Crossing the Midline

Touch your right hand to your left elbow. Brush your teeth with your opposite hand. What do these two activities have in common? The answer is a simple, yet important one. They encourage our young children to cross the midline.

What does crossing the midline mean? Think of the body as having a line down the middle, right where the bellybutton is located! Imagine then a right side of this line and a left side of the line. When a child can easily cross their midline, it means he or she can reach over from one side to perform a task on the other side of the body. Here is an example: a child is sitting “criss cross applesauce” on the floor, doing Legos and reaches with his or her right hand to place a Lego in a place that is nearer to the left side of the body. This child is able to cross the midline. A child who cannot do this, might put the Lego in the opposite hand or could move his or her body to perform the task.

It sounds so simple, right? But this seemingly easy task can be difficult. It is important because children who can easily and readily cross the midline are often better readers, have more writing fluency (can hold a pencil longer and with more efficiency), and often feel less frustrated. Research tells us that crossing the midline is a necessary skill.

Activities to help children cross the midline are often a part of our preschool day. We just need to be intentional and clear in our minds about these activities. We all sing with fun motions to enhance a song. When these motions involve using a hand or arm and crossing to the other side of the body, we are developing a child’s ability to cross the midline. When we give children beads to thread or streamers to swirl, we are offering valuable age-appropriate activities to develop crossing the midline.  Playing on the sand table offers important opportunities to scoop sand with one hand and then dump it into a pail on the other side of the body.

Be sure to share the reasoning behind your daily activities with families. They need to know that what you are doing is not just a ‘cute’ activity but is helping to develop an important skill for future school success.  

Standards Alignment:

NAEYC – 2.C.04

Head Start – I.C

Teaching Strategies For ELLs

This week we continue discussing teaching strategies to help our English Language Learners. Keep in mind that these strategies are a help to ALL children and are good ways to assist children who may not have background knowledge and school skills.  These two strategies are different and may be used depending on your class and the topics you are presenting. They are Total Physical Response and The Silent Way.

Total Physical Response  

Children can learn language when they listen to and follow along with an adult’s speech. The key is that the adult must use many gestures and facial expressions to talk with children. Children can merely watch and participate using their bodies, without any oral responses. This helps children feel less pressure to speak. They can respond in a physical way, which is so appropriate for preschoolers. An example of this might be to talk about elephants by using your arm as a trunk, your hands as ears, making an elephant sound, and showing pictures of foods elephants eat. Children can then pretend to be elephants, without any pressure to describe an elephant.

The Silent Way

When we give children a train of unifix cubes in a pattern, with a tub of cubes to continue this pattern, we can think of this as being an example of The Silent Way. Adults should give as little direction as possible and let children explore and discover new concepts on their own. Adults might use gestures and gestures, but little language is used. Children can experiment, without the need to process teacher direction. This helps children develop important concepts and encourages self-reliance.  

Standards Alignment:
NAEYC - 2.D.01 & 03.
Head Start - VIII.A. & B.

Comprehensible Input for Preschoolers: A Video

Last week we talked about the benefits of comprehensible input - the idea that you pair known gestures, expressions, and actions with vocabulary to help both English Language Learners and those who may not have the background knowledge to understand a concept or book. As promised, today we share a video of comprehensible input in action. Watch carefully as we also demonstrate our favorite way to avoid b/d reversals! 

Standards Alignment:
NAEYC - 2.D.01 & 03.
Head Start - VIII.A. & B.

Helping ELLs and ALL Children: Age-Appropriate Comprehensible Input

How can we help our ELLs and even our young children who may not have the background knowledge to understand the contents of a book we are reading? We can use gestures, pictures, objects, and even videos to help children understand the content of a book or even our directions. 

We find that gestures are so important. Here are a few examples of helpful actions:

• Want children to listen? Be sure to cup your hand over your ear. 
• Want children to be quieter? Put your finger over your lips.
• Want children to think or wonder about something? Point to your head.

As you can imagine, it is also helpful to include appropriate facial expressions with these gestures. Look puzzled or happy. These facial expressions can align with a book character's feelings, too. They are helpful in so many ways.

If you are reading a book about a dog, be sure to show pictures. If you are reading about someone running, you can act this out or even have children do this. Talking about rain? Use a rain stick to get children involved. Want children to look closer at something? Wear BIG glasses! It's fun, too! 

Gestures, facial expressions, body language, pictures, objects...all of these are helpful examples of comprehensible input that help all of the children in our class to understand the language of school. 

Stay tuned next week for more on comprehensible input.

Standards Alignment:
NAEYC - 2.D.01 & 03.
Head Start - VIII.A. & B.