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(Unit 2) Topic 8: Promoting Early Literacy

3 Clock Hour of Early Childhood Education

Language is the Foundation of Literacy

​Topic 8 Page 3

Its development is fundamental to success in reading and writing. Experiences beginning in the first years of life that promote the acquisition of vocabulary, varied and complex sentence structures, and extended discourse are crucial; each of these plays an increasingly important role in long-term literacy development.

Infants, toddlers, and preschoolers need thoughtful and rich exposure to and experiences with language by attentive and responsive adults. 

They need ample opportunities to engage with varied forms of language as they participate in conversations, read-alouds, and meaningful content experiences. Furthermore, children flourish when provided with opportunities to use language—saying, signing, or using touch screens—to tell, question, learn, think, and imagine.  

Language interactions throughout the day are essential for literacy development.  They allow children to:

• express needs
• communicate feelings
• share personal stories
• explain understandings
• interact with novel and familiar materials
• participate in spontaneous and dramatic play 

Especially important are opportunities to engage in extended conversations in which multiple conversational turns are taken. A critical role of adults is to thoughtfully interact with children, express interest in children’s verbalizations, and expand and elaborate on their language, adding details or more complex sentence structures to children’s verbalizations. Furthermore, adults should provide experiences and instruction that increase children’s vocabularies. 

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