Focus on Book Knowledge and Print Concepts

Planned Language Approach Big 5: Focus on Book Knowledge and Print Concepts

Deborah Mazzeo: Hello and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for this third Planned Language Approach Big 5 webinar with a Focus on Book Knowledge and Print Concepts. So far, we have talked about alphabet knowledge and early writing, and last month background knowledge, and so this month, we're focusing on the next Big 5 skill which is book knowledge and print concepts.

A quick note for those who may not have been on the two prior webinars: The Big 5 is one of the five components of the planned language approach. They are the key skills that are critical for later school success including grade level reading. Be sure to join us again in April on the 18th at the same time for a webinar on the fourth Big 5 skill which will be oral language and vocabulary. Just so everyone is aware, know that all of these webinars are recorded, and in case you missed the first two or want to listen again, they will all get posted to the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center, or ECLKC for short, but it won't be available immediately, so in the meantime, we'll post the link to the recording on MyPeers which is one of the online platforms that we use, and we encourage you to join if you're not already a member, and we encourage you to join specifically the CLRP which stands for the Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Practices community, and you'll find more information on MyPeers in the resources section of the platform here.

So, my name is Deborah Mazzeo, and I am the cultural and linguistic practices coordinator here at the National Center on Early Childhood Development Teaching, and Learning, and I am joined today by my dear colleagues, Jan Greenberg, who is the senior subject matter expert in child development, and Karen Nemeth, who is the senior training and technical assistance specialists on DLLs, dual language learners, so you'll be hearing their voices momentarily.

Before we begin, I'd like to go over some information regarding the webinar. We'll be using some of the features of this platform to help us interact, and at the bottom of your screen, you'll notice these widgets. If you have any questions during the webcast, you can submit them through the purple Q&A widget. We'll try to answer these during the webcast and please know that we do capture all of your questions. If you happen to have any tech questions, please enter them here, as well. A copy of today's slide deck and additional resources are available in the resource list which is the green widget. We encourage you to download any resources or links that you may find useful.

Throughout this session, we'll be using the blue chat widget to engage with each other, and I see many of you have been responding, sharing with us where you're from, so that's great and what kinds of environmental prints children come into your programs knowing. You can find some additional answers to some common technical issues located in yellow help widget at the bottom of your screen. You can also find the closed captioning widgets in both English and Spanish. This is a new feature that we're so excited to be able to offer this time.

Each of these widgets are resizable and movable for a customized experience. Simply click on the widget and move it by dragging and dropping and resize using the arrows at the top corners. Finally, if you have trouble, try refreshing your browser by pressing F5. Be sure to log off your VPN and exit out of any other browsers. So, with that, here is what we're going to be covering today. I'll be starting out with a brief introduction and will explain some of the research around book knowledge and print concepts. We'll talk about the development progression from birth through age 5.

We'll be sharing effective practices through that spectrum and sharing examples of supporting book knowledge and print concepts in various early learning settings, so these topics are going to be interwoven and connected throughout our time together, and I did want to bring your attention to the multipage PDF in the resource list titled "Book Knowledge and Print Concepts." You all are the first to receive this newly updated document which is the basis for this webinar. There is also a link to the new book knowledge and print concepts web page on ECLKC, and as many may have heard me say before, there is a page for each of the Big 5 skills on ECLKC, or the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center.

So, at the end of this presentation, you should be able to understand the connects to a planned language approach, or PLA for short, coordinated approaches and the ELOF, or the Early Learning Outcomes Framework. You should be able to explain what the research says about book knowledge and print concepts, describe the development trajectory from birth to age 5, identify strategies to support children who are dual language learners and identify effective practices for supporting each skill in different early learning settings. So, when we talk about book knowledge and print concepts, we include the points that you see here on the slide. It is the understanding that print is speech written down. It's learning the various purposes of print which include communicating with others, finding information, recording our ideas or documenting information and providing pleasure or entertainment. It also includes recognizing common signs, symbols and logos.

