The Hundred Languages of Childhood
Language Development and Literacy
Oral language is the foundation for literacy. From birth children are exposed to the sounds of language and as they grow they need experiences that help them acquire and understand oral language. It is through interactions and communications with adults and other children both in the home and in school that children build the foundations for language acquisition.
The program at Reggio Kids provides countless opportunities for language-oriented activities and provides resources that are relevant to the lives of young children that engage children in thinking, problem solving and experimenting.
Drama, music and visual arts all play an important role in furthering the development of communication and literacy skills.
Some of the overall skills for the children as they move through the program based on the Ontario Curriculum for kindergarten:
- To communicate effectively by listening and speaking.
- Demonstrate an understanding of materials that are read and presented to them.
- Communicate thoughts and feelings using appropriate sentence structure and expressive language.
- Communicate needs to peers and teachers.
- Listen and respond to others in a variety of contexts (e.g. pay attention to the teacher during story or group instruction, take turns speaking in group).
- Retell stories and personal experiences using appropriate vocabulary and basic story, structure with a beginning, middle and end.
- Ask questions, express feelings and share thoughts.
- Make connections between new information and already acquired information.
- Listen and respond to oral language patterns in stories and poems.
Reading Skills:
- Identify the letters of the alphabet and their letter sounds.
- Begin to identify phonetic blends, beginning, middle and final sounds of words.
- Identify sight words.
- Identify some features of books and other written materials (e.g. title and illustrations) and use these features to help them understand the printed text (e.g. using the pictures to tell the story).
Writing Skills:
- Print the letters of the alphabet, their own names and the names of their family members as well as some short words.
- Suggest words and sentences to add to a class story.
- Give the teacher information about a drawing and suggesting text to accompany the picture.