Baby didn't hear that
What bilingualism means for a child's early education
By Megan Bali
By Megan Bali
Families walk into Explorer Elementary with their children at 8:00. Conversations fill the halls; most in English, and some in a different language. At Ms. Mill’s kindergarten classroom there are students arriving with their parent in tow. For the first 30 minutes of the school day, the little boys and girls won’t have to let go of their parent’s hand. This is a special part about kindergarten classes at Explorer; each morning a parent, or sibling, or other family member is welcomed to stay until 8:30, helping the student with morning tasks while they transition into the school day.
The interactions a child gets at home is one of the biggest correlating factors in a child’s language development. The words a child hears in their early years develops their vocabulary, jump starting their school readiness when there is a variety of language exposure. The socioeconomic class of the child’s family influences the kind of language a child hears as well. Betty Hart and Todd Risley wrote a book based off of their research on the performance disparity between children of different socioeconomic classes they did at the University of Kansas. The study took several years and many hours of transcribing audio, but the results revealed that by age 3, there is a 30 million word gap between students who come from a poorer background, and students whose parents are of a professional level. The parents who live off of welfare wouldn’t continue conversation, or interactions after giving an order like, “Don't eat that!” The likely reason being they assumed the child got the message, and wasn't aware they should give an explanation, or use the scenario to teach them something. I wonder why this is the case. Why do families on welfare speak significantly less to their child? Normally they have less education than parents in a professional environment, so it’s possible they have a harder time keeping a conversation with their child if they didn't realize the importance of talking to a child. A low-income parent will work many hours to support their family, so it’s very likely that they don’t find time to have a conversation, or are too preoccupied with other daily stresses that it slips their mind. The kind of language a parent uses with their child will also influence the mindset they gain. High Tech High Media Arts Director, Robert Kuhl, believes that a growth mindset is healthy for a student’s success. “When a student hears, ‘oh you're smart’... It doesn't do as much damage, but it has a similar effect on their mindset as, ‘you’re stupid.’” Both of those statements cause development of a fixed mindset. When a child is told that they are smart they won't learn that you have to work hard to be “smart” at something, or that they can grow to become “smart” at something if it isn't one of their strengths. The understanding of working hard and growing is a growth mindset. Robert tells his son that he played a good soccer game because worked hard at practice that week, instead of telling him he’s so good at soccer. The kind of language the parent uses before the child enters school will influence the child’s mindset, which will impact how well the child does in school. Once the families say goodbye to their children for the day, the class sits down for morning meeting. One “goodbye” will lead to another “hello,” which is how the class begins their day together. Morning meeting is a community building time. Ms. Mill will go over the day’s schedule, take questions about it, then a student will share big news with the class, and at the end they will usually play a game. “As a ‘greeting,’” Ms. Mill said to me, “the students will have ‘reader’s workshop’ that happens after Morning Meeting.” Ms. Mill has an over-sized picture book that they read from as a class. ”Kindergarteners tend to - when they have an idea, they just need to share it.” For this reason, they do a lot of sharing as they read. Sometimes the sharing will be out loud to the entire class, but other times it will be sharing with a neighbor. Some classmates are quieter than others, so sharing with a partner helps alleviate the discomfort of sharing with the entire class. It also gives students a chance learn from hearing others ideas if they are having trouble coming up with their own. Reading, at their age, is a form of “decoding” the letter and word combinations to distinguish a story. Kindergarteners naturally do a lot of inferring of what’s going on from the pictures because they can't decode every word. The first time, they listen while Ms. Mill reads the book to them; the next few times, they will try to read along with her, inferring based off of the story’s ideas they had talked about. The kids will start off by saying back what they had heard Ms. Mill say, then little by little they will start to recognize familiar words. I asked Ms. Mill if she thinks preschool is important to a child’s school readiness, having already read about students who attended preschool being more prepared for kindergarten. She and I talked quite a bit about preschool, but her explicit answer was that she didn't think it was crucial to attend preschool; however as she talked about the differences between her preschool attendees and students who didn’t go, I noted that she did describe a difference. The ones who went to preschool often had a language delay because they didn't have those early years to practice social skills, and develop their speech around other kids. On the other hand, Ms. Mill thought that the early years children spend in preschool should be spent with their families as these are prime years of development.
“It’s easier for a student to catch up on their reading and writing, but the social interactions, and initial understanding of school structure you don’t just catch up on; it’s something you develop because of exposure.” Bilingual students will benefit from a head start in school because they already possess the difficulty of having to learn and grow in two languages. In San Diego it is common that a lower income family is also bilingual. Lower income students benefit from preschool more than well-off families as they are not promoting language development in the home environment. In our preschool conversation, I learned about one of her English language learner students (ELL) who did attend preschool, but went to an all Spanish speaking one. At home she’s around mostly Spanish, but her ability to pick up on English quickly proved she must be around English in some ways near home. Despite the English barrier she is actually very advanced compared to her peers. Hola; kumusta; nin hao; bonjour; konnichiwa; hello. No matter what language, or how many languages, it’s important a child hears words. But what changes when a child hears two versions of a word? Overall, bilingual students tend to be very strong students because they have that cognitive ability of living in two different languages. Independent reading happens after recess. Following the morning of reading, the students have a writer’s workshop. At the beginning of the year their idea of a story was, “I played soccer.” Now they are learning to develop that sentence into an actual story by answering questions like: how did you begin playing soccer? Then what happened? And then what happened? How did you end playing soccer? The school day ends with free choice time where they get to read, or play with blocks, or play with legos, or make a craft at the “Creation Station.” After this play time, there is one last closing meeting to say goodbye. Ms. Mill will turn on a song, cueing students to start cleaning up their free time work, and sit down on the rug before the song ends. The closing meeting is similar to the morning meeting because it is also about community building, and talking about the day. The students who chose to work at the creation station during free time will each get a chance to share what they created. Then it’s time to give appreciations, one boy said, “I appreciate so-and-so for sharing their snack with me, and playing with me at recess.” Expressing this to a friend in the class not only promotes a positive environment, but in the long run it will help the kids understand that a nice thing doesn't go unnoticed. The last thing they talk about are problems they might observe in the classroom; for example, someone might give the message that the markers are drying out because the caps aren't closed all the way. Then as a class they will try to work out a solution to the problem. Ending the day by communicating these feelings, will send the students home with something to think about, or share at home. Families walk back into Explorer at 3:30 to pick up their child from another day of school. Once again, conversation fills the halls with, “Hi sweetie! How was school?” The students in the kindergarten classroom wait patiently (or as patiently as a 5 year old can) for their name to be called, letting them know someone was here to pick them up. |