What Early Childhood Teachers Need To Know about Language. ERIC Digest.

Considerable evidence exists that high-quality early childhood education programs for children from birth to age 5 can have long-lasting, positive consequences for children's success in school and later in life, especially for children from low-income families. However, such programs are not available for all children who need them, nor are all programs of the quality that is necessary to achieve positive outcomes for children. Recently, the U.S. Department of Education released a study of the skills and knowledge of a nationally representative cohort of children at entrance to kindergarten, showing that social class and other group differences are already evident this early. This finding suggests that kindergarten is too late to intervene in order to narrow the achievement gap. High-quality early childhood education programs have great potential for preventing later school failure, particularly if they place a strong emphasis on language development. For this reason, early childhood teachers need thorough knowledge about language and how to help children develop language and literacy skills. Often teachers have not had opportunities to build the knowledge they need. This digest discusses early childhood education in context, why early childhood teachers need to know more about language, and what early childhood teachers need to know. (Contains 10 references.) (VWL)(Author/VWL)