Focus on Phonological Awareness

Planned Language Approach: Focus on Phonological Awareness

Deborah Mazzeo: Hello and welcome, everyone. Thank you, so much for joining us today for this fifth and final Planned Language Approach Big Five webinar, with a focus on phonological awareness. So far, we have talked about alphabet knowledge in early writing, background knowledge, both knowledge and print concepts and oral language and vocabulary. And this month, we're focusing on the last of the Big Five skills, which is phonological awareness. So, glad you could be here with us today.

As a reminder for those who may not have been on the prior webinars, the Big Five 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. Just know that all of these webinars are recorded in case you missed one, or would like to listen again. They all will get posted to the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center, or the ECLKC, for short. That's how we call it.

But it won't be available immediately.

So, just know that in the meantime, we'll be posting the link on MyPeers, and we encourage you to join. If you're not already a member of the CLRP, or the culturally and linguistically responsive practices community, more information on joining can be found in the resources section of this platform.

And since this is our final webinar in the series, we'll be staying on about 15 minutes past the hour mark to answer any questions, but know that for those of you who do have to go at the hour, we'll provide the evaluation link in the chat so you can be sure to complete it and get your certificate.

Alright.

With that I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Deborah Mazzeo. I'm the cultural linguistic practices coordinator here at the National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching, and Learning, and I am joined today with my colleagues who have also been on the prior webinars with me. Jan Greenberg is the senior subject matter expert in child development, and Karen Nemeth is the senior training and technical assistance specialist for dual-language learners.

Before we begin, I'd like to go over some information regarding the webinar platform. We'll be using some of the features of this webinar platform to help us interact. So, 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 questions. If you have any tech questions, please enter them there as well.

A copy of today's slide deck and additional resources are available in the resource list, which is the green widget, and we encourage you to download any resources or links that you might find useful. Throughout this session, we'll be using the blue group chat widget to engage with each other, and many of you have already been entering some of your creative ideas for fostering phonological awareness, and we appreciate that.

You can find additional answers to some common technical issues located in the yellow help widget at the bottom of your screen. You can also find the closed captioning widget in both English and Spanish. Each of these widgets are resizable and movable for a customized experience. Simply click on the widget to move it by dragging and dropping, and resize using the arrows at the top corners. Finally, if you have any trouble, just try refreshing your browser by pressing F5 and be sure to log off your VPN and exit out of any other browsers. 

So, here is what we're covering today. These topics will be interwoven and connected throughout our time together. You may have noticed that in the resource list, there is a multipaged PDF titled, "Phonological Awareness," and you all are the first to receive this newly updated document, which is the basis for this webinar and contains these major sections that you see as part of our agenda today. There is also a link to the new phonological awareness web page on ECLKC. And as many may have heard me say before, there is a page for each of the Big Five skills.

Towards the end of today's webinar, I'm going to be doing a virtual tour of the PLA Big Five web pages, so we hope you'll be able to stay a few minutes extra as we give the virtual tour and have that opportunity to engage in some Q&A -- some questions and answers. So, be thinking about what those questions might be.

And here we have our session objectives. So, at the end of this presentation, we hope you'll be able to understand the connection to a PLA, which is a planned language approach, connections to coordinated approaches, and to the ELOF, the early learning outcomes framework. You should be able to explain what the research says about phonological awareness, describe the developmental trajectory from birth to age 5, identify strategies to support children who are dual-language learners, and identify effective practices for supporting phonological awareness in different early-learning settings.

So, let's start out with this definition. When we talk about phonological awareness, we include the points that you see on this slide. It involves noticing and listening to the meaningful sounds of language. So, there is a connection between the sounds of words and the meanings of words, and that underlying research for all the points on this slide is that children learn all of this in the context of words that they understand. So, keep that in mind.

Next, we have play with sound patterns, and that includes repeating sounds, rhyming words, singing, or chanting. Next is identifying sounds of words that sound the same. For example, at the beginning of "airplane" and "airport," we hear the same sounds, right? Manipulating sounds of words, such as blending. So, for example, blending "air" and "plane" into "airplane," or manipulating sounds and saying things like "pancake," "lambcake," "mancake." And then also breaking up sounds or segmenting, such as breaking today into "to" and "day." So, these are what encompass phonological awareness, and I invite others to feel free, if there's anything else that comes to mind when you think of phonological awareness, go ahead and share that in the chat.

So, implementing the Big Five involves a coordinated approach, and all of these activities bulleted on the slide here involve implementing a coordinated approach. Supporting phonological awareness throughout the day as part of the curriculum. Assessing children's learning of phonological awareness. Supporting families to develop children's phonological  awareness. Our conversation on phonological awareness today is only one slice of the pie -- the Big Five for all.

All of the other pieces are important, too, and so that's the pie image that you see on the slide here. The five pieces of the PLA are aligned to the sections of the DLLPA. That's the dual language learner program assessment. Hopefully, you've had the chance to either Google it and access it on ECLKC, and it's a wonderful resource for assessing your own systems and services for supporting children who are dual-language learners and their families. 

