According to Weber (1991), balanced literacy combined with an instructional model of sheltered instruction best supports the second-language learner because it provides clear and explicit language instruction. This combination is beneficial because it fosters intrinsic motivation, self-reward, student accountability, and student ownership of literacy in a community of ELs.

Research showed ELs can benefit from balanced literacy instruction before they have developed full control of the oral language (Goodman & Flores, 1979; Hudelson, 1984, 1986; Urzua, 1987). This research further elaborated that balanced literacy will develop concurrently if the instruction is carefully organized to be meaningful and relevant.

See the companion, Effective Early Childhood Instruction for the Young EL after you have read and studied the content in this section—Balanced Literacy. 

Reading through the balanced literacy framework includes being read to by an adult, reading with an adult and other students, and reading independently. Literacy in writing within balanced literacy is accomplished in much the same way as reading: writing is modeled by an adult, students write with an adult and other students, and students write independently. Within the balanced literacy framework, oral language development, phonological awareness, concepts of print, alphabet knowledge, fluency, comprehension, and written expression are developed. Balanced literacy is used in different social contexts for a variety of purposes and evolves through social interactions and everyday experiences that support the development of young ELs.

The Texas Prekindergarten Guidelines (TEA, 2015) state that reading books frequently relates strongly to literacy development. Students who are read to on a regular basis have a higher likelihood of acquiring age-appropriate language skills. The interactive conversations between teachers and students about literature are rich opportunities for students to broaden vocabulary, language, and cognitive skills. Reading books in English with young ELs will increase their knowledge of the structure of the English language and broaden their vocabulary. It is also critical that students are also read literature in their first language. Concepts of story structure, character actions, and informational text can be learned through texts in either language.

An effective strategy is the Read-Aloud, which is a systematic method of reading aloud to students, allowing teachers to scaffold young ELs’ understanding of the book being read. Teachers can model strategies for making inferences and explanations and can teach vocabulary and concepts.

Clay (1991) explained that when teachers read aloud to students, “meanings can be negotiated in discussion before, during, and after the story reading” (p.171).

Reading aloud to students should include think-aloud or interactive elements and focus intentionally on the meaning within the text, about the text, and beyond the text (Fountas & Pinnell, 2006).

Helping young ELs find and make connections to stories and books requires them to relate the unfamiliar text to their relevant prior knowledge. Keene and Zimmermann (1997) recommended three strategies in making read-aloud connections:

• Connecting the book to their own life experience
• Connecting the book to other literature they have read
• Connecting what young students are reading to universal concepts

Read-Aloud Connections

Shared reading is an experience in which children read enlarged text as a group with a proficient reader. Children see themselves as readers because they are able to join in the reading process, reading words they know. The appropriateness of the text must be considered to ensure that children can engage in the activity. Using highly repetitive text allows children to join in when there are words or phrases they know. In shared reading, there is support from both the proficient reader and the other children. In turn, the affective filter is lowered and the children feel comfortable taking risks with the reading. 

Young ELs benefit when early childhood education teachers use sheltered instruction strategies by focusing on instructional supports and linguistic accommodations that accelerate content and academic skill development as their students develop language skills. High-quality early childhood education programs embed sheltered instruction strategies that are meaningful and build on ELs’ experiences.

Children's natural curiosity makes the early childhood years an important time to lay the foundation to think critically. Critical thinking requires the analysis and manipulation of incoming information. At this early childhood stage, students are very observant and seek to inquire about many topics (Rymanowicz, 2016). The balanced literacy framework requires critical thinking.  Students make connections across reading, writing, and speaking, allowing them to gain metalinguistic awareness as they continue to communicate and make sense of language. Done well, early childhood instruction centered around reading, writing, oral language development, and critical thinking will create a positive start toward success in literacy, especially for young ELs.

Developing students' oral language skills helps lay the foundation for later reading and writing. Students in early childhood classrooms are still developing language, and it is important to continue to foster their oral language skills. There is a direct correlation between a child's oral language skills and his or her later reading and writing ability (Echevarría, Short, & Peterson, 2012). Through the use of read-alouds and shared reading, students are exposed to developed language skills as they practice their own skills in a natural, risk-free environment.

Oral language is listening and speaking to communicate meaning and includes the following:

• Phonology—producing the basic sound units of language
• Vocabulary—the appropriate usage of words and word meanings
• Grammar—combining words into phrases and sentences that make sense and are correct
• Pragmatics—the appropriate use of language; rules for communicating effectively and responding to the needs of one’s listeners, such as rules of politeness, conversational skills, and extended discourse

Reading with young ELs impacts each of these four language development areas.

