Literacy Matters - Vol 21 - Winter 2021

curriculum (Gronlund, 2006). By including ELDS in lesson plans, teachers demonstrate increased intentionality about the types of activities and experiences they provide in the classroom and their relation to age-specific expectations. Additionally, lesson plans are one way to communicate effectively with parents, other teachers, and administrators about how the curriculum supports children’s learning related to the goals articulated in ELDS. Step Four: Implement a Plan The final step is for teachers to implement their plan, whether it be a specific activity, making new materials accessible in the classroom, large group or small group experiences, or conversations with children. As teachers implement the plan, they should take mental or physical notes about how the plan progressed. Some examples of reflective questions include: Was the learning outcome achieved? How were children engaging? What were children learning? How can I (the teacher) improve or build upon this experience? Following this reflection, the cycle begins again with teachers observing and documenting children’s current progress towards language and literacy milestones outlined in their state’s ELDS. In the following section, we sketch an example of this process using the Language Development and Communication Domain of the South Carolina Early Learning Standards (South Carolina Early Learning Standards Interagency Stakeholder Group, 2017). Vignette using the South Carolina Early Learning Standards Step One: Observation and Documentation During independent play in Nina’s four-year-old classroom, she notices Nashua at the classroom library selecting and flipping through a board book’s pages on animals. She grabs her clipboard where she takes anecdotal records on students’ progress and moves a discreet distance from Nashua, where she can see and hear him but is not interfering in his self-directed play. As she observes, she notices that Nashua is engaging in the following behaviors: (a) the book is held upright, (b) he is turning the pages from front to back, (c) he is turning the pages in order, (d) he is sometimes turning multiple pages at a time, and (e) he is engaging independently with the book. Step Two: Reflection After the students have gone home for the day, Nina sits down with her anecdotal records to consider what she has learned about her students and their educational progress through her observations that day. As she reflects on her observation of Nashua’s engagement with books during independent play and relates it to the SC Early Learning Standards, she notes that her observation indicates attainment of the following Developmental Indicators: • LDC-8j: Engage in reading behaviors independently (choose books, turn pages but not always in order, tell the story). In the following vignette, you will read an example of an early childhood teacher observing one child’s language and literacy development, reflecting upon it, formulating a plan, and implementing it.

• LDC-8k: Show an interest in books, other print, and reading-related activities.

• LDC-9h: Hold a book upright while turning pages one by one front to back, but not always in order. Likewise, she notes that her observation indicates Nashua is in the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) to attain the following Developmental Indicators: • LCD-8n: Use and share books and print in their play. • LDC-9k: Hold a book upright while turning pages one by on e from front to back. Step Three: Formulate a Plan To support Nashua’s progress, Nina determined the Development Indicators she wanted to address. Nina develops an activity plan to (a) refine his page-turning skills to turn one page at a time consistently and (b) help him engage socially with texts. She decides to embed the opportunity for Nashua to practice one-by-one page turning into the morning meeting where he will be selected to turn the pages of the big book and (a) she will voiceover to the class the importance of making sure you are turning just one page, so you do not miss anything and (b) praise his one-by-one page-turning. She also decides to plan several opportunities for Nashua and his classmates to include books in their play, such as at the art center where they can trace beautiful illustrations, the dramatic play center where they can act out their favorite stories using costumes, and the blocks center where they can build what they see in the books. Because some of those opportunities are not new and utilize existing materials students have always had access to, Nina realizes she needs to advertise the opportunity to engage with the materials and each other in these ways and to model doing so herself. She also recognizes these integrated learning experiences will allow children to make progress towards the Language Development and Communication (LDC) Developmental Indicators she identified and will also support children’s learning and development across other content areas and developmental domains. Step Four: Implement a Plan Over the following several days, Nina enacts the plan she formulated and monitors its effects on Nashua and his classmates’ engagement with language and literacy in general and with the specific Developmental Indicators she had identified as being in Nashua’s reach. As she enacts the plan, she also asks herself the following questions: Was the Learning Outcome Achieved? Nina continued her anecdotal observations of Nashua and his classmates’ language and literacy learning. She noted that Nashua was indeed more often and more carefully turning the pages one-by-one and was also engaging with his classmates with the texts more often. How were children engaging? She noted other children asking to be selected to be the turner of the big book pages during morning meeting, children encouraging one another to turn pages one-by-one, and children engaging with texts in each of the centers she had advertised and modeled using.

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What were children learning? During the morning meeting and each of the centers, she noted that many children were

| 48 | Literacy Matters | Volume 21 • Winter 2021

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