Hanoch Piven, an internationally known collage-caricature artist, visited Omaha, Nebraska, to conduct arts-based workshops for families, teachers, and children. The workshops were organized by the Omaha Family Literacy Partnership (OFLP). The partnership promotes literacy learning among children and their families through community activities such as author and illustrator visits, family book celebrations, storytelling events, book distributions, and puppet shows. The OFLP invited Piven, an author and illustrator of children’s books, because of his connection to literacy. Playful explorations with objects are his method of creating art, and this method was the focus of the workshops. The weeklong project engaged more than 2,000 children, teachers, and family members at a number of locations: a children’s museum, a nonprofit center for immigrant families, the University of Nebraska Omaha, a public library branch, and local schools that serve pre-K M. Susan McWilliams, Ashley Brailsford Vaughns, Anne O’Hara, Loretta S. Novotny, and Theodora Jo Kyle
Miss Jessie’s concern is not unique. Early childhood educators across the United States are asking similar questions. Teachers often report that they have three, four, or more languages in their classroom—and those languages keep changing from year to year. To add to the challenge, multilingual materials can be hard to find and costly. It is important for teachers to have as many tools as possible to help them meet the language needs of all children in this ever-changing landscape. In addition to books and other materials on hand in your classroom, technology tools allow you to find multilingual resources and create activities and materials that can be adapted quickly and inexpensively to meet changing language needs. There are also software applications (apps) for your computer, phone, or other electronic devices and interactive websites that can support children’s dual language experiences. In this article, we describe ways to use the technology you might already have and offer some new ideas to inspire you. Using Technology as a Teaching Tool for Dual Language Learners in Preschool through Grade 3 Karen N. Nemeth and Fran S. Simon
While children in a classroom of 4-year-olds are actively engaged during center-based learning, a small group begins constructing a tower using blocks of all sizes. This is a specific structure the group decided to make after listening to a nonfiction book—Structures, by Time-Life Books—about all sizes and types of structures. As the group begins building, Mrs. Blakley observes the interactions and listens to the following dialogue: Jose: We make a scraper. Thomas: Like a skyscraper! We have to make it tall. Keep putting more blocks. Jose: Yeah, make it tall—like a scraper. (The three children each add blocks to the tower until it almost reaches their shoulders, and it begins to fall over.) Cindy: Oh, no! Too high! Too high! Thomas: We have to put blocks down here to make it strong. Cindy: Let’s make it strong! Strong tower! Jose: Strong scraper! Thomas: If we don’t make it strong, the skyscraper will fall! ® 2 , 3
Young Children • November 2012 Stephanie Feeney, PhD, is professor emerita of education at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She has served on the governing boards of NAEYC and the National Association for Early Childhood Teacher Educators (NAECTE). Since the 1980s she has been involved in developing and teaching the NAEYC Code of Ethical Conduct. feeney@hawaii.edu Nancy K. Freeman, PhD, is an associate professor of early childhood education at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, where she is the director of the Yvonne and Schuyler Moore Child Development Research Center. She chairs the Governor’s Advisory Committee on Child Care Regulation and is immediate past-president of the National Association for Early Childhood Teacher Educators (NAECTE). nfreeman@ sc.edu An archive of the Focus on Ethics columns is available at www.naeyc.org/yc/ columns/focusonethics. The Birthday Cake: Balancing Responsibilities to Children and Families F0cus 0n Ethics
