Language+Play

This section of our wiki is about the components that are necessary in a preschool program in order to help young children understand the connection between the written and spoken word. Many preschools hold fast to their beliefs that, if young children are immersed in a print rich environment, they will naturally learn to read and write. Teachers are often taught that choice of activity is the most important aspect of their program. Studies are now showing that children do learn some by discovery alone, but not enough to become strong readers and writers. They also need language play and code-related literacy learning. We hope to offer solutions and suggestions to combat the barriers that many children face when learning to read and write.

As the push for high-stakes testing in our public school systems grows ever larger, there is less time to spend reading books and really allow children to be exposed to a large number of literary pieces throughout the school day - even in preschool. This causes issues within preschool level classes that can affect children for a number of years. There is a lack of phonemic awareness, letter familiarity, and a lowered exposure to printed books and text. This exposure is essential to a child’s literacy development in the years following preschool. It is key to create activities that allow students to identify the difference between a sentence, a word, an a letter in the classroom. Whether the activity includes identifying the parts of a sentence that has been previously prepared for them, categorizing the parts of a sentence the student creates on their own, identifying a beginning sound a letter makes and matching it to a specific picture, or simply organizing the portions of a word into the correct order, when students work at identifying these attributes of sentences, they are sharpening their abilities to read and write. Play and hands-on activities are, in fact, a major aspect of a child’s learning.

All in all, there are many solutions to the numerous challenges that educators are facing with regard to teaching their students to read and write. One chapter of Diane Barone and Lesley Morrow’s book, //Literacy and Young Children//, identifies preschoolers as facing troubles when learning to read because they are being given a choice of whether to read a book or do otherwise in another center. Once that problem has been identified, many teachers are able to find solutions to it. This solution lies within the fact that students need to be given choices, but, when it comes to reading and writing, the choices need to all include a literacy-based activity. There is a need for these choices and the need for teachers to be available for other activities aside from reading books as a whole group activity. There are a number of activities and lessons that can drastically change the learning a child experiences in the early stages of their life through reading and writing. Children can learn about one lesson in a number of ways through the examples given in these books. The overarching idea is that young children can learn through hands-on, interesting, inventive, attention-grabbing activities that can also prove to be educational in nature.

We have included a PowerPoint in this portion of the Wiki for you to use as a resource. The PowerPoint includes information on Language Play, but more specifically Phonemic Awareness, in the early childhood education classroom. There is a lesson plan included in the PowerPoint that provides a word segmentation activity to help build students' phonemic awareness.



In addition to our PowerPoint, please view our other useful resources below.

**Books & Articles**  -Hughes, F. P. (1999). Language play and language development. Retrieved from http://www.education.com/reference/article/language-play-development.

-Leong, D.J., and Bodrova, E. Playing to learn, understand and promote high-level language-building play. Retrieved from http://www.scholastic.com/resources/article/playing-to-learn.

**Websites**  -Preschool Rainbow: This website has a number of alphabet activities for young children. http://www.preschoolrainbow.org/alphabet.htm

-Growing Free... Resources for Learning: This is a comprehensive list of websites for preschool children and their language learning. http://www.growingfree.com/Websites.html

**Videos**  -Preschool Language Lesson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSkse5vO5w4

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;"> -Lettercise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q7IPo7j1jc&feature=related

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">**Lesson Plan(s)** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">-Lesson Pathways: www.lessonpathways.com/Pathways/Featured/1194 ** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%; line-height: 17px;">(The first lesson is an excellent way to introduce phoneme segmentation to the youngest of our students. Through this lesson, prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers are building students’ reading foundations, a most important, though overlooked, first step.)

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%; line-height: 17px;">-Ideal Curriculum: http://www.idealcurriculum.com/ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;"> (This site is full of lesson ideas for all types of classrooms full of young children.)