Colorado Academic Standards Online

Supportive Teaching Practices/Adults May:

1. Create opportunities for children to learn to use and recognize precise vocabulary that relates to math, science, art, and social experiences.
2. Frequently read books with rich descriptive vocabulary, exploring and extending children's understanding of the meaning of new words.
3. Talk with individual children often, encouraging them to express their ideas, needs and feelings, and ask them questions.
4. Provide a rich variety of frequently repeated songs, poems, finger plays, and storytelling, which encourage children's participation and exposes them to many cultures.
5. Provide a daily routine wherein simple directions are given for children to follow on a regular basis.

Examples of Learning/Children May:

1. At the sensory table, children use various tools and instruments, such as tubes, scoops, funnels, and eggbeaters, to explore and describe the manipulation of water with the support of the paraprofessional who uses parallel talk to model (e.g., “Billy, you’re using the eggbeater to whip the water.”)
2. On a trip to a pumpkin farm, the farmer talks to the children about planting, using words like tractor, hoe, growing season, and fertilizer. Later that week, Mark uses the toy garden hoe in the sand and tells another child to "Get the fertilizer.”
3. When asked whether she wants a snack before playing, Angela uses her communication board to indicate her choice of the snack first.
4. Every day, Marius enters the classroom and hangs up his backpack and jacket. Sometimes he needs a reminder to wash his hands before choosing an activity.

Supportive Teaching Practices/Adults May:

1. The classroom environment provides a variety of play centers that encourage children to interact and communicate with one another.
2. Child-initiated play time occurs at least 1/3 of the day to provide ample opportunity to practice using vocabulary and conversational skills.
3. Talk with children frequently, encouraging them to share their experiences and ideas and listening attentively to their contributions.
4. For children with limited expressive capabilities, use the language stimulation technique of expansion (e.g., Child: “That a dog,” Teacher: “That’s a brown dog with a long tail.”)
5. Facilitate the use of words between children to express ideas, desires, feelings, and to resolve conflicts.
6. Ask children questions, explaining how questions are different from statements, and allow children to practice asking questions to classroom visitors, on field trips, during read alouds, etc.

Examples of Learning/Children May:

1. To create a graph, children are asked “What kind of pet do you have?” and they place a sticky note with their name beside the animal(s).
2. Aaliyah approaches a group of children in the dramatic play center and asks, "What're you playing?" When they answer "Spaceship," she asks, "Can I play too?" She then offers her ideas, "I'm the princess." The play continues for over 10 minutes.
3. When Max’s dad visits the class to show how to make pots on a pottery wheel, the children have an opportunity to ask questions. The teaching staff reminds what a question is to help children along (“a question helps you find out things”).

Supportive Teaching Practices/Adults May:

1. The environment contains an ample number of quality, age-appropriate children's books.
2. Model how to use books while frequently reading with children individually and in small groups.
3. Engage the children in conversations and ask questions about what they have read.
4. Provide dramatic play props that link to the stories that are read and are rotated on an ongoing basis such as furniture (for example: table, chair, crib, store dividers), clothes (for example: hats, shoes, material, costumes) and props (for example: dolls, dishes, cash register).

Examples of Learning/Children May:

1. While reading a book, Ms. Danae points to the cover of the book and names it, describes how she opens the book to read, and points out the title, author, and illustrator, explaining what the latter two do.
2. In writing centers, children create products in which they are named “author and illustrator.”
3. Mrs. Nguyen reads the book, Tough Boris, to a child who sits in her lap, observing how she handles the book. She then asks, "Why do you think Tough Boris cried when his parrot died?” Then the child draws a picture of Tough Boris and his parrot to describe who the main characters were.
4. The children love a book called “The Grocery Store.” Mr. Jay sets up a "grocery store center" that includes empty food boxes and cans, receipt pads, price tags, newspaper food ads, a cash register, and shopping lists.
5. Mrs. Ramos, the librarian, reads some poems from Robert Lewis Stevenson's "Poems for the Very Young." The children especially like "I Have a Little Shadow." They talk about the shadows they have seen. Later, their teacher provides them a chance to experiment with shadow puppets in the classroom, discovering how shadows are made.

Supportive Teaching Practices/Adults May:

1. Adults are aware of the developmental progression within the component skills of phonological awareness: Rhyming comes first; Then alliteration (matching and producing words to the same beginning sounds); Then blending (combining syllables and sounds); Finally segmenting (pulling words apart into syllables and sounds). (Paulson and Moats)
2. Adults plan activities and interact so as to draw attention to the phonemes (the smallest unit of speech) in spoken words, following the developmental progression of: Words as a whole (elephant) and Syllables (e-le-phant). Adults promote syllable-sound awareness by clapping or tapping out the syllables of words or slowly "sounding out" word. Onset-Rime (p-ad, br-ick): Adults practice onset-rime activities blending beginning sounds with ending sounds to make words.). Phonemes (/b/ /ă/ /t/): Adults break down words into phonemes when reading and/or when a child asks how to spell a word. (Paulson and Moats)

Examples of Learning/Children May:

1. During small group time, Ms. Brown plays a rhyming game with older 4- and 5-year-olds. They generate rhymes together for words like star, ring, and frog. Her assistant, Mrs. Oldshield, plays a different rhyming game with the three-year-olds and younger fours in which they listen to her read familiar nursery rhymes and fill in the missing rhyme at the end of the last line.
2. Kendra claps out the syllables of her name when it’s her turn.
3. When pretending to be the teacher in a dramatic play, Kyle points to the words of the books while he “reads” the story.

