Language and Literacy: Preschool domain

ATTENDING AND UNDERSTANDING 

COMMUNICATING AND SPEAKING

VOCABULARY 

PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS 

PRINT AND ALPHABET KNOWLEDGE  

COMPREHENSION AND TEXT STRUCTURE 

WRITING

Child attends to communication and language from others.

Child understands and responds to increasingly complex communication and language from others.

Child varies the amount of information provided to meet the demands of the situation.

Child understands, follows, and uses appropriate social and conversational rules.

Child expresses self in increasingly long, detailed, and sophisticated ways.

Child understands and uses a wide variety of words for a variety of purposes.

Child shows understanding of word categories and relationships among words.

Child demonstrates awareness that spoken language is composed of smaller segments of sound.

Child demonstrates an understanding of how print is used (functions of print) and the rules that govern how print works (conventions of print).

Child identifies letters of the alphabet and produces correct sounds associated with letters.

Child demonstrates an understanding of narrative structure through storytelling/re-telling.

Child asks and answers questions about a book that was read aloud.

Child writes for a variety of purposes using increasingly sophisticated marks.

36 to 48 Months: Shows acknowledgment of comments or questions and is able to attend to conversations, either spoken or signed.

48 to 60 Months: Shows acknowledgment of complex comments or questions. Is able to attend to longer, multi-turn conversations, either spoken or signed.

By 60 Months:

36 to 48 Months: Understands and responds (verbally and non-verbally) to increasingly longer sentences, simple questions, and simple stories.

48 to 60 Months: Shows an understanding of complex statements, questions, and stories containing multiple phrases and ideas, and responds appropriately.

By 60 Months:

36 to 48 Months: Uses language, spoken or sign, for different purposes and is sometimes able to provide sufficient detail to get needs met from a variety of adults.

48 to 60 Months: Uses language, spoken or sign, for a variety of purposes and can typically provide sufficient detail in order to get needs met from a variety of adults.

By 60 Months: 

36 to 48 Months: Engages in conversations with adults, other children, or within the group setting lasting 2–3 conversational turns, and, with support, will sometimes use appropriate tone and volume for different situations.

48 to 60 Months: Maintains multi-turn conversations with adults or other children by being responsive to the conversational partner in a variety of ways, such as by asking a question. With increasing independence, varies tone and volume of expression to match the social situation.

By 60 Months: 

36 to 48 Months: Communicates clearly enough to be understood by familiar adults, but may make some pronunciation and grammatical errors. Typically uses 3–5 word phrases/sentences when communicating. With some prompting, can offer multiple (2–3) pieces of information on a single topic.

48 to 60 Months: Communicates clearly enough to be understood by familiar and unfamiliar adults, but may make some pronunciation errors and some isolated grammatical errors. Uses longer sentences, as well as sentences that are slightly more complex, such as “I need a pencil because this one broke.” Can offer multiple pieces of information on a topic with increasing independence and answer simple questions. 

By 60 Months: 

36 to 48 Months: Shows a rapid increase in acquisition of new vocabulary words that describe actions, emotions, things, or ideas that are meaningful within the everyday environment. Uses new vocabulary words to describe relations among things or ideas. Shows repetition of new words offered by adults.

48 to 60 Months: Shows a steady increase in vocabulary through the acquisition of words with increasing specificity and variety. Shows repetition of new words offered by adults and may ask about the meaning of unfamiliar words.

By 60 Months: 

36 to 48 Months: Typically uses known words in the correct context and, with support, shows an emerging understanding of how words are related to broader categories, such as sorting things by color.

48 to 60 Months: Demonstrates an increasingly sophisticated understanding of words and word categories with support, such as listing multiple examples of a familiar category or identifying a synonym or antonym.

By 60 Months:  

36 to 48 Months: Shows rote imitation and enjoyment of rhyme and alliteration. With support, distinguishes when two words rhyme and when two words begin with the same sound.

48 to 60 Months: Demonstrates rhyme recognition, such as identifying which words rhyme from a group of three: hat, cat, log. Recognizes phonemic changes in words, such as noticing the problem with “Old McDonald had a charm.” Is able to count syllables and understand sounds in spoken words.

By 60 Months: 

36 to 48 Months: Distinguishes print from pictures and shows an understanding that print is something meaningful, such as asking an adult “What does this say?” or “Read this.”

48 to 60 Months: Begins to demonstrate an understanding of the connection between speech and print. Shows a growing awareness that print is a system that has rules and conventions, such as holding a book correctly or following a book left to right.

By 60 Months:

36 to 48 Months: Shows an awareness of alphabet letters, such as singing the ABC song, recognizing letters from one’s name, or naming some letters that are encountered often.

48 to 60 Months: Recognizes and names at least half of the letters in the alphabet, including letters in own name (first name and last name), as well as letters encountered often in the environment. Produces the sound of many recognized letters.

By 60 Months: 

36 to 48 Months: With support, may be able to tell one or two key events from a story or may act out a story with pictures or props.

48 to 60 Months: Retells 2–3 key events from a wellknown story, typically in the right temporal order and using some simple sequencing terms, such as first … and then.

