Ecosystem Interactions Class Discussion Presentation in Blue Green Lined Styl...
A Wealth of Words: Building Language, Literacy, Culture and Community in Early Childhood Jewish Education
1. Betty Bardige, Ed.D. Building Language, Literacy, Culture and Community in Early Childhood Jewish Education
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4. The key to school readiness is language development, fostered in caring relationships through frequent, vocabulary-stretching conversations that stimulate and build upon children’s natural curiosity.
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10. Children don’t learn to talk by watching TV. To become good communicators, they need the back and forth engagement of meaningful conversation.
15. Positive Caregiving for US Children Ages 1 to 3 Source: NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (2000). Characteristics and quality of child care for toddlers and preschoolers. Applied Developmental Science , 4.
34. So that every child begins school with a wealth of words
Notas do Editor
I began my early childhood career at a Jewish preschool. My youngest sister had been born with severe brain damage. At five, she could speak and even read, but was unable to stand or walk. No kindergarten would take her. The only schooling available to her – public or private – was at a program for multihandicapped children with severe cognitive limitations. At the time, our Temple was building a new Sunday School classroom wing, my grandfather chaired the building committee. My mother convinced her father to equip several of the new classrooms for young children, and founded the first inclusive preschool in South Florida. Soon, this preschool included the county’s first Head Start program as well. As a senior in high school, I helped out after school and during vacations, and worked there as my first summer job. But today, I want to talk about language. As the People of the Book, we Jews place a high value on words. We are known for answering questions with questions, commenting on commentaries, and debating with ourselves, our friends and family members, those whose perspectives are different from ours, and even with God. Discussions of the meaning of words and the interpretation of stories are at the very center of the tradition we pass on to our children. We value education, and we offer our children opportunities to taste its sweetness very early in their lives. We also live in a world that is full of distractions – cell phones, iPods, media of all sorts, 24/7 jobs, and a myriad of demands on our time. Those of us who are parents of young children may be challenged to find affordable, high quality child care – especially for our infants and toddlers, and to fit in time for family talk. Those of us who teach young children are pulled in multiple directions as we try – sometimes with too few resources and too little support and compensation, as is, unfortunately, characteristic of our field – to respond to the needs of each child and each family in our care. All of us share the traditions of tsedakah and tikkun olam, which obligate us to seek justice for all of the children in our communities – to reach out when we can, as my mother did, to give every child a fair and promising start. Through our actions and habits in our own homes and classrooms, and our shared activism in our communities and country, we can assure that every child is equipped with a wealth of words, and therefore primed for success.