As a scholar practitioner and family advocate in the field of early education, it is evident of how much of my passion has become a lifestyle. I eat, breath and sleep early childhood education. I currently run my very own educational support services. I provide tutoring, homeschooling and parent advocacy in regards to their children. Daily I am fostering language development with students.
One of the memories I have is with one of my Japanese students. This student of mine moved here from Japan not speaking any English. Two weeks later she was speaking chopped up sentences. I am so proud of her progress because she had to adapt to new friends, new surroundings, change of language and lifestyle. I’m glad this big change happened while she is younger because it’s easier for younger children to adapt.
During our sessions I would go back to the basics and have her review each letter and then in the weeks to come letter sounds. She is a very fast learner. I then had her identify lower case letters by participating in small activities. One particular activity she loved was rainbow rice and bottle tops. We took a bag of white rice, used four different pans, Ziploc bags, food coloring and vinegar. I then used a bunch of old water bottle tops and wrote lower case letters on them. Once we mixed all the ingredients, let them dry and mixed all the rice together, we had ourselves a rainbow rice party with letters.
As my student picked up letter and letter sounds fast, I then introduced her to reading. We would look at pictures and I would have her tell me what she sees and then match up the word to that picture by sounding out the word that sounded close to what that picture was. I have been working with this student for two years and now she is fully speaking English, reading, writing and singing at the age of 4. She is now learning addition, subtraction and reading at a second grade level all while continuing her sessions with me.
I have found this course highly effective in my field of practice. I have been attuned more towards the child language development versus a child overall development. Most childcare development courses I have taken just look at a broader aspect of all domains. This course focused on a specific domain.
An article I found in this course that was interesting as it relates to my experience with my Japanese student is What happens in the brain when you learn a language? It was discovered that your brain actually expands when you learn a second language (Mackey,2014). “Early language studies based on brain research have shown that Japanese speakers can learn to hear and produce the difference in “r” and “l” by using a software program that greatly exaggerates the aspects of each sound that make it different from the other” ( Mackey, para. 7.,2014).It is a great advantage to learn a second language overall.
I would still like to learn about the milestones of children in language and literacy. How can you predict when a child is supposed to know or had developed this many words or an understanding of that when each child’s development is different? I believe that more information of this topic will affect my future topic greatly for parents. I have been dealing with competitive parents who wonder why this some kids are smarter than their kid or why the sister is not as smart as the brother in reading and writing. This would help me explain to the families on a research level versus my basic answer for them.
Mackey. A. (2014). What happens when you learn a language? Retrieved fromhttps://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/sep/04/what-happens-to-the-brain-language-learning
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