic knowledge by providing opportunities for children to participate in creating their own written stories and participating in story dictation. Through careful observation, teachers can become better acquainted with children's current and developing syntactic knowledge of oral and written language.
Tips for Parents:
1. Label parts of speech during shared book reading. For example, highlight and label different parts of speech by turning grammar into a fun game.
2. Another great tip is to create your own mad libs. Help your child understand parts of speech by creating your own Mad Libs modeled after the popular fill-in-the-blank game. Use any book you read together to create many similar sentences in order to help your child to understand nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
3. You can also build a sentence using objects. Build sentences with your child by using your own tangible materials (such as stuffed animals or lego people). For example, you could line up a baby doll, a spoon, and a bowl of cereal and "read" the sentence, "The baby eats cereal." This is a fun, interactive way to build skills together.
What is Syntactic Knowledge?
Syntactic knowledge is the knowledge of how words can be combined in meaningful sentences, phrases, or utterances. It involves the way that words are assembled and sentences are constructed in a particular language. Characteristics of normal development relating to this aspect include, telegraphic speech (use of two or three content words in an utterance with no function words), difficulty in pronounce use, speaking in short utterances, and an increase in the number of adverbs used to expand verb phrases (kindergarten).
Syntactic Knowledge in Infants/Toddlers:
Syntactic development during infancy is not readily evident because infants do not begin to use expressive language until the later part of infancy and then only in the form of idiomorphs and single words. However, research with infants has documented their ability to "detect changes in the order of sounds." Children's receptive knowledge of syntax is developing during infancy as they observe and begin to participate in the communicative contexts around them. Children at the one-word stage appear to indicate that words presented in strings are not isolated units but are part of larger constituents. This early awareness facilitates syntactic knowledge development. Children develop receptive knowledge of syntax through speech directed to them and also by being listeners-observers in adult-to-adult interactions. Syntactically, adult-to-child speech is shorter in length and less complex grammatically. It contains repetitions, uses few subordinate clauses, contains fewer modifiers and pronouns, and has more content words and fewer verbs. Older infants' receptive knowledge of syntax is evident in their nonverbal responses to questions or directions such as, "Where is your cup?" or "Go get the ball" or "Where is your nose?" When a child retrieves a cup or ball or points to his nose, comprehension of the question or request is evident. Infants who are involved in storybook interactions with adults are exposed to more complex syntactic structures than those present in daily conversational settings. As infants near their first birthday, they begin to participate verbally as well as nonverbally during storybook interactions. Adults intuitively appear to alter the exact text to fit the comprehension and linguistic competencies of children. They shorten the text, create their own version of the text, increase repetitions, ask questions, and add sound effects. These adaptations encourage more engagement from children.
Children's speech during the toddler years is characterized by longer utterances and utterances with specific syntactic features. It is often referred to as telegraphic speech. Telegraphic speech is defined as the child's use of two or three content words in an utterance, with no function words, such as conjunctions, articles, prepositions, and inflections. Simple sentences or utterances involving two or three words are created, such as "Daddy come" and "Mommy coat." Grammatical relations are implied in these two-word combinations. Syntactic knowledge is represented in the word order patterns found in telegraphic speech; however, the word order patterns are closely tied to a child's semantic knowledge. Because we cannot directly ask young children how they decide to combine words in utterances, we must analyze their utterances to see what syntactic patterns are present. Children appear to use this syntactic-semantic knowledge when speaking, using such word combinations as "more juice," "play more," "all gone," "kitty come," etc. Even though children may be using multiple word utterances as toddlers, they may have difficulty with pronoun use. Pronoun use is semantic in the sense that pronouns take the place of nouns in an utterance; however, the way pronoun reference works in a sentence or an utterance involves syntactic structure because a pronoun refers to a noun used earlier in the utterance or sentence, in a specific syntactic position. The acquisition of the pronouns, "I", and "you," is particularly complex for toddlers because the use of these pronouns depends on the role of the listener (you) and speaker (I). When toddlers participate in storybook activities with adults, they are exposed to more complex sentence structure than in everyday conversations. With young toddlers, adults may intuitively continue to adapt story text to fit the toddlers' comprehension and attention span. This adapted text often models simple syntactic structures similar to adult-to-child speech. With older toddlers, parents and teachers may also alternate reading short segments of text with conversational comments that engage a child in talking about the illustrations or a related experience. Teachers and parents may also use a series of questions to encourage children to use more complex explanations instead of responding only by pointing to the picture.
Syntactic Knowledge in Pre-Schoolers:
Preschool children's development of syntactic knowledge is evident in the length and structure of their speech. Children entering the preschool years typically are in the telegraphic speech stage, speaking in short utterances of two to three words. Although the sentence is considered a unit of structure in written language, oral language is often composed of smaller structural units, such as phrases composed of several words, and are referred to as "utterances." The grammatical complexity of preschoolers' speech occurs in significant ways: increasing noun and verb phrase complexity, using negation (no, not), producing interrogative sentences (questions), and beginning to use passive forms of sentences. Each of these new structures contributes to the increasing linguistic complexity of preschool children's language. As children's ability to engage in monologues or extended speech develops, they begin to use more complex syntax when sharing stories and accounts of personal experiences. Noun and verb complexity increases with the use of conjunctions (and) as well as with connectives (because, then, so, if).
Preschool children begin to use the word "no" at the beginning of an utterance; later on, the negative word-element appears within sentences, as in "I no want milk." Gradually contractions such as "don't" or "can't" appear. Preschool children ask a lot of questions. Some children seem to realize that, by asking questions such as "why?" they can keep a conversation going. In summary, during the preschool years, significant changes occur in children's syntactic knowledge. At the beginning, children are likely to use simple two and three word utterances, whereas at the end of the preschool years, children use a wider variety of syntactic structures characterized by greater complexity, having embedded clauses (because...) and conjoined clauses (...and...).
