Knowledge of Children's Literature and the Writing Process

Communication Development Normally Occurring Within a Child's First Five Years of Life
Language and communication development depend strongly on the language a child develops within the first five years of life. During this time, three developmental periods are observed. At birth, the first period begins. This period is characterized by infant crying and gazing. Babies communicate their sensations and emotions through these behaviors, so they are expressive; however, they are not yet intentional. They indirectly indicate their needs through expressing how they feel, and when these needs are met, these communicative behaviors are reinforced. These expressions and reinforcement are the foundations for the later development of intentional communication. This becomes possible in the second developmental period, between 6 and 18 months. At this time, infants become able to coordinate their attention visually with other people relative to things and events, enabling purposeful communication with adults. During the third developmental period, from 18 months on, children come to use language as their main way of communicating and learning. Preschoolers can carry on conversations, exercise self-control through language use, and conduct verbal negotiations.

Milestones of Normal Language Development by the 2 Years Old

By the time most children reach the age of 2 years, they have acquired a vocabulary of about 150 to 300 words. They can name various familiar objects found in their environments. They are able to use at least two prepositions in their speech, for example in, on, and/or under. 2-year-olds typically combine the words they know into short sentences. These sentences tend to be mostly noun-verb or verb-noun combinations (e.g. 'Daddy work,' 'Watch this').
They may also include verb-preposition combinations (e.g. 'Go out,' 'Come in'). B. the age of 2 years, children use pronouns, such as I, me, and you. They typically can use at least two such pronouns correctly. A normally developing 2-year-old will respond to some commands, directions, or questions, such as 'Show me your eyes' or 'Where are your ears?'

Salient General Aspects of Human Language Abilities from Before Birth to 5 Years of Age
Language and communication abilities are integral parts of human life that are central to learning, successful school performance, successful social interactions, and successful living. Human language ability begins before birth: the developing fetus can hear not only internal maternal sounds, but also the mother's voice, others' voices, and other sounds outside the womb. Humans have a natural sensitivity to human sounds and languages from before they are born until they are about 4½ years old. These years are critical for developing language and communication. Babies and young children are predisposed to greater sensitivity to human sounds than other sounds, orienting them toward the language spoken around them. Children absorb their environmental language completely, including vocal tones, syntax, usage, and emphasis. This linguistic absorption occurs very rapidly. Children's first 2½ years particularly involve amazing abilities to learn language including grammatical expression.

6 Months, 12 Months, and 18 Months
Individual differences dictate a broad range of language development that is still normal. However, parents observing noticeably delayed language development in their children should consult professionals. Typically, babies respond to hearing their names by 6 months of age; turn their heads and eyes toward the sources of human voices they hear; and respond accordingly to friendly and angry tones of voice. By the age of 12 months, toddlers can usually understand and follow simple directions, especially when these are accompanied by physical and/or vocal cues. They can intentionally use one or more words with the correct meaning. By the age of 18 months, a normally developing child usually has acquired a vocabulary of roughly 5 to 20 words.
18-month-old children use nouns in their speech most of the time. They are very likely to repeat certain words and/or phrases over and over. At this age, children typically are able to follow simple verbal commands without needing as many visual or auditory cues as at 12 months.

Three Years

By the time they are 3 years old, most normally developing children have acquired vocabularies of between 900 and 1,000 words. Typically they correctly use the pronouns I, me, and you. They use more verbs more frequently. They apply past tenses to some verbs and plurals to some nouns.
3-year-olds usually can use at least three prepositions; the most common are in, on, and under. The normally developing 3-year-old knows the major body parts and can name them. 3-year-olds typically use 3-word sentences with ease. Normally, parents should find approximately 75 to 100 percent of what a 3-year-old says to be intelligible, while strangers should find between 50 and 75 percent of a
3-year-old's speech intelligible. Children this age comprehend most simple questions about their activities and environments and can answer questions about what they should do when they are thirsty, hungry, sleepy, hot, or cold.
They can tell about their experiences in ways that adults can generally follow. B. the age of 3 years, children should also be able to tell others their name, age, and sex.

Four Years
When normally developing children are 4 years old, most know the names of animals familiar to them. They can use at least four prepositions in their speech (e.g. in, on, under, to, from, etc.). They can name familiar objects in pictures, and they know and can identify one color or more. Usually they are able to repeat four-syllable words they hear. They verbalize as they engage in their activities, which Vygotsky dubbed 'private speech.' Private speech helps young children think through what they are doing, solve problems, make decisions, and reinforce the correct sequences in multistep activities.
When presented with contrasting items, 4-year-olds can understand comparative concepts like bigger and smaller. At this age, they are able to comply with simple commands without the target stimuli being in their sight (e.g. 'Put those clothes in the hamper' [upstairs]). 4-year-old children will also frequently repeat speech sounds, syllables, words, and phrases, similar to 18-month-olds' repetitions but at higher linguistic and developmental levels.

Five Years
Once most children have reached the age of 5 years, their speech has expanded from the emphasis of younger children on nouns, verbs, and a few prepositions, and is now characterized by many more descriptive words, including adjectives and adverbs. 5-year-olds understand common antonyms, e.g. big/little, heavy/light, long/short, hot/cold. They can now repeat longer sentences they hear, up to about nine words. When given three consecutive, uninterrupted commands, the typical 5-year-old can follow these without forgetting one or two. At age 5 most children have learned simple concepts of time like today, yesterday, tomorrow; day, morning, afternoon, night; and before, after, and later. 5-year-olds typically speak in relatively long sentences, and normally should be incorporating some compound sentences (with more than one independent clause) and complex sentences (with one or more independent and dependent clauses). 5-year-old children's speech is also grammatically correct most of the time.

Personal Narratives
Personal narratives are the way that young children relate their experiences to others by telling the stories of what happened. The narrative structure incorporates reporting components such as: who was involved; where the events took place; and what happened. Understanding and using this structure is crucial to young children for their communication; however, many young children cannot follow or apply this sequence without scaffolding (temporary support as needed) from adults. Adults can ask young children guiding questions to facilitate and advance narratives. They can also provide learning tools that engage children's visual, tactile (touch), and kinesthetic (body position and movement) senses. This reinforces narrative use, increases the depth of scaffolding, and motivates children's participation.
Children learn to play the main character; describe the setting; sequence plot actions; and use words and body language to express emotions. Topic-related action sequences or 'social stories' are important for preschoolers to comprehend and express to promote daily transitions and self-regulation. Such conversational skills attainment achieves milestones in both linguistic and emotional-social development.

Achievements or Processes Enabled by Oral Language Skills Development
Crucial oral language development skills enable children to (1) communicate by listening and responding to others' speech; (2) comprehend meanings of numerous words and concepts encountered in their listening and reading; (3) acquire information on subjects they are interested in learning about; and (4) use specific language to express their own thoughts and ideas.
Research finds young children's ability to listen to, understand, and use spoken and written language is associated with their later reading, spelling, and writing literacy achievement. Infants typically begin developing oral language skills, which continue developing through life. Babies develop awareness of and attend to adult speech, and soon begin communicating their needs via gestures and speech sounds. Toddlers express emotions and ideas and solicit information via language. They start uttering simple sentences, asking questions, and giving opinions regarding their likes and dislikes. Young preschoolers expand their vocabularies from hearing others' speech and from books. They describe past and possible future events and unseen objects; tell fictional/'make-believe' stories; and use complete sentences and more complex language.

Benefits of Play-Based Activities
When young children play, they often enact scenarios. Play scenarios tell stories that include who is involved, where they are, what happens, why it happens, and how the 'actors' feel about it. Children engage in planning when they decide first what their playing will be about; which children are playing which roles; and who is doing what. This planning and the thought processes involved reflect narrative thinking and structure. Children who experience difficulties with planning play are more likely to avoid participating or to participate only marginally. Since playing actually requires these thought and planning processes, children who do not play spontaneously can be supported in playing by enabling them to talk about potential narratives/stories as foundations for play scenarios. When conflicts emerge during play, conversation is necessary to effect needed change.
Narrative development constitutes gradual plot development; play conflicts are akin to fictional/personal narrative problems and result in changed feelings.
Adults can help young children discuss problems, identify the changed feeling they cause, and discuss plans/actions for resolution.

Conversation of Adults with Young Children
Adults should converse with young children so the children get practice with: hearing and using rich and abstract vocabulary and increasingly complex sentences; using language to express ideas and ask questions for understanding; and using language to answer questions about past, future, and absent things rather than only about 'here-and-now' things. To ensure they incorporate these elements in their conversations, adults can consider the following: in the home, care setting, or classroom, whose voices are heard most often and who does the most talking; the child, not the adult, should be talking at least half of the time. Adults should be using rich language with complex structures when conversing with young children. Adults should be talking with, not at children; the conversation should be shared equally rather than adults doing all the talking while children listen to them. Adults should also ask young children questions, rather than just telling them things.
Additionally, adult questions should require that children use language to formulate and communicate abstract ideas.

Natural vs. Intentional
Children enjoy conversing with significant adults, including parents, caregivers, and teachers; and they require practice with doing so.
Caregivers tend to talk with young children naturally, sometimes even automatically, throughout the day, which helps children develop significant language skills. However, caregivers can enhance young children's oral language development further through intentional conversations. One element of doing this is establishing an environment that gives the children many things to talk about and many reasons to talk. Another element of intentionally promoting oral language skills development is by engaging in shared conversations. When parents and caregivers share storybook reading with young children, this affords a particularly good springboard for shared conversations. Reading and conversing together are linguistic interactions supplying foundations for children's developing comprehension of numerous word meanings. Researchers find such abundant early word comprehension is a critical basis for later reading comprehension. Asking questions, explaining, requesting what they need, communicating feelings, and learning to listen to others talk are some important ways whereby children build listening, understanding, and speaking skills.

1:1 Conversations with Children
When parents, caregivers, or teachers converse 1:1 with individual children, children reap benefits not as available in group conversations. Caregivers should therefore try to have such individual conversations with each child daily. In daycare and preschool settings, some good times for caregivers to do this include when children arrive and leave; during shared reading activities with one or two children; and during center time. 1:1 talk allows the adult to repeat what the child says for reinforcement. It allows the adult to extend what the child said by adding more information to it, like new vocabulary words, synonyms, meanings, or omitted details. It allows the adult to revise what the child said by restating or recasting it. It allows the child to hear his or her own ideas and thoughts reflected back to them when the adult restates them. Moreover, 1:1 conversation allows adults to contextualize the discussion accordingly with an individual child's understanding. It also allows adults to elicit children's comprehension of abstract concepts.

Extended Conversations and Turn-Taking
When adults engage young children in extended conversations including taking many 'back-and-forth' turns, these create the richest dialogues for building oral language skills. Adults make connections with and build upon children's declarations and questions. Adults model richer descriptive language by modifying/adding to children's original words with new vocabulary, adjectives, adverbs, and varying sentences with questions and statements. For example, a child shows an adult his/her new drawing, saying: 'This is me and Gran in the garden,' the adult can build on this/invite the child to continue: 'What is your gran holding?' The child identifies what they planted: 'Carrot seeds. Gran said to put them in the dirt so they don't touch.'
The adult can then encourage the child's use of language to express abstract thoughts: 'What could happen if the seeds were touching?' The adult can then extend the conversation through discussion with the child about how plants grow or tending gardens. This introduces new concepts, builds children's linguistic knowledge, and helps them learn to verbalize their ideas.