If you're implementing a PLA, or 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.

So, all of the Big Five skills, and our conversation today on phonological awareness are supported by research and connected to the language and literacy central domain of the ELOF.

While here, we're showing the ELOF goals, child care programs will see that phonological awareness will also align with state's early learning and development standards.

So, for infants and toddlers, the goal associated with phonological awareness appears in the language and communication domain, under the emergent literacy sub domain. And for preschoolers, the phonological awareness goal is in the literacy domain and the phonological awareness sub domain. And these goals are relevant for children in classrooms, family child care, and home visiting settings. And next, I'm going to turn it over to Karen to talk about the research. Karen.

Karen Nemeth: Well, thank you very much. And we do have a fair amount of research about supporting the development of phonological awareness in infants through toddlers and also for children who are dual-language learners and how phonological awareness develops in their home language and in English.

So ... As Deb said, we were looking at the ways we help children understand how we communicate by manipulating the sounds, right? That speech is made up of words; words are made up of syllables. Syllables are made up of individual sounds or phoneme. And as children hear people talk, they start to make sense out of that. And so, you notice that even before a baby can talk, they know the difference between, "take this cookie," and, "break this cookie."

And they show you by their behavior that they can hear the difference. And then, as they get older and they begin to talk, the development of their understanding, their awareness, of phonological awareness really depends heavily on how well they use words and how many opportunities we give them to practice the words in their play and interaction. So, it's about hearing the words and about using the words.

And so, in classrooms where there's a lot of child talk, we know that children are getting a lot of experience that helps them practice their phonological awareness. We want them to have word awareness, so they gradually begin to know the difference in words. Rhyme awareness,  which is a great source of amusement for young children when they start catching on.

But you know that the children you see developed that awareness at different times. A preschool teacher can't come in and say, "On Tuesday, everyone is going to learn writing.

"Some children are ready; some children are not. Some children notice other parts of words before they learn rhymes. Some children are ready to learn about speech sounds in the home language before they learn them in English. So, there's a fair amount of variation among children about when and -- and in what order they learn these things and a fair amount of variation in terms of how the teacher has to be prepared to support each child as they're moving along.

We want children to develop symbol awareness, like some words have one syllable, like "leap" or "last." Some words have two syllables like, "sleepy" or "laughing," and three syllables like, "banana" or "dinosaur" and more. And we have to help children, not only hear those things, but 
be able to recognize what they hear and to identify that those are separate syllables. And then we will also focus on phonemic awareness, and phonemes are the smallest sound involved in... 

The small units of sound involved in making up the meaning of words, right? So, we find that children start to notice the beginning sounds of words. So, they might notice what is the beginning sound of their own name. Maria starts to learn that "M" is the sound of her name. And then Maria might start noticing, "Hey, market -- that has my letter 'M.' Market, Maria," and so forth. And we have some specific knowledge about supporting dual-language learners in phonological awareness, and one of the things that's important to remember is that phonological awareness is an understanding of how the sounds in a language work.

So, if a child can learn about how the sounds work in their own language, then that means they understand the role of sounds in making words and in communicating. So, if they understand how it works, it becomes easier then to learn the sound in a new language and another new language.

But the beginnings always are strongest when children make those sound and meaning connections in language it's most familiar to them. And so, as Deb said earlier, it's really important that we use words that mean something to the individual child, and that's how they make the connection with the sounds that shape that meaning. 

So, for dual-language learners, a lot of times, that is a good place to use their home language, in the beginning, until they catch on to where the syllables change, or how many syllables are in a word in their home language. That means they understand what syllables are and then they can 
learn the same concept of syllables in English.

So, for example, Korean is a phonetic language that matches letters and sounds, and researchers have found that Korean-English bilingual children can perform the tasks that require phonological manipulation more easily even than their Korean monolingual peers because they'd gotten that practice in two different languages. So, they're perceiving the differences in those syllables more clearly because they have to pay attention when they're listening to someone who speaks to them in Korean versus someone who speaks to them in English.

Other languages are tonal languages. So, the language in Laos depends also on the tone of the voice in addition to the syllables and phonemes. But in English, for the most part, sounds occur one at a time, and each letter's sound is like a phoneme. And English does have some sounds that other languages do not have. So, we may be trying to get children to pronounce a sound that doesn't actually exist in their home language, and that takes a little bit more practice. 

But dual-language learners will not make those connections to sound in words that they don't understand. So, rhyming words that they know is helpful. Chants and rhymes with nonsense words don't help dual-language learners because they don't know what to listen for because it doesn't have meaning for them, okay?

So, we have a poll here. Can children who are deaf or hard of hearing benefit from phonological awareness instructional practices? That's a yes-or-no question. So, this is your time to answer. 

It's not a quiz. It's a poll. So, you don't have to worry about being right or wrong. Just give it a try and let's see what people think. I see some people are answering.

So far ... Looks like a lot of people are putting in the same answers. Let's see if there's any variation. Now we're seeing a bunch of more answers. Okay. I'll just give you about 10 more seconds. It's a yes-or-no question. Okay. Wait 'til you see how this turned out. 97.2 percent said yes. Explicit instruction about phonological awareness helps children who are deaf or hard of hearing, and the research supports that. Although it's a pretty reasonable question, isn't it?