We just talked about environmental print in the chat. It involves having experiences with different types of print materials such as books and pamphlets and lists, letters, journals, all those different types of print materials, and knowing how to use books appropriately including how to hold the book and turn the pages, and this list continues on here to the next slide as well. It includes asking and answering questions about what is read such as during a shared reading or other experiences with print. It involves identifying basic story elements like characters and sequence, main events, the setting. It involves understanding that some books provide information rather than tell a story. It includes enjoying books and other experiences with prints like having a favorite book, and we know that children love requesting that their favorites be read over and over again and then lastly here, pretending to read books, or we also call that emergent reading.

So, I won't spend too much time on this because many may know from our previous presentations that implementing the Big 5 involves a coordinated approach, and all of those activities listed on the slide involve implementing a coordinated approach, and so our conversation here today on book knowledge and print concepts is only one slice of the pie, which you see the pie image there on your screen. It's part of the Big 5 for all slice, but all of the other pieces to that pie are important, too. Those five pieces of the PLA are aligned to sections of the tool, the DLLPA, the dual language learner program assessment, which is a wonderful resource for assessing your own systems and services for supporting children who are dual language learners and their families. I encourage you to download that if you have not seen it yet before, and if you're implementing a planned language approach, you're implementing a coordinated approach to serving children who are DLLs which is required by the Head Start program performance standards.

Now all of the Big 5 skills and our conversation today specifically on book knowledge and print concepts are supported by research and connected to the language and literacy domain of the ELOF. While here we're showing the ELOF goals, childcare programs will see that book knowledge and print concepts will also align with states' early learning and development standards. For infants and toddlers, the goals associated with book knowledge and print concepts appear in the emergent literacy subdomain of language and communication, and then for preschoolers, all goals associated with book knowledge and print concepts appear in the literacy domain and two subdomains, the first being print and alphabet knowledge and the second comprehension and text structure, and these goals are relevant for children in classrooms, family childcare and home visiting programs. And with that, I will turn it over to my colleague, Karen.

Karen Nemeth: Okay, and so in your brief introduction about book knowledge and concepts of print, you listed a lot of factors which is so important because it seems so simple as if, "Well, all children need to do is know about books and know about print, and [Inaudible] can check this off their list," but there really are so many components as part of this whole topic area, and the research has a lot to say about it, so let's see what we can learn from the research. It won't be surprising, but it will be affirming of all of the great work that we're doing and give us some details, so for example, we know that reading-related behaviors actually prepare children for later reading and writing. Book handling, language comprehension, emergent reading all lead to the actual reading progress that children make later in childhood, so helping very young children engage with print and learn as much as possible about all the different forms and functions like Deb has just described will really make a difference in easing the child's transition into reading and writing. When adults show an interest in books, research shows that makes a difference, too.

The amount of time that we read in the presence of children, when we read things that we enjoy, or we read things that we use, it makes a difference in their understanding of – of the enjoyment of reading and the value of reading. We need children to notice the differences between print and pictures. That came up in the chat as you were talking about things they know when they come into the classroom. Developing children's later reading and writing skills depends on their ability to pick out those little differences between symbols and signs even before they read. Research also shows that when children who are dual language learners have opportunities to learn in both of their languages, their print knowledge in addition to other skills increases, so book knowledge and print concepts developed in any language can support a child's knowledge of how books and how print works in English.

The central insight is that print is speech written down and can happen in any language and transfer from one language to another, so for example if a teacher is reading "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" in her home language of the children in the classroom, that helps these children better understand the print concept that she's, you know, looking at words on the page and saying those words and how the book works, and if she does that in their home language, then they understand how it works. They can transfer that knowledge also to English, but children may develop knowledge of print and how books work in their home language with a written form that's different from English, and so children may expect that English-language books look and work like the books in the home language, but they might be different, so that's not wrong. Their prior knowledge in their home language actually helps them begin this understanding, and once they understand how print works in their own language, it's easy to understand the changes they need to understand it in English, so that's where we have some of these examples. Some languages are read from right to left or left to right.