In-Depth Comprehension of Word Meanings
To support deeper word-meaning comprehension, teachers can give multiple definitions and examples for the same word and connect new vocabulary with children's existing knowledge. For example, a teacher conducting a preschool classroom science experiment incorporates new scientific concepts with new vocabulary words and conversational practice: pouring water on a paper towel, the teacher asks children what is happening to the water. A child answers, 'It's going into the paper.' The teacher asks how. Another child says, 'The paper's soaking it up.' The teacher confirms this, teaches the word 'absorb,' compares the paper to a sponge, and asks how much more water will be absorbed. A child responds probably no more since water is already dripping out. The teacher pours water on a plastic lid, asking if it absorbs. Children respond, 'No, it slides off.' Confirming, the teacher teaches the word 'repel.'
This teacher has introduced new science concepts and new vocabulary words; engaged the children in conversation; related new concepts and words to existing knowledge; and added information to deepen comprehension.

Adults' Narration of Child Activities and Actions
One oral language development technique adults can use is to narrate, i.e. describe what a child is doing as s/he does it. For example, a caregiver can say, 'I see you're spreading paste on the back of your paper flower—not too much so it's lumpy, but not too little so it doesn't stick. Now you're pressing the flower onto your poster board. It sticks—good work!' Hence narration can be incorporated as prelude and segue to verbal positive reinforcement. This promotes oral language development by introducing and illustrating syntaxes. Communicating locations and directionality employs verbs and prepositions. Describing intensity and manner employs adverbs. Labeling objects/actions that are currently present/taking place with new vocabulary words serves immediately to place those words into natural contexts, facilitating more authentic comprehension of word meanings and better memory retention. Caregivers/teachers can narrate children's activities during formal instructional activities and informal situations like outdoor playtime, snack time, and cleanup time, and subsequently converse with them about what they did.

Topics That Young Children Enjoy Talking About
Personal content is important with young children, who enjoy talking about themselves; e.g., what their favorite color is or where they got their new shirt; about their activities, like what they are constructing with Legos or shaping with Play-Doh; or about familiar events and things that access their knowledge, like their family activities and experiences with neighbors and friends. Here is an example of how a teacher can make use of children's conversation to reinforce it, expand it, and teach new vocabulary and grammar.
The teacher asks a child what s/he is building and the child answers, 'A place for sick animals.' The teacher asks, 'You mean an animal hospital [or vet clinic]?' and the child confirms. When a child says someone was taken to a hospital 'in the siren,' the teacher corrects the usage: 'They took him to the hospital in the ambulance with the siren was sounding?' This recasts 'siren' with the correct word choice, 'ambulance.' It incorporates 'siren' correctly and extends the statement to a complete sentence.

Storytelling
Young children like to communicate about their personal life experiences. When they can do this through narrative structure, it helps them use new words they are learning, organize their thoughts to express them coherently, and engage their imaginative powers. Teachers/caregivers can supply new words they need; model correct syntax for sentences by elaborating on or extending child utterances and asking them questions; and build further upon children's ideas. For example, a teacher asks a child what they did at her sister's birthday party. When the child describes the cake and makes gestures for a word she doesn't know, the teacher supplies 'candles,' which the child confirms and repeats. When the child then offers, 'Mom says be careful with candles,' the teacher asks what could happen if you're not careful, the child replies that candles can start a fire. In this way, teachers give young children models of sentence structure, teach vocabulary, and guide children in expressing their thoughts in organized sequences that listeners can follow.

Shared Book Reading
When teachers share books with preschoolers, they can ask questions and discuss the content, giving great opportunities for building oral language through conversation. Books with simple text and numerous, engaging illustrations best invite preschoolers to talk about the characters and events in the pictures, and the plotlines they hear. Children's listening and speaking skills develop; they learn new information and concepts; their vocabularies increase; and their ability to define words and explain their meanings is enhanced through shared reading. Many children's books include rich varieties of words that may not occur in daily conversation, used in complete-sentence contexts. Teachers should provide preschoolers with fictional and nonfictional books; poetry and storybooks; children's reference books like picture dictionaries/encyclopedias; and 'information books' covering single topics like weather, birds, reptiles, butterflies, or transportation whereby children can get answers to questions or learn topical information. Detailed illustrations, engaging content, and rich vocabulary are strong elements motivating children to develop oral language and understand how to form sentences, how to use punctuation, and how language works.
Abstract thought is stimulated by asking young children to think about things not observed and/or current. During/after sharing books, teachers can ask children what else might happen in the story; what they imagine the story's characters could be feeling or thinking—which also engages their imaginations; and ask them the meaning of the story's events using questions necessitating children's use of language to analyze this meaning.
Teachers can ask younger children vocabulary words: 'What did we call this animal?' and encourage them to use language by asking them to describe story details, like 'How do the firemen reach people up high in the building?' Once younger children are familiar with a story, teachers can activate and monitor their retention and recall: 'Do you remember what happened to Arthur the day before that?' Teachers can ask older children to predict what they think will happen next in a story; to imagine extensions beyond the story ('What would you do if…?'); and make conclusions regarding why characters feel/behave as they do.

Enhancing the Effects of Shared Reading
According to researchers' findings, the effectiveness of shared reading experiences is related to the ways that adults read with young children. Rather than merely labeling objects or events with vocabulary words, teachers should ask young children to recall the shared reading, which monitors their listening comprehension and retention abilities. They should ask children to predict what will happen next based on what already happened in a book; speculate about what could possibly happen; describe characters, actions, events, and information from the shared reading; and ask their own questions about it.
Shared reading with small groups of 1–3 children permits teachers to involve each child in the book by questioning and conversing with them about the pictures and plots. To teach vocabulary, teachers can tell children word meanings; point to illustrations featuring new words; relate new words to words the children already know; give multiple, varied examples of new words; and encourage children to use new words they learn in their conversations.

Repeating Shared Reading
Young children develop preferences for favorite books. Once they know a story's plot, they enjoy discussing their knowledge. Teachers can use this for extended conversations. They can ask children who the characters are; where the story takes place; and why characters do things and events occur. They can ask specific questions requiring children to answer how much/how many/how far a distance/how long a time, etc. Teachers can also help children via prompting to relate stories to their own real-life experiences. In a thematic approach, teachers can select several books on the same theme, like rain forests or undersea life. This affords richer extended conversations about the theme. It also allows teachers to 'recycle' vocabulary by modeling and encouraging use of thematically related words, which enhances memory and in-depth comprehension of meanings. Teachers can plan activities based on book themes, like painting pictures/murals, sculpting, making collages, or constructing models, which gives children additional motivation to use the new language they learn from shared readings of books.

Reading Aloud
Just before reading a story aloud to young students, the teacher should identify vocabulary words in the story that s/he will need to go over with the children. The teacher can write these words on the board or on strips of paper. Discussing these words before the reading will give the children definitions for new/unfamiliar words, and help them understand word meanings within the story's context. Teachers can also give young children some open-ended questions to consider when listening to the story. They will then repeat these questions during and after the reading. Questions should NOT be ones children can answer with yes/no. When discussing vocabulary words, the teacher can also ask the children to relate words to personal life experiences.
For example, with the word fish, some children may want to talk about going fishing with parents. Teachers can encourage children to tell brief personal stories, which will help them relate the story they are about to hear to their own real-life experience, making the story more meaningful.
Before reading a story aloud, adults should tell young children its title and the author's name. Then they can ask the children what an author does (children should respond 'write stories' or something similar).
Giving the illustrator's name, the adult also can then ask the children what illustrators do (children should respond 'draw pictures' or something similar).
Holding up the book, an adult can identify the front, spine, and back and ask the children if we start reading at the front or back (children should respond 'at the front'). Adults can show young children the illustration on the front cover of the book and ask them, 'From this picture, what do you think is going to happen in this story?' and remind them to answer this question in complete sentences. These exchanges before reading a story aloud activate children's fundamental knowledge regarding print and books, as well as the last example's exercising their imagination and language use.
When a teacher is reading a story aloud to young children, after reading each page aloud, s/he should have the children briefly discuss the picture illustrations on each page and how they relate to what the teacher just read aloud. After they read aloud each plot point, action, event, or page, they should ask the children open-ended (non yes/no) questions about what they just heard. This monitors and supports listening comprehension and memory retention/recall and stimulates expressive language use. When children associate something in the story with their own life experiences, teachers should have them explain the connection. As they read, teachers should stop periodically and ask the children to predict or guess what will happen next before continuing. This promotes abstract thinking, understanding of logical sequences, and also exercises the imagination. After reading the story, teachers should ask children whether they liked it and why/why not, prompting them to answer using complete sentences. This helps children to organize their thoughts and opinions and to develop clear, grammatical, complete verbal expression.

Environmental Print
Street signs, traffic signs, store and restaurant names, candy wrappers, food labels, product logos, etc.—all the print we see in everyday life—are environmental print. Just as parents often play alphabetic games with children in the car ('Find something starting with A…with B…' etc.), adults can use environmental print to enhance print awareness and develop reading skills. They can ask children to find letters from their names on colorful cereal boxes. They can select one sign type, e.g. stop, one-way, or pedestrian crossing, and ask children to count how many they see during a car trip. They can have children practice reading each sign and talk about the phonemes (speech sounds) each letter represents. Adults can take photos of different signs and compile them into a little book for children to 'read.' By cutting familiar words from food labels, they can teach capitalized and lowercase letters; associate letters with phonemes; have children read the words; and sort words by their initial letters and by categories (signs, foods, etc.).

Alphabetic Principle
The alphabetic principle is the concept that letters and letter combinations represent speech sounds. Children's eventual reading fluency requires knowing these predictable relationships of letters to sounds, which they can then apply to both familiar and unfamiliar words. Young children's knowing the shapes and names of letters predicts their later reading success: knowing letter names is highly correlated with the ability to view words as letter sequences and to remember written/printed words' forms.
Children must first be able to recognize and name letters to understand and apply the alphabetic principle. Young children learn letter names first, via singing the alphabet song and reciting rhymes and alphabetical jump-rope chants
('A my name is Alice, I come from Alabama, and I sell Apples; B my name is Betty…' etc.). They learn letter shapes after names, through playing with lettered blocks, plastic/wood/cardboard letters, and alphabet books. Once they can recognize and name letters, children learn letter sounds after names and shapes and spellings after sounds.
To help young children understand that written or printed letters represent corresponding speech sounds, teachers should teach relationships between letters and sounds separately, in isolation, and should teach these directly and explicitly. They should give young children daily opportunities during lessons to practice with letter-sound relationships. These opportunities for practice should include cumulative reviews of sound-letter relationships they have already learned and new letter-sound relationships as well. Adults should begin early in providing frequent opportunities to young children for applying their increasing knowledge and understanding of sound-letter relationships to early experiences with reading. They can do this by providing English words that are spelled phonetically (i.e. spelled the same way that they sound) and have meanings that are already familiar to the young learners.

Print Awareness
Even before they have learned how to read, young children develop print awareness, which constitutes children's first preparation for literacy. Children with print awareness realize that spoken language is represented by the markings on paper (or computer screens). They understand that the information in printed books adults read comes from the words, not the pictures. Children who have print awareness furthermore realize that print serves different functions within different contexts. They know that restaurant menus give information about the foods available; books tell stories or provide information; some signs show the names of stores, hotels, or restaurants, and other signs give traffic directions or danger warnings. Moreover, print awareness includes knowledge of how print is organized, e.g. that words are combinations of letters and have spaces in between them. Children with print awareness also know that [English] print is read from left to right and top to bottom; book pages are numbered; words convey ideas and meaning; and reading's purpose is to understand those ideas and acquire that meaning.
One way in which a teacher can get an idea of whether or to what extent a young child has developed print awareness is to provide the child with a storybook. Then the teacher can ask the child the following: 'Show me the front of the book. Show me the back of the book. Show me the spine of the book. Where is the book's title? Where in the book are you supposed to start reading it? Show me a letter in the book. Now show me a word. Show me the first word of a sentence. Can you show me the last word of a sentence? Now will you show me the first word on a page? Please show me the last word on a page. Can you show me a punctuation mark? Can you show me a capital letter? Can you find a small letter/lowercase letter?' The teacher should also praise each correct response, supply the correct answers for incorrect responses, and review corrected answers.
Teachers should show young children the organization of books and the purpose of reading. When they read to them, they should use books with large print, which are more accessible for young children to view and begin to learn reading. Storybook text should use words familiar/predictable to young children. While reading together, teachers should point out high-frequency words like the, a, is, was, you; and specific letters, words, and punctuation marks in a story. Teachers can use index cards to label objects, areas, and centers in the classroom, pairing pictorial labels with word labels, and direct children's attention to them. They can invite preschoolers to play with printed words by making greeting cards, signs, or 'writing' shopping lists and personal letters. They should point out print in calendars, posters, and signs. Also, teachers can have children narrate a story using a wordless picture book; write down their narrative on a poster; and reinforce the activity with a reward related to the story (e.g. eating pancakes after narrating the book Pancakes).

Self-Concept
Self-concept development begins during early childhood.
Children come to identify characteristics, abilities, values, and attitudes that they feel define them. From 18–36 months, children develop the Categorical Self. This is a concrete view of oneself, usually related to observably opposite characteristics, e.g. child versus adult, girl versus boy, short versus tall, and good versus bad. A four-year-old might say, 'I'm shorter than Daddy. I have blue eyes. I can help Mommy clean house!' Young children can also describe emotional and attitudinal aspects of self-concept, e.g. 'I like playing with Joshua. I'm happy today.' Preschoolers do not usually integrate these aspects into a unified self-portrait, however. Also, many preschoolers do not yet realize one person can incorporate opposite qualities; a person is either good or bad to them, rather than having both good and bad qualities. The Remembered Self develops with long-term memory, including autobiographical memories and things adults have told them, to comprise one's life story. The Inner Self is the child's private feelings, desires, and thoughts.

Phonics Instruction
Because children display individual differences in their speeds of learning sound-to-letter relationships, instruction should consider this; there is no set rate. Generally, a reasonable pace ranges from two to four sound-letter relationship per week. Relationships vary in utility: many words contain the sounds/letters m, a, t, s, p, and h, which are high-utility; but x as in box, gh as in through, ey as in they, and the sound of a as in want are lower-utility. High-utility sound-letter relationships should be taught first. Teachers should first introduce consonant relationships using f, m, n, r, and s, which are continuous sounds children can produce in isolation with less distortion than word-initial or word-medial stops like p, b, t, d, k, and g. Teachers should also introduce similar-sounding letters like b and v or i and e, and similar-looking letters like b and d or p and g, separately to prevent confusion. Single consonants versus clusters/blends should be introduced in separate lessons. Blends should incorporate sound-letter relationships children already know.

Language Experience Approach (LEA)
The LEA teaches beginning reading by connecting students' personal life experiences with written/printed words. A unique benefit is students using their own language and words, enabling them to interact with texts on multiple levels simultaneously. They thus realize they acquire knowledge and understanding through not just instruction, but also their own experiences. Four steps for implementing the LEA with EC groups: (1) Children and teacher choose a topic, like an exciting trip, game, or recent TV show, to discuss with teacher guidance. (2) Each child takes a turn saying a sentence using his/her own words that advances the discussion/story. The teacher writes the children's words verbatim without corrections, visibly and clearly. (3) Every few sentences or several words, the teacher stops and reads the record aloud for children to confirm accuracy. (4) Record review: the teacher points to each word, they read aloud together, or children repeat after the teacher.
The teacher gives children copies of the record for independent review and possible compilation into books of LEA stories.

Whole Language Approach
The whole language approach concentrates on children's seeking, finding, and constructing meaning in language. As such, young children's early technical correctness is not the priority. Whole language teachers do not ignore children's errors. However, they do not make correction more important than overall engagement, understanding, and appreciation of reading, writing, and literature. Instead, teachers make formative assessments taking into account the errors each child makes. Then they design learning experiences for children that give them opportunities and assistance in acquiring mechanically correct linguistic forms and structures. While this holistic approach finds analytical techniques that break language down into components like phonemes and alphabet letters less useful, children with language processing/reading problems need to learn phonemic awareness, phonics, and other decoding skills to develop reading fluency. The National Reading
Panel conducted a study (1997–2000) to resolve controversy over phonics vs. whole language as the best teaching method, finding that any effective reading instruction program must teach phonemic awareness, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary development, and reading comprehension.
The whole language approach is based on constructivist philosophy and psychology: children construct their own knowledge through their interactions with their environments. In contrast to analytical approaches like phonics and alphabetic learning, constructivism views learning as an individual's unique cognitive experience of acquiring new knowledge, shaped by the individual's existing knowledge and personal perspective. Whole language instruction emphasizes helping children create meaning from their reading and express meaning in their writing. The whole-language philosophy emphasizes cultural diversity, integrating literacy instruction across subject domains, reading high-quality literature, and giving children many opportunities for independent reading, small-group guided reading, and being read to aloud by teachers. Whole language believes children learn to read by writing and vice versa.
Realistically purposeful reading and writing are encouraged, as is using texts that motivate children to develop a love for literature. Early grammatical/spelling/technical correctness is not stressed, which can be problematic for children with reading/language processing disorders, who need explicit instruction in decoding skills and strategies.

Addressing Early Mechanical Errors in Learning Reading and Writing
The basal reader is America's commonest approach, used in an estimated 75–85 percent of K–8th-grade classrooms. The number of publishers offering basal reading series has decreased to about one-fourth of that in the 20th century, decreasing teacher responsibility for investigating/piloting readers for district approval. Using basal readers is a skills-based/bottom-up approach. Teaching smaller-to-larger reading subskills in systematic, rigid sequence assists students' transition from part to whole. Texts graded by reading level contain narration and exposition organized thematically by unit, including children's literature and diverse other genres. Phonics and other specific instructional strands with practice assignments develop skills, which are assessed with end-of-unit tests. For young children, text decoding is enabled through exact control of vocabulary items and word analysis skills, 'big [enlarged] books,' and word and picture cards. 20th-century and older series sacrificed comprehension and enjoyment for vocabulary control and skill acquisition, but 21st-century series vary methods more (like multiple story versions or book excerpts enabling selection sharing), affording children more motivation to read.

Directed Reading Activity (DRA) and the Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA)
Using basal readers, the DRA comprises: (1) The teacher prepares children for reading by stimulating their motivation and introducing new concepts and/or vocabulary. (2) Students read silently, guided by teacher questions and statements. (3) The teacher develops student comprehension and students discuss characters, plots, or concepts to further comprehension. (4)
After silent reading, students read aloud and read answers to teacher questions, known as 'purposeful rereading.' (5) Students' follow-up workbook activities/practice review comprehension and vocabulary. Some selections may include enrichment activities relating them to writing, art, drama, or music.
The DR-TA approach is designed to develop critical readers through instruction in group comprehension. It requires children's active engagement in reading by processing information, asking questions, and receiving feedback as they read.
The first phase of DR-TA is the teacher's direction of student thought processes throughout reading. The second phase involves developing student skills according to their needs as identified in phase 1, and additional extension or follow-up activities.

Differences Between DRA and DR-TA Approaches
(1) One main difference is that the DR-TA approach gives teachers all the responsibility and greater flexibility for developing lessons. A. such it contains fewer directions than the DRA approach, which contains specific materials and questions to use, specific guidelines, and is more teacher-manual-oriented and materials-oriented. Therefore DR-TA can be used for not only basal readers, but also planning lessons in other curriculum areas involving reading; the DRA approach applies more directly to basal reader programs. (2) DRA manuals use mostly literal, factual questions, requiring only convergent thinking for student responses. However, in DR-TA, questions also demand divergent (creative) thinking of students, stimulating higher-level reading comprehension and interpretation. (3) New vocabulary is pretaught in the DRA approach before children read. The DR-TA approach excludes preteaching, realistically requiring student decoding of new vocabulary words during reading. (4) DRA manuals specify when to teach which skills for reading comprehension. DR-TA approaches do not, requiring more questioning expertise and acceptance of some alternative student responses by teachers.

Phonological Awareness, Phonemic Awareness, and Phonics
Phonological awareness refers to the awareness of the sounds that make up a spoken language.  This includes being aware of the fact that certain speech sounds rhyme with one another, and that it is possible to break down spoken sentences into individual words, words into individual syllables, and syllables into individual phonemes or speech sounds. Phonological awareness also includes the abilities to talk about speech sounds; to think about them; and to manipulate them into various combinations, sequences, and patterns. The latter includes changing one word into another by inserting, deleting, or exchanging an individual phoneme. Moreover, phonological awareness is an understanding of the relationship between spoken and written language.
Typically, children's phonological awareness skills develop continuously and gradually throughout the later preschool years. Children develop phonological awareness through their exposure to language and through direct training, both of which are provided by the adults around them and in their lives.
Phonological awareness focuses on the awareness of speech sounds, which young children typically develop and learn before they learn to read. Phonemic awareness refers to awareness of the individual phonemes or speech sounds used in the child's native language, which the child hears in the language spoken by the adults and older children around them in their environment. Phonological awareness instruction teaches children to recognize the speech sounds they hear, to identify and differentiate these sounds, to produce them accurately, and to manipulate them. Good phonological awareness facilitates children's ability to make connections between sounds and alphabet letters, hence facilitating phonics. Phonics is the instructional method used to establish the Alphabetic Principle (i.e. the concept of sound-to-letter correspondence) and teach skills for decoding (breaking words down to their component sounds/letters) and encoding (blending/combining individual sounds/letters to form words).