Syntactic Knowledge in Kindergarteners:
Kindergarten-age children can construct basic sentences with little difficulty. The average sentence length for 5-year-olds is five to seven words. Children can comprehend others' speech that is more syntactically complex than the speech they produce. Kindergarten-age children's acquisition of syntactic knowledge continues as they begin to use more complex noun and verb phrase structures. Increases in syntactic knowledge allow children to communicate more complex ideas. Acquisition of more complex noun phrase structures may involve clearer use of pronouns. Most kindergarten-age children have mastered pronoun use for indicating subjects (I, you, she, he, they) and objects (me, him, her, them); however, they are just beginning to master the use of reflexives (myself, himself, herself, etc.). Kindergarten-age children's speech is characterized by an increase in the number of adverbs used to expand verb phrases. Auxiliary verbs such as "have, do, will, was, and could" are also increasingly used throughout the kindergarten year. During the kindergarten year, children typically begin to comprehend passive sentence construction, although they may be able to produce only short sentences using passive voice. Children appear to use passive sentences for specific linguistic or discursive purposes. For example, when Steven approached his teacher and said, "The truck wheel got broke," he was using passive sentence construction that did not mention who broke the truck's wheel. It may be that Steven wanted to take the focus off who broke the wheel, or perhaps he just wanted to focus on the fact that it was broken and appeal to his teacher to fix the truck so he would be able to play with it.
Syntactic Knowledge in Primary Age Children:
Children's use of sentence structure becomes more elaborate and complex in both their oral and written language during the primary grade years. This syntactic development is influenced by language use in home, school, and community settings and by children's semantic language knowledge. Children who have been exposed to more complex language through a variety of genres, such as poetry, drama, nonfiction, and narrative stories, and who have many opportunities to create their own decontextualized texts will develop more elaborate syntactic knowledge. It is also important for children to have opportunities to participate in collaborative projects with their classmates as well as to participate in informal conversations and instruction-based discussions. Classrooms where most of the instruction occurs in teacher-directed large groups or where children work independently offer little opportunity for children to develop the linguistic competencies needed for complex language and literacy tasks. Primary-age children's knowledge of syntax is evident in their creation of both narrative and informational writing. They also continue to develop a clearer understanding of how pronouns are used in oral and written language. When pronouns are used in oral language, their referents are often indicated by the context, the setting, or both, in which the speech occurs; however, in written language, pronoun referents need to be identified through specific syntactic features.
During primary grades, children are more accurate in understanding and producing passive sentences. Passive sentences require a different type of linguistic processing because passive sentences do not follow the expected subject-verb-object sequence. Children appear to use a variety of clues in understanding passive sentences: contextual support, the presence of action verbs, and the presence of a preposition such as "from" or "by," as in "The window was broken by the ball." Teachers can informally observe primary children's syntactic knowledge by providing opportunities for children to participate in creating their own written stories and participating in story dictation. Through careful observation, teachers can become better acquainted with children's current and developing syntactic knowledge of oral and written language.
Tips for Parents:
1. Label parts of speech during shared book reading. For example, highlight and label different parts of speech by turning grammar into a fun game.
2. Another great tip is to create your own mad libs. Help your child understand parts of speech by creating your own Mad Libs modeled after the popular fill-in-the-blank game. Use any book you read together to create many similar sentences in order to help your child to understand nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
3. You can also build a sentence using objects. Build sentences with your child by using your own tangible materials (such as stuffed animals or lego people). For example, you could line up a baby doll, a spoon, and a bowl of cereal and "read" the sentence, "The baby eats cereal." This is a fun, interactive way to build skills together.
Semantic Knowledge
What is Semantic Knowledge?
Semantic Knowledge is the aspect of language knowledge that involves word meanings and vocabulary. Semantic knowledge involves the meaning found in the actual text, symbols and signs themselves. Characteristics of normal development relating to the aspect include, different kinds of cries, fast mapping (rapid word learning), acquisition of categories, over and under-extensions, and direct naming.
Semantic Knowledge in Infants/Toddlers:
Early interactions between parents and infants are often in response to the infant's cries. Young infants' crying and fussing occurs as an expression of their physiological and emotional status. There are three different cries: 1.) a basic cry 2.) an anger cry, and 3.) a pain cry. These types of cries are distinguished by pitch, rhythm, and intensity. Semantic development begins here with the topic of infants' cries because their cries elicit a parental or caregiver response that nearly always involves language and the assumption that the cries "mean" something. This assumption of meaning leads to the inclusion of children in interactive dyads, which promotes communication. Two types of experiences facilitate concept and semantic development: direct and vicarious. Direct experiences occur from birth on, as infants experience objects and events in their world as a direct participation (touching, tasting, smelling, seeing, and hearing). Vicarious experiences occur when children interact with concepts through visual representations (such as pictures or print). In infancy, many of children's experiences are essentially all firsthand or direct. While direct experiences have a greater impact on concept development, both direct and vicarious experiences make valuable contributions to concept development. At about the age of 1 year, children may, with some degree of consistency, begin to use distinct vocal units to refer to specific objects or actions. It is important to keep in mind that some children will begin several months later and will eventually acquire language competency the same as the early talkers. The development of semantic knowledge related to emergent literacy occurs as infants and adults participate in picture book interactions. During this activity, adults typically use gesture and finger pointing to establish a shared reference before labeling the character or object pictured. Children who have been included in storybook sharing events since early infancy, beginning at about 4 to 5 months, often show that they are predicting the meaning of upcoming text by their verbal and nonverbal behavior.
