Children’s Day Special
“Children have 100 languages & we the school & society steals
the 99 & then we ask the child to use only one language.
By Loris Malaguzzi (Reggio Emillia – Italy)
Language is a means to communication & all learning is based on communication, so it's important that the Child is comfortable with the same. A Child interact from his early years like: making sound, babble, imitate, listen, use actions, words, short sentences, repeat words, follow sentences, talk, sing or rhyme, with new words, label objects around them, identify by picture books with single word, short sentences or short stories to them. Language & phonics can be best taught by seeing the symbols like letters/ pictures/ words. By hearing the songs, rhymes, action sounds by games, helps as an indicator of phonemic awareness in their early years.
Drawing & Coloring is a significant form of communication that can express the Child's response to everyday experiences & world around, more readily than words. Experiences & perceptions find expression & sharpened in drawing.
Adults can help by displaying a positive attitude & interest towards their drawing, but do not push/ nag if the child is reluctant.
It is more appropriate to ask & share our views about their drawing with the Child.
The early childhood teachers are trained in using a variety of language-stimulation techniques that will support both in communication and in language development. These techniques include describing in steps in a complete sentence by all the words used like, “Here some drawing books for all of you and I am going to give them to you to draw”.
Parallel talking focuses about the action, the child presently doing, and to connect with additional one or two sentences along with like like – “You are coloring a picture with your crayons”. Practicing self- talk like using “I” in short sentences, with extension words helps child's vocabularies & tends to use a word to signify the whole sentence like- “I play… I play with a ball”.
A child's linguistic ability is to communicate with the language where he can express & connect. While communicating we make mistakes in mother-tongue & we were corrected and that's how our mother-tongue was learnt. No grammar taught separately, no teaching of grammatical techniques used.
We live, experience and hear the language every day, relate, understand & comprehend. That's the best way to learn any language and express it. When we sense that our child needs to talk, to give them full attention, toface them, make eye contact, kneel down to get on our child's level if necessary – even tilt our head – to show that we are really listening. When our child has noticeable emotion in their words or in body language, attend to that feeling. It's often useful to make an observation or restate what we hear them say like- we might say, “You're upset because I'm not letting you go outside to play?” These reflective statements then allow our child to respond by affirming or clarifying what they are feeling and it will usually prompt more conversation. Empathy is one of the most powerful and comforting responses we can give to another person, especially a child. Feelings, we often think of as “negative,” such as anger, frustration and disappointment but if we validate a child's emotion we sensitize them to that emotion and give them permission to feel it and also acknowledge it in other people. We often expect our children to understand adult-like ways of thinking and we don't give consideration to how they might be thinking or viewing the situation. Their upset behavior, a plea for comfort, security, reassurance, or something else that a child might need to say, where we must be attentive & try to comprehend.
When we can see that certain behaviors are connected to their developmental needs, it is easier to be rational and patient with an appropriate intervention. Avoid shaming a child because he doesn't know how to correct being defective but he can learn to correct his behavior if given instruction in a supportive and encouraging way.
For e.g., a 9-year-old boy spills his milk for the 3rd time in a week and his father explodes saying, “You idiot, can't you be more careful?” Over time, these instances of shame make them unworthy. A better approach is to focus on the behavior. Given the same situation, the father could say, “It's okay. Let's get a towel to clean it up; it's just an accident or unintentional.”
Try to encourage the child to think proactively about solutions like- when faced with a decision that we as a parent/ guardian and our child disagree on, we should ask our child what he wants to happen or would like to change. This helps them see that there are options to every problem. If they can come up with a reasonable approach to a problem, let them try it. When we encourage our children to become part of the solution, they often have greater motivation for resolving it.
Articulation is important to be able to produce sounds, words and sentences which are clear and can be easily understood and interpreted by others in order to be able to express basic needs and wants, right through to being able to engage in complex conversations. While speaking, repetition of sounding words gives good articulation in pronunciation, which is the ability to physically move the tongue, lips, teeth & jaw to produce sequences of speech sounds, words & sentences. If a child has difficulties with articulation they might have communication problems in the formative years of age which includes:
· Hearing problem
· Trouble following directions
· Trouble asking or answering questions
· Difficulty holding a conversation, putting sentences together
· Poor vocabulary growth
· Trouble learning preschool concepts, such as colors and counting
· Stuttering
· Unclear speech
Tumpa Datta Gupta
Educationist - Founder.
Green Wings Pre-School Educational Network.
Mysore
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