Some are read from back to the front and others from front to the back which is kind of funny because we say the front of the book because we are English speakers, and what's front to us is really the back to somebody else. It's not really the front or the back. It's just which side you start on depending on your language and culture, so some languages are read horizontally, and some are read up and down vertically, and some languages have no written form at all, but we can still develop that concept of recording information and thoughts and feelings and stories with pictures on the pages of books. In addition, we know these things about – Some of the research about the importance of how we use books with children. We have different ways of using them with infants and toddlers with – and with young children. With infants and toddlers, we're more likely to have that child, you know, sort of crawl into your lap and look at the pictures and touch the book and turn the book around, and so when reading "Goodnight Moon," for example, a home visitor could model to the parents how she points out that there's two kids playing in the picture and the green blanket and the blue books on the shelf and how she can talk through the book even if the toddler isn't ready to hear the whole story.

When you read books to young children, you might also choose wordless books that allow [Inaudible] to tell any story in any language while focusing on what's in the picture. Children's books are often colorful and engaging, and adults and children enjoy reading them together, so adults typically read infants and toddlers who are sitting on their lap to support that warm, engaging interaction, and so it's important to remember that it's not just about the physical book but the whole experience of the concept of book reading and how we interact and respond with children. When children get a little older, we might see adults reading to preschoolers one-on-one in pairs or small groups to continue to allow for a lot of interaction about the book. Sometimes adults read to preschoolers in large groups if the book is short and the topic is very interesting to the children, but books should be on topics that – that really connect with the children and draw from a variety of cultures including the cultures represented in the classroom.

We need to, according to the research, be very focused on engaging with children while reading the books, not just presenting the book but using the book as a tool for interaction and keeping the session short and having opportunities beyond a large group where children can engage one-on-one with an adult and a book or small groups to have those conversations, and so we have one teacher provided an example of reading the story "The Mitten" by Jan Brett, that Ukrainian folktale, and she had the children pass around wool mittens to feel and hold and to talk about what they thought the world was and where it came from, and she also put a blanket in the middle of the circle, and the children took turns pretending to be the different animals and climbing into the blanket, and so she used props to further engage the children, and this is the kind of activity that's really supported by the research to go beyond that basic idea of book knowledges, that you know what a book is, but really all of these different factors coming together. We have a lot of research about using dialogic reading strategies, and I wonder if any of you have tried using dialogic reading strategies.

Some people are very familiar with that idea, and others are not, something you can read more about in the documents that we've attached for today's webinar about specific kinds of questions that you can ask to build children's knowledge and interaction about a book.

We also engage children in shared reading, read-alongs, choral reading where people – where the children join in saying parts of the story and pointing to the words on the words on the page as they say the words. Even before they learn to read, they, you know, know by recognizing the pictures that a certain sound happens on the page, or, you know, when they – when they see the picture of the fireworks, they know that that big word on the page says, "Boom," and they can point to it and say, "Boom," that's the beginnings of reading, and research shows that that action is really very helpful, and now the next thing we're going to do is look at a video that shows a child, or two children I guess, using a felt board, and I want you to look at this video and get an idea for something you can type in the chat box.

What – You're not just seeing what's in the here-and-now, but what do you think that the teacher did to make it possible for these children to have this rich interaction? What do you think happened in that classroom before the video that makes it possible for these children to engage in their experience of book knowledge when you see the – the video, so is everybody ready?

 [Video clip begins]

Children: ♪ Black sheep, black sheep, what do you see? ♪

♪ I see a goldfish looking at me ♪

 ♪ Goldfish, goldfish, what do you see? ♪

 ♪ I see a mother looking at me ♪

♪ Mother, mother, what do you see? ♪

♪ I see beautiful children looking at me ♪

Girl: ♪ Farmer, farmer, farmer, farmer ♪

 ♪ Farmer, farmer, what do you see? ♪

 I see a boy.

Girl 2: No. Pig.

Girl: Pig.

Girl 2: Pig, pig, what do you see? I see a pig, another pig. Pigs, pigs, what do you see? I see a horse. What do you see? I see a...

Girl: Cow. Cow.

Girl 2: Pig. Pig.

Girl: Cow. Cow, cow, what do you see?

Girl 2: Horse.

Girl: No, cow. What is that?

Girl 2: Pig. Huh?

Girl: What is that?

Girl 2: [Speaking Spanish] I see the...

Both: Pig, pig, what do you see? I see a...

Girl: Horse.

Girl 2: Horse, horse.