Between 1 and 2 years of age, a child has 20 to 170 words in his productive vocabulary but understands many more. There is considerable variation among individual children because their vocabulary will reflect their individual family contexts and experiences. While idiomorphs will still be part of a young toddler's expressive vocabulary, there is gradual transition to conventional words. As objects and events in children's environments are repeatedly labeled, both the receptive and expressive vocabularies increase; however, the listening vocabulary is still larger than the productive vocabulary. The productive vocabulary of older toddlers may range from 200 to 300 words, with a much more extensive listening vocabulary. A toddler usually maintains only one word pre referent in his or her productive vocabulary. A child may experiment with a specific word and switch to another if the first word is not successful in referring to the desired object, action or event. One aspect of semantic development involves children's acquisition of categories, which organize phenomena into groups of shared characteristics. These generalizations may be evident in toddlers' semantic over-extensions and under-extensions as they develop schemata with general and specific concepts. Semantic knowledge related to emergent literacy continues to expand during the toddler years, as children develop an awareness of environmental print and meanings, such as stop signs, McDonalds logos, and labels on food packaging. Throughout infancy and toddlerhood, children are active learners in building their concept knowledge and vocabulary. Daily interactions with people, objects, and actions in their environment provide direct and vicarious experiences that enhance children's development of semantic knowledge. When children have opportunities to observe parents and teachers interacting with written language and to participate in those interactions, semantic knowledge related to written language is also enhanced.
Semantic Knowledge in Pre-Schoolers:
Children's vocabulary expands and becomes more refined or precise during the preschool years as children begin to develop more complex concepts. When children encounter new experiences, they have opportunities to expand their language as they refer to and respond to these new experiences. Receptive and expressive vocabulary grows rapidly. A preschool child's expressive vocabulary has been estimated to range from 800 to 1,000 words. Semantic knowledge develops through the process of assimilation and accommodation. Semantic knowledge also develops as children communicate with adults and other children who expose them to new words within contextually rich settings. The context in which new words are introduced influences children's acquisition of vocabulary. Upon hearing a new word, some children will ask what it means or relate it to a word they already know. As young preschoolers are acquiring semantic knowledge, over-extensions and under-extensions in using vocabulary may occur. Over-extensions occur when children use the same word to apply to referents that may resemble the actual, appropriate referent in some way. Under-extension, in contrast, occurs when a label or word is inappropriately restricted (ex: the word cat is used only to refer to the neighbor's cat and not to other cats the child sees in the neighborhood). Throughout the preschool years, children's verbal interactions with adults and other children gradually refine the use of words, reducing instances of over-extension and under-extension.
Conceptual development and vocabulary are also increased through book sharing with fiction and nonfiction texts. The written language of storybooks exposes children to more precise and varied vocabulary than they may experience in daily conversations. For many children, the appeal of storybooks and nonfiction books is in the variety of ways language is used to communicate a story or real-world information. Pre-school children begin to understand figurative language. Examples of figurative language, such as similes and metaphors, may occur in daily conversations and may also be found in children's storybooks. They also may also encounter idiomatic expressions and be puzzled when they try to comprehend the literal meaning of the expression. Stories created by children provide evidence of their development of semantic knowledge. Children may incorporate specific phrases or vocabulary in their own stories that most likely come from their experiences with storybooks, such as "beautiful, handsome prince, going to the parlor for dinner, buried treasure." In these instances, the impact of storybook experiences on children's developing semantic knowledge is evident. The development of semantic knowledge is closely related to the development of syntactic knowledge. Children's understanding of how words convey meaning is closely to their knowledge of how to interpret or comprehend speech directed to them and how to arrange words in creating the messages they want to communicate.
Semantic Knowledge in Kindergarteners:
Kindergarten children typically have a speaking vocabulary of 1,500 or more words and understand more more words. It is estimated that a child's listening vocabulary is four times larger than his speaking vocabulary. In most classrooms, teachers will note there are wide variations between children in the size of their listening and speaking vocabularies. Vocabulary development is a major goal of language arts curricula in kindergarten as well as in the primary grades because vocabulary strength is associated with later reading comprehension and success in school. Expansion of children's semantic knowledge during the kindergarten year must involve not only adding new words and concepts but also further developing networks of vocabulary or schemata. For kindergarteners, vocabulary is acquired through direct and indirect experiences. Some vocabulary is learned through direct naming, or ostensive naming. Vocabulary is also learned through conversational context as well as through literacy events where books are shared with children. Both conversational contexts and book sharing contexts provide supportive mediation, which is critical to vocabulary acquisition.
Children's understanding and use of figurative language, such as similes and metaphors, also provide evidence of semantic knowledge. When storybooks containing figurative language are shared and discussed, children are able to develop an understanding of the similes and metaphors. Their sense of humor is also an indication of their semantic knowledge development. The riddles and jokes they create are often based in semantic comparisons or words that have multiple meanings. Knock-knock jokes are often popular among kindergarten children, though some children do not fully appreciate such jokes until they are in the primary grades. This reflects their awareness of language patterns as well as their ability to manipulate words to create a humorous idea. Because the increases in children's semantic knowledge during the kindergarten year are represented in words from many syntactic categories, the increase in semantic knowledge occurs concurrently with an increase in syntactic knowledge.
Semantic Knowledge in Primary Age Children:
During primary school years, elaboration and differentiation of concepts occur, along with the acquisition of labels attached to concepts. Semantic development continues to occur informally as children interact in conversations with family and friends and through exposure to various media as well as new experiences, such as family trips and vacations. Semantic development also occurs more formally in literacy-related instruction where children are introduced to specific words and encouraged to participate in discussing what those words mean. Such discussions of words and word meaning are metalinguistic in the sense that children are asked to focus consciously on meaning as an aspect of words. Comprehending and using figurative language requires a special understanding of semantic knowledge because the meaning of a word is used to create a comparison between two objects or settings. Similes are more explicit in their comparison than are metaphors, which create an implied comparison. In creating a metaphor, a child must be able to see the ways two objects or settings are similar on a more abstract or symbolic level.
