LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN FROM LOW-

INCOME BACKGROUNDS

PowerPoint Outline• I. Background and Introduction• II. Potential Negative Effects of Poverty• III. Situational vs. Generational Poverty• IV. Oral Language Skills of Low-SES Children• V. Literacy Skills of Low-SES Children• VI. Considerations in Assessment of Language

Skills• VII. Considerations in Language Intervention• VIII. Increasing Executive Functioning Skills• IX. Developing a Growth Mindset

My own story…

I’ve written a book: **

• Increasing language skills of students from low-income backgrounds: Practical strategies for professionals (2nd ed. 2013). Plural Publishing Company.

I. BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION**• (no stats are on exam)

National Center** for Children in Poverty, 2015:

22% of children in the U.S. live in families that are considered officially poor.

National Center for Children in Poverty, 2015 (continued):**

• Child poverty rates are highest among Black, Latino, and American Indian children

• Across the states, official child poverty rates range from 11% in New Hampshire to 32% in Mississippi

According to the Pew Research Center (2014):**

• Today, most poor Americans are in their prime working years (ages 18-64)

• In 1959, only 41.7% of Americans in this age group were poor; in 2012, 57% of poor Americans were ages 18-64

• Today in the U.S., 21.8% of poor Americans are children under the age of 18

In terms of race and ethnicity, the following numbers of children live

in low-SES homes:**• 27% White• 30% Asian• 61% African American• 63% Hispanic

Children in the Hispanic community…..

• **32% of migrant workers have less than a 9th grade education as compared to 3% of the