Girl 2: [Speaking Spanish] Horse, horse.

Girl: No, no. [SpeakingSpanish]

Girl 2: Food, food, what do you see? I see [Indistinct speaking].

Girl: No, [Indistinct speaking], no. [Speaking Spanish] I see a car, car looking at me. I see a car. [End video clip]

Karen: Okay. That was the – The video will stop playing.

Girl: [Speaking Spanish] what do you see?

Karen: I wonder if there's a delay because I can still hear video even though I don't...

Children: [Speaking Spanish]

Karen: So, thank you. Okay.

Children: [Speaking Spanish]

Karen: I still hear the video playing in my sound while I'm trying to talk, so [Inaudible].

Children: [Speaking Spanish]

Karen: Now I am getting some instructions.

Girl: Dogs, dogs, what do you see? I see a mommy looking at me.

Karen: Okay. Let's see if this works.

Girl: What do you see? I see cow.

Karen: Nope, didn't work.

Girl: Cow, cow, what do you see?

Karen: So, I've still got it playing in the background.

Girl: I see a cat. Cat, what do you see?

Karen: And I think I'm going to have to – I'm going to ask for Jan to get back [Inaudible] if I'm going to have – if we're going to have these technical issues, so just, I'll step back in if you could step up, and I'll work on this. Thank you. Okay. I don't – I don't hear Jan, but I also don't hear the video.

Deborah: Karen? Hey. This is Deborah. Yep, this is Deborah, so I think the video has ended. You can go ahead and proceed with the slides or with the questions pertaining to the video.

Karen: What? Okay, well, we'll ask our tech people in the background to take a look at... Because we have a couple other videos about how to make sure they stop when we move onto the next slide so we don't have that audio. That will be a big help, and so now I'm interested to know if people chatted about they saw the teacher doing in that video, or not just the teacher, what they thought that the teacher did to set it up so that there was this rich interaction that the children got from their prior experience of reading the story.

And, yes, it was a great example of English-language learning and not just using one language but using both of their languages so that they can have this rich, engaging conversation about the content by pulling words from their home language and English together and – and that they – Oh, I see that Carrie is saying they were teaching each other. Isn't that great that they were teaching each other? And – And so that's a question. What might a teacher do to encourage and prepare children so they know how to teach each other and that they feel comfortable teaching each other that they can experience books and print knowledge and the information they get that way with their peers and not always with an adult making it happen? So – So thanks for your patience about the technology.

That is certainly something we have to work on, and now I – I want us to take a moment to say that one of the important things to watch for is what are the prior experiences that children brings to the classroom, what happens at home in terms of books and print knowledge, and – and you can find that out by using this great resource that's called Gathering and Using the Language Information Families Share, has some great topics for conversation with families that you can use on a home visit or when you meet up with the families. You can use it as a whole experience, or you can just look at the document and pull up your questions to ask at certain times to get to know the family and what is happening in their home in support of book knowledge and print concepts and how you can incorporate what they do and how you can help them build on what they do and expand on it, so that connection with family is very important, and in the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge – Knowledge Center, there are several resources designed specifically for families. One of these is called the Importance of Home Language series, and we also have the Big 5 strategies with handouts specifically made for families available in both English and Spanish, so all of these things that we recommend today we've tried to also provide connections that you can use to bring them to families.

Okay. Now... this is a poll, and so we're seeing now if you can answer this poll question. And let's see how things are going. Are you able to answer the poll question? Yes, we're seeing people now starting to answer the poll. Click on your screen which choice – which answer choice you choose. It says, "What strategies have you used to support parents to build their children's knowledge of books and print concepts?" Choice one, "Send books home or have a class library or program lending library." The next choice is, "Hold literacy workshops for families." Another choice is, "Sending tips and questions for parents via a text message, post videos with ideas for home literacy," or you have another idea, you can type in the chat, so these – that's our poll. And let's see.