So, for those of you who said no, there are some kind of concerns you might have about, "How does this work?" The research shows that explaining, actually describing the phonological components of words helps children, even if they have very limited hearing, to know what they're listening for or to understand how to recognize, even if they're lip reading, right? 

So, adults who work directly with children who are deaf or hard of hearing, or their families can benefit from working with specialists in speech and language or deaf education to help them understand which aspects of phonological awareness can be successful, working with a particular child at a particular stage of development. Okay? So, that was an interesting question. And now we're going to start talking about the developmental progression, starting with infants and toddlers. And here's where Jan takes over.

Jan Greenberg: Okay. Thanks, Karen. And actually thanks to Deb and Karen for giving us a great picture, context for phonological awareness -- what it is and why it's important. And so now we're going to get into the how. These are strategies to support children in developing this very important literacy skill, and we're going to start with a baby. 

And as Deb mentioned when she was talking about the ELOF and goals, this is a goal for infants and toddlers in emergent literacy subdomain, and it focuses on paying attention to repeating and using some rhymes, phrases, or refrains from stories or songs. And you see the developmental progression from birth to 36 months.

And so, what do we know about phonological awareness for the littlest kids? Well, we know that babies learn the differences between sounds, like voices or barking dogs and vacuum cleaners, and language as they interact with others and explore the world around them. We know from research that they recognize the sound of their mother's voice from birth, and as they spend time with other caring adults, like teachers or family child care providers or home visitors, they will begin to recognize those voices, as well. And with lots of repetition of words, and songs, and whatnot, babies are also going to begin to recognize favorite songs and poems and stories.

So, what are some of the strategies we can use to help babies support ... Help babies develop phonological awareness? And we have this list of seven strategies, and I'm actually going to start with, "respond to babies' needs" because you might be wondering, what does that have anything -- what does that have to do with phonological awareness?

And it is really simply things like responding to their needs for a diaper change, or they're hungry, and you feed them. And we know that when baby's needs are met, they are more available for the kinds of interactions and learning experiences that would help them develop phonological awareness. So, we want them to be ready and present for what we can offer them.

And so what else can we do? We can sing songs and nursery rhymes in children's home languages. We can also share rhyming books, song books, and storybooks with them, especially if they are board books or cloth books that have those kinds of rhymes and songs in them. We can use child-directed speech or "parentese," and this means speaking in a higher pitch at a slower rate with clearer enunciation in simpler and shorter phrases. And we combine this with gestures and facial expressions and, essentially, what that does is that draws children's attention to the sounds of language that you are making.

We can describe routines and actions, like, "Let's go wash your hands." We always want to wash our hands before we eat lunch, and we could use lots of different words in children's home language. And as Karen had mentioned earlier, one of the types of phonological awareness is word awareness.

So, these are opportunities to be using lots of different kinds of words with infants. And then we can describe voices and the sounds of voices. So, for example, you might say, "Oh, I hear your sister Shane coming. She has a higher voice than your nana. There's Shane." We can also describe the sounds that babies hear, like, "Did you hear that doggie bark? He made a loud sound. Woof! Woof!"

So, these are just some strategies that you can use. And if you're working directly with children, you can use them with children. If you're working with parents as a home visitor, you can support them in identifying and adapting and trying any of these practices when you're on a home visit or during group socialization. Okay.

So, the next thing we're going to do is look at a video, and in this video you're going to see a family child care provider interacting with one of the babies in her care. And so, as you're watching this video, what are some strategies that you see her using? What is she doing to support the infant phonological awareness development and then what you see the infant doing in response? Okay. So, now we're going to take a look at this video.

[Video begins]

Woman: ♪ How I wonder what you are! ♪ ♪ Twinkle, twinkle ♪ [Laughs] ♪ Little star ♪ ♪ Twinkle, twinkle, little star ♪ ♪ How I wonder what you are! ♪

[Laughing]

Girl: Let's do this. Let's do this.

Woman: ♪ Twinkle, twinkle, little star ♪ ♪ How I wonder what you are! ♪ Huh? [End of video]

Jan: [Chuckles] Okay. So, what did you see the family child care provider do? And what did you see the infants do in response? You could type your responses in the chat box. What did she do? What did the infant do? As she was singing, "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." Alright. She was making hand motion. The child was copying her. Yes. That baby was watching her intently. She changed her tone, yep. She repeated it. Actually, it seemed the child wanted that. Yep. She repeated it several times. Giving the child a chance to hear it several times. She repeated this story. She modeled language. There was some eye contact, hand motion. She smiled. She laughed. She changed her tones. Yes, absolutely. These are great responses.

And so yes, we saw ... It's possibly hard to hear this, but the infant was attempting to vocalize with her. Not just the hand movements, the child was vocalizing. We also saw the family child care provider emphasize the word "are," which rhymes with "star." 