Semantic development is evident in primary-age children's appreciation of puns and riddles. The appreciation comes from children's ability to realize that words may have double meanings or may have a similar phonological knowledge sequence to other words. The riddles created by first and second graders tend to be completely nonsensical or too realistic and thus are not really riddles but "pre-riddles." During third grade, most children are able to grasp the double meanings of riddles simultaneously. Throughout the primary years, children become more aware of possible double meanings and incorporate puns and riddles into their linguistic play. Hobbies and special interests of primary children may provide opportunity to develop specialized vocabulary. For example, an 8-year-old who is an avid baseball fan would develop vocabulary related to this interest. This vocabulary might include such phrases as "hit a triple, pitch, stuck out, pop-up, tagged up, grounder, line-drive out, inning, foul ball, or home run." This vocabulary knowledge probably would not develop in a classroom simply because it is so specialized. Yet it is important to recognize that children's hobbies and special interests outside the classroom can have an impact on concept and vocabulary development. Teachers can recognize and acknowledge children's specialized vocabulary by providing opportunities for children to talk about and write their home and community activities during language and literacy based activities in the classroom.
Tips for Parents:
1. Label and elaborate on new words during shared reading. For instance, make comments and ask questions to draw your child's attention to new vocabulary words and new ideas during shared reading.
2. Label and elaborate on new words throughout the day. Make comments and ask questions about the things you see or people and situations you encounter during shared activities such as driving in the car, watching television, or looking at a billboard.
3. Another great tip is to select themed books. Choose a book with a theme (for example, a day at the beach, or a visit to the zoo), which will help your child learn many words that fall into a particular category.
What is Semantic Knowledge?
Semantic Knowledge is the aspect of language knowledge that involves word meanings and vocabulary. Semantic knowledge involves the meaning found in the actual text, symbols and signs themselves. Characteristics of normal development relating to the aspect include, different kinds of cries, fast mapping (rapid word learning), acquisition of categories, over and under-extensions, and direct naming.
Semantic Knowledge in Infants/Toddlers:
Early interactions between parents and infants are often in response to the infant's cries. Young infants' crying and fussing occurs as an expression of their physiological and emotional status. There are three different cries: 1.) a basic cry 2.) an anger cry, and 3.) a pain cry. These types of cries are distinguished by pitch, rhythm, and intensity. Semantic development begins here with the topic of infants' cries because their cries elicit a parental or caregiver response that nearly always involves language and the assumption that the cries "mean" something. This assumption of meaning leads to the inclusion of children in interactive dyads, which promotes communication. Two types of experiences facilitate concept and semantic development: direct and vicarious. Direct experiences occur from birth on, as infants experience objects and events in their world as a direct participation (touching, tasting, smelling, seeing, and hearing). Vicarious experiences occur when children interact with concepts through visual representations (such as pictures or print). In infancy, many of children's experiences are essentially all firsthand or direct. While direct experiences have a greater impact on concept development, both direct and vicarious experiences make valuable contributions to concept development. At about the age of 1 year, children may, with some degree of consistency, begin to use distinct vocal units to refer to specific objects or actions. It is important to keep in mind that some children will begin several months later and will eventually acquire language competency the same as the early talkers. The development of semantic knowledge related to emergent literacy occurs as infants and adults participate in picture book interactions. During this activity, adults typically use gesture and finger pointing to establish a shared reference before labeling the character or object pictured. Children who have been included in storybook sharing events since early infancy, beginning at about 4 to 5 months, often show that they are predicting the meaning of upcoming text by their verbal and nonverbal behavior.
Between 1 and 2 years of age, a child has 20 to 170 words in his productive vocabulary but understands many more. There is considerable variation among individual children because their vocabulary will reflect their individual family contexts and experiences. While idiomorphs will still be part of a young toddler's expressive vocabulary, there is gradual transition to conventional words. As objects and events in children's environments are repeatedly labeled, both the receptive and expressive vocabularies increase; however, the listening vocabulary is still larger than the productive vocabulary. The productive vocabulary of older toddlers may range from 200 to 300 words, with a much more extensive listening vocabulary. A toddler usually maintains only one word pre referent in his or her productive vocabulary. A child may experiment with a specific word and switch to another if the first word is not successful in referring to the desired object, action or event. One aspect of semantic development involves children's acquisition of categories, which organize phenomena into groups of shared characteristics. These generalizations may be evident in toddlers' semantic over-extensions and under-extensions as they develop schemata with general and specific concepts. Semantic knowledge related to emergent literacy continues to expand during the toddler years, as children develop an awareness of environmental print and meanings, such as stop signs, McDonalds logos, and labels on food packaging. Throughout infancy and toddlerhood, children are active learners in building their concept knowledge and vocabulary. Daily interactions with people, objects, and actions in their environment provide direct and vicarious experiences that enhance children's development of semantic knowledge. When children have opportunities to observe parents and teachers interacting with written language and to participate in those interactions, semantic knowledge related to written language is also enhanced.
Semantic Knowledge in Pre-Schoolers:
Children's vocabulary expands and becomes more refined or precise during the preschool years as children begin to develop more complex concepts. When children encounter new experiences, they have opportunities to expand their language as they refer to and respond to these new experiences. Receptive and expressive vocabulary grows rapidly. A preschool child's expressive vocabulary has been estimated to range from 800 to 1,000 words. Semantic knowledge develops through the process of assimilation and accommodation. Semantic knowledge also develops as children communicate with adults and other children who expose them to new words within contextually rich settings. The context in which new words are introduced influences children's acquisition of vocabulary. Upon hearing a new word, some children will ask what it means or relate it to a word they already know. As young preschoolers are acquiring semantic knowledge, over-extensions and under-extensions in using vocabulary may occur. Over-extensions occur when children use the same word to apply to referents that may resemble the actual, appropriate referent in some way. Under-extension, in contrast, occurs when a label or word is inappropriately restricted (ex: the word cat is used only to refer to the neighbor's cat and not to other cats the child sees in the neighborhood). Throughout the preschool years, children's verbal interactions with adults and other children gradually refine the use of words, reducing instances of over-extension and under-extension.