We have quite a few responses, and so let's see where we're at. Okay. You can see that 88 percent of you said you have some kind of program where you send books home to families. That's a pretty big deal. Almost half of you hold literacy workshops for families. Twenty-two percent say they send text messages home. That's pretty significant number that actually text message, but a very few use the strategy of posting videos, and I see that some of you are also typing your ideas in the chat box, so that's a good place for you to – to access some interesting thoughts that you can use, and now we just want to ask you a couple of questions for thinking that you can answer now in the chat box so that you can bring back to your programs as a topic for discussion with your colleagues. For example, how do you support parents specifically on building book knowledge and print concepts understanding? What languages are spoken by the children, and how does that affect your support?

So, you have some specific strategies to meet the needs of dual language learners in your program, right? And how do you incorporate families' funds of knowledge? What – What assets the families bring, what interest and talents and traditions that families can share to help you connect your learning environment to the child's culture, so those are some interesting questions that you can answer in the chat box to share with each other and also to think about using as discussion questions after you view the webinar when you go back to your programs and talk about what, you know, what we've shared today, so now we're going to talk about the development progression and share some examples of book knowledge and print concepts according to the age ranges, and Jan is going to start with that.

Jan Greenberg: Okay. So, Karen, thanks. You know, this is our third PLA Big 5 webinar together, and I just continue to appreciate the thoughtful context that you and Deb provide about the whats and the whys of these important literacy practices.

Karen: Mm-hmm.

Jan: So today, you've provided the what and why about book knowledge and print concepts, and now we're going to get into some of the how to support children in learning and developing these important skills and concepts, and in fact, we've already started identifying some of those strategies and practices, and so we are going to start with babies as we have for the last couple of webinars, and we're going to use this goal from the ELOF, "Child comprehends meaning from pictures and stories," and it shows the development progression of that concept and skill from birth all the way up to 36 months, and – and so we know that babies and young children are learning important information about books and print that they are going to need to become readers, so they watch how adults hold books and turn the pages.

They notice that pictures change when they do so and especially if adults are pointing that kind of thing out to them. They notice the rhythm of words in a story, and they notice how the reader's voice – voice rises and falls, and in fact, when babies are read to often, adults may observe them book babbling. I love that phrase, book babbling, which involves babbling in a way that mimics a reader. Book babbling is different from other forms of babbling, and it's what babies do when they're beginning to understand that book reading is different than talking. We know that when infants and toddlers are engaged in a book-sharing experience, they will look at the book. They'll touch it. They'll look at the adult.

They might switch their gaze from the adult to the book. They'll seem content and interested. We also know that children will signal when they're ready to stop reading by looking at something else, or they'll squirm and fuss, or they'll turn the pages to – to get to the end, so when it's time to end the book-reading experience, you can turn the page. You can put the book down, and you can cuddle them, tickle them and let the children crawl, walk and play and so okay, so what do we do to support babies in beginning to develop book knowledge and print concepts? Well, we can share stories, poems and songs in the children's home language. We can cuddle up and read books with them as Karen mentioned earlier, and as you're reading, you're labeling what's in the book. You're describing the pictures. You're describing what – what animals or characters in the book are doing. You can look in the direction where children point or follow their gaze to support their language development, and again, you're labeling and describing what you think they're looking at, so for example, if you're looking at a book about different transportation vehicles, you could say, "Yes, that is a truck," but you don't stop there. You say, "It's a dump truck. See that big pile of dirt in the back?"

And so you both label, and then you actually extend their – their language learning. You provide cloth and board books, and why cloth and board books? Because we know that one of the ways babies explore their environment is to put objects in their mouth, so this is one way that they're beginning to develop the concept of book and what makes up a book and, you know, what you do with a book, and again, you're talking about what they're looking at and seeing in the book, and you're engaging them in a conversation by getting their attention, and you ask them a question, and then you wait for them to respond, and they might do body movements or gestures or facial expressions. They might coo. They might babble. They might have other vocalizations, and you interpret what those responses are, and you provide the language, so for example, you might say, "What do you see? A cat? That's right. I see a cat, too. It's a little white cat with a black nose," so you label and extend, and you can play games such as peekaboo and pat-a-cake, or you can invent games like can you find a ball, and again, these kinds of things build children's interest in language, and that's one of the reasons that you're reading books to them, too, is you're getting them interested in language.