And so, you know, that is another strategy. Putting an emphasis on a word that you want a child to hear. Okay. So, yes. ... Some great responses. And you picked up on a lot of things that I picked up on when I was looking at that video.

So, I do have another question for you. So, are there ways that you integrate parent's and families' traditional songs used in their home languages or cultures? What do you do? How do you integrate traditional songs in children's home languages. or cultures. Type your response in the chat box. What are some things that you do? Waiting for responses. Let me see if we've got some responses here. Okay. So, you might do them during a small group. You ask families to come into your classroom, teach songs during nap time, also during music time. 

Okay. You're inviting families to give you the information about songs, and you're thinking about when you might use these songs or chants or finger plays. Learning parties? I want to hear more about learning parties. Okay. These are great responses. Yes, always ask families if there are songs that they like to sing, and then have them teach you or come in and sing to the babies in your classroom. Okay. So, that was babies.

So, what about toddlers. Okay. So, we see the same ELOF goal for toddlers as we saw for infants and we're giving them more opportunities to pay attention, to repeat, and use some rhymes, phrases, or refrains from stories and songs. And so, what do we know about toddlers? Well, as we've already learned, toddlers, including children who wear hearing aids or have cochlear implants, can and do pay attention to the sounds around them. So, as they listen to language and play with sounds, they show us that they are developing phonological awareness.

And, as you heard from Karen, adults can support children using soundplay and by talking and reading and singing with them, and we know that toddlers who are dual-language learners benefit from hearing their home language, as well as English. So, we're very much still in a word awareness stage and perhaps starting to get into some more discrete soundplay as they move into the toddler years.

So, what are some things we could do to support them? Well, we can share nursery rhymes, and rhyming books, and alliterative texts. And alliterative texts are ones that have a series of words that begin with the same consonant sound, and we can share songs and chants that play with words, including in their home languages, as appropriate for the language. So, for example, in English, we might share, "Willoughby Walliby Woo," and, "Down by the Bay." Or in  Spanish, we might share, "Arrorro Mi Niño," and, "Los Pollitos Dicen." Use the languages you speak fluently with children and play with the sounds of those languages as appropriate for the language. Remember, as Karen said, use words that children understand, that are meaningful for them.

Creating a print-rich environment by labeling shelves and toy bins with words and pictures and creating a library and displaying signs but, more importantly, drawing children's attention to that print, talking about those words and what they mean. That is part of word awareness, as is having one-on-one conversations with children daily and having those back-and-forth exchanges that go on for two or more turns for each child. Again, you're giving them words, and words have sounds, and you're exposing children to all of this richness.

Other strategies you can use: you can point out rhyming words. So, for example, you can say, "You said you have new shoes. Listen! New and shoe. They rhyme." You can encourage children to say the rhyming word at the end of the sentence. So, you could say something like, "Switcheroo. Right foot, right shoe," would be the rhyming word.

Supporting attentional skills is an interesting one. You can say things like, "Jamal is showing us the towers he built. Let's watch him first, and then you can show me the tower that you've built." But why attention? Well, phonological awareness involves paying attention to sounds of language. In other words, listening closely.

So, this is another strategy for helping children focus in on language and what you're saying and what that language sounds like. You can introduce alphabet books and puzzles, and you can talk about the letters in languages children are learning. You can talk about their shapes and their names and their sounds, and you can talk with older toddlers about the names and sounds of meaningful letters, like the letters in their names, and you could say, "Look, there is the letter 'L' just like in your name, Lily." And you can emphasize the "L" in Lily.

And, again, you can help children label and describe pictures and objects in their home language and in English, and, again, that's so much about word awareness. And, again, these are strategies that you can use directly with children, or that you can share with parents during home visits or group socialization, or other opportunities where you are interacting with parents.

So, we have another video to show. And so, the video I'm going to show takes place on a home visit. And right before the clip that I'm going to show you, the mom and the home visitor were doing and singing a fingerplay in English. The language that the mom speaks -- Uyghur -- is spoken in an area in the northwestern corner of China. And it's also spoken in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. And so, let's go to this video. And, again, what do you ... 

[Video begins] Woman: ... song that you sang at play group in Uyghur, in your language.

Woman No. 2: Yeah. It was about star.

Woman: Yeah. Yeah. Will you sing that with us?

Woman No. 2: [Speaking Uyghur] [Singing in Uyghur] [Singing continues]

Woman: Yay! [Both laughing] Clapping. [Video ends]

Jan: Okay. Short, but very sweet video. So, what was mom doing? What was the home visitor doing to support the toddlers' phonological awareness and how was the child responding? 

What did you see? You can post your responses in the group chat. You might have seen some things that are ... similar to the video we saw with the family child care provider and the baby. So, what did you see? You can go ahead and type that into the chat. 

They were singing, assisting in conversation. There was eye contact. Home visitor was mimicking mom's hand movements. Yes. So, mom was clearly leading this interaction with her daughter and the home visitor was supporting her. Absolutely. Child is watching both adults.

Yeah, the child turned around and looked at the home visitor at one point. The home visitor was looking at mom and imitating mom. Absolutely. Mom modeled. And what was lovely is that the home visitor asked mom to sing a song in her home language right after they had sung a song in English.

So, the home visitor is acknowledging the home language, is asking the mom to sing to her child in the language, and so the child is getting the sounds of her home language, as well as sounds of English. All of which is so important to developing phonological awareness and the awareness of sounds in words and meanings in words. And so, with that, I'm going to hand this over to Karen because she's going to continue the  developmental progression with preschool children. Karen.

Karen: Thanks, Jan. You know, every time we do these webinars on the planned-language approach Big Five, we do the same pattern, where we start with it developmental progression for infants and toddlers, and Jan or Deborah handles syllables, and then somebody hands it to me to do the preschool part. And every time, I start with the same remark, pretty much. 

So, much of what you talked about with infants and toddlers, Jan, continues to be important all the way through the preschool years. The big change comes because now the preschool child is developing more and more expressive vocabulary, so we shift the emphasis from just being exposed to sound and hearing sound to now thinking more as a teacher, or a home visitor, or a family child care provider, or a parent. How am I going to encourage my child to use those different sounds?

Now the shift comes where we want to give children more opportunities to actually be in charge of identifying, "Hey, those two words rhyme." And, you know, sometimes, it's not always going to go the way we want. Sometimes, it's going to be that child that notices we have soup for lunch and soup rhymes with poop.

Okay. That might not be, you know, the thing the teacher had in mind, but when we start seeing children using their own initiative, understanding so much about the sounds of words that they point this out, that's when we're really moving forward into those exciting preschool years with those early language and literacy skills.

So, we're really focusing now on adding to all those activities that have to do with listening -- songs, and chants, and rhymes and, and sounds in the environment -- to helping children be in the driver's seat for using different sounds and choosing different words and pointing out syllables and pointing out when somebody makes a mistake with a word. 

And so, we want to really give them plenty of opportunities to do that and continue to draw their attention to those things. And I think it's interesting – the comments that people made showed that the idea of eye contact and drawing the child's attention ... Like, in the chat, that was a theme that was coming up in a lot of the comments, and that's still important in preschool because one of the things we're modeling is that it's fun to notice these cool things about words and how they are alike and how they're different. And that's for your home language or for a new language, in any case, okay? So, we want to continue, as adults, to talk, talk, talk, and talk some more using different kinds of words, noticing when words sound the
same, when there's a rhyme or when two words have the same beginning sound.

Another thing that you'll notice throughout the recommendations for infants, toddlers, and on into preschool is that there's not a big emphasis on teaching these things as lessons. A much greater emphasis on picking up on those teachable moments, wherever they happen, and engaging in noticing words children are using in play and highlighting, "Hey, you know your name is Tommy, and you just made a tower." And therefore, connecting with each child, what's their interest. What's meaningful to them. What's going to capture their interest at any particular time so that it's more child focused, responding to the child's needs rather than a teacher-directed lesson.

You want to do things like encouraging careful listening and attention, and that means, you know, like, listening games where we listen, you know? "Okay, if I play a sound, is that a cat or dog, right?" Or instructions, like, "We look. We use our eyes to see what I'm doing. Use your ears to hear what I'm saying." Right? We read rhyming stories and poems and identify the rhymes, notice them and point them out, okay? Play with fun and interesting words, like, "Oh, this fruit has a name that's fun to say. Cantaloupe. Can-ta-lope," right? Model how to listen to and blend a syllable. "Can you guess whose name this is? Mo-ha-med. Mohammed. That's right."

And also, play games that encourage children to really notice the sounds of words and then blend them together and make a fun game out of noticing the sounds of words. But by responding to each child, what they're playing with or what they're interested in at the time, you have a stronger connection of meaning that helps them to identify those sounds and then use those sounds rather than when we try to have all the children learn the same thing at the same time. In which case, some children may not be ready.

Some children may speak different languages, etc. And I had one participant in my workshop yesterday that said they changed the labels they put by the window. Instead of saying window, now their label has words for things they see outside the window, like, what the children would be looking at outside. The tree, or rain or wind or a squirrel or whatever, and then they use those as conversation starters so the environmental print is actually being used just like you suggested, Jan. So, I thought that was pretty cool.

And ... they have this idea of combining phonological awareness now with alphabet activities because as the children are getting more advanced in the recognition of phonemes and phonological awareness, they are able now to start making those connections with alphabet letters.

You can read and make up alphabet stories, especially those that also use rhyme and alliteration and rhythm. Boy, we don't talk enough about rhythm. But you know those stories that have a predictable rhythm, like, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" We hear those children repeating those stories a lot because of the rhythm. Talking about the letters we see and the sounds we hear while children are playing, modelling how to sort words or objects and encouraging older preschoolers to use invented spelling, and that's always a great time, when you start seeing those children use invented spelling, and we know they are on their way. 

So, we have a video clip, and I'll ask you questions after it's over. 

[Video begins] Woman: Can we do eagle?

Boy: Eagle.

Woman: Eagle. You are good! [Gasps]

Boy: [Speaks indistinctly]

Woman: King crab.

