TM Language and Literacy Individualizing

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• Provide the article, Responding to Linguistic and Cultural Diversity Recommendations for Effective Early Childhood Education: A position statement of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. With teacher(s) read the section, Acknowledge that children can demonstrate their knowledge and capabilities in many ways. After reading the section, discuss ways in which the teacher enables children to currently demonstrate knowledge in the classroom. What ability do staff members have for recognizing children’s wide variety of capabilities? With current children in the program in mind, make a large list about ways teaching staff recognize children’s communication of knowledge. Suggest that the teacher return to the list periodically at staff meetings as a reminder of communication that occurs within the classroom and to add new ways children communicate capabilities and knowledge throughout the year.
• Share the handout, Practices of Universal Design, from resource page with teacher. Ask teacher to think of a favorite language or literacy activity from this year. Then use the handout to discuss how the activity embodied universal design. Ask questions like, “Why is that your favorite activity? Why were children so engaged? Did it help children who are not typically engaged become more involved? How? How did you support children at a more beginning developmental level? What about children who do not verbally communicate?”
• Guide the teacher to the paragraph beginning, Prepare materials ahead of time for maximizing language and literacy, on page 108 of the California Preschool Curriculum Framework, Volume 1. Reflect on individual strengths in planning. What strategies does the team use to maximize these teacher strengths?
• Consider how the teaching methods used in the early care and education program fit within the children’s cultural context and values.
  Set up a planning meeting with the teacher to review lesson plans. 
  • Explore ways to modify teaching and communication strategies so that they match the child’s learning style and culturally based ways of communicating. For example, Western approaches to teaching and learning often emphasize achievement as an individual enterprise in which children’s abilities are measured in relation to the achievement of others, thus setting up implicit comparisons and competition. In other cultures, achievement may be viewed more as a group outcome, and cooperative strategies are employed instead. Success comes not in the form of individuals who master specific skills, but in the form of group progress at mastery. (Family Partnership and Culture, page 78)