Communication begins to develop through social interactions during infancy. As communicative interactions continue and increase, infants begin to understand and then use language. From these early beginnings, the foundation is established for the communication and language skills that will support a lifetime of learning. Students' daily experiences with language and communication will contribute to their later success in literacy. As young children engage in conversations with adults and peers during play and during planned, active learning experiences, they are building their communication and language capabilities.

For students whose first language is not English, their native language serves as the foundation for communication among family and community members and for building concepts and an understanding of the world around them. Most students who are ELs enter school with a linguistic knowledge they utilize instinctively in their daily communications. Educators should take what students already know and understand about language, communication, and literacy in their first language and ensure that this knowledge is used to help them gain skills in a second language.

Early childhood students gain the ability to use language in a variety of settings and for a variety of purposes. They become increasingly able to describe wants and needs, carry on conversations with others, and share information with peers and adults.

The skill of engaging others in conversations involves initiating, listening, and responding, as well as using verbal and nonverbal communicative exchanges.

Students who are English learners may require more time to process and respond to language and thus may need longer wait-time from conversation partners.

Young children must learn to articulate, discriminate, and manipulate the speech sounds and the words of language in order to be understood, to understand what others are saying, and to generate more words. Although most early childhood students can accurately perceive the difference between similar-sounding words, they continue to acquire and refine their own speech sounds.

As students learn through experiences, including play, they develop concepts, acquire new words, and increasingly refine their understanding of words they already know. When introducing vocabulary to students who are English learners, teachers can use a variety of approaches to extend the child’s vocabulary as they pair new words with experiences, real-life objects, and pictures.

Effective communication requires students to use their knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, and sense of audience to convey meaning. Students’ use of invented words and the overgeneralization of language rules (e.g., saying “foots” instead of “feet”) is a normal part of language acquisition. The teacher can model the language rule naturally, such as, “Yes, I see that you have two feet.” Early childhood students become increasingly adept at using language to express their needs and interests, to play and pretend, and to share information and ideas. 

Strategies/Activities

As young children observe others producing and using writing, they imitate the forms and explore the functions of this method of communication. Through these early experiences, students build their own understanding in the writing domain. It is crucial that teachers model writing daily, invite the students to write with them, and allow for independent writing time, regardless of the students' stage of writing.

Writing often starts when students explore the use of tools to make marks. Typically, the early skill of making marks evolves into scribbles, drawings, drawings that resemble letters of the alphabet, and eventually recognizable letters. Next, spelling emerges. Students begin writing mock letters, followed by producing random letter strings. Within the random letter strings, students use initial letters in words to represent the intended word. Finally, students engage with invented spelling. Over time, following exposure, exploration, experience, and sensitive scaffolding, the child's early writing attempts will continue to progress toward conventional forms.

Young ELs will be at various stages of writing based on their experiences with writing and their language development. According to Teale (1985), the cultural background of preschool children and their social structural factors will have an impact in their writing development. If a young EL scribbles or attempts to write his or her name phonetically, composing the text is a complex academic accomplishment. Since writing brings many specialized skills together, it has been thought of as being at the top of the language hierarchy (Johnson, 1993). The research elaborates that all students, including young ELs, struggle to acquire writing skills. Therefore, teachers should be cognizant of the developmental writing stages. Each level is important in young ELs’ development of writing. Each EL will develop at his or her own learning pace. However, the classroom environment and best teaching practices in writing will accelerate the improvement of writing skills.

Children begin to understand that print conveys meaning as they watch adults write for many purposes. With this understanding of the function and meaning of print comes the motivation to produce print. It is important for students to have opportunities throughout the day to write or draw to convey meaning using the forms for which they are developmentally ready. 

In modeled writing, the proficient writer models the writing process in front of the children. The children are encouraged to listen as the writer describes what is being written and why the message is being written. The writer clearly demonstrates how thinking aloud or talking to oneself supports the writing process. Including questioning during the modeling can promote a high level of engagement, as students may be encouraged to participate in answering the writer's questions themselves.

As teachers engage young ELs in emergent writing activities, it is important to remember to model and guide writing for different purposes. Thus, young ELs will begin to write through many experiences (TEA, 2015).

Interactive writing is an example of a cooperative activity in which the teacher and the students jointly compose and write text (Morrow, 2015). The decision about what to write is shared among students and the teacher. Morrow (2015) described the interactive writing session as teachers modeling reading and writing strategies while including young ELs in creating the text. The completed writing is displayed in the classroom for continued learning and support. The writing may not be as neat as when the teacher creates posters alone, but young ELs are more likely to use it as a source of knowledge because of the ownership that comes with their involvement in the writing process.