Boy: King crab.

Woman: King crab.

Boy: King crab.

Woman: You are so good. Last one. "T-T" ... Totem pole.

Boy: Totem.

Woman: Totem pole.

Boy: Totem.

Woman: Okay. Good job. We're going to work on the Ts. Ts are hard. [Video ends]

Jan: You saw a really clear example of the strategy that teacher was using in that video. Now I want to ask you, what are some strategies you are using? And I'm already seeing them crop up in the comments before I even ask. See, Lynn is saying that she uses pictures in Spanish to help her hear those words with her children. Oh, and Dana is saying, "clap it out," right? Clapping the syllables in children's names is a great way to start because they're really tuned in to their name. Oh, and Rosalyn has another one. That's a good one for a rainy day when you're stuck inside, Rosalyn, right, to stomp it out and clap it out and use those bodies to have that whole experience of the sounds of words. And Kimberly was saying they use different songs every day that focus on alliteration.

And so there's a lot of ... See, I don't have to talk anymore because all of those examples are starting to flow through in the chat box. You're really sharing with each other. And I think this is so important that everybody has these things on their minds so that you can use all these strategies at a moment's notice, whenever something comes up in the play and learning for those children. And so, now it's time for me to hand this back to  Deborah for some resources.

Deborah: Alright. Thank you so much, Karen. And I'm just really excited to share that we have resources for parents and families available in both English and Spanish. And here you see the sheets for phonological awareness. They're also available in the resources list. Feel free to share these with families to build those home-school connections. They offer suggested daily activities for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers with multiple examples. So, just wanted you to be aware that these are available.

And here on this side, you see the icon for the CLRP community on MyPeers. I had mentioned it early on, at the beginning of the webinar. We encourage you to join the CLRP community to keep the conversation going. It's a great place to share ideas, questions, and resources, and based on questions or ideas that came up on today's webinar, we'll plan to follow up with you on this platform. And we just encourage you to post and contribute to the conversation on phonological awareness. I'll be planning on posting tomorrow.

And we want to put a plug in here for some of the new and upcoming resources that are available. And so, we have the new curriculum consumer report that is available, if you haven't seen it yet. It provides summaries and ratings for home-based, infant and toddler, and preschool curricula on various criteria that are required by the Head Start program performance standards. So, be sure to check that out on the ECLKC.

And we also, for those home visitors that are on today and participating, there is the Home Visitor e-Institute. Hopefully, you've heard about this. It's happening May 28 through the 31. 

So, I encourage you to register, and it will be a series of four micro-learning sessions, which are 10 minutes or less. And so, there is one each day, and you'll get a certificate of completion at the end. So, be sure to register for that, if that is of interest to you. And we have several resources here, so be sure to download the copy of this PowerPoint from the resources widget, and you'll be able to easily access these additional resources through the links. And so, with that, we're going to say thank you for joining this webinar. And I'm going to ask my colleague to place the evaluation in the chat for those who will have to go right at the hour mark. 

And for those who are able to stay a few minutes extra, I'll be starting our virtual tour momentarily, and we'll provide the evaluation link again at the end of the virtual tour and the Q&A. So, those of you who will need to get off right at 4, please note that my colleague, Stephanie, has now placed the evaluation link in the chat, so you can feel free to access it there. And for those of you who can stay an extra 15 minutes or so, this will be great. 

I'm going to share my screen, and we'll do your virtual tour, and I'll address some of the questions that have come up from evaluations of the prior webinars as we're doing the tour, and then, you know, feel free to ... If you have questions that you've been sitting with throughout this presentation, or if you've participated in prior ones and have burning questions, start typing those and sending them to us, and we'll try to get those addressed here ... in this extra time frame.

So, alright. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. And, hopefully, you all are seeing what I have up. This is the landing page for the planned-language approach. "Big Five for ALL." And so, we have our PLA pie graphic. In the prior -- I think it was a prior webinar -- one of the evaluation
questions was, "What are the other five components of the Big Five?"

And so ... Or the other five components ... The other components of PLA, I should say. Sorry about that. And so besides the Big Five, we have the research-base, the home language support, policies, practices, and systems, and then strategies that support DLL. So, this is actually an interactive image. So, anytime I click on any section of the PLA pie, it will take me directly to that section. We are currently at the Big Five for all slice of the pie. There is an introduction document to the Big Five for all, and when I click on that, it opens up a PDF that I wanted to be certain to show you all because there is a really nice alignment chart here of the Big Five skills to the Language and Literacy domains of the ECLKC for infants and toddlers, and then for preschoolers. So, if you hadn't seen that, be sure to check it out.

And, again, I got there by clicking on this link from the home page of the Big Five for all. So, I had mentioned at the beginning that there is a page for each of the Big Five skills, and you can see them here, right? And so, today our focus was on phonological awareness. So, I'm going to go ahead and click on that resource card, and each page of these Big Five skills is pretty much organized in the same manner.

