Supporting Children’s Vocabulary and Thinking in a Magic Potion Laboratory: A Reflective Conversation Between Educators, a Speech-Language Pathologist and a Linguist

Mother playing with child

Janice Greenberg, The Hanen Centre’s Director of Early Childhood Education Services, and her colleagues were recently published in Early Childhood Education, the official journal of the Early Childhood Education Council of the Alberta Teacher’s Association.

This is a collaborative article where representatives from three different professions reflect on how teachers can intentionally create opportunities for extending children’s thinking and supporting vocabulary development. The authors use the context of a magic potion laboratory, involving an educational assistant and six kindergarten students, as a starting point for their reflective conversation. They propose ways in which teachers can take an active role in building young children’s vocabulary and deepening their thinking in everyday interaction with others with regard to objects and literature. The professional learning stemming from this reflective conversation points to the value of collaboration between educators, speech-language pathologists and linguists). (Greenberg, Bowles, Stagg Peterson, Altidor-Brooks, 2019, p 3).

Click here to read the article.

 

To read more about how to support children’s vocabulary and thinking, check out these articles from the Hanen Centre:

You can also find helpful information in The Hanen Centre’s Early Literacy Corner as well as in our Learning Language and Loving It guidebook and our ABC and Beyond guidebook.

 

To learn more about collaboration between SLPs and educators, view our webinar, Every Toddler Talking: Enriching Language Learning in Early Childhood Education and Care Settings. This will introduce you to a project in Australia that paired SLPs and educators as trainers for Learning Language and Loving It - The Hanen Program® for Early Childhood Educators.

 

References

Greenberg, J., Bowles, P, Stagg Peterson, S. & Altidor-Brooks, A. (2019). Supporting Children’s Vocabulary and Thinking in a Magic Potion Laboratory: A Reflective Conversation Between Educators, a Speech-Language Pathologist and a Linguist, published in Early Childhood Education. Early Childhood Education, 16(1), 3-9.