Conceptual development and vocabulary are also increased through book sharing with fiction and nonfiction texts. The written language of storybooks exposes children to more precise and varied vocabulary than they may experience in daily conversations. For many children, the appeal of storybooks and nonfiction books is in the variety of ways language is used to communicate a story or real-world information. Pre-school children begin to understand figurative language. Examples of figurative language, such as similes and metaphors, may occur in daily conversations and may also be found in children's storybooks. They also may also encounter idiomatic expressions and be puzzled when they try to comprehend the literal meaning of the expression. Stories created by children provide evidence of their development of semantic knowledge. Children may incorporate specific phrases or vocabulary in their own stories that most likely come from their experiences with storybooks, such as "beautiful, handsome prince, going to the parlor for dinner, buried treasure." In these instances, the impact of storybook experiences on children's developing semantic knowledge is evident. The development of semantic knowledge is closely related to the development of syntactic knowledge. Children's understanding of how words convey meaning is closely to their knowledge of how to interpret or comprehend speech directed to them and how to arrange words in creating the messages they want to communicate.
Semantic Knowledge in Kindergarteners:
Kindergarten children typically have a speaking vocabulary of 1,500 or more words and understand more more words. It is estimated that a child's listening vocabulary is four times larger than his speaking vocabulary. In most classrooms, teachers will note there are wide variations between children in the size of their listening and speaking vocabularies. Vocabulary development is a major goal of language arts curricula in kindergarten as well as in the primary grades because vocabulary strength is associated with later reading comprehension and success in school. Expansion of children's semantic knowledge during the kindergarten year must involve not only adding new words and concepts but also further developing networks of vocabulary or schemata. For kindergarteners, vocabulary is acquired through direct and indirect experiences. Some vocabulary is learned through direct naming, or ostensive naming. Vocabulary is also learned through conversational context as well as through literacy events where books are shared with children. Both conversational contexts and book sharing contexts provide supportive mediation, which is critical to vocabulary acquisition.
Children's understanding and use of figurative language, such as similes and metaphors, also provide evidence of semantic knowledge. When storybooks containing figurative language are shared and discussed, children are able to develop an understanding of the similes and metaphors. Their sense of humor is also an indication of their semantic knowledge development. The riddles and jokes they create are often based in semantic comparisons or words that have multiple meanings. Knock-knock jokes are often popular among kindergarten children, though some children do not fully appreciate such jokes until they are in the primary grades. This reflects their awareness of language patterns as well as their ability to manipulate words to create a humorous idea. Because the increases in children's semantic knowledge during the kindergarten year are represented in words from many syntactic categories, the increase in semantic knowledge occurs concurrently with an increase in syntactic knowledge.
Semantic Knowledge in Primary Age Children:
During primary school years, elaboration and differentiation of concepts occur, along with the acquisition of labels attached to concepts. Semantic development continues to occur informally as children interact in conversations with family and friends and through exposure to various media as well as new experiences, such as family trips and vacations. Semantic development also occurs more formally in literacy-related instruction where children are introduced to specific words and encouraged to participate in discussing what those words mean. Such discussions of words and word meaning are metalinguistic in the sense that children are asked to focus consciously on meaning as an aspect of words. Comprehending and using figurative language requires a special understanding of semantic knowledge because the meaning of a word is used to create a comparison between two objects or settings. Similes are more explicit in their comparison than are metaphors, which create an implied comparison. In creating a metaphor, a child must be able to see the ways two objects or settings are similar on a more abstract or symbolic level.
Semantic development is evident in primary-age children's appreciation of puns and riddles. The appreciation comes from children's ability to realize that words may have double meanings or may have a similar phonological knowledge sequence to other words. The riddles created by first and second graders tend to be completely nonsensical or too realistic and thus are not really riddles but "pre-riddles." During third grade, most children are able to grasp the double meanings of riddles simultaneously. Throughout the primary years, children become more aware of possible double meanings and incorporate puns and riddles into their linguistic play. Hobbies and special interests of primary children may provide opportunity to develop specialized vocabulary. For example, an 8-year-old who is an avid baseball fan would develop vocabulary related to this interest. This vocabulary might include such phrases as "hit a triple, pitch, stuck out, pop-up, tagged up, grounder, line-drive out, inning, foul ball, or home run." This vocabulary knowledge probably would not develop in a classroom simply because it is so specialized. Yet it is important to recognize that children's hobbies and special interests outside the classroom can have an impact on concept and vocabulary development. Teachers can recognize and acknowledge children's specialized vocabulary by providing opportunities for children to talk about and write their home and community activities during language and literacy based activities in the classroom.
Tips for Parents:
1. Label and elaborate on new words during shared reading. For instance, make comments and ask questions to draw your child's attention to new vocabulary words and new ideas during shared reading.
2. Label and elaborate on new words throughout the day. Make comments and ask questions about the things you see or people and situations you encounter during shared activities such as driving in the car, watching television, or looking at a billboard.
3. Another great tip is to select themed books. Choose a book with a theme (for example, a day at the beach, or a visit to the zoo), which will help your child learn many words that fall into a particular category.
Friday, December 4, 2015
Phonetic Knowledge
What is Phonetic Knowledge?
Phonetic Knowledge is the knowledge of sound-symbol relations and sound patterns represented in a language. It is when a child is learning to talk/communicate and they develop phonemic awareness, which is a awareness of distinctive speech sounds, and they use phonemes (smallest unit of sound) to create words. Characteristics of normal development related to this aspect include, cooing, babbling, sound play, matching speech sounds to print, early spelling attempts, and the variations in spelling attempts.
Phonetic Knowledge in Infants/Toddlers:
Research with very young infants has concluded that they can distinguish nearly all the phonemic contrasts represented in natural language. Children can distinguish specific phonemes as early as 1 month of age. In addition, at 5 months, infants recognize and categorize the same phonemes, regardless of changes in speakers and intonation. Babies can also distinguish between sequences of syllables. In addition, infants are able to categorize utterances from different languages, based on the rhythmic patterns of utterances. Between 8 and 10 months, infants begin to pay more attention to phoneme-sound contrasts that exist in their home language, while they pay little or no attention to phoneme-sound contrasts found in other languages.