Supportive Teaching Practices/Adults May:

1. The classroom environment provides opportunities for children to interpret the meaning of words and symbols, including pictures of toys on the shelves, photos of children, and labels on materials and areas.
2. Name labels include symbols at the beginning of the year; when children no longer need the symbols, they are removed.
3. Point to words as you read them out loud, showing the sweep of print from left to right and top to bottom.
4. Print daily messages, saying the words as they are written. (Example: Today is Monday, March 18, 2018, and we have a special project today.)

Examples of Learning/Children May:

1. At the beginning of the year, cubbies are labeled with the child’s name and a symbol of a certain color. After the winter break, the labels only have the child’s name. Hondo arrives in class, finds his cubby, and points to the label, saying, “That’s my name!”
2. Mr. Bob calls children one at a time to wash hands. Before they go to the sink, they touch the letter on the wall that begins their names.
3. Zena goes to the visual schedule and points to the picture and label for the playground and announces, “Hey, we go outside next!”
4. In blocks, children create a castle village together. Miss Lupe brings them paper so they can draw pictures of it to use as building plans to build it again another day.
5. Terrence points to a picture of the McDonald’s arches in writing center, and says “I know what that is. That’s McDonalds!”

Supportive Teaching Practices/Adults May:

1. Use children’s names, as well as other meaningful words like mom, dad, dog, cat, etc. as the basis for letter games and experiences.
2. Keep alphabet displays and strips and word walls at children’s eye level.
3. Create opportunities for children to record their thoughts and stories by having children draw, and by writing words that the children dictate to them.
4. Teach letter naming through developmentally appropriate games. For example, alphabet letters are hidden or scattered around the room. Children are given matching letters to identify and then they go on an “Alphabet Hunt” to find the matching letter.

Examples of Learning/Children May:

1. Kyle designs a menu for dramatic. He asks Mr. Kelly how to spell "hot dog." Mr. Kelly sounds out the word, telling Kyle which letters to write for each sound.
2. Paola touches the letter P on the wall alphabet strip and says, “That’s my letter!”
3. Isabella picks out an alphabet book and points to and names the letters she recognizes (I, S, L, and A) as she reads.
4. Ms. Tanisha plays Alphabet Bingo with the older 4- and 5-year-olds while her assistant Mr. Bryan plays a simple alphabet matching game with the three-year-olds and younger fours.

Supportive Teaching Practices/Adults May:

1. Provide opportunities for children to develop fine motor skills, which support grasps using tongs, Play-Doh, spray bottles, tweezers, etc.
2. The classroom environment provides an easily accessible writing center, filled with a wide variety of materials: markers, pens, pencils, crayons; paper of different shapes, sizes, textures, as well as envelopes, cards, sticky notes, and postcards, etc.
3. Similar materials are available in each center throughout the room.
4. Expect the following progression in children’s writing Pre-alphabetic (ages 2-5) [Pictures and scribbles, Letter-like forms, Letters from names and the environment, Strings of letters, One letter (first sound) to represent a word.] Semiphonetic/Early Alphabetic [(4-6) Letter sound connection begins (One letter (first sound) to represent a word.]

Examples of Learning/Children May:

1. Jesse uses tweezers to pick up cotton balls and drop them in cups. This builds the strength in his hands for fine motor skill tasks like writing.
2. Children sign in their names everyday on a white board as their family members sign them in.
3. Alejandro and Holly are in a dramatic play area which is set up like a grocery store. Holly discovers the pad of paper and markers Mrs. Martinez has provided. "Look! We can use these to make a grocery list." Next, she draws squiggles down the paper as she names milk, cookies, and grapes.
4. Miss Mary sits with Sofia to assist her in holding the pencil grip correctly as the occupational therapist showed them.

Colorado Essential Skills:

1. Researchers know the difference between sharing a statement (something they know) and a question (something they wonder about).
2. Researchers know how to stay on topic and ask relevant questions that pertain to real problems.

Essential Questions:

1. What is the difference between a question and a statement?
2. How do asking questions help us learn and solve problems?

Essential Reasoning Skills:

1. Researchers know the world is full of information.
2. Researchers understand that for thinking to improve, it is necessary to seek out alternative ways to solve problems.
3. People who reason know thinking has potential strengths and weaknesses.