By 60 Months:

36 to 48 Months: Can answer basic questions about likes or dislikes in a book or story. Asks and answers questions about main characters or events in a familiar story. With modeling and support, makes predictions about events that might happen next.

48 to 60 Months: With support, provides basic answers to specific questions about details of a story, such as who, what, when, or where. With support, can answer inferential questions about stories, such as predictions or how/why something is happening in a particular moment.

By 60 Months:

36 to 48 Months: Engages in writing activities that consist largely of drawing and scribbling. Begins to convey meaning. With modeling and support, writes some letter-like forms and letters.

48 to 60 Months: Progressively uses drawing, scribbling, letter-like forms, and letters to intentionally convey meaning. With support, may use invented spelling consisting of salient or beginning sounds, such as L for elevator or B for bug.

By 60 Months:

Uses verbal and non-verbal signals appropriately to acknowledge the comments or questions of others. 

Shows ongoing connection to a conversation, group discussion, or presentation. 

Shows an ability to recall (in order) multiple step directions.

Demonstrates understanding of a variety of question types, such as “Yes/No?” or “Who/What/When/Where?” or “How/ Why?”

Shows understanding of a variety of sentence types, such as multi-clause, cause-effect, sequential order, or if-then.

Shows an understanding of talk related to the past or future.

Shows understanding, such as nodding or gestures, in response to the content of books read aloud, stories that are told, or lengthy explanations given on a topic. Children who are DLLs may demonstrate more complex communication and language in their home language than in English.

Usually provides sufficient detail in order to get needs met, such as explaining a point of difficulty in a task or sharing a request from home with the teacher. 

Uses language, spoken or sign, to clarify a word or statement when misunderstood.

Children who are DLLs may switch between their languages. 

Maintains multi-turn conversations with adults, other children, and within larger groups by responding in increasingly sophisticated ways, such as asking related questions or expressing agreement. 

With increasing independence, matches the tone and volume of expression to the content and social situation, such as by using a whisper to tell a secret.

Communicates clearly enough to be understood by adults across a range of situations. Pronunciation errors and grammatical errors are isolated and infrequent. Shows proficiency with prepositions, regular/irregular past tense, possessives, and noun-verb agreement.

Typically, uses complete sentences of more than 5 words with complex structures, such as sentences involving sequence and causal relations.

Can produce and organize multiple sentences on a topic, such as giving directions or telling a story, including information about the past or present or things not physically present, and answer a variety of question types. 

Demonstrates the use of multiple (2–3) new words or signs a day during play and other activities.

Shows recognition of and/or familiarity with key domain-specific words heard during reading or discussions.

With multiple exposures, uses new domain-specific vocabulary during activities, such as using the word “cocoon” when learning about the lifecycle of caterpillars, or “cylinder” when learning about 3-D shapes.

With support, forms guesses about the meaning of new words from context clues.

Categorizes words or objects, such as sorting a hard hat, machines, and tools into the construction group, or giving many examples of farm animals.

Discusses new words in relation to known words and word categories, such as “It fell to the bottom when it sank” or “When you hop it’s like jumping on one leg” or “The bear and fox are both wild animals.” 

Identifies shared characteristics among people, places, things, or actions, such as identifying that both cats and dogs are furry and have four legs. 

Identifies key common antonyms, such as black/white or up/down. Identifies 1–2 synonyms for very familiar words, such as glad or happy. 

Shows an ability to distinguish similar words, such as “I don’t like it, I love it!” or “It’s more than tall, it’s gigantic” or “It’s so cold, it’s frosty.” 

Provides one or more words that rhyme with a single given target, such as “What rhymes with log?”

Produces the beginning sound in a spoken word, such as “Dog begins with /d/.”

Provides a word that fits with a group of words sharing an initial sound, with adult support, such as “Sock, Sara, and song all start with the /s/ sound. What else starts with the /s/ sound?” 

Understands that print is organized differently for different purposes, such as a note, list, or storybook.

Understands that written words are made up of a group of individual letters.

Begins to point to single-syllable words while reading simple, memorized texts.

Identifies book parts and features, such as the front, back, title, and author.

Names 18 upper- and 15 lower-case letters.

Knows the sounds associated with several letters.

Re-tells or acts out a story that was read, putting events in the appropriate sequence, and demonstrating more sophisticated understanding of how events relate, such as cause and effect relationships.

Tells fictional or personal stories using a sequence of at least 2–3 connected events.

Identifies characters and main events in books and stories. 

Answers questions about details of a story with increasingly specific information, such as when asked “Who was Mary?” responds “She was the girl who was riding the horse and then got hurt.” 

Answers increasingly complex inferential questions that require making predictions based on multiple pieces of information from the story; inferring characters’ feelings or intentions; or providing evaluations of judgments that are grounded in the text.  

Provides a summary of a story, highlighting a number of the key ideas in the story and how they relate.  

Creates a variety of written products that may or may not phonetically relate to intended messages.

Shows an interest in copying simple words posted in the classroom.

Attempts to independently write some words using invented spelling, such as K for kite.

Writes first name correctly or close to correctly.

Writes (draws, illustrates) for a variety of purposes and demonstrates evidence of many aspects of print conventions, such as creating a book that moves left to right.