Although infants perceive a wide range of phonemes and environmental sounds, their production of speech sounds is limited by their immature physiology. Early infant vocalizations are initially reflexive and later on non-reflexive vocalizations develop. Reflexive vocalizations come from the infants physical state and include, crying, coughing, hiccupping, and burping. Between 6 and 8 weeks, many infants spontaneously produce cooing sounds. Cooing, and later on, babbling are non-reflexive vocalizations. The cooing stage is important because during this time, infants begin to manipulate their tongues and mouths in producing sounds. These actions are precursors to actions required for later speech production. At about 4 to 6 months, babbling appears which is essentially reduplicated sounds, such as ba-ba-ba-ba. At about 11 to 12 months, infants may begin to produce word-like units that have relatively consistent sound patterns. A small number of conventional words may also be produced, such as "no." In literate cultures, awareness of phonological distinctions may develop as infants engage in picture book sharing activities with parents or caregivers. Parents may engage their infants in looking at the pictures by using wide variations in sounds and intonation. For example, animal sounds, rhyming text, songs, and environmental sounds. In this way, picture book sharing stimulates auditory perception and phonological awareness related to spoken and written language.
Children's perception and production of phonemes becomes especially evident during toddler years, as they begin to speak a range of words. Initially, pronunciation of a child's first words is not stable, varying from day to day or even more often. Toddlers are aware of speech sounds they cannot make and may avoid or refuse to pronounce words containing those sounds. Adults may engage in imitating sounds made by toddlers to initiate a turn-taking, game-like interaction. Evidence of toddlers' awareness of sound similarities and patterns also occurs when toddlers express delight, respond nonverbally with body movement, or both when poetry or rhythmic prose is read or when action songs or finger plays are performed. During the toddler years, children may also begin to explore letter and sound connections by manipulating magnetic letters displayed on their family's refrigerator or in their early childhood classroom. For example, a child might place the letters D and B on the refrigerator and say, "Daddy, bee" as well as naming the letters as they use them.
Phonetic Knowledge in Pre-Schoolers:
During the preschool years, children's growing awareness of phonemes is often evident in how they use language. This metalinguistic awareness that words are composed of separate sounds that can be manipulated is termed phonemic awareness. When speaking, preschool children may begin to focus on and manipulate specific phonemes. Although they may not be able to name the different sounds in words or explain why the words rhyme, preschool children are developing an awareness that they can create words that have similar sounds and that sound manipulation is fun. One of the types of language play is sound play, which consists of children's manipulating the phonemic elements and prosodic features of pitch, stress, and juncture. As preschoolers, children focus on the sound similarities between words and consciously manipulating the sound elements in a word. Spontaneous rhyming is a type of phonemic sound play. As children play, rhyming chants may be expressed, as in "cat, fat, bat, mat, sat." When children listen to stories or to poetry readings, they may also indicate their awareness of sound patterns and phonemic relations by anticipating upcoming text or contributing additional rhyming words. Children may also verbally comment on words that rhyme. For example, saying, "bat and cat sound the same. They rhyme."
As preschool children interact more with written language when adults read stories, and with environmental print, such as road signs and restaurant or store signs, they being to associate initial letters with specific sounds. Some preschool children begin to try to match speech to print and to explore way of sharing ideas on paper. As preschoolers attempt to figure out which letters to use for their names and messages and how to "say" what they have written or what someone else has written, their developing awareness of connections between sounds and print becomes evident. Initially, preschoolers typically use scribbling, letter-like forms, or strings of letters when writing and assign meaning to what they have written when "reading" it to a peer or adult. Gradually, children begin to associate specific sounds with letters and may use just one letter to represent a word; for example, using the letter D to represent the word "Daddy."
Phonetic Knowledge in Kindergarteners:
The acquisition of phonological knowledge is evident in kindergarten children's ability to distinguish similarities in beginning and ending sounds. Children's awareness of alliteration and rhyme contribute to the acquisition of reading in two ways, 1.) perception of rhyme and alliteration are the forerunners of being able to distinguish phonemes, and 2.) perception of rhyme helps children see similarities in spelling patterns. Kindergarten children may also become aware of others' different pronunciations and may tease children who speak differently. Likewise, children who are experiencing difficulty may become less verbal, not risking failure or embarrassment. Teachers must be aware of these situations and encourage acceptance and communication among all children.
Significant evidence of children's acquisition of phonological knowledge of written language may occur during the kindergarten year. Knowledge of the names of letters in the alphabet is related to the development of phonological awareness. When kindergarten children create their own stories, they may comment on their process and their expectations for using print. Kindergarteners may show evidence of phonological knowledge in their attempts to read when they begin to focus on letter-sound connections. When asked to "read" a familiar storybook, some children attempt an effortful "sounding out," focusing on the print. When they encounter difficulty, some children then refuse to read, indicating that although they know the print is the source of the message, they cannot decode it: "I don't know what that word says," or "I don't know this word." These print-related refusals are thought to indicate an awareness of the importance of decoding to "real" reading. Other children, while unsuccessfully attempting to decode print, frequently look to an adult researcher for confirmation that their attempts are "right." Kindergarten children exhibit a wide variety of emergent writing behaviors that indicate that they are beginning to focus on the way print represents specific speech sounds. Children's early spelling attempts provide rich evidence of their acquisition of phonological knowledge about written language. Children's conscious awareness of the sounds in words and how the sounds can be separated orally during language play or when attempting to create a written message are evidence of phonological awareness. This awareness is significantly related to learning to read and write. Literacy-related instruction also influences the continued development of phonological awareness due to the focus of that instruction on letter-sound connections, phoneme segmentation of words, and spelling patterns.
