David K. Dickinson

This practical guide shows teachers how to introduce academic language to young children, with an emphasis on appreciating and leveraging linguistic diversity. New educational standards are asking students to master content-area concepts and increasingly complex texts in earlier grades. This practitioner-friendly text provides instructional materials, sample dialogs, and assessment tools to facilitate academic language use in PreK–3 classrooms. The authors describe the word, sentence, and discourse levels of academic language, while encouraging teachers and students to consider purpose, participants, discipline, and context. Strategies are provided to help readers adapt language for a variety of academic purposes across mathematics, science, play, mealtimes, and ELA instruction. The text includes discussion questions, reproducible activities, planning materials, assessment tools, and handouts to facilitate smooth implementation into classroom practice. From Words to Wisdom will empower teachers to build bridges to academic success for all young learners. Book Features:Expands teachers' understanding of academic language beyond vocabulary to include syntax and discourse-level features.Includes specific strategies, activities, and suggestions for teaching from and with academic language across multiple settings and disciplines.Addresses all students, including multilingual and linguistically diverse speakers.Incorporates user-friendly features, such as text boxes, vignettes, assessment protocols, and sample teaching materials.

This practical guide shows teachers how to introduce academic language to young children, with an emphasis on appreciating and leveraging linguistic diversity. New educational standards are asking students to master content-area concepts and increasingly complex texts in earlier grades. This practitioner-friendly text provides instructional materials, sample dialogs, and assessment tools to facilitate academic language use in PreK–3 classrooms. The authors describe the word, sentence, and discourse levels of academic language, while encouraging teachers and students to consider purpose, participants, discipline, and context. Strategies are provided to help readers adapt language for a variety of academic purposes across mathematics, science, play, mealtimes, and ELA instruction. The text includes discussion questions, reproducible activities, planning materials, assessment tools, and handouts to facilitate smooth implementation into classroom practice. From Words to Wisdom will empower teachers to build bridges to academic success for all young learners. Book Features:Expands teachers' understanding of academic language beyond vocabulary to include syntax and discourse-level features.Includes specific strategies, activities, and suggestions for teaching from and with academic language across multiple settings and disciplines.Addresses all students, including multilingual and linguistically diverse speakers.Incorporates user-friendly features, such as text boxes, vignettes, assessment protocols, and sample teaching materials.

In this fascinating book, you'll travel into the homes and schools of over 70 young children from diverse backgrounds and observe parent-child and teacher-child interactions. Through research gathered in the Home School Study of Language and Literacy Development, the authors share with you the relationship they've found between these critical, early interactions and children's kindergarten language and literacy skills.You'll explore both the home and school environments of children at ages 3, 4, and 5 and see how families talk to their young children during everyday activities like book reading, toy play, and mealtimes. You'll also examine children's conversations throughout the classroom day and consider how teachers strive to support children's development. In each chapter, you'll:see how the data was collectedread actual transcripts of parent-child and teacher-child interactionsrecognize how these interactions relate to later developmentget suggestions for supporting children's language and literacy developmentlearn how these findings play out in the lives of four of the children in the studyFind out how young children's home and classroom experiences during the preschool years are related to their kindergarten language and literacy skills, and discover the kinds of conversations that make a difference.

How do responsive adult–child interactions influence early language development? How do a child’s language skills develop in tandem with social-emotional development, executive function, and literacy? What are effective ways to help parents support their child’s development? Uncover the answers to these questions in this fascinating book, which draws on current research to examine connections between language, social-emotional, and literacy development and profiles effective programs that support this development.You’ll begin with a research-based examination of critical topics such as:•How the brain develops in the first years of life•Why parent–child attachment is fundamental to early development•What responsive and language-rich parent–child exchanges look like •How children learn the building blocks of language and literacy•Which guiding principles professionals should follow for effective intervention•Which economic arguments support early developmentBuilding on this foundational knowledge, the book gives you snapshots of more than a dozen programs that support language and literacy development by coaching parents and providing books for young children. You’ll learn how these programs promote responsive adult-child interactions and expand children’s access to books, and you’ll get brief summaries of the research that demonstrates the success of each program. Essential reading for researchers, administrators, and educators, this synthesis of science and practical guidance will help you foster foundational language skills and nurture the healthy development of every young child.