Books to Promote Language Development for Pre-School Aged Children!
April 2023 | Aslyn Murphy and Grace Ganey M.S. SLP Candidates
Literacy skills
How do you build early literacy skills with pre-school age children?
This blog will focus on:
Ways to encourage and model language during a book activity
Strategies for caregivers to use when reading at home with children
Play schemas that correlate to the book to help facilitate language use
There are many ways to encourage the use of language within a book activity. Shared book reading can be such an engaging way to elicit language in younger children. In my clinical experience, this is an amazing way to keep the child interested and entertained while still targeting certain areas of language. Book reading has been shown to expand a child’s language and assist in their early literacy skills (Dickinson et al., 2012). The book we are going to address today is Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Dr. Bill Martin Jr.
We all know and love this book, some of us can even recite it from memory. This book (plus many others) is a great way to keep your child engaged while targeting some of their language skills! While reading this book it is useful to talk with your child about what is going on. For instance, for receptive language you can ask a question about what is happening in the book. In order to model some expressive language, you can comment on something, make a connection to their everyday life, or add some fun to it as well by making animal sounds! CROWD is an acronym that outlines different techniques for both expressive and receptive language which can be useful to remember what strategies you can use while reading (Morgan & Meier, 2010).
What does CROWD stand for?
Completion questions (example: “I see a ___”)
Recall questions (example: who was in the house?)
Open-ended questions (example: what do you see?)
Wh- questions (example: what is this?)
Distancing (example: have you ever seen a red bird?)
A great way to expand a child’s expressive vocabulary is to encourage them to complete a close phrase. Brown Bear, Brown Bear is a perfect book to try this with. When the book states “I see a ___”, it is extremely useful to add an expected pause while reading and give the child an opportunity to fill in the correct word. This can be tricky at times since sitting there in silence can be a little uncomfortable. However, if you wait for around 10 seconds to see if your child will fill in the word, that can create an opportunity for them to produce the word. If they don’t fill it in after the 10 seconds, then this time delay is still an amazing opportunity to model the correct vocabulary and have them gain that exposure. When using this strategy, I have always found it useful to review the vocabulary so that the child is familiar with the words. It can also be very helpful to have the different options printed out on a sheet of paper next to you. If your child is a visual learner and visuals help them then this can be a great resource for them to see their options.
Another way to foster language during these book-sharing activities is to incorporate some of the functional words that we like to focus on during the beginning stages of language acquisition. In the beginning of the book, you can model the word “more” when flipping the page. You can also model the baby sign for “more” if you are familiar with this as well. This is a great way to model requesting in both verbal and non-verbal communication. Once you model a few times, you can then give the option of “more book or all done book?” when you get to the end of the page. This way if they are interested in continuing the book they have the option to say or sign “more.”
After finishing the book, this is a great opportunity to incorporate some language into a play schema! Gather up some animals that you have around the house and start to play with them. You can model vocabulary terms, comment on what your child is doing during play, or what you are doing. You can even create a routine into this schema. For example, you can act as if they are getting ready for bed and add some of these actions (e.g., cleaning up from dinner, taking a bath, brushing their teeth, getting tucked into bed, then reading a book, etc) into your pretend play.
Not only will this activity help with your child’s language development, reading books at home with your child can help increase their pre-literacy skills. Dennis & Horn (2011) report that using books is a great way to expose and enhance literacy skills. This can be useful for a child’s overall literacy development but also for phonological awareness skills and awareness of print.
Do not forget this does not just have to be with Brown Bear, Brown Bear this can be used with a variety of other children’s books!
For further information, check out the following websites:
https://doi.org/10.1177/1096250611420553
https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/602807
References:
Dennis, L. R., & Horn, E. (2011). Strategies for supporting Early Literacy Development. Young Exceptional Children, 14(3), 29–40. https://doi.org/10.1177/1096250611420553
Dickinson, D. K., Griffith, J. A., Golinkoff, R. M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2012). How reading books fosters language development around the world. Child Development Research, 2012, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/602807
Morgan & Meier 2010. Dialogic Reading's Potential to Improve Children's Emergent Literacy Skills and Behavior. Prev Sch Fail. 2008;52(4):11-16. doi: 10.3200/PSFL.52.4.11-16. PMID: 25960623; PMCID: PMC4422048.