Importance of Developing Phonological and Phonemic Awareness Skills

By developing phonological and phonemic awareness skills, young children develop awareness of the sounds used in their native language.
Significantly, they also learn to make the association between the speech sounds (phonemes) they hear and the written/printed letter symbols that represent them. Understanding this connection gives young children the foundation they need for the development of future skills, including word recognition skills and the decoding skills needed to read printed/written language. When young children develop phonological and phonemic awareness, they are less likely to experience deficits or delays in learning to read, and are more likely to achieve success in reading and spelling. The consensus of a great deal of educational research is that strong phonological and phonemic awareness in children is often a predictor of future long-term success in spelling, reading, and overall literacy performance. Research has also found that this awareness is a more accurate predictor of future success than vocabulary knowledge, intelligence, socioeconomic status, and other related factors.

Examples of Phonological Awareness Skills
Young children who have developed phonological awareness can typically recognize the sounds of alliteration in spoken language, which is the repeated use of the same or similar consonants (e.g., 'She sells seashells by the seashore'); the sounds of rhyming words; the sounds of words with the same initial sounds (e.g., 'Wee Willie Winkie'); and final sounds. They can typically divide words into smaller parts, such as syllables and phonemes (speech sounds). They can usually also count these smaller parts. When given isolated speech sounds, they are typically able to blend these separate phonemes together to form familiar words. Children with good phonemic awareness realize that words are composed of phonemes, and that these individual sounds are symbolically represented by written/printed letters. Hence, they understand the relationship between speech and writing/print. Phonologically aware preschool children can typically also manipulate spoken language by adding, removing, or substituting specific speech sounds to create different words.

Benefits of Phonological and Phonemic Awareness Instruction
Phonological and phonemic awareness (PPA) instruction benefits all children learning to read, which includes preschoolers, kindergarteners, and first-graders. In addition, PPA instruction is important for children who are at risk for reading problems. Such children typically have fewer alphabetic skills due to less exposure to and less experience with using the alphabet. This can be because their families have less access to books and/or libraries; their parents have different expectations of reading, or they prioritize reading differently; or their parents do not realize the importance of reading aloud to children to literacy development. Preschoolers with delayed language development, who are more likely to be diagnosed with reading disorders by the time they reach school age, also benefit from PPA instruction.
Enhanced PPA enables enhanced awareness of correct speech, so children with articulation disorders also benefit. According to research, children with spelling disorders perform poorly when given PPA tasks. Phonemic instruction improves their understanding of sound-to-letter relationships and their ability to recognize common spelling units found in words, thereby strengthening their spelling skills.

Oral Language Development
Because of the amount of variation among individual children in the process of normal oral language development, it is neither easy nor accurate to pin down any linguistic developmental milestone to a specific age.
Therefore, ranges rather than ages are identified. For example, most normally developing children will utter their first recognizable words sometime between the ages of 12 months and 18 months. However, the progress of normal language acquisition is unpredictable in the individual child, a statement which holds true for other areas of normal growth and development. For example, one child may say his/her first word at the age of 10 months, while another child may begin using words at 20 months. The majority of typically developing children tend to begin speaking in complex sentences around the ages of four to four-and-a-half years. But again, because the pace of normal language development can vary, some children might use complex sentences by three years old, while others only develop this ability by five-and-a-half years old.

Considerations for Adults
The vast majority of children's oral language develops with great natural efficiency. Adults need not try to force it, but can nurture it by providing language-rich environments. Practices that may help include talking to children regularly starting at birth; reading regularly to babies, toddlers, and preschoolers; naming objects, actions, and events children encounter for them; and playing games with speech sounds, words, rhymes, etc. Adults need not be concerned when younger children distort or substitute more difficult phonemes like /r/ and /s/ with easier ones; this is normal. However, if a child still mispronounces such sounds beyond the age of about eight or nine, hearing and speech testing and therapy are indicated. Newborn hearing screenings are vital, as hearing loss is the most common disability in infants. If a child seems not to hear others' speech, a child's closest family/friends have trouble understanding the child's speech, or a child's communication is obviously different from that of same-age peers, adults should consult hearing and speech language specialists.

Genetic and Environmental Influences

As with so many other aspects of human growth and development, oral language development is a product of the combined influences of nature and nurture, and of the interactions between the two. Humans have inborn inclinations to seek out social interaction with other people. Babies communicate their needs and wants through crying and gesturing before acquiring spoken language, and they frequently understand adult communication.
Researchers have pointed out that social interactions and oral language development do not take place for the purpose of learning rules, but for connecting with others and making sense of the reality we experience. Children have inherent abilities to decipher linguistic rules through their environmental exposure to spoken language. They can do this without formal instruction. This is evidence of the influence of nature on oral language development, as is over-regularization. An example of the latter includes applying regular verb rules to irregular exceptions (e.g., 'tooths,' 'freezed,' 'goed,' etc.) until exceptions are learned. Adults' constant corrections during this learning stage are typically futile. In addition to natural and environmental influences, children's language development is also influenced by their own cognitive abilities.

Phonology, Morphology, Semantics, Syntax, and Pragmatics
Phonology is concerned with the rules for the combinations of speech sounds within a given language. For example, while some African languages include words beginning with the –ng/[ŋ] phoneme, in English this sound is only word-medial or word-final, never word-initial. Most speakers follow such rules unconsciously. Morphology focuses on the smallest structural/grammatical units that convey or affect meaning. For example, in books, the noun book and the plural –s ending are each morphemes. Semantics focuses on the meanings of morphemes, words, and sentences. Syntax refers to sentence structure and word order, and is related to a language's rules for correctly combining morphemes and words into suffixes/inflections, sentences, questions, imperatives, etc. For example, features like participial modifiers and the verbs they modify are placed in a different order in German and English. The verb-containing phrase 'I walked' would follow modifiers like
'happily,' 'down the street,' and 'on a sunny day' in German, but would precede most if not all modifiers in English. Pragmatics focuses on rules for using language appropriately in various situations. An example of pragmatics would be how to speak at home versus how to speak at school or work.

Supporting Natural Development
Teachers should realize that whatever language and/or dialect a child speaks is a reflection of that child's family's and community's values, identity, and experiences. As such, it is a valid communication system that deserves respect. Adults should treat babies and young children as conversationalists even before they begin talking, because they learn conversational rules very early (e.g., attentive gazing, facial expressions, and turn-taking). A significant component of language development is peer learning, particularly in mixed-age child groups. Adults should encourage child interaction by providing activities conducive to talking and using a broad range of materials. Individual and collaborative activities should be balanced.
Sharing books, building with blocks, engaging in dramatic play, and taking part in 'shop'/carpentry-related activities all stimulate interaction and discussion. While peer learning is important, adults are children's main resources for initiating conversations, questioning, listening, responding, and maintaining language development. Adults should always keep this in mind.
Continued interaction into the elementary grades and written language comprehension also support oral language development in children. Language informs all curriculum areas, so active learners in classrooms are always communicating.

Approaches to Communicating with Young Children
Researchers have found that a common practice among teachers when they are using language in their classrooms is to use linear or one-way questions requiring linear/one-way responses. However, experts recommend using reciprocal instructional approaches (e.g., asking open-ended questions that enable two-way/three-way responses). Studies also reveal that teachers are likely to dominate the classroom verbally. Experts believe a better approach would be to encourage and elicit children's conversational language and higher order cognitive skills by deliberately incorporating these into children's play activities. Experts state that teachers should have someone record a video of them during children's play time so they can monitor their own verbal behavior.
Teachers should note how many times they verbally describe what the children do, how many times they repeat what a child says and then add some further information to it, how often they comment on and describe the properties of objects, and how often they ask open-ended questions. They should reflect not only on the number and duration of verbal interactions, but also on the quality of each conversation.

'Following the CAR' Teaching Strategy
Some researchers recommend using a teaching strategy called 'Following the CAR' to engage in conversations with two- to five-year-old children. The C in CAR stands for Comment. In this step, the adult should comment on what a child is looking at, handling, or talking about. The adult should then wait five seconds. Experts find that this interval is important because it gives the young child time to hear and cognitively process the adult's comment, experience a response, formulate that response into verbal form, and then express it orally. The A stands for Ask. To continue the conversation the adult has begun and/or to start a new one, the adult should then ask the child questions about something the child is looking at, handling, or talking about. The adult should again wait five seconds to give the child time to respond. The R stands for Respond. Once the child gives an oral response, the adult should respond to what the child says by repeating the child's response and then adding a bit more information to extend the child's knowledge.

'Real' Conversations
Experts define 'real' conversations as those that interest the child and consist of three to four exchanges/'turns' between the child and the adult. Having at least one real conversation with each child on a daily basis is a highly effective way to improve vocabulary development and develop listening comprehension beyond the level of individual words. Teaching strategies that support children's active participation in real conversations include the following: attentively listening to what the children say; inviting the children to join extended conversations with adults and peers; demonstrating genuine interest in and affection for the children; sending verbal and non-verbal messages that are consistent; avoiding making judgmental comments about children or anybody else to or in front of the children; addressing the children with courtesy; availing oneself of spontaneously occurring opportunities for informal conversations with each child, and/or even planning some opportunities; basing conversations on children's specific interests; and using children's experiences, as well as songs, stories, and books, as topics for conversation.

Using Stage-Appropriate Prompts with Children Learning English as a Second Language
Children in the preproduction stage of ESL acquisition comprehend little English. They do not speak English, but can nod, point, and draw. Teachers can give prompts like 'Where is…?' 'Who has…?' 'Show me the…' or 'Circle the….' In the early production stage, children's comprehension is limited. They can give one- or two-word answers, use some important words and familiar phrases, and use verbs in present tense. Teachers can ask 'Yes/No' and 'Either/Or' questions and questions requiring short answers consisting of one or two words. They can also use lists and labels to access and expand vocabulary knowledge. In the speech emergence stage, comprehension improves and simple sentences emerge, albeit with grammatical and pronunciation errors.
Teachers can now ask children 'Why…?' 'How…?' and 'Explain…' questions, and can expect answers in the form of phrases or short sentences. In the intermediate fluency stage, when students have excellent comprehension and can use correct grammar more often, teachers can ask children more abstract questions like 'What would happen if…?' or 'Why do you think…?' During the advanced fluency stage, when students approach native proficiency, teachers can instruct students to retell stories and make decisions.

Stages of Second Language Acquisition
For ESL children, the first stage of second language acquisition is preproduction, which takes place during roughly the first six months of learning. Listening comprehension is minimal. The child does not speak in English, but can nod/shake the head 'yes/no,' draw pictures, and point at things. In the second, early production stage, which lasts from roughly six months to one year into learning, children have limited English comprehension.
They can utter one- to two-word answers, essential words, familiar phrases, and present tense verbs. In the third, speech emergence stage, which lasts from about one to three years into learning, children comprehend English well. They can speak in simple sentences, but still make mistakes in pronunciation and grammar. They often misunderstand jokes in English. The fourth stage is intermediate fluency, which begins about three years into the language acquisition process and extends to about the fifth year. By this stage, children have attained excellent English listening comprehension, and do not make many grammatical errors. In the fifth, final stage of advanced fluency, children's English language proficiency is similar to that of a native English speaker. Children typically reach this stage between five and seven years after they start learning English.

