Language and Literacy

Children develop language and literacy in these three aspects: 

It is crucial to develop children’s positive dispositions towards language and literacy. When they have interest and find joy in communicating and reading in both EL and MTL, they are more likely to remain motivated to learn in both languages. This motivation makes it easier to acquire and continue using the languages, even after they leave preschool.

Children need to hear a language in order to learn to speak it. Playing and interacting with others provide meaningful contexts for them to speak and communicate with confidence. Listening and speaking skills in the preschool years are essential as they lay the foundation for later reading and writing. Children may go through these four phases of language acquisition:

Some children come from bilingual or multilingual environments, while others use only one language at home. Find out about the five stages of second language acquisition to understand and support these children.

It is important to cultivate children’s love for books as it contributes to their reading and literacy skills. You can expose them to a variety of texts such as rhymes, story books, charts, which helps them in learning to read. The emphasis in MTL is to help them develop an awareness and recognition of MTL print and their characteristics. Learn how to create and immerse children in a print-rich environment.

Here are a few useful resources to understand children’s development in reading: 

Overview of Children’s Reading Development: 

Decoding- Knowing How to Read: 

Comprehension: 

Writing and reading are interconnected, and learning one supports the other. Writing involves children expressing their thoughts and ideas using print that convey meaning to others. This can be achieved through meaningful and authentic writing-related activities. 

It is important to develop children’s fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, posture and executive functioning skills to prepare them for writing. There are six broad categories of writing for EL where children progress from using less mature forms to conventional writing. 

The learning of MTL is closely intertwined with the customs and traditions of the culture. By participating in culturally-related activities and learning about traditions, children understand moral values and develop appreciation for their ethnic culture. This includes festivals relevant to Singapore's context.

Refer to the Educators’ Guide for Language and Literacy for more information.

There are three broad objectives of MTL Teaching and Learning:

These strategies are applicable for both EL and MTL instruction in preschool education. We need to cater to the diverse learning needs of children and provide targeted support in a timely manner to help children lay a strong foundation in both languages. 

Listening and Speaking

You play a vital role by being good language models. Children learn to speak by listening to language used around them. Take time to listen and respond to show that you value their talk. When you model how to take part in conversations through active listening and asking questions, you should: 

You can read aloud to children to develop their interest and positive attitudes towards reading. When reading a story to children, you should:

• Sit in a position that allows for eye contact with the children.
• Seat the children so that every child gets to see the pictures in the book.
• Hold the book so that the text and pictures face the children.
• Use facial expressions, volume contrast, different voices for different characters and audience participation to focus and retain children’s attention

You can use storybook reading techniques such as:

• Dialogic Reading: You can involve a small group of children in the reading process. The goal is to move them from being a listener to a storyteller. Refer to the five different types of prompts (CROWD) on how to do so.
• Shared Book Approach (SBA): You can model the reading process by leading the children in an enjoyable reading experience using a Big Book. This encourages children to participate actively, acquire listening, speaking and reading skills. Use a pointer to point to the words while reading and draw children’s attention to print and print conventions.
  
  Refer to the teaching steps, the example using the book, “What the Ladybird Heard” by Julia Donaldson or the video below to see SBA in action. Here are some tuning-in song lyrics and activity ideas to help you use the NEL Big Books in your classrooms!  
  
  

It is crucial to directly introduce children to the specific aspects of the language, including letters, phonological awareness and vocabulary.

• Teaching Vocabulary: You have to be intentional to select target words, provide both explicit and implicit instruction and give children repeated exposure to the word. Find out how you can help children learn target vocabulary using the “Say-Tell-Do-Play” technique.
• Teaching Phonological Awareness: You can use direct teaching as a form of explicit instruction. This is a systematic approach that scaffolds children’s learning experience to acquire phonological awareness, particularly phonemic awareness.

You can support children’s writing development in these ways:

You can use shared writing to model the writing process. This helps children to link letters to their sounds and to spell and write the words they hear. Encourage them to participate in the writing as they become more familiar with the process. Consider these steps when engaging children in shared writing:

• Discuss about the activity or story that has been read aloud
• Model the writing process of planning, drafting and reviewing by thinking aloud while writing
• Guide children in a discussion of the text
• Encourage independent drawing and writing as a follow-up activity

The Language Experience Approach (LEA) is an example of shared writing. Children talk about and compose stories using their own words based on shared experiences such as a field trip to the zoo or a neighbourhood walk. 

Here are some strategies that can provide opportunities for children to develop more than one language and literacy knowledge or skill. Some of them also can develop children’s executive functioning skills. 

You can songs and rhymes with repetitive phrases and encourage children to participate in finger plays where there are actions and hand movements coordinated with the words. These expose children to new vocabulary and help them to notice sounds and intonation patterns which develop their phonological awareness.

When introducing a song, rhyme, or finger play, you can consider the following steps:

Children will take on different roles and act out situations in familiar settings. This allows them to use the language authentically and organise their own play. Here are some ways to support functional role-play:

You can incorporate language games to create engaging contexts for children to practice using the language. Here are some tips to incorporate language games:

These language games also provide opportunities to build executive functioning skills:

Examples of language games:

You can gradually shift responsibility for learning from the teacher to the children as they acquire language skills. The Gradual Release of Responsibility model involves three stages, “I Do”, “We Do” and “You Do”.

The diagram below shows how the model can be used to develop children’s reading skills.

 

When selecting materials and activities for children, you should ensure that they are:

When implementing the above strategies for MTL teaching and learning, you should consider:

Our children have varying abilities in EL and MTL. Here are a few ways to help you in catering to diverse learners: 

1. Differentiating questions: There are three levels of questioning. You can start with level 1 and Level 2 Literal Questions for children who are starting to learn or struggle with the language. Do provide sufficient wait time for children to think, put their thoughts into words and verbalise.
   
   
   Differentiating Questions to enrich children’s language experiences
   MOE (2022). Nurturing Early Learners Educators’ Guide for Language and Literacy (English Language), Differentiating Questions (pp. 88). Singapore.
2. Providing effective support in your centre for EL:
   Support is essential as EL is the medium of instruction in schools. You can refer to these key considerations when developing effective and additional support for children with gaps in language learning:
   
   
• Careful observation and identification of children needing support
• Complement the centre’s curriculum
• Maintain the frequency and duration of support to children in small groups or in pairs
• Monitor children’s progress at key time points

You can provide children with ample opportunities to hear, see and interact using languages beyond learning activities, routines and transitions. Here are some strategies to create a language-rich environment:

You can foster children’s curiosity about print, understanding that print conveys meaning and learning of letters, words and phrases through a print-rich environment. Here are some tips to do so:

Here are examples of print that you can incorporate:

You can set up learning centres for children to use the language authentically to communicate and play with one another. Here are ways to do so:

It is crucial to observe, document, assess, and provide feedback to support children’s language and literacy development. Here are key considerations and guiding questions to facilitate the monitoring and assessing process:

• Educators’ Guide for Language and Literacy (EL)
• Educators’ Guide for Language and Literacy (MTL)
• Printables for Language and Literacy (EL)
• Printables for Language and Literacy (MTL)
• T&L resources page