Phonetic Knowledge in Primary Age Children:
The primary years are a time during which children achieve mastery over phoneme production. In addition, during this time, children's phonological knowledge is increasingly influenced by their experience with reading and writing. During children's sixth and seventh years, they continue to increase in their ability to produce a full range of specific language sounds. By age 8, most children have complete phoneme production. The acquisition of consonant clusters may not occur until children are 8 years old. While some children may have acquired these articulations earlier than the ages cited here, it is important for teachers to hold off on referring slower-achieving children for speech remediation until they are well past those target ages for the respective sounds. Primary age children also increase in their rhyming abilities and awareness of other sound patterns, such as onset and rime. Onset refers to the initial consonant of a syllable that precedes the first vowel of a syllable; rime refers to the vowel and any remaining consonants of a syllable.
Primary children vary in their approaches to spelling. Some are just beginning to figure out the orthographic system. Other children are more sophisticated in their representations of phonemes. Thus, it is important for primary teachers to be aware of the developmental progression of orthographic-phonemic knowledge in young children. Prior to acquiring conventional spelling, primary grade children may go through one or more stages of phonemic spelling, as representations of phonemes become more consistent and complete. Primary-age children also become aware of the ways in which words are spelled differently in academic English than when represented in dialect. In addition, as children begin to read a wider variety of texts, they come across unusual spelling patterns that do not follow previously learned letter-sound associations. Children's experiences that contribute to their oral and written vocabularies and the ways they are encouraged to use and examine those words will influence their acquisition of spelling knowledge. A key factor in this process appears to be opportunities children have to apply what they are learning about word spelling patterns to their reading and writing activities.
Tips for Parents:
1. Focus on one sound at at time. For instance, certain sounds, such as /s/, /m/, /f/ are great sounds to start with. The sound is distinct, and can be exaggerated easily. "Please pass the mmmmmmmmilk." "Look! There's a ssssssssssnake!" "You have fffffffive markers on the table." It's also easy to describe how to make the sound with your mouth. "Close your mouth and lips to make the sound. Now put your hand on your throat. Do you feel the vibration?" Once your child learns a few phonemes, it will be easier to keep talking about letters and sounds.
2. Help your child listen for the sounds. One part of learning letters and sounds is being able to figure out if a word contains a particular sound. "Do we hear /mmmmmmm/ in the word mmmmmmoon? Do we hear /mmmmmmm/ in the word cake?" These sorts of activities, done orally with your child, can help him begin to listen for and hear sounds within words.
3. Apply letter-sound skills to reading. Putting these skills to work within a book is a powerful way to help your child see the connection between letters, sounds, and words. As you're reading together, find places in the book to point out the letters and sounds you've been working on together. "Look! This page says 'Red fish, blue fish." There's the /fffffff/ sound we've been having fun with! It's at the beginning of the word fish."
What is Phonetic Knowledge?
Phonetic Knowledge is the knowledge of sound-symbol relations and sound patterns represented in a language. It is when a child is learning to talk/communicate and they develop phonemic awareness, which is a awareness of distinctive speech sounds, and they use phonemes (smallest unit of sound) to create words. Characteristics of normal development related to this aspect include, cooing, babbling, sound play, matching speech sounds to print, early spelling attempts, and the variations in spelling attempts.
Phonetic Knowledge in Infants/Toddlers:
Research with very young infants has concluded that they can distinguish nearly all the phonemic contrasts represented in natural language. Children can distinguish specific phonemes as early as 1 month of age. In addition, at 5 months, infants recognize and categorize the same phonemes, regardless of changes in speakers and intonation. Babies can also distinguish between sequences of syllables. In addition, infants are able to categorize utterances from different languages, based on the rhythmic patterns of utterances. Between 8 and 10 months, infants begin to pay more attention to phoneme-sound contrasts that exist in their home language, while they pay little or no attention to phoneme-sound contrasts found in other languages.
Although infants perceive a wide range of phonemes and environmental sounds, their production of speech sounds is limited by their immature physiology. Early infant vocalizations are initially reflexive and later on non-reflexive vocalizations develop. Reflexive vocalizations come from the infants physical state and include, crying, coughing, hiccupping, and burping. Between 6 and 8 weeks, many infants spontaneously produce cooing sounds. Cooing, and later on, babbling are non-reflexive vocalizations. The cooing stage is important because during this time, infants begin to manipulate their tongues and mouths in producing sounds. These actions are precursors to actions required for later speech production. At about 4 to 6 months, babbling appears which is essentially reduplicated sounds, such as ba-ba-ba-ba. At about 11 to 12 months, infants may begin to produce word-like units that have relatively consistent sound patterns. A small number of conventional words may also be produced, such as "no." In literate cultures, awareness of phonological distinctions may develop as infants engage in picture book sharing activities with parents or caregivers. Parents may engage their infants in looking at the pictures by using wide variations in sounds and intonation. For example, animal sounds, rhyming text, songs, and environmental sounds. In this way, picture book sharing stimulates auditory perception and phonological awareness related to spoken and written language.
Children's perception and production of phonemes becomes especially evident during toddler years, as they begin to speak a range of words. Initially, pronunciation of a child's first words is not stable, varying from day to day or even more often. Toddlers are aware of speech sounds they cannot make and may avoid or refuse to pronounce words containing those sounds. Adults may engage in imitating sounds made by toddlers to initiate a turn-taking, game-like interaction. Evidence of toddlers' awareness of sound similarities and patterns also occurs when toddlers express delight, respond nonverbally with body movement, or both when poetry or rhythmic prose is read or when action songs or finger plays are performed. During the toddler years, children may also begin to explore letter and sound connections by manipulating magnetic letters displayed on their family's refrigerator or in their early childhood classroom. For example, a child might place the letters D and B on the refrigerator and say, "Daddy, bee" as well as naming the letters as they use them.
Phonetic Knowledge in Pre-Schoolers:
During the preschool years, children's growing awareness of phonemes is often evident in how they use language. This metalinguistic awareness that words are composed of separate sounds that can be manipulated is termed phonemic awareness. When speaking, preschool children may begin to focus on and manipulate specific phonemes. Although they may not be able to name the different sounds in words or explain why the words rhyme, preschool children are developing an awareness that they can create words that have similar sounds and that sound manipulation is fun. One of the types of language play is sound play, which consists of children's manipulating the phonemic elements and prosodic features of pitch, stress, and juncture. As preschoolers, children focus on the sound similarities between words and consciously manipulating the sound elements in a word. Spontaneous rhyming is a type of phonemic sound play. As children play, rhyming chants may be expressed, as in "cat, fat, bat, mat, sat." When children listen to stories or to poetry readings, they may also indicate their awareness of sound patterns and phonemic relations by anticipating upcoming text or contributing additional rhyming words. Children may also verbally comment on words that rhyme. For example, saying, "bat and cat sound the same. They rhyme."
As preschool children interact more with written language when adults read stories, and with environmental print, such as road signs and restaurant or store signs, they being to associate initial letters with specific sounds. Some preschool children begin to try to match speech to print and to explore way of sharing ideas on paper. As preschoolers attempt to figure out which letters to use for their names and messages and how to "say" what they have written or what someone else has written, their developing awareness of connections between sounds and print becomes evident. Initially, preschoolers typically use scribbling, letter-like forms, or strings of letters when writing and assign meaning to what they have written when "reading" it to a peer or adult. Gradually, children begin to associate specific sounds with letters and may use just one letter to represent a word; for example, using the letter D to represent the word "Daddy."
Phonetic Knowledge in Kindergarteners:
The acquisition of phonological knowledge is evident in kindergarten children's ability to distinguish similarities in beginning and ending sounds. Children's awareness of alliteration and rhyme contribute to the acquisition of reading in two ways, 1.) perception of rhyme and alliteration are the forerunners of being able to distinguish phonemes, and 2.) perception of rhyme helps children see similarities in spelling patterns. Kindergarten children may also become aware of others' different pronunciations and may tease children who speak differently. Likewise, children who are experiencing difficulty may become less verbal, not risking failure or embarrassment. Teachers must be aware of these situations and encourage acceptance and communication among all children.
Significant evidence of children's acquisition of phonological knowledge of written language may occur during the kindergarten year. Knowledge of the names of letters in the alphabet is related to the development of phonological awareness. When kindergarten children create their own stories, they may comment on their process and their expectations for using print. Kindergarteners may show evidence of phonological knowledge in their attempts to read when they begin to focus on letter-sound connections. When asked to "read" a familiar storybook, some children attempt an effortful "sounding out," focusing on the print. When they encounter difficulty, some children then refuse to read, indicating that although they know the print is the source of the message, they cannot decode it: "I don't know what that word says," or "I don't know this word." These print-related refusals are thought to indicate an awareness of the importance of decoding to "real" reading. Other children, while unsuccessfully attempting to decode print, frequently look to an adult researcher for confirmation that their attempts are "right." Kindergarten children exhibit a wide variety of emergent writing behaviors that indicate that they are beginning to focus on the way print represents specific speech sounds. Children's early spelling attempts provide rich evidence of their acquisition of phonological knowledge about written language. Children's conscious awareness of the sounds in words and how the sounds can be separated orally during language play or when attempting to create a written message are evidence of phonological awareness. This awareness is significantly related to learning to read and write. Literacy-related instruction also influences the continued development of phonological awareness due to the focus of that instruction on letter-sound connections, phoneme segmentation of words, and spelling patterns.
Phonetic Knowledge in Primary Age Children:
The primary years are a time during which children achieve mastery over phoneme production. In addition, during this time, children's phonological knowledge is increasingly influenced by their experience with reading and writing. During children's sixth and seventh years, they continue to increase in their ability to produce a full range of specific language sounds. By age 8, most children have complete phoneme production. The acquisition of consonant clusters may not occur until children are 8 years old. While some children may have acquired these articulations earlier than the ages cited here, it is important for teachers to hold off on referring slower-achieving children for speech remediation until they are well past those target ages for the respective sounds. Primary age children also increase in their rhyming abilities and awareness of other sound patterns, such as onset and rime. Onset refers to the initial consonant of a syllable that precedes the first vowel of a syllable; rime refers to the vowel and any remaining consonants of a syllable.
Primary children vary in their approaches to spelling. Some are just beginning to figure out the orthographic system. Other children are more sophisticated in their representations of phonemes. Thus, it is important for primary teachers to be aware of the developmental progression of orthographic-phonemic knowledge in young children. Prior to acquiring conventional spelling, primary grade children may go through one or more stages of phonemic spelling, as representations of phonemes become more consistent and complete. Primary-age children also become aware of the ways in which words are spelled differently in academic English than when represented in dialect. In addition, as children begin to read a wider variety of texts, they come across unusual spelling patterns that do not follow previously learned letter-sound associations. Children's experiences that contribute to their oral and written vocabularies and the ways they are encouraged to use and examine those words will influence their acquisition of spelling knowledge. A key factor in this process appears to be opportunities children have to apply what they are learning about word spelling patterns to their reading and writing activities.
Tips for Parents:
1. Focus on one sound at at time. For instance, certain sounds, such as /s/, /m/, /f/ are great sounds to start with. The sound is distinct, and can be exaggerated easily. "Please pass the mmmmmmmmilk." "Look! There's a ssssssssssnake!" "You have fffffffive markers on the table." It's also easy to describe how to make the sound with your mouth. "Close your mouth and lips to make the sound. Now put your hand on your throat. Do you feel the vibration?" Once your child learns a few phonemes, it will be easier to keep talking about letters and sounds.
2. Help your child listen for the sounds. One part of learning letters and sounds is being able to figure out if a word contains a particular sound. "Do we hear /mmmmmmm/ in the word mmmmmmoon? Do we hear /mmmmmmm/ in the word cake?" These sorts of activities, done orally with your child, can help him begin to listen for and hear sounds within words.
3. Apply letter-sound skills to reading. Putting these skills to work within a book is a powerful way to help your child see the connection between letters, sounds, and words. As you're reading together, find places in the book to point out the letters and sounds you've been working on together. "Look! This page says 'Red fish, blue fish." There's the /fffffff/ sound we've been having fun with! It's at the beginning of the word fish."
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