They're exposing them to – to words and new ideas. Okay, so we are going to take a look at a video, and you'll see in this video there are two female teachers, and they are doing the "Where Is Thumbkin?" finger play with five infants, so as you watch this video, post in the chat box what strategies do you see teachers using, and what are they doing to support children's development of book knowledge and print concepts and then maybe what do you see the children doing in response, so here we go. [Video clip begins]

Teachers: ♪ Pointer, where is pointer? ♪

♪ Here I am. ♪ ♪ Here I am. ♪

♪ How are today, sir? ♪

♪ Very well, I thank you. ♪

♪ Run away. ♪ ♪ Run away. ♪

♪ Where is tall man? ♪ ♪ Where is tall man? ♪

♪ Here I am. ♪ ♪ Here I am. ♪

♪ How are today, sir? ♪

♪ Very well, I thank you. ♪

♪ Run away. ♪ ♪ Run away. ♪

[End of video clip]

Jan: Okay, so in the short clip, we saw two teachers singing "Where Is Thumbkin?" with a group of possibly mobile infants here, and so what strategies did you see teachers use, and how did they relate to developing children's knowledge of book and print, so what did you see? You can post your responses in the chat box. Okay, song and music with touch, okay.

They're using – Okay, so they're – they are using a visual. They're using a song. Song has language. They're tapping children with their fingers. They touch the children, close proximity, using props, using fingers as their props, looking at children as they were singing. Okay, so lots of – of similar responses. Yeah, close-proximity singing – We might add to this, so they were sharing a song. We might think that they're sharing a song in the children's home language, so in this case, we might think that the children speak English at home, but if some don't, then we could say that teachers are exposing children whose home language is not English to English, and this would be in keeping with Head Start program performance standards related to infants and toddlers who are dual language learners.

Yeah, they're – they're using the song, and they're using movements to interest children in language which is an important foundation for interest in books and print, and so – and so your responses definitely mirrored – mirrored that, so we've just talked a little bit about babies, and now we're going to talk about toddlers, and we're going to springboard that using this goal from the ELOF, "Child handles books and relates them to their stories or information," and so we know toddlers learn about their world through observing and listening and touching everything in reach and by having their questions answered in the languages that they know. We've already talked about using...

We've talked about using environmental print as a way to help children learn about print concepts and uses of print, so talking about that environmental print or using sign language to describe print at home and out in the community helps toddlers begin to understand that print is meaningful and important, and as for – as books are concerned, many toddlers are interested in books, and they will ask to have their favorites read over and over and over again. Some may even begin to pretend read on their own. We do know that some toddlers may only listen to a few words before they drift away, and we know that some others will develop an interest in books later on, but – but despite all those differences, we know that caring adults should continue to provide opportunities for toddlers to discover the joy of story reading by reading and talking about books, and so what are some of those strategies?

And, oh, my. We've got a whole bunch of strategies here, and we've actually already talked about some of these. We've talked about environmental print. We've talked about sharing stories, poems and songs in home languages as well as in English. Some of the strategies that Karen mentioned earlier are ways to make story time fun, and I am sure that your curriculum has some specific strategies for doing that, but I would say that I think one of the most important strategies for making it fun is to demonstrate your own enthusiasm and engagement in the story. Children will see that, and they will watch and model what they see you doing. We've talked about reading and rereading and rereading favorites of children, and so it's important to just maintain your enthusiasm when you're reading the same story for the thirtieth time to children. Repetition is really important for them.

We've talked about talking or signing about books and asking questions during and after story reading, and make sure some of those questions are open-ended that give children a chance to use the language that they're learning to answer a question and just like with infants, wait for a response and then respond to them. One of the great things you can do when you're reading is to help them understand unfamiliar words, so for example, if you're reading a book about trains, you can point out the engineer and say, "That's the engineer. He drives the train. Can you say engineer?" So, it's – it's very good and useful to provide simple definitions of unfamiliar words. It's a great way to build their vocabulary. We've already talked again about print, signs and logos. You know, respond to children when they're asking you questions about what those things mean and go the extra distance, so, you know, if they say – If they ask what the sign says, you could say something like, "That says push, so we need to push this forward to get it open," so, you know, label and expand. You can point out and name meaningful letters of the alphabet such as those that are in a children's name, and you can do that with any print that you're looking at with a – with a child. Just like with infants and toddler – just like with infants, you want to provide, you know, durable books that will hold up well to active explorations.