Research by Swartz, Klein, and Shook (2001) illustrated that the goal of interactive writing is that the skills learned will transfer to students’ independent writing and development of reading skills as well as language development. There is no specific way to use interactive writing, rather there are many ways to implement it into the classroom. Interactive writing can include teacher choices based on observations of young ELs’ needs and with student feedback on what the writing will be about.

Strategies/Activities

Example 1
The teacher wrote the sentence frame I like _____________ apples to be completed by the students.

Example 2
The student wrote most of the interactive writing about the fall season.

As students become increasingly competent in language, their ability to think about the language they use each day develops. This is called metalinguistic ability. When students have metalinguistic ability, they can think about the speech sounds and the words within their spoken language. Awareness of speech sounds and words in one’s language and the ability to manipulate them is called phonological awareness and is one of the key predictors of later reading success.

Van Kleeck (2003) described phonological awareness as an auditory and oral skill based on an understanding of words and sounds of one’s spoken language. Anthony, Lonigan, Driscoll, Phillips, and Burgess (2002) contributed to the understanding that the development of phonological awareness is both hierarchical and sequential, and includes

• distinguishing individual words in a spoken sentence,
• blending syllables to make words,
• dividing words into syllables,
• recognizing and producing rhyming words, and
• developing phonemic awareness.

Phonological awareness emerges before students learn letter-sound correspondence, so supporting the development of phonological awareness does not require printed text. Even so, developing phonological awareness is important for understanding the alphabetic principle.

According to the research provided in the Texas Prekindergarten Guidelines (2015), instruction in bilingual and ESL programs will emphasize phonological awareness skills within the primary language while developing English language skills. Rhyme, alliteration, sentence segmentation, syllable segmentation, onsets and rimes, phoneme segmentation, blending, and manipulation make up phonological awareness (TEA, 2015).

Strategies/Activities

The following are simple early-childhood phonological awareness activities that focus on the units of oral language. The activities will scaffold the development and enrichment of sounds necessary for young ELs. Implementation of these activities during a teacher-led group of three or four students will reinforce the processing system needed for language and reading. For example, an oral language unit can be implemented for an entire week, such as rhyming for one week and alliteration for the following week. Though the units are directly taught by week, the skills can continue to be integrated during following weeks for enrichment. Keep in mind that phonological awareness is not the same as phonics.

Rhyming

Rhyming occurs when the ending of two or more words sound the same (Yopp & Yopp, 2009). 

Alliteration

Alliteration is the repetition of the same initial consonant sound in a group of words (Yopp & Yopp, 2009).

Sentence Segmenting

Sentence segmenting is separating words in a sentence (Yopp & Yopp, 2009).

Syllable Blending and Segmenting

Syllable blending and segmenting occurs when words are naturally separated when pronounced (Yopp & Yopp, 2009). To support students with this process, the teacher will separate spoken words into syllables and then blend them to say the words. 

Onset and Rime Blending and Segmenting

Onset-rime blending is the combination of the initial consonant or consonant cluster with the vowel and consonant that follow. The onset is the initial consonant or consonant cluster, and the following vowel and consonant(s) make up the rime. Onset-rime segmenting breaks apart the blended onset-rime (Yopp & Yopp, 2009). If the onset is /m/ and the rime is /ice/, the word becomes mice. 

Phoneme Blending and Segmenting

Phoneme blending and segmenting is the blending of phonemes into words, segmenting words into individual phonemes, and manipulating phonemes in spoken words (Yopp & Yopp, 2009).

Phonological awareness is important because it focuses on the sounds of spoken language and how they can be blended, segmented, and manipulated. It provides the basis for understanding the alphabetic principle and lays the foundation for phonics and spelling. It has been identified as a strong predictor of later reading success.

Print and book knowledge includes knowing the difference between a letter, a word, and a sentence; identifying spaces between words; recognizing that capital letters and punctuation are used for special purposes; and knowing that a book is for reading. It also includes recognizing the front, back, top, and bottom of a book; how to handle books; and where to begin reading. Children with print and book knowledge know the functions of print and pictures and the relationship between the two. Lastly, print and book knowledge includes knowing the title, author, and illustrator of the book (Pinnell & Fountas, 2011).

Some strategies and activities that assist in the development of print and book knowledge include

• using environmental print,
• engaging in shared reading,
• participating in center time, and 
• providing small-group or one-to-one instruction.

Alphabet knowledge is an essential component of learning to read and write. Knowing that the letters of the alphabet represent speech sounds and that these letters can be combined to make words that people can read is crucial to students' success in reading. Combined with phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge is the key to students' understanding of the alphabetic principle; recognition of phoneme-letter connections; and discrimination between decoding, spelling, and writing phonetic words (Southern Early Childhood Association, 2002).

