Creative Curriculum Connections

Just the other day while sitting in a coffee shop I observed a young mom feeding her child a yogurt. The perhaps 8-12 month old sat in his stroller and obediently took each spoonful. Between every two or three spoonfuls mom carefully scraped the spoon against her son’s chin to clean the dripped yogurt. After a little less than 10 minutes the yogurt and the whole process came to an end. Both mother and child left the store.

I noticed two things. The child and mom seemed to enjoy themselves. Each looked at each other steadily and helped each other peacefully. Interestingly, though, the mother spoke not one word and the child made not one sound. As an early interventionist this concerns me a bit. Now, of course, I cannot judge this mother-child pair by this one interaction but it spurs me on to have this conversation with you.

Talking to your child no matter how young is critical to language and cognitive development. Even though you might think young children cannot understand because of age they learn much through your verbal interaction. Some of what they learn includes:
• Rhythm of their native language
• Language connects people
• Sounds have meaning
• Each object/action can be labeled with a word
• Vocabulary
So when you talk, sing, ask questions, and label objects consistently you positively contribute to your child’s development. Have fun!!

Dear Teachers,

What do you think of when you hear the term “classroom management”? Does it strike fear into your heart? While I may be trying to be funny, I understand classroom management is a major concern for many of my undergraduate students and many of the beginning teachers with whom I’ve worked. When I discuss various ideas connected to literacy, I often hear “But what about classroom management? How do we maintain discipline? If the students aren’t going to listen, how can we include writing or reading choices? Even though my undergraduate students watch me teaching third grade during the first week of school and see that I immediately establish the literacy environment and never wait until “they are able to listen,” they still express their apprehensions this way:

Cindy: But how do we make them behave?

Nina: What do you mean? Aren’t these children behaving?

Heidi: Yeah, but what if they don’t behave?

Nina: Why do you think they are behaving now?

Dana: I don’t know. I’m asking you what if they don’t behave?

Nina: I like to encourage people to look at the why’s of success first, just like looking at the strengths of a child before the weaknesses, so why do you think these third graders are behaving on the first day?

 Project Orientation: Ensuring Successful Learning for Each Student

The most powerful and purposeful way to differentiate instruction is through projects and long term work. Indeed, the one question to ask our students that will ensure deep differentiation is: “In what way will you show us how you connected to this material?” In this way, students have the power to choose the most personal way to respond. Let’s look at how a project orientation can enable all participants success and purpose.

Project Orientation

A project is work that needs to be completed over time and so requires a level of commitment usually not necessary for daily activities such as filling in a worksheet, finish reading one more chapter, etc.    This type of commitment can be inspired in the students when they are allowed to choose what they want to create. Just as in other areas of literacy, the teacher’s passion is a major key to success. Let’s look at some possible projects:

Every child, needs a consistent daily structure that remains the same from day to day. This kind of predictability is imperative for growth in speech. A predictable structure enables predictable language that will serve as foundational pivot points to build language upon. So for example, if every night you say to the child, “You need to put your socks in your shoes.” This language will serve as pivotal language that you can help him build upon as you turn your directives into questions. So after a certain amount of time you will no longer say “You need to put your socks in your shoes” but you will ask “What do you need to do now?” If your schedule is consistent the child will know the answer to this question and to other similar questions. This method will enable increase use of speech by the purposeful connection to vocabulary and action. With the building of this vocabulary through repetition then questioning (What do you need to do next?) child will begin to internalize the structure and thus the ability to connect to daily activities, control himself and grow in his independence.