So, we have the brand-new documents that you all received. That was the basis for our webinar today. And then we have the document on how to support parents and families. And then we have the Joan Talks series. Now, just to give a little explanation of what that is, it's a series of resources to support implementation of each of the Big Five skills. And so it's called, "Joan Talks" because Joan is a kindergartner who tells us how she learned each of those Big Five skills. 

And just so you're aware of that.

A question that we often get asked is, "How do I access these documents in Spanish?" And so the way to do that is on the upper right on any ECLKC page, you have to click Español, and when you do that, it converts the page into Spanish. You'll notice here that because this is the brand new document, the "Phonological Awareness," document is in process for translation, So, it's currently available only an Inglés -- in English, but these other documents are available in Spanish. So, when I click on there, you can see that the document for parents and families to support phonological awareness is available in Spanish already. So, we just wanted to bring that to your attention. The Joan Talks is also available in Spanish. Okay? So, I'm going to go ahead and convert it back to English, and I'm going to go out to that landing page for the Big Five for all again.

I wanted to point out this resource card for book knowledge and print concept. So, I mentioned that, you know, the pages are organized in a similar fashion for each of the skills. This page, in particular, has some extra resources on selecting and using culturally- and linguistically appropriate books. So, when I click on this down arrow here, we have several additional PDFs.

There was some questions after we delivered the last -- it was actually the third webinar on book knowledge and print concepts -- there were questions about, you know, "How do I find more book-related resources?" Or, "What are some book suggestions that you might have?" 

And so this is the page that they encouraged folks to go to for some of those suggestions and ideas.

So, I'll go back. So, at the bottom of each page, there's that link that will take you back out to the main page. So, we have the Big Five skills. We have that Joan Talks about the Big Five series.

So, you can actually, if you just click on that resource card, you can find all five of the Joan Talks for each of the Big Five skills together on the one page and this page is actually part of the resource guide. And so, the resource guide is like a how-to on the use of the series for professional development, in coaching and parent learning communities or groups socialization. So, it gives some ideas on how you can use the series for those different purposes. 

So, going to scroll back down again.

Actually, I'm going to go back. I just want to bring your attention to this additional resource card here on screening and assessing the planned language approach of Big Five skills. So, here we have several resources so that your literacy instruction is individualized and culturally and linguistically sensitive. So, be sure to check those out when you have the opportunity. 

And then, last but not least, here we have a card where all of the Big Five webinar series will be housed. And so at the beginning of the webinar, I did mention about ...All of the webinars being recorded. And so the first one, on alphabet knowledge and early writing, is currently available.

So, we're excited about that.

So, you can listen to the recording, the PDF of the webinar slides is available. You can download the transcript, and so, you know, we'll be posting the additional webinars as soon as possible.

And in the meantime, again, I just recommend that folks join the CLRP community and I usually ... I always post the link afterwards in that community until they do become available on ECLKC. 

So, with that, I think I am going to stop sharing my screen here.

And while I've been sharing, I haven't been able to see whether questions have come in. So, let me ... end here. And ... Alright. So, I just want to ask my colleagues now if they'll help me with seeing about any questions that came in since I wasn't able to see. I'm just kind of catching up here and seeing that folks ... There must have been a glitch in the system, and folks haven't been able to get their certificate. So ...

Karen: Right. But they, they came up with that alternative that's open in the chat -- that Stephanie put in the chat. So, if we scroll up, we can see that Stephanie said we'll be sending out the certificate because there was a problem with the link.

Deborah: Oh, no! Okay. Well, as long as folks know that they will be receiving one. I see ... Yeah, several posts. Okay. Alright. Well, so have there been any questions that have come up? So, let me just click on one of these here. And it looks like, Jan, you might have answered Hannah's question about, "Does the Joan Talks have videos?"

Jan: Currently, it does not.

Deborah: Go ahead, Jan.

Jan: No, I did answer that question, but I was actually going to invite Karen to talk about a question that came up about phonological awareness, and children hearing language and accents that people have as they speak. So, Karen, do you want to say more about that question and your response?

Karen: Yes, I tried to type that response, but when interesting questions come up like that, I have so much to say that the system cuts me off and won't even let me finish my entence, which just goes to show you, I try to say too much in those little chat boxes. Thanks for giving me this chance to say a little bit more about that question because it's about really the whole underlying science of developing phonological awareness, which is that the most important thing is focusing on how it works. Children need to know how it works. So, if someone speaks with an accent that's different or they pronounce things that are not typical for your community, then that doesn't prevent the child from learning that their words have syllables and that different sounds mean different things, right?

So, for example, if I'm trying to speak Spanish, and I want to draw a child's attention to, you know ocho is different then "also" in Spanish. Well I'm not going to pronounce it the way a native Spanish speaker will, but a child can still hear how it works, that the sounds -- the middle sound makes a difference in the meaning of the word and that ocho has two syllables. Also has two syllables. Those are the important things that children need to learn about phonological awareness.

And then if they learn how it works, they have that foundation, and then as they hear more and more words and use more and more words in different contexts and different kinds of conversation, they learn to catalogue what is the more commonly-used pronunciation, and they're less likely to use the less commonly-used pronunciation. And so, you know, I use that example.