Alphabetic knowledge includes recognizing, naming, and producing the letters of the alphabet, with the ultimate goal of rapidly and accurately identifying letters of the alphabet both sequentially and randomly.

Teaching letter-sound correspondence includes teaching the more frequently used letters and sounds first, establishing a logical order of introduction. Begin with a productive sequence that encourages making and reading syllables, and then words, as quickly as possible. Separate the introduction of auditorily similar letter-sound correspondences (Ford & Palacios, 2015). Introduce a few letter-sound correspondences at a time, and provide many opportunities for practice. In the balanced literacy framework, this is best achieved through interactive writing in which the teacher shares the pen with the students as they begin to make the sound-symbol relationship in their writing.

Strategies/Activities

Fluency is the combination of reading rate and accuracy. It includes prosody, which refers to reading with expression, appropriate phrasing, and attention to punctuation (De Ley, 2017). For young ELs, the teacher’s role is to model appropriate fluency through read alouds so students hear how fluent reading sounds.

Strategies/Activities

Frequent book-reading has a strong correlation to literacy development. The interactive conversations between teachers and students about literature are rich opportunities for students to broaden vocabulary, language, and cognitive skills. Exposure to many kinds of books, both fiction and expository, helps children become familiar with the language of books and story forms. Through these reading experiences, students can develop concepts of story structures, character actions, and informational text structure, which influence their ability to understand, interpret, and link what they already know to new information. Understanding how stories and books work facilitates the development of reading comprehension, which is the goal of reading (TEA, 2007–2017).

Reading comprehension is the act of understanding what a person is reading or is being read. It is an active, interactive process that occurs before, during, and after a person reads or hears a particular piece of writing (Pardo, 2004).

Reading comprehension can be the most challenging skill to develop, especially for young ELs who are still developing their language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

The four techniques to apply to build comprehension skills are

• building background knowledge,
• teaching vocabulary,
• checking comprehension, and
• summarizing the learning.

The application of comprehension strategies can be used when teaching vocabulary.

Strategies/Activities

Comprehension strategy example
While reading a story about a farm, ELs may struggle with vocabulary terms such as the word tractor. Students may need more explanation of the word and what its purpose is on the farm.

The teacher can

• draw a picture of a tractor or use a picture card to provide a visual connection;
• write down the vocabulary word tractor on chart paper next to the picture; and
• discuss the word tractor using sentences such as, "A tractor is used for planting corn on the farm."

Throughout the day, use the word tractor in a sentence, and have students repeat and practice. Students can use Total Physical Response (TPR), a language-teaching method that uses physical movement and whole-body actions to demonstrate a concept (Asher, 2009). When students line up or are in the lunch line, call on a few students to describe and explain the role of the tractor.

The following chart provides examples of how the level of questioning can be approached in the early childhood setting.

The following organizer can be completed as an anchor chart to describe a story in the early childhood setting.

Vocabulary plays a critical role in oral language development and literacy. It is the foundation of reading and understanding text. As mentioned previously, young ELs have social and academic vocabulary. Teachers must provide young ELs with the tools to acquire new vocabulary so they are able to make connections and build their academic vocabulary.

Building vocabulary scaffolds language development and supports reading comprehension. Incorporating questioning can further promote vocabulary development and enhance comprehension.

Questions should be structured for young ELs’ language ability. Some ELs may point to a picture or word to demonstrate their understanding. To maintain a lower affective filter, it is suggested that ELs be shown or exposed to the questions they will be asked ahead of time. Young ELs may need processing time, or wait time, to translate the question into their native language, cognitively construct their response, and then translate it again to respond in English. 

It is recommended for the teacher to ask questions frequently throughout the lesson, as this allows young students to practice the new language and also assists teachers in assessing how much of the content was understood. The use of sentence stems by the teacher allows the young ELs an opportunity to see a model for how to use language.

As a teacher reads a text, it is suggested that question stems be incorporated during and after the reading to further language development and use critical-thinking skills. Questions should be aligned with the students' levels of language acquisition and can be tailored to the students' language ability level. When the teacher implements questions, young ELs will be practicing language and using academic vocabulary. Refer to the Question Stems to Scaffold and Support Vocabulary Development resource document for examples.

Question Stems to Scaffold and Support Vocabulary Development

It is important to know that when learning new vocabulary, young ELs may encounter cognates, especially between English and Spanish.

Cognates are words in two languages that have a similar spelling, pronunciation, and may even have a similar meaning.

Cognates provide a bridge to the English language for ELs and can serve as a tool for understanding a second language.

When reading aloud, a teacher can review cognates in the text. Teachers must consider grade- and age-appropriateness when preparing for this vocabulary activity.

Examples: