Language Stimulation in Daycare Settings: Strategies that Really Work
Many children in the United States attend daycare centers.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, “In 2019, approximately 59 percent of children age 5 and younger and not enrolled in kindergarten were in at least one weekly nonparental care arrangement, as reported by their parents” (nces.ed.gov, as cited in Larson et al., 2020). Sixty-two percent of these children were attending a daycare center, preschool, or center-based prekindergarten.
With so many young children attending daycare centers, what effect do they have on language development?
How does language stimulation at daycare centers differ from the language stimulation provided from parents and caregivers at home?
How can daycare workers stimulate language in the classroom?
These are some questions addressed in this blog post.
To begin, let's recognize that daycare centers are not all the same. The quality of daycare centers vary, as do teacher’s teaching and communication styles. These differences contribute to determining the effects daycare centers have on language development.
Several research studies showed that “high-quality” daycare centers tend to employ childcare providers who give more instances of linguistic input to children. This means that the childcare providers at “high-quality” daycare centers usually ask questions, respond to children’s vocalizations, and talk to the children in a way that promotes language.
Childcare centers that are deemed “high-quality” are usually those that have accreditation from child care accrediting organizations. This is because the accreditation process entails more advanced standards than general licensing guidelines. Click here for a list of national accreditation organizations in the United States.
Interestingly, though, a study by Huttenlocher et al. (2002) revealed that preschoolers' syntactic growth was greater in classes where teachers’ language was more syntactically complex regardless of whether or not the childcare center was deemed “high-quality”. Measuring the proportion of multi clause sentences and the average number of noun phrases per sentence, they found that teacher speech was related to children’s syntactic growth.
Now what in the world does this mean?
A multi-clause sentence combines two complete thoughts. So teachers who spoke using more complex or compound sentences positively affected the grammatical development of their students. For instance, teachers who spoke using conjunctions like “but” or “because” to join two clauses together as in, “He ran because he was late for the bus” positively impacted children’s skill levels over the year.
Two important and related takeaways from both studies are:
daycare centers should provide language-rich environments for children
daycare providers and teachers should speak and respond to children in a way that stimulates and encourages language development
Specific strategies on how to promote language will be shared later in this blog post.
The benefits of these two factors appear to be most pronounced for children who are living in poverty and do not come from homes where “high-quality language interactions” occur frequently.
This leads to the next question:
How does language stimulation provided from parents and caregivers at home differ from language stimulation at daycare centers?
Determining the difference between language stimulation between parents in a home environment versus daycare providers in a center based setting is also difficult to ascertain.
This is because parent communication styles and home environments are even more variable than regulated and licensed daycare centers. Additionally, there is not a lot of research comparing the language use between children’s homes and daycare centers.
A recent study by researchers Anne L. Larson, Tyson S. Barrett, and Scott R. McConnell examined the difference between the home and childcare language environments of young children who are living in poverty. Thirty-eight children ranging in age from 18 to 42 months old wore a special recording technology called LENA at their home and at their daycare center. This wearable technology is often referred to as a “talk pedometer” (LENA Organization, 2022). It records and analyzes up to 16 hours of child vocalizations, adult words, and environmental sounds using cloud-based software. Using this technology, these researchers found that language exposure in terms of adult word count, number of conversational turns, and amount of child vocalizations were lowest in the childcare setting.
These children heard approximately 13 fewer words spoken by adults during each 5-minute segment. They also spoke using five to six fewer sounds or words and had one less language interaction with adults in childcare as compared to the home (Larson et al., 2020).
This is unfortunate because many of these children were not experiencing interactive language environments at home. In comparison to the sample from the LENA Natural Language Study, (Gilkerson & Richards, 2008, as cited in Larson et al., 2020), these children were engaging in fewer back-and-forth conversational turns with adults at home.
This begs the question - what can childcare providers do to best stimulate language in the classroom?
Simply speaking, they can talk and respond more to the children under their care.
More precisely, childcare providers can:
Ask questions
Listen to the children’s needs
Encourage children to express how they feel through words
Be responsive to children’s communication attempts - including pre-linguistic behaviors like gestures, eye gaze, and coos and babbles
Engage in conversation and aim to increase conversational turns
Some of this may sound obvious but it’s trickier than you think.
Daycare providers care for many children at once.
Numerous children compete for their attention and abilities.
They need to intentionally use these techniques with a classroom of children in addition to executing their other work responsibilities. This is no easy task!
So the question we should honestly ask is:
How can daycare providers stimulate language while simultaneously achieving their work responsibilities?
Enter the speech language pathologist.
Speech language pathologists treat many children who attend daycare centers. They can share their speech and language expertise with childcare providers to inspire language facilitation and more communication exchanges in the centers.
Are you a speech language pathologist? If so, this part is for you.
For maximum effect, speech language pathologists should coach daycare providers by applying adult learning principles.
Barging into a classroom and dictating terms to overworked teachers and daycare providers is not only disrespectful, it’s ineffective.
Telling child care providers to “Ask more questions”, “Listen to Johnny when he speaks' ', and “Try to keep the conversation going” provides superficial and trite guidance.
If you desire to improve outcomes for children, you must actively engage fellow educators in the problem solving and decision making process (Romano et al., 2021).
Seeking active participation and input from daycare providers increases awareness of existing language opportunities in the classroom, sparks ways to improve these moments, and inspires motivation to follow through with techniques during daily routines.
Speech language pathologists can brainstorm with daycare providers by asking questions like the following:
When do conversations occur most in your classroom?
When do you have the most one-on-one interaction with children in or outside the classroom?
When is it easiest for you to ask questions, respond to sounds and words, and listen to children?
What can you do to further stimulate language in your classroom?
Asking these questions will help fellow adults discover what moments of the day or situations in the environment are most conducive to language stimulation. For instance, diaper changes and trips to the bathroom may offer more one-on-one time with a child versus story time. Or, maybe it’s easier for daycare providers to have longer conversations with a child when the class is divided into centers versus trying to chat during recess. Adult learners benefit from their life experiences. Building upon existing, positive language experiences will benefit adult learners and consequently optimize outcomes for the children.
So think - I shouldn’t tell childcare providers what to do and when to do it, I should coach and guide them to apply and embed language strategies into their daily routines in a way that is relevant and meaningful for them.
I hope this post has been helpful. Please feel free to share it with others who may enjoy reading it.
References:
Huttenlocher, J., Vasilyeva, M., Cymerman, E., & Levine, S. (2002). Language input and child syntax. Cognitive Psychology, 45(3), 337-374.
Larson, A.L., Barrett, T.S., & McConnell, S.R. (2020). Exploring early childhood language environments: A comparison of language use, exposure, and interactions in the home and childcare settings. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 51(7), 706-719.
@LENAEarlyTalk, via. “Home.” LENA, 2 Aug. 2022, http://www.lena.org/.
Romano, M., Eugenio, J., Kiratzis, E. (2021). Coaching childcare providers to support toddlers’ gesture use with children experiencing early childhood poverty. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 52 (4), 686-701.