Improving (ESL) Instruction
Research in the early 1990s found that regardless of the type of bilingual education language programs used (e.g., early-exit, late-exit transitional, or immersion), teachers tended to ask ESL students questions requiring low levels of English language proficiency and lower-order cognitive skills. Teacher knowledge of what stages of second language acquisition students are in, as well as an awareness of the kinds of prompts and questions that are appropriate for each stage both enable teachers to approach children using suitable levels of discourse. Another advantage of knowing the stages is that teachers can assess students' content knowledge as well as their English language proficiency. A third benefit is that knowing language acquisition levels enables teachers to use what Vygotsky termed the zone of proximal development (ZPD), the gap between a learner's current capability and the next level of ability.  Vygotsky found that the ZPD can be utilized by providing necessary temporary support—which Bruner called scaffolding—that is gradually withdrawn as students progress.

Using Scaffolding and the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
Scaffolding, a term coined by Jerome Bruner, involves temporarily providing the support a learner needs to accomplish tasks just above his/her current performance level (i.e. things s/he cannot do independently, but can achieve with assistance). Lev Vygotsky identified the ZPD as the gap between a learner's current ability and the next level. He found that providing scaffolding enables teachers to exploit the ZPD to enhance learning.
Teachers can apply this concept to ESL language development through direct instruction, by asking challenging questions, and/or by modeling correct
English pronunciation and grammar. For example, a student in the first, preproduction stage of second language acquisition is able to find things, point at objects, and circle pictures, and such tasks are stage appropriate.
However, a teacher can promote higher development by providing scaffolding to support students in answering Yes/No questions and/or giving one-word answers.
These are tasks associated with the second, early production stage. With teacher support, the student can move to a higher stage of ESL acquisition.

Conversational Versus Academic English for ESL Learners
Conversational English requires basic skills that are used in interpersonal communication in everyday life, including basic vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Conversational English enables ESL students to comprehend and participate in informal conversations with adults and peers. ESL children generally develop it after living in English-speaking locations for about two years. Conversational English is not particularly difficult cognitively. Children with conversational English skills sound fluent to most people. They converse in English, understand teacher questions, and may even translate for parents. However, their conversational fluency is often not reflected in school homework and tests. Teachers and parents may wrongly assume a child is unmotivated/learning disabled/lazy, when the true reason for the child's academic underachievement is that he or she lacks a knowledge of more cognitively demanding academic English (such as content specific vocabulary in math, science, etc.) and complex-compound sentence syntax. ESL students take at least five to seven years to become fluent in academic English, and take even longer when they lack native language literacy at the time they enroll in an English language school. To understand textbooks, solve word problems, write reports/papers, and develop the problem solving and critical thinking skills needed to comprehend and communicate abstract and novel concepts, students must master academic English.

Using Word Walls to Enhance Vocabulary Building for ESL Children
Young ESL children learn English vocabulary words by repeatedly singing the same familiar songs and chants, and by hearing the same stories many times. Such repetition is also favored by young children. While ESL children are involved in activities featuring repeated story readings, rhyme recitations, and/or singing, teachers can supplement these activities to enhance further vocabulary building by providing word walls. A word wall uses visuals to illustrate concepts represented by vocabulary words, as well as by related words. Key characteristics of vocabulary words and related words may also be shown. A word wall can also illustrate concepts like synonyms and subcategories. For example, a word wall for 'Chicken Little,' 'The Little Red Hen,' or another poultry-related story could have a picture of a chicken at the top labeled Chicken. Below it on the left might be several related pictures labeled with their names: Rooster, Hen, and Chick. Under the main chicken picture on the right could be several labeled pictures showing chicken characteristics (e.g., Feathers, Beak, and the Eggs that hens lay).

Input Hypothesis
Krashen and Terrell, who identified the stages of second language acquisition, posited the input hypothesis. This states that when an ESL learner in one stage of acquisition is given instructional input that includes some structures characteristic of the next stage of acquisition, and is also encouraged to use language reflective of that next, higher stage, the learner will advance to that next stage in listening and speaking. The input hypothesis is expressed as i + 1, where i represents the speaker's actual or current level (or stage) of second language acquisition, and i + 1 represents the speaker's potential second language development level. Teachers who know the stages of second language acquisition and the appropriate types of prompts to use for each stage can adapt their prompting so that students respond commensurately with their current stage of English language development and with the next higher stage at the same time.

Application of the Word-MES Formula to ESL Instruction
Jane Hill's 'Word-MES' stands for 'Word selection,' 'Modeling,' 'Expanding,' and 'Sounding like a book,' respectively. Include examples in your response. 'Word-MES' is a mnemonic for the key steps in applying the stages of second language development to ESL instruction. Students in the preproduction stage need to learn English vocabulary Words. Teachers should focus on helping students learn and correctly apply basic vocabulary.
For example, using the story of 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears,' teachers can teach words like house, bed, cereal, oatmeal, too, hot, cold, hard, and soft.
When working with students in the early production stage, teachers should Model correct English usage. For example, if a child says 'Goldie runned,' the teacher can respond, 'Yes, Goldilocks ran and ran.' Teachers should not make explicit corrections. When working with children in the speech emergence stage, teachers can focus on Expanding spoken/written sentences. For example, if a child says, 'Bed was too soft,' the teacher can expand on this by saying, 'Yes, the second bed was too soft,' adding the correct article and specifying adjective. Teachers can help students in intermediate and advanced fluency stages to Sound like books by exposing them to words outside their repertoires, repeatedly reading familiar books and singing songs, and using supplementary word walls.

Causes and Signs of Articulation Disorders
Articulation refers to the pronunciation of specific speech sounds and phonemes. Some phonemes are harder to produce than others.
Therefore, it is normal for young children not to produce some sounds correctly until they reach a certain level of maturity. For example, children are around seven or eight on average before they can pronounce difficult phonemes like /r/ and /s/. Some children continue to distort, omit, or substitute a certain sound beyond the age norm. Speech therapy can help address these types of issues. If a child mispronounces multiple phonemes beyond the typical age ranges, testing is needed to determine the cause. Multiple factors can affect articulation, including hearing loss, misaligned teeth/jaws, missing teeth, a tongue that is shorter or longer than normal, velopharyngeal insufficiency interfering with complete vocal tract closure, breathing problems, mild cerebral palsy causing neuromuscular weakness and incoordination of the speech mechanisms, mild to moderate intellectual disabilities, and others. Some children's speech is difficult to understand due to multiple misarticulations, which may also be caused by any combination of the factors outlined above.

Causes and Signs of Delayed Language Development
Some children develop skills for understanding and using spoken and written language significantly later than normal, even when individual variations are taken into account. This can be due to a number of causes. Children with mild or moderate intellectual disabilities are likely to show delayed language development as well as delayed cognitive development, as these are closely related. Some children do not test with obvious cognitive deficits, but may have minimal neurological damage, which can delay language development. Other children may have no organic basis for the delay, but have been born into environments where they are deprived of adequate environmental stimulation. For example, if a child's parents and/or caregivers/teachers do not routinely talk to them, have limited daily interactions with them, and never read to them, young children are likely to exhibit delayed language development. Some parents who do interact with and talk to their children may still be linguistically, educationally, and culturally deprived themselves.
Their children may feel loved and have good self-esteem, but may have a level of language development that is below average for their age.

Alphabetic Principle and Its Predictive Value for Future Literacy
The concept that written/printed letters and their patterns correspond to speech sounds is called the alphabetic principle. Children's future success with reading is strongly predicted by their early knowledge of the shapes and names of written/printed letters. Children's development of the abilities to view words as series of letters and to remember printed/written word forms is closely associated with their knowledge of letter names. Children cannot learn letter sounds or recognize words without knowing letter names.
Being able to recognize and name multiple letters is a prerequisite for comprehending the alphabetic principle, which explains that spoken sounds and printed letters have predictable, systematic relationships. Children follow a sequence of first learning letter names, then learning letter shapes, and finally learning letter sounds. Singing the 'ABC' song and reciting rhymes help children learn letter names. Playing with lettered blocks, large 3-D letters, and alphabet books helps them learn letter shapes. Teachers can plan informal instruction so that children are given multiple, varied opportunities to view, compare, and manipulate letters. Relevant activities may include identifying, naming, and writing upper-case and lower-case letters.

Instruction Principles in Teaching the Alphabetic Principle
Not all children begin preschool or school with good alphabetic knowledge, which refers to an awareness that written letters represent spoken sounds. For those who have not developed this prerequisite skill, educators must provide well-organized instruction to enable students to identify, name, and write the letters of the alphabet. Once they master these skills, they will have the foundation necessary to learn letter sounds and word spellings. A general instructional plan revolving around the alphabetic principle includes several elements. First, teachers should give children explicit instruction in isolated letter-sound correspondences. Second, during each day's lessons and activities, teachers should give children opportunities to practice their developing knowledge of letter-sound relationships. Teachers should both review children's cumulative learning of letter-sound correspondences already taught and create opportunities for children to practice new letter-sound relationships they are just learning. Finally, to give students opportunities to apply their expanding knowledge of the alphabetic principle early and frequently, teachers can supply phonetic spellings of words with meanings familiar to children for them to read.

Pace and Order of Lessons in Teaching the Alphabetic Principle
There is no expert consensus regarding the speed or sequence that should be used to teach young children letter-to-sound relationships.
However, educators generally agree that phonemes and letters with the highest utility—those used most often—should be taught earliest. These include m, a, t, s, p, and h. Conversely, x as in 'box,' gh as in 'through,' ey as in 'they,' and a as in 'want' are letter-phoneme relationships that are used less frequently. The letter-sound relationships of consonants least subject to distorted articulation when pronounced in isolation should be taught first.
These include f, m, and n. Word-initial or word-medial stops (p, b, t, d, k, and g) are more difficult for young children to combine with other sounds than continuous (fricative/affricate) phonemes are. Sounds that are easily confused
(like /b/ and /v/) or letters that look similar (like b and d, or p and g) should be introduced to young children in separate lessons.

Sound-to-Alphabet Letter Relationships Instruction
When a teacher is instructing preschoolers on the relationships between spoken sounds and written letters (known as the alphabetic principle), s/he might begin by introducing a few (e.g., two, three, or four) single consonant sounds and one or two short vowel sounds. Once the children have mastered these, the teacher can present some additional new single consonant sounds, present some additional new short vowel sounds, and introduce one long vowel sound in a subsequent lesson. Then, the teacher could introduce consonant blends like st-, cl-, etc. in a separate lesson. Another lesson after the one on consonant blends could focus on digraphs (e.g., ch, sh, and th), which would enable children to read frequently used words like 'chair,' 'she,' and 'the.' A later lesson could introduce consonant clusters such as str-, spl-, etc. Teachers should always teach young children single consonants and consonant blends/clusters in separate lessons to avoid confusion.

