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 exciting new 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 these children at ages 3, 4, and 5. You'll 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 collected read actual transcripts of parent-child and teacher- child interactions recognize how these interactions relate to later development get suggestions for supporting children's language and literacy development learn how these findings play out in the lives of four of the children in the study Find 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 development Building 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.

The field of early literacy has seen significant recent advances in theory, research, and practice. This volume brings together leading authorities to report on current findings, integrate insights from different disciplinary perspectives, and explore ways to provide children with the strongest possible literacy foundations in the first six years of life. The Handbook first addresses broad questions about the nature of emergent literacy, summarizing current knowledge on cognitive pathways, biological underpinnings, and the importance of cultural contexts. Chapters in subsequent sections examine various strands of knowledge and skills that emerge as children become literate, as well as the role played by experiences with peers and families. Particular attention is devoted to the challenges involved in making schools work for all children, including members of linguistic and ethnic minority groups and children living in poverty. Finally, approaches to instruction, assessment, and early intervention are described, and research on their effectiveness is presented.

Building crucial bridges between theory, research, and practice, this volume brings together leading authorities on the literacy development of young children. The Handbook examines the full range of factors that shape learning in and out of the classroom, from basic developmental processes to family and sociocultural contexts, pedagogical strategies, curricula, and policy issues. Highlights of Volume 3 include cutting-edge perspectives on English language learning; innovative ways to support print knowledge, phonological awareness, and other code-related skills; and exemplary approaches to early intervention and teacher professional development.