You want to try to create a comfortable space where books are attractively arranged and easy to read, so you might use shelves, or you might use baskets, and you want to try to store some of those books in a way that toddlers can see the cover rather than the spine because that will help them self-select favorites, and hopefully that minimizes their need to pull all of the books off the shelf, and again, you can model how to use books appropriately, so you show them how to open them, how to turn pages carefully and how to return them to shelves or a basket, and you can use all of these strategies if you're working directly with children and if you're working with parents and families such as during home visits or socializations, you can talk with them about these strategies and then work with them to identify and adapt what would work best for them in their home environment, so okay, so that's lots of strategies, and we have another video to show, and again, I'll ask you to watch the video and then post in the chat box about the strategies that the adult uses and what you see the child doing, and in this video, you're going to see an adult reading a book to a toddler, and here we go.

[Video clip begins]

Teacher: Choo-choo.

Child: Train.

Teacher: Train.

Child: Train.

Teacher: That's the choo-choo train. That's the red one, red. Yes. No, that has – that has coal in there. You see it? Choo-choo.

Child: Choo-choo. [Inaudible] up.

Teacher: They're going up.

Child: Up.

Teacher: Up.

Child: Up and down.

Teacher: Up there, we see blue.

Child: Blue.

Teacher: There's the blue one. There's purple. Zebra – Oh, back to the train.

Child: Choo-choo train.

Teacher: Choo-choo train. Back to the zebra. Elephant, elephant, oh, choo-choo train.

Child: Choo-choo train.

Teacher: Choo-choo train. You see the yellow one?

Child: Choo-choo train.

Teacher: Choo-choo train.

Child: Up and down.

Teacher: Up and down, that's right, up and down.

Child: Up and down.

Teacher: Up and down. That's the yellow one.

[End of video clip]

Jan: Okay, what's happening in – in – in that clip, so what did you see? What are some of the strategies the adult was using with the toddler, and what was he doing? What are – What are your thoughts about this? What did you see? You can post that in the chat box. Child-focused and point and make sounds [Inaudible] simple words. It did. Yes, I agree. That is a great interaction. Great use of following the child's lead with the story. Yes, this is all about the child and where the child wanted to go with the book, absolutely. Interacting with the story as well, yes, there was some repetition. She pointed out. She expanded. She was letting him manipulate the book, allowing – allowing the child some autonomy, so yep, lots of – lots of modeling. She definitely follows his lead, so great, so yeah, you picked out some really great strategies that this adult was using with this toddler, and so we are going to continue the conversation about the how and our developmental progression with preschool, and I'm going to turn this over to Karen now. Karen, take it away.

Karen: Oh, thank you, and so now I'm going to talk about what we expect to see and provide for preschool children in a few minutes knowing that if we were all at an event together, we could probably talk about this for hours because as children get to be preschoolers, the many ways that they experience books and print for so many different purposes and the amount of their own experience and knowledge they bring to those experiences makes them increasingly sophisticated, and so we're going to talk about some strategies, but I do want to take a moment to say that in that first video with the felt board and the children talking at the felt board in English and Spanish was from a collection of videos provided by Teaching At the Beginning, and they have – You can access those videos on their YouTube channel by just looking up Teaching At the Beginning YouTube. There's about 20 videos, free videos, there like the one we saw, and we want to thank them for letting us use that.

Also, we're going to share a couple of – not a couple, a few quick strategies here about supporting preschoolers, and – and a lot of these we've mentioned before, and I'm just going to add a little detail because these are the things that were supported by the research that came up at the beginning of this webinar, and the variety of kinds of print and the kinds of books gets to be more and more important with preschoolers. They need to see all of the ways that we use writing and stories and books and lists and labels and instruction sheets, etc, and we need to make sure that those things are available in home language as well as English. We really need to focus on setting aside time to read to children every day, you know, throughout the preschool year. Read and reread stories multiple times, so this is something you could type in the chat room. On average, how many times do you – do you think a child wants to hear a story repeated? You'll also want to read informational text.