Pacing and Order of Lessons on Sound-Letter Correspondences
Early childhood alphabetic principle instruction should be logical and consistent with the rates at which young children are able to learn. Teachers should introduce sound-to-letter relationships that will enable children to work with words as early as possible. According to research findings, direct and explicit instruction controlled by the teacher is more effective for teaching children the alphabetic principle than indirect and implicit methods are. Many teachers also use eclectic approaches, combining multiple teaching methods. Educators should remember that individual children normally learn sound-letter relationships at varying rates. A reasonable rate for introducing sound-letter relationships ranges from two to four relationships weekly. The earliest relationships teachers should introduce are high-utility ones. When introducing consonants and vowels, teachers should present them in an order that facilitates children's reading words readily.
Teachers should avoid presenting similar-sounding phonemes and/or similar-looking letters together. They should use separate sessions/lessons to introduce single consonant sounds and consonant blends/clusters. Instruction in blending letters/sounds should use words with letter-sound relationships children have already learned.

English Literacy Development in ESL Students
To teach ESL students to read English, teachers must know the essential elements of literacy development, the principles of second language acquisition, and the differing conventions of both the students' first (L1) and second (L2) languages. Second language acquisition is an ongoing, lifelong process. In many ways, the process of second language acquisition parallels that of first language acquisition. Regardless of their L1 or their formal L2 instruction, students demonstrate predictable error patterns in learning. Acquiring language is not a linear process. While formal instruction can expand knowledge and inform and ease the process of language acquisition, it cannot accelerate it. Therefore, it is also detrimental to require sequential mastery of each curriculum element before proceeding onto the next element. Activities using language that are meaningful to students within a relevant context and teacher guidance help develop L2 acquisition. Varying language conventions must be kept in mind during instruction. For example, letter-sound correspondences are more consistent in Spanish than in English.
Spanish letters are pronounced the same way they are spelled, so Spanish-speaking children can find the multiple pronunciations of the same phoneme in English confusing.

Phonological Differences Between Spanish and English Affecting the ELL Process
Because letter-sound correspondences are more consistent in Spanish than in English, Spanish vowels have fewer possible pronunciations than
English vowels. Spanish has fewer total vowel sounds than English, regardless of spelling. This makes learning English more complicated for Spanish-speaking children. In modern Spanish, the pronunciation for the consonants v and b is the same, but these letters have different pronunciations in English. Spanish and English both contain the phoneme /ð/. In Spanish, it is represented by the letter d; in English, it is represented by the letters th. In English, the consonant clusters /sk/, /sp/, and /st/ are word-initial, as in school, special, and star. In Spanish, they are always preceded by /e/, as in escuela (school), especial (special), and estrella (star). Spanish speakers thus have difficulty pronouncing such initial clusters, and often end up using Spanish conventions, saying 'estart' for start, 'espeak' for speak, etc. Some sounds exist in L2 but not in L1; some L1 sounds transfer to L2; and letter-sound correspondences may differ between languages. Therefore, phonological and phonemic awareness and oral language development are crucial for ELLs.

English Literacy Development Versus Spanish Literacy Development
In English literacy instruction with native English-speaking children, educators teach individual phonemes/speech sounds and their corresponding alphabetic letters (phonics instruction). Spanish, however, is a syllabic language, and Spanish reading is taught using syllables rather than single phonemes. Spanish instruction uses syllables to teach word spellings, word divisions, stressed/accented parts of a word, word reading, and simple sentence construction. English-speaking children are taught to 'sound out' a new word they encounter while reading by separating it into individual letters representing individual sounds. Spanish-speaking children are taught to 'sound out' words by separating them into their component syllables. For example, in English, children sound out 'man' as /m/, /æ/, and /n/. In Spanish, children sound out manzana (apple) as man, za, and na. Teachers must realize that ELLs encounter many phonological, syntactic, and semantic differences between their first and second languages, and that children with less English proficiency depend more on L1 cues. ELLs also expend double the cognitive effort of native
English speakers through their attention to new language sounds, meanings, and structures, as well as their attempts to learn new literacy concepts and 
Writing Systems of Different Languages
Not only do different languages have phonological and orthographic differences, but they also use different writing systems. For example, although
Spanish is syllabic in phonology and Spanish literacy instruction is syllabic, the Spanish writing system and letter-sound correspondences are (like English) alphabetic. The Chinese writing system is logographic. Rather than using alphabet letters to symbolize speech sounds, Chinese uses ideographs, or characters depicting concepts, to symbolize words. The Japanese language has a combined logographic and syllabic writing system. Directionality can differ, too. In English, Spanish, and other European-based languages, lines of writing/print go from left to right. In Hebrew, they go from right to left; in Chinese, they go from top to bottom. Therefore, children's ESL progress relies on their phonological awareness, their oral language knowledge, their grasp of the alphabetic principle, and their print awareness and book knowledge. These are best developed in purposeful contexts that are relevant to children.

Helping ELL Students Develop English Language Literacy
When teaching children learning English as a second language, teachers should make their instruction understandable to them. They can do this by providing visual aids, graphic organizers, and concrete examples of what they are teaching. They should consistently monitor children's language for development levels and use. They can paraphrase to clarify unfamiliar words and the concepts they describe. Teachers should take advantage of every opportunity to establish connections between children's L1 and English. They must repeat things frequently. They can also help ELLs by establishing a safe atmosphere where children receive ongoing support and feel comfortable taking risks. Teachers should adopt and communicate high learning expectations. They should enable children to develop necessary language and literacy skills that are consistent with their current levels of oral English proficiency. Literacy instruction should build upon children's comprehension, the alphabetic principle, and print concepts. Teachers should use language that children understand and find meaningful.
Teachers should assess their students' specific needs, and then design instructional programs that address those needs. They should also design instructional plans expressly for new students. They should design instruction so children can understand it. They should assess student progress often. Based on data they collect through assessment and monitoring, teachers should make instructional decisions, including adjusting schedules accordingly.
They should create plenty of opportunities for children to participate in extended conversations in English. Teachers should also seek out others in their preschool's community who have expertise in one or more areas, and should use these assets when creating their curriculum. ESL teaching strategies should be integrated into instruction in all content areas. Teachers should activate and access children's background knowledge and connect instructional content to children's real lives. They should give children opportunities to discuss learning materials, topics, and early texts. Teachers must also acknowledge and value diverse cultural patterns of speech and discourse.
Print awareness, also called print literacy, emerges gradually during the preschool years in normally developing children. Print awareness is the understanding that print conveys meaning, and the understanding of print's form and function. Research has found that children typically tend to develop print awareness between three and five years of age.
Some researchers have observed that at this age, children go through a significant metamorphosis, wherein they demonstrate exponential increases in self-motivated, independent interactions with print. Such interactions include reciting the alphabet, identifying printed letters, recognizing printed words, and using print as a communicative mechanism. Many studies have concluded that the development of these print literacy skills by preschool-aged children is a strong predictor of their future achievement in reading. Studies have also shown that while four-year-olds have not mastered either word concepts or print concepts, they may acquire many print concepts sooner than word concepts.

Instructional Strategies for Promoting Literacy Development and Reading Comprehension
Instructional strategies designed to promote early literacy development and reading comprehension that are used in many ECE programs (like the EC component of the Partners for Literacy [PfL] Curriculum) include interactive book reading, the 3N strategy, extended teaching, problem solving, and curriculum-embedded assessments. These are also suitable for teaching ESL children. Interactive book reading is a teaching method that should be used at least once per day with each child. Children participate either individually or in pairs. This interactive reading is done in addition to (not instead of) reading in large and small groups. The purpose of interactive book reading is to stimulate responsive, reciprocal instructional conversations between each child and the teacher. Interactive book reading employs three main component strategies: the 3S strategy (3S stands for see, show, and say), wh- questions, and expanded book reading.

Using 3S Strategy and Wh- Questions in Interactive Book Reading
Interactive book reading is a strategy aimed at generating responsive instructional conversations between the child and teacher. In the 3S strategy, the 3 S's are see, show, and say. First, the teacher asks the child to see/look at a specific feature in a book, such as the main character. If the child succeeds, the teacher then asks him/her to locate an image or a word on a page. If the child does this correctly, the teacher then asks the child to say a word/answer a question. This requires multiple responses, promoting children's attending behavior and building upon each student's abilities.
During the say part of 3S, the teacher asks the child questions beginning with who, what, where, when, and why. These wh- questions help teachers assess children's listening and/or reading comprehension levels, and also encourage ongoing conversations between each child and the teacher.

Using Interactive Activities in Expanded Book Reading
Expanded book reading is an instructional strategy that is part of the interactive book reading teaching format, which is used to promote early childhood literacy development. In expanded book reading, teachers can ask children to predict the possible subject matter of a book. They can give children an overview of a book. They can discuss setting, characters, and events in a book with children. They can help children relate the story in a book to their own lives, thereby making the book meaningful and relevant to children and helping them establish connections between literature and real life. Teachers can enhance the meaning of stories in books by acting them out using puppets and other props. To integrate literacy into all content areas across the curriculum, teachers can design math, science, art, and/or music activities that are related to a book students read. Teachers can ask children to retell the story they read together, which is an excellent way to informally assess their comprehension. This activity also assesses children's receptive and expressive language processing and speech-language production abilities.

Promoting Early Childhood Literacy Development with the 3N Strategy
In the 3N strategy, the 3 Ns are notice, nudge, and narrate.
This teaching strategy involves providing scaffolding. Scaffolding is temporary support that helps a child advance from his or her current skill, knowledge, or competency level to a higher level. Scaffolding permits advancement that the child could not achieve on his or her own. The 3N teaching strategy can be employed to make any activity a learning experience for a young child, because it provides a structure for how teachers should interact with children. First, the teacher notices the level of an individual child's literacy skill(s). Second, the teacher verbally nudges the child to do things that are a step above his or her current skill level. Third, the teacher narrates what the child does, verbally describing and reflecting the child's activities. A number of literacy games designed for young children, including the Partners for Literacy curriculum's Literacy Games, utilize a 3N instructional strategy.

Incorporating Problem-Solving Strategies and Skills into Curriculum and Daily Instruction
During each preschool day, teachers can help young children recognize their emotions, identify their own needs and wants, develop empathy for and identify with the emotions of others, recognize situations involving problems, come up with simple solutions to problems, and think about the potential consequences of problem solutions. These activities help children develop age appropriate and developmentally appropriate competencies for solving problems and making decisions. Periods of both formal and informal instruction afford opportunities for children to develop these skills.
Developing problem-solving and decision-making skills at an early age has a number of benefits. Young children learn to self-regulate their emotions and behaviors through this development. They develop social skills for interacting with others. Moreover, developing early problem-solving and decision-making skills prepares children for the further development of the higher order cognitive skills they will need to succeed in formal primary, secondary, and higher education settings, as well as in everyday life.

Strategies to Help Read New and/or Difficult Words
Phonics helps children read unknown/difficult words by teaching them how to sound out the phonemes represented by each printed letter.
Teachers can help when children mispronounce words that have irregular spellings. They can also confirm children's correct pronunciations of words they have not heard or seen before. Context helps children deduce which of several possible words is most likely to be found in a particular sentence, paragraph, or book by examining its meaning in relation to the overall subject matter.
Looking at a word's part of speech and how it fits into the sentence in question is also an example of using context. For example, reed and read have different spellings and meanings, but sound the same (homonyms). After reading the sentence 'Reeds grow in marshes,' a child knowing the meaning of 'reads' can rule this word out even without knowing how it is spelled because it makes no sense in the context of the sentence. Children could also use their knowledge of language structure to analyze the sentence above. Children can ascertain whether a new word is a noun (person/place/thing) or a verb (action/state of being) by looking at its syntactic placement and its relation to the other words in the sentence that they are familiar with.

Children's Literature

Formats and Genres in Children's Literature
The picture book is both a genre and a format that encompasses various other genres. It includes wordless storybooks, which contain only pictures. Picture books integrate pictures and text to create a multimodal experience. Text is the most important feature of illustrated story books.
Illustrations are secondary but complementary to the text. Poetry books contain poems rather than prose. Poems can use concrete verse, free verse, and rhymed and metered verse. Poetry emphasizes the sounds and meanings of words, and appeals to both readers' emotions and thoughts. Traditional literature is an adapted form of oral storytelling. It includes fairy tales, fables, folklore, epics, and proverbs. 'Once upon a time…' introductions and happy endings are common features. Modern fantasy is based on traditional literature, but it is original. It includes modern fairy tales, such as those written by Lewis Carroll and Hans Christian Andersen. White's Charlotte's Web and Milne's Winnie the Pooh are also examples. Fantasy stories are imaginary, and often focus on good vs. evil conflicts, magic, and/or quests. Non-fiction informational books include narrative, how-to, question and answer, activity, life cycle, and concept texts.

Features Promoting Literacy Development
Books that some EC educational experts refer to as 'predictable books' contain repetitive text throughout. A salient characteristic of young children is their behavior of repeating familiar rhymes/songs/chants/phrases and stories over and over. Children find such repetition enjoyable. They also ask adults to read them the same books repeatedly. In addition to being enjoyable, repetition provides young children with opportunities to practice words and language patterns, and also encourages retention. Children also like repetitive books because they can immediately participate in the reading of the story. Some examples of good 'predictable' children's books include the traditional stories 'The Three Little Pigs' and 'The Little Red Hen.' Other examples are Dr. Seuss's 'Green Eggs and Ham' and his story 'What Was I Scared Of?' found in the compilation Yertle the Turtle.
Another feature of children's books promoting early literacy development is pictures. Picture books with equal, interrelated/interdependent pictures and text help young children learn to recognize and begin to read letters and words by relating them to familiar visual images. The pictures in illustrated storybooks inform text, supporting beginning readers' continuing literacy

Characteristics of Good Children's Literature
To select good children's literature, adults should determine whether a book tells an interesting story. The story should be age appropriate. It should also be appealing to a teacher's students. Books should be well-written, and should have original, believable, and well-constructed plots. Story characters should be credible and convincing, and they should grow and change as a result of their experiences. Dialogue should suit the characters, and should sound natural. Stories should have themes that are important to children. Adults should consider whether a book's theme is obviously moralistic. They should consider what the reader can expect based on a book's title and format. Illustrations should contribute to text, and vice versa. Good children's books avoid stereotypes based on race, gender, etc. They should afford pleasant reading/listening experiences. Adults can also read book reviews for guidance. Children's book authors should be knowledgeable about their subject matter, and they should write in a style suitable for the subject being discussed. Informational books should be accurate and well-organized.

Abilities Demonstrating Phonological and Phonemic Awareness
Young children with phonological awareness recognize rhymes they hear, can rhyme words, can 'count' the number of syllables in a word by clapping, and can identify words with matching initial sounds (e.g., 'mother' and 'milk'). Children with phonemic awareness can manipulate individual phonemes in words. For example, they can separate the word 'cat' into the sounds /k/, /æ/, and /t/. Children who have problems with phonemic awareness frequently experience reading problems without early intervention. There are several issues teachers may observe in the classroom that can indicate phonological and/or phonemic awareness deficits. Children may not correctly combine individual phonemes to make a word. For example, they may not be able to select and blend the phonemes /k/, /æ/, and /t/ to make 'cat.' A child may not correctly perform phoneme substitution tasks to make different words. For example, a child may not be able to change the /k/ in 'cat' to /m/ to make
'mat.' A child may have difficulty determining how many syllables are in a word like 'paper.' A child may also have problems rhyming, syllabicating, or spelling new words based on how they sound.

Word Decoding and Phonics
Word decoding ability consists of being aware of letter-sound correspondences and letter patterns, and applying them to correctly pronounce the words we read. Phonics is a reading instruction approach that focuses on letter-sound correspondences, exceptions to general rules, and strategies for sounding out new words. In the classroom, if a teacher observes a child is having trouble matching up letters with sounds (or vice versa), this can signal decoding and phonics problems that can interfere with a child's ability to read and spell. Children who can decode words, but must use a great deal of effort to do so, may have decoding and phonics problems. Difficulties with spelling words phonetically and reading are also signs of possible problems. Children who struggle greatly with phonics activities and patterns may have decoding deficits. Children who try to guess words based on the first one or two letters may have problems with decoding and phonics. If after teaching several letter sounds/patterns to a class, a teacher finds that certain children cannot recognize them while reading words and do not include these sounds and patterns in their writing, the teacher should suspect that these children are having problems with decoding and phonics.

Types of Vocabulary
Educators frequently divide vocabulary into listening, speaking, reading, and writing vocabulary. These are not necessarily the same.
Listening vocabulary refers to the words we must know to understand what we hear others say. Speaking vocabulary refers to the words we use when we talk.
Reading vocabulary refers to the words we must know to comprehend what we read.
Writing vocabulary refers to the words we use when we write. To read print, children must understand the majority of the words they encounter in a text.
Children learn the majority of word meanings indirectly through daily life experiences. Well-designed instruction teaches them additional vocabulary. If a teacher observes that a child has more questions than usual about what words mean in age appropriate/developmentally appropriate texts, the child may have vocabulary issues. A teacher may observe that a child does not use or recognize many words compared to his or her peers, which could also indicate vocabulary issues. A child who cannot see connections/relationships among words in different texts may have vocabulary deficits. If a child frequently cannot find the correct word to express a thought, idea, etc., this could also indicate vocabulary difficulties.

Reading Fluency
Reading fluency is the ability to read quickly, accurately, and smoothly both silently and aloud, and to read aloud with appropriate vocal intonations and expression. Children who do not read fluently sound awkward and choppy when they read aloud. Some students who read dysfluently have word decoding problems. Others simply need more reading practice to read quickly and smoothly. Reading fluency is important to children's reading motivation. When children find reading laborious or view it as a chore rather than an enjoyable experience, they dislike reading and avoid it. This exacerbates reading problems. Reading fluency becomes more important in upper elementary grades, when the volume of required reading increases exponentially for students.
Therefore, younger children with poor reading fluency will also have difficulty meeting academic reading demands in the future. When teachers conduct correct words per minute assessments, children who do not meet the criteria for their grade level may have fluency issues. Struggling and becoming frustrated with speed and/or accuracy while reading aloud may indicate fluency problems.
Reading aloud without expression is another sign of fluency issues, as are failing to pause at meaningful breaks in a sentence or a paragraph and failing to 'chunk' words into meaningful units.

Abilities Necessary to Have Good Reading Comprehension
To have good reading comprehension, children must be able to (1) decode the words they read, (2) connect what they read to things they already know, and (3) think about what they have read in depth. Knowing enough word meanings (i.e. having enough vocabulary) plays a major role in reading comprehension. Children with good comprehension can make conclusions about what they read, including identifying factual elements, determining the causes of specific events, and identifying comedic characters. Therefore, comprehension involves a combination of reading, thinking, and reasoning. Teachers may observe a number of signs of reading comprehension problems. A child may focus on details/'trees' to the exclusion of the main point/'forest.' This child can report how stories end, but cannot explain why. A child may not speculate about characters' motivations or upcoming events when reading a book. When trying to relate reading to his/her life, a child may choose irrelevant information. A child may not be able to recount logical event sequences in stories or isolate main facts in informational texts. A child may appear to have inadequate vocabulary to understand a text. Finally, a child may be unable to relate details of a story, such as the setting, what the characters look like, etc.

Basic Reading Components of Phonological and Phonemic Awareness
The five basic reading components of phonological and phonemic awareness are word decoding, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. A deficit in any of these components can lead to reading problems. In addition to deficits in one or more of these areas, about two to three percent of children have central auditory processing disorders (CAPDs).
Our ears receive environmental sound waves and convert them to acoustic impulses that are carried by nerves to the brain, which interprets these signals as various sounds, including speech. This is auditory processing.
Children with CAPD have problems attending to, listening to, and remembering spoken information, and often take longer to process auditory input. They frequently cannot differentiate among sounds in words that sound similar to other phonemes, despite being able to hear them clearly. This causes decoding difficulties, which interferes with reading. Some children with strong auditory
(and language) processing skills have deficits in phonological processing (i.e. processing phonemes/speech sounds specifically). This also typically causes decoding and hence reading difficulties. Language processing problems are broader, including deficiencies in linguistic experiences, vocabulary, comprehension (despite being able to correctly decode words), and reading.
Role of Memory in Children's Reading Development
For children to read, understand what they read, and switch efficiently between the printed language they see and the information they have stored in their memories, children must be able to store information and retrieve it as it is needed. There are three main types of memory. Short-term memory holds small pieces of information for short periods of time. For example, when we hold a phone number in our mind only long enough to dial it, but do not retain it after it is dialed, we use our short-term memory. Working memory holds interim information in the mind for use during calculations. For example, we use our working memory when mentally multiplying double digit numerals or doing long division. Processing new information so that it can be stored for a long period of time, searching for stored information, and retrieving information as it is needed are also functions of working memory.
Phonological working memory is a component of phonological processing that is important in reading comprehension, spelling, written expression, and retention. We store enormous amounts of information for many years in our long-term memory. This information influences our differential attention to various environmental factors and our perceptions of the world.

Dyslexia

Difficulties Displayed When Speaking That May Be Signs of Dyslexia
Preschoolers/kindergarteners who have trouble learning alphabet letters are more likely to have trouble identifying sound-letter correspondences in first grade, and are more likely to have subsequent life-long difficulties with reading. Issues related to children's speech that can indicate dyslexia include mispronouncing unfamiliar, long, or complex words. This may include omitting word parts and/or arranging syllables or word parts in the wrong sequence. Other signs of dyslexia include speech that is not fluent (e.g., speech that is marked by frequent hesitations, 'um's,' and pauses); speech that uses vague or non-specific wording, such as 'things' or 'stuff,' instead of correct nouns and names of specific objects; speech that suggests the child is having difficulty finding words while speaking, which is indicated when students confuse words that sound similar (e.g., substituting 'volcano' for 'tornado,' substituting 'humidity' for 'humility,' etc.); and speech that shows an inability to generate verbal responses to questions quickly and on demand. Students with dyslexia may also require more time than normal to respond orally to language stimuli; and may also have difficulties with rote memory (e.g., retaining and/or retrieving names, dates, phone numbers, random lists, and other isolated items contained in information presented verbally).

Observable Reading Problems
Dyslexic children typically show abnormally slow progress in their acquisition of reading skills. They often lack systematic strategies for reading new words (decoding, sounding out, etc.), and make wild guesses instead. Being unable to read short function words (e.g., 'an,' 'on,' and 'that') is common, as is stumbling over multisyllabic words. Dyslexic children often miss parts of words when reading and/or fail to decode word parts, and may, for example, read a word aloud with its middle syllable missing (e.g., 'imation' for 'imagination'). Children with dyslexia tend to fear and hence avoid oral reading because they have made errors in the past and have an expectation that they will make additional errors if they attempt to read aloud again. When they do read aloud, they may omit appropriate inflections; sound like they are reading a foreign language; sound laborious and choppy, rather than fluent and smooth; mispronounce numerous words; and make numerous omissions and substitutions. While reading, they depend on the context to comprehend meaning, and have more difficulty understanding single/isolated words. Their performance on objective (e.g., multiple choice) tests is typically much poorer than their intelligence and knowledge would predict.
Children who consistently cannot complete written tests in the time allowed may have dyslexia. Children who cannot pronounce more difficult printed words and substitute easier ones for them instead (e.g., 'car' for 'automobile') may have dyslexia. In math, dyslexia causes difficulty reading word problems. Dyslexic children often misspell words. The spellings are not phonetic, but are often bizarre and wildly different from actual spellings and from native language conventions. Children with dyslexia read very slowly, finding it laborious and exhausting. Reading is such a chore to dyslexic children that they do not enjoy it, do not read for pleasure, and will avoid reading whenever possible. Such children have a lot of trouble learning foreign languages. Despite good fine motor skills and word processing abilities, they often have poor handwriting. Homework seems to take forever for dyslexics. Some students ask parents to read so they don't have to. Dyslexics' reading becomes more accurate with time and practice, but still remains labored and dysfluent. Dyslexic children often have family histories of problems with reading, spelling, and learning foreign languages. Dyslexia can cause low self-esteem. This is not always obvious, but can be detected by sensitive, skilled professionals.

Learning to Spell
Children must understand the alphabetic principle—the concept that words are comprised of individual phonemes/speech sounds, and that the letters of our alphabet represent those sounds in writing/print—in order to learn how to spell. They must also develop a knowledge of specific letter-to-sound correspondences. As children gain more experience hearing, understanding, and using words, they start to observe patterns in the ways in which letters are combined. They also notice repeated series of letters that create syllables, common roots for many related words, prefixes, suffixes, word endings, and other word features. When children know these basic patterns and have also learned their language's basic spelling principles and rules, they can usually figure out how to spell new words they hear. Moreover, children can usually read words that they can spell. Therefore, children's development of good spelling skills promotes the development of good reading and writing skills as well.

Salient Characteristics of the Stages of Spelling Development
(1) Precommunicative stage: Children use alphabet letters, but may not know the whole alphabet, may not differentiate between upper case and lower case letters, or may not know that English is written from left to right. They do not demonstrate knowledge of letter-to-sound correspondences. (2) Semiphonetic stage: Children begin to comprehend letter-to-sound correspondences. They frequently use simple logic to symbolize words with single letters. A good example is using 'U' for 'you' (early texting potential!). (3) Phonetic stage: Children use letters to represent all speech sounds they hear in words. These representations may not always be correct, but are systematic and understandable (e.g., writing 'kom' instead of 'come'). (4) Transitional stage: Children begin the transition from phonetically spelling words according to their sounds to visually and structurally learning conventional word spellings. They still make errors as they assimilate this new knowledge (e.g., writing 'highked' instead of 'hiked'). (5) Correct stage: Children know fundamental English orthographic rules, including silent letters, irregular and alternative spellings, prefixes, suffixes, and other word features. They have learned many word spellings, and recognize misspellings. Their knowledge of exceptions to spelling rules and the generalizations they make about spelling are usually correct.

Invented Spelling and What It Reveals About Phonetic Awareness
When young children have not yet learned how to spell many (or any) words, they commonly 'invent' spellings for spoken words they hear.
They do this by identifying letters that correspond to the separate phonemes
(speech sounds) they hear and arranging them in a sequence that matches the word's sounds. Linguistic researchers (e.g., Read, 1975) studying preschoolers have found that different children choose the same phonetic spellings. These children have developed phonemic and phonetic awareness, enabling them to invent spellings before they have actually learned to spell. This skill is a prerequisite to learning how to read, spell, and write. Researchers observe that neither adult influence nor chance could explain diverse children's high incidence of selecting the same phonetic spellings. Therefore, even at young ages, children can identify the phonetic properties of English words that are symbolized by their real spellings. Experts conclude from these observations that spelling is a developmental process rather than merely a word memorization process, and that it results in comprehension that goes beyond understanding simple sound-to-letter correspondences.

Writing
According to the National Institute for Literacy, writing is defined as 'the ability to compose text effectively for various purposes and audiences.' We use writing as a tool to help us collect detailed information, document it, and disseminate it to widespread audiences. We use writing to express our ideas, thoughts, and feelings, and to persuade our readers to believe or agree with what we write. Researchers have also found that the learning capacity of an individual increases when his or her writing skills improve. This aspect of writing skills mirrors that of reading skills in that the development of both improves learning ability. Students need instruction to learn to write well. Reading skills have been found both to be reinforced by and to reinforce important writing skills like spelling and grammar. Thus, when teachers help children improve their writing, they are contributing to the improvement of their reading abilities as well.

Stages of Writing Skills Development
(1) Scribbling and drawing: Young children grasp crayons/pencils with their fists, exploring form, space, and line. As their fine motor skills and cognitive understanding of symbolic representation develop concurrently, they progress to (2) letter-like forms and shapes.
They comprehend that written symbols represent meanings. They start including shapes like circles and squares into their drawing and writing, but they are randomly located without much spatial orientation. Children in this stage commonly write figures and ask parents, 'What does this say?' (3) Letters: Children can form letters, and start writing them randomly. They usually write consonants first. They do not initially possess a knowledge of symbol-to-sound correspondence; this develops gradually. Children tend to favor writing their own initials. (4) Letters and spaces: Children realize that printed/written words are separated by spaces, develop an understanding of the concept of a word, use 1:1 word correspondence, and write correctly spaced words. They write initial and final word sounds and vowels, correct the spelling of some high frequency words, and experiment with sentence construction and punctuation. (5) Conventional writing and spelling:
Children write, spell, and punctuate correctly most of the time. They view various forms of purposeful writing as more important.

POWER Strategy
One popular model of the writing process proposed by experts, the POWER strategy, has five steps.  In (1) planning, student and teacher ask and select Yes/No on a checklist to decide whether the student selected a good topic, researched/read about the topic, considered what information readers would want to know, and wrote down all of his/her ideas. In (2) organization, the student and teacher ascertain if the student grouped similar ideas together, selected the best ideas for the composition, and arranged the ideas in a logical sequence. In (3) writing, the student and teacher decide whether the student wrote down his/her ideas in sentences. They also decide whether the student did his/her best to get help when it was required. To get the necessary information and assistance, the student may have consulted a text, asked a learning partner/classmate for assistance, and/or asked the teacher for help. In (4) editing, the student and teacher consider whether the student read his/her first draft to himself/herself, marked the parts s/he liked and those that might need changing, read the first draft to his/her partner/classmate, and listened to the other student's input. In (5) rewriting, the student and teacher look at whether the student made changes in his/her composition, edited it for correct mechanics, and wrote the final draft using his/her best handwriting.

Rating Early Writing Efforts
One easy rating scale (Clay, 1993) focuses on three areas: language level, message quality, and directional principles. Each category has six progressive levels. For language level, the categories are (1) alphabetical (writes letters), (2) word (writes any recognizable word), (3) word group (writes any two-word phrase), (4) sentence (writes any simple sentence), (5) punctuated story (writes two or more related sentences), and (6) paragraphed story (includes two themes). The levels for message quality are as follows: (1) Student has a concept of signs/symbols. (2) Student has a concept that a message is communicated. (3) Student copies a message. (4) Student repeats sentence patterns like 'This is a…' (5) Student tries to record his/her own ideas in writing. (6) Student writes a successful composition. The levels for directional principles are as follows: (1) Student does not demonstrate knowledge of directionality. (2) Student exhibits partial directional knowledge (e.g., left to right or start at the top left or return from top right down to the left). (3) Student reverses the direction. (4) Student follows the correct directional pattern. (5) Student uses correct directionality and spacing between words. (6) The student writes extensively without problems related to arranging and spacing text.

Written English
Written English should meet the standard conventions of correct spelling, capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and handwriting.
Traditionally, teachers have paid more attention to a composition's appearance, length, word usage, and spelling than to how well-organized it is or how appropriate its content is. This habit can cause a superficial focus on imperfect form, while essentially ignoring the fact that the function is effective and meaningful. Other readers also form negative first impressions of writing when its appearance and/or format are less than acceptable, even if it otherwise effectively conveys its message. One type of common spelling error is vowel combination reversals (e.g., writing 'siad' instead of 'said,' writing 'freind' instead of 'friend,' etc.). Capitalization errors include failing to capitalize words at the start of sentences, months of the year, and proper nouns/names. Another type of capitalization error is incorrectly capitalizing words/letters within words. Punctuation errors include omitting commas in dates, omitting commas before conjunctions in compound sentences, omitting/substituting semicolons in complex sentences, and adding extraneous punctuation marks. Grammatical errors include incorrect/conflicting verb tenses, subject-verb disagreement, missing articles, misplaced modifiers, and dangling participles. Handwriting errors/problems include illegible writing, poor alignment, and incorrect/poor spacing.

Techniques and Activities to Motivate Young Children to Write
Experts note that like adults, children prefer participating in activities they find exciting rather than ones they find unexciting/uninteresting. To motivate students to write, teachers can share personal journals and other samples of their own writing, post e-mailed/handwritten letters/notes in classrooms, display favorite magazines and books, and show children fun greeting cards/invitations. They should also invite children to bring writing samples from home. Teachers can create classroom 'writing corners' that contain varied writing examples contributed by children and teachers. Diverse writing activities help children stay enthusiastic about writing. Children can take turns contributing a sentence for a daily class newsletter/journal/newspaper, and teachers can have students practice sounding out and spelling words as they dictate their sentences.
Teachers can deliberately make some transcribing errors and have children correct them. Daily pages can be compiled into monthly class books. Connecting writing subjects to people/things that are familiar and exciting to children, and guiding students in how to write and ask classmates 'interview' questions using modeling and other techniques both help motivate students.
Encouraging/guiding children to evaluate and record their comments about authors, illustrators, and books can also be a motivational tool. Ultimately, children will learn to write their own critiques.