Objectives:
• Demonstrate ability to accurately interpret the results of ongoing assessments in oral language development, including sentence and grammatical complexity, and to use the results to inform instructional planning and delivery, including differentiation strategies and interventions.
• Demonstrate knowledge of the continuum of oral language development as described in the Texas Prekindergarten Guidelines and the TEKS for ELAR (Kindergarten through Grade 5), including basic stages of oral language development; characteristic features of children’s oral language at different stages of development; and the importance of providing young children with frequent, repeated, incremental exposures to and opportunities to use new academic language structures in meaningful contexts, including providing opportunities for low-risk oral language rehearsal.
• Recognize that individual variations in oral language development occur and that speech or language delays require additional support and monitoring in the early childhood education classroom and may warrant in-depth evaluation and/or collaboration with other professionals, if improvement is not achieved through classroom interventions.
• Demonstrate knowledge of research-based strategies and best practices for promoting students’ understanding and use of sentences and grammatical structures of increasing complexity (e.g., compound sentences, complex sentences, relative clauses).
• Demonstrate knowledge of research-based strategies and best practices for promoting students’ understanding and use of grade-level instructional language, including terminology and sentence structures used to label and describe people, things, places, and locations and to name, describe, and explain actions, directions, positions, sequences, locations, and categories (e.g., colors, shapes, textures).
• Explore critical issues pertaining to the ways in which language, culture (and society) transacts with literacy development today’s diverse classrooms.
Guidelines:
