ACTIVITIES

Gabriele Cassina, Age 5

Components
Each activity includes a purpose statement with a list of behaviors the activity facilitates, a description of the activity procedures and materials, suggestions for specific child objectives and adult assistance, adaptations for specific disabilities, and ideas for home activities and parent involvement.

Purpose Statement
The purpose statement describes the major goals of the activity and how these goals promote the use of literacy and language in daily life settings. It also includes a list of concepts and behaviors across the three major areas of the curriculum (print/book awareness, metalinguistic awareness, and oral language) that the activity develops. These behaviors correspond to items from the Ladders to Literacy Preschool Checklist.

Materials and Description of the Activity
Suggestions are provided for organizing materials, setting up the activity, and encouraging child participation.

Adult-Child Interactive Behaviors
The adult-child interactive behavior section describes how, through participation in the same activity, children functioning at diverse levels may learn new concepts and behaviors developmentally appropriate to their individual needs and characteristics. Three groups of learning objectives (these are the task demands) with corresponding teaching strategies (or supports) are outlined: high demand/low support, medium demand/medium support, and low demand/high support. The three levels of task demands consist of skills that correspond to items on the Ladders to Literacy Preschool Checklist. These are skills the adult aims to facilitate or teach children during the activity. For example, the three levels of task demands for the Snack/Lunch Menu activity in the print/book awareness section are the following:

• High demand/low support: Children read the menu to find out what will be served for snack/lunch. They will:
  read words and name single letters.
  
  
• Medium demand/medium support:
  Children refer to the menu during snack/lunch and will:
  recognize a few memorized words.
  
  
• Low demand/high support: Children will:
  identify foods and objects represented in the pictures.

The skills selected were the behaviors that are the most likely to occur naturally as children participate in a particular activity. As a result, levels of demand may vary from one activity to another. For each level of task demand, specific teaching strategies to support the child's learning of a skill are suggested. Teaching strategies are organized according to levels of assistance from low to high support. In general, the more competent child will require minimal guidance from the adult, whereas other children will need more intensive assistance and higher levels of support. Therefore, low-support strategies are generally the most appropriate for children ready to master tasks presenting at high levels of demand. Children learning tasks with lower demands are more likely to benefit from high-support strategies. For each child participating in the activity, the teacher may determine the most appropriate level of demand based on the child's performance on the Ladders to Literacy Preschool Checklist, the individualized education program (IEP)/individualized family service plan (IFSP) goals and objectives, and/or the teacher's recent observations of the child.

For certain activities, multiple skills or goals may be listed within each level so that teachers may select the most appropriate tasks for individual children or address more than one skill for the same child. In the previous example, the high-demand level contains two learning objectives: reading words and naming single letters. When multiple learning objectives are listed for the same level, individual strategies may be applicable to only one of the objectives. In this case, the teacher should select those appropriate for each individual goal. For example, two strategies are suggested for cognitive structuring. One strategy is the following: Point out distinctive features, similarities, and differences between targeted letter and other letters ["You said this is a b. Does it look the same as this other b here? Look carefully. Which side of the circle is the stick on?"]. This strategy addresses letter identification. The second strategy is the following: Provide verbal information about the identity of the word ["It grows underneath the ground and is orange"]. This latter strategy addresses word recognition.

After determining appropriate levels of task demands for each child, teachers should select two or three teaching strategies to assist the child in accomplishing the task. Figure 2 shows an example of an activity planning form to assist teachers in this task. Begin by using the least intensive support strategy (usually the first listed). If this does not help the child learn the skill, then gradually increase the amount of support.

It is important to remember that children will respond differently to different types of support, with some children benefiting from more direct assistance and others from less direct assistance. Children who are ready to take on high-demand tasks may, at times, need high-support teaching strategies (explicit instructing). In some situations, low-support strategies (open-ended questioning) might be sufficient for children learning low-demand tasks. During the teaching interactions, adults should continually evaluate and revise decisions about appropriate levels of support based on the individual child's responses to prior types of assistance.

Adaptations
Recommendations are provided for adapting materials and activity procedures to facilitate the participation of children with visual, motor, or hearing impairments.

Home Link and Parent Activity
Each activity offers easy-to-implement suggestions for families to enhance the early literacy and language development of their children at home and in community settings. The purpose of these suggestions is to encourage family participation and establish ongoing communication between the home and the school. The suggestions for home activities are simple for teachers to implement, such as sending home samples of children's work or eliciting parent assistance in having children bring special objects from home to share with their peers. Also, we have compiled a special set of Early Literacy Activities for Children and Parents (see Appendix B), which help parents reinforce the concepts and behaviors being taught in the classroom. Teachers can, for example, include these suggestions in regular parent newsletters; compile them as a special booklet for parents; or make separate copies, on colored paper, to send home. Also, teachers can personalize the activities by adding illustrations or have children draw their own pictures or paste figures or photographs on the copies.

(Notari-Skyverson, A., O'Connor, R.E., & Vadasy, P.F. (1998). Ladders to Literacy: A Preschool Activity Book. (pp.39-43). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. (#3173; $49.95); toll-free telephone: 1-800-638-3775; fax: 410-337-8539; web site: www.brookespublishing.com)