The Ideal Language Program

01/14/2015

If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise you'll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you've already been in.
Anne Lamott

Celia Genishi and Anne Haas Dyson talk about how adults who are responsible for the educational program in an early childhood center adapt it so that each child's language is recognized and valued in their article, "Ways of Talking — Respecting Differences," in the Exchange book, Literacy - A Beginnings Workshop Book. The article outlines the characteristics of an ideal language program in a diverse program:

Talk between caregivers and children and between groups of children serves a variety of purposes or functions. That is, language is used to inform, have fun, persuade, plan, argue, and so on.
Since talk flows when people have something to talk about or tell each other, caregivers engage the children in activities that are the focus of talk.
Conversations are comfortable for both child and teacher. Talk is fluent because the communicators are absorbed in getting their message across and their conversations are meaning oriented.

"The ideal language program, then, is one in which there is lots of varied, activity-based, and meaning-oriented talk because there are many opportunities for talk."

MyPlace for teachers: work and storage solutions for child care.

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