Having books and materials around the classroom or the environment that give information about the activities or about things that are happening in the world and also want to begin to really model how to care for books and store books and to discuss what's in those books, and we – we want to talk about how print is used for different purposes, so, like, when a child reminds you or something or asks you something, and you say, "Oh, I'll try to do that tomorrow," how about getting out a piece of paper, writing yourself a note and then showing the child that you wrote yourself a note so that you can remember what to do or making lists so the child can see it, etc. Draw child's attention to the letters, the words, the signs that are in the environment. So, the labels that you have in your classroom, the labels on the different areas, the label on the table that says table, how about using those labels to start a conversation and actually talk about the words that exist in the room that may seem boring, but to a child, they're new and interesting. Model using different kinds of books and magazines, digital texts, you know, stories on websites and apps and books that reflect the languages and cultures of the children and including print and writing materials not just in the writing area.

Well, it is good to have a writing area, and I'll ask you now. You might type in the chat box. What are some of the things you have in your writing area? But how about extending those writing supplies to other areas like having some paper and pencils in the block area so children can pretend to write down their designs and their list of blocks they use and that kind of thing to really build that knowledge, so what we're going to have now is another video, so this is a test of my video skills. It's going to give us some examples of reading in the home.

[Video clip begins]

Adult: [Speaking Spanish] Because they were afraid there were coyotes. It was a bad very bad coyote. When Suddenly – The rabbits...everybody was helping. the bears. Of a feather? ...they made their house even bigger.

Child: [Speaking Spanish] Si. 

Adult: [Speaking Spanish]

Child: [Speaking Spanish]

Adult: [Speaking Spanish]

Child: [Speaking Spanish] But if all were like this nobody could blow it down.

Adult: No, they could not blow it down.

Teacher: You're reading every day at home with them somehow.

Adult: [Speaking Spanish] Every night, one book is read before going to bed.

Child: Oh! He was sleeping. He was sleeping. He was sleeping. He was sleeping. He was sleeping.

Adult: Uh-huh. [Speaking Spanish]

Child: He began eating.

Adult: What were they serving?

Child: Corn Fakes.

[End video clip]

Karen: Okay, so that was a video with a lot of wonderful examples. It's a small moment of reading with a lot happening, so – so we want to shared those examples with you, but in finishing up our discussion about strategies, I'm just going to ask you to really think about all of the strategies we talked about today on the webinar and think about, what are the strategies you are using to promote preschoolers' book knowledge and print concepts, and type them into the chat, and I realize I said that too quietly. I repeat: Can you please write into the chat box thinking about all of the things, all of the strategies that we talked about today, what are the strategies that you plan to use with your preschoolers to support book knowledge and print concepts? And this is our chance to take another look at all of the great ideas that our colleagues are sharing with each other in the chat box that we will have this opportunity to really collect all these great ideas from each other as well as from the videos that we've shown today, so – so we'll keep an eye on all your great ideas that are flowing through that chat box, and I will now hand the presentation back to Deborah.

Deborah: Thank you, Karen. So, as we conclude our webinar here, I wanted to show this slide, and you'll see the image of the globe with the hands around the world. That is the icon for the CLRP community on MyPeers. You might recall from the very beginning and opening of this webinar that I talked about, this is where you can get the link to the recording in case you're wanting to hear it again or share it with others.

With this webinar, it will be – We'll be continuing the conversation on book knowledge and print concepts tomorrow on the MyPeers platform, and we'll – we'll plan on doing that for the following two webinars as well, the one on oral language and vocabulary that'll be happening in April and then the one on logical awareness happening in May, so tomorrow on MyPeers based on the questions and the ideas that have been shared today in the chat, we'll follow up with you on this platform and encourage you to post and contribute to the conversation on book knowledge and print concepts, and so here you can see a list of the resources that will support this skill development, and we just want to thank you for your time and attention today, and we ask that you please complete the evaluation. You'll get a certificate at the end after you submit that, and we really do value your input and use it in the – in the following webinar, so here is the link, and again, I thank you, and I wish you all a lovely rest of the day.

Thank you so much.