Language and Literacy

Specify the experiences children need from birth to age nine to prepare them to learn, read, and succeed in school.

Identify early interactions with adults and peers, the Pre K – 4 teaching methods and curricula, and comprehensive interventions that support learning and development, specifically in domains that prepare children from diverse backgrounds for kindergarten and the early grades.

Know the range of development, normative and non-normative, inter-and intra-variability for all children, including special learning and developmental needs from Pre K through nine years of age in the following areas of language: receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, auditory comprehension, and pragmatic language.

Effectively apply the principles and theories of child development, including: a) Developmentally-appropriate practices, b) Constructivism, and c) Socio-cultural theory

Become familiar with a four-processor model of reading (context, meaning, phonological, and orthographic) and understand that reading depends on language proficiency.

Explain the relationship between phoneme awareness, phonological processing, and phonics.

Define, identify, and segment important linguistic units including vowels, consonants, syllables, and onset-rime.

Emphasize the role of vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension and identify the ways in which word meanings are learned, in oral and written language.

Make overt connections between and across the curriculum, students’ lives, literature, and literacy.

Recognize phonological influences on children’s inventive spelling.

Acquire adequate knowledge of literacy content, and related researchbased pedagogy, based on sound educational psychology principles.

Build and reinforce relationships between early spoken language and early pre-literacy abilities and consider influences of parent-child interactions in early shared storybook interactions.