So, I say "cawfee," because I'm from New Jersey, and that's not really technically correct, but if I say, "cawfee," you still know that has two syllables, and you can later learn to say "coffee" more correctly. And so those ... That's the thing that's important about all phonological awareness, is really focusing on helping children hear how it works and use how it works. And you can add different words to different sounds different pronunciations later as you go on. So, can you add to that Jan or Deb to round out that explanation with the examples you would usually use?

Jan: Karen, I had to, to smile. This is Jan. I had a smile when you used the word coffee and said you were from New Jersey because that's how I used to pronounce it, growing up on Long Island in New York. But I would use similar kinds of examples. Probably "wuter" is another one. 

Karen: [Laughing]

Jan: But it's, as you say, more about the fact that you can hear two syllables, and how those syllables are pronounced can be refined over time. I do see a question that came up. Do you find that dual-language learners are delayed in fluency in two languages? Ooh, who wants to take that one?

Karen: Oh, I'll jump on that now.

Jan: Oh, I know you're going to jump on that, Karen.

Karen: But not literally jump.

Jan: Okay.

Karen: So, what we know from the research is that children who are growing up with two or more languages learn some words in one language and some words in the other language. The total number of words is generally about the same as the total number of words a monolingual child uses, but some of the words are in one language, some of the words are in the other  language. So, on the question of fluency is a little bit tricky because in order to technically measure fluency, you need tools that are available not just a tool in one language and then a tool in the other language, but a tool designed specifically for bilingual children who speak those two particular languages. And you're not likely to find those tools, so it's more a question of really just getting to know the child's skills and the child's level and using -- depending more on observations of that child -- to detect where you think there might be an actual delay that might be interfering with the processing of language or their communication skills, etc. And so we, we actually do have ... Too bad Deb can't go back into the tour because we do have, on ECLKC, a whole resource on screening young children who are dual-language learners in Early Head Start and Head Start. So, that's another thing that you can look for on ECLKC, if you want
more information about getting started and exploring what might be going on with the child.

Deborah: So, actually, Karen, I'm going to jump in because I actually can go back onto the screen share because not only ... Yeah, I'll definitely show where that screening document is, and, you know, there is another question that had come up that I want to show folks, about another resource that's available. 

And while I'm talking, Karen ... There's a question I see here in the chat. We have an issue with children with speech delays, and I'm just wondering if anyone wants to take that while I share my screen. Go to the resource here. Okay. So, hopefully, you all can see my screen. So, I'm back on to the "Big Five for All" landing page, right? I had talked through all of their resource cards here, and remember that there's this resource card on screening and assessing children. I want to point out that the screening dual-language learners resource is right here at the very top. So, that's where we can find that.

And then in terms of children who are experiencing speech delays. What I know to be true from the research is that if they're experiencing a delay, it will be not in one language and not another. It will probably be happening in both languages. So, that's one thing to keep in mind.

And so, Karen, do you want to say anything more about that? Or ...

Karen: Well, I agree with you. And so in that document about screening children who are dual language learners, the document actually gives you steps. Now if the delay .. Is a true delay, it would be happening in both languages. You have to screen them in both languages, and we don't always have those screeners, but the document gives you steps to take of how to collect information and what kind of information to collect.

But if you replay the whole webinar that we did today, you would really see how strong the focus is on individual interactions with individual children, that ... The approaches that we recommend, the approaches that are in the planned-language approach documents are about responding to each child -- where they're at, what they can do, what they need -- and because that's the kind of strategy that's best for supporting phonological awareness, that approach helps children who have speech delays. But, of course, the best thing to do is to partner with the speech therapist and to address any potential issues and share those strategies from their toolkit and strategies from our early childhood toolkit, as well.

Deborah: Thanks for that additional information, Karen. And so we have about one more minute left, and I just want to show one additional resource while I'm here, sharing my screen still, and talk about this question that we often get, which is, "What do you do when many different languages are spoken in one classroom?" Any advice for that?

Karen: Well, one key thing to keep in mind is that all children -- and each child -- needs to understand the words you're using in order to perceive those speech sounds, the phonological components that we talked about. So, if you have multiple languages if you don't have resources in the languages of each child, then at least focus on supporting the largest components of the words and words that children clearly understand what you mean, even if they don't say them yet, but you can see when you say snack time, they run to the snack table.

Then you know, "Okay, I can start with the word snack and maybe some words we use during snack because that's something I know they understand, and then I could start with that, and build out to other vocabulary that occurs in stories, etc." That's just one example, but maybe
y'all have others to add.

Deborah: Thanks, Karen. And I'll just click here on the strategies that support DLLs piece of the pie. I want to point out this resource on creating environments that include children's home languages and cultures as a resource for you all to check out. And so, I'm going to end my screen share.

I see we are at 4:16, actually. And I just want to thank you all for your participation. And we'll plan to follow up tomorrow on MyPeers. So, please join us there, and we thank you so much. 

Have a great afternoon.

Jan: Thanks, everybody.

Karen: Thanks, everyone.

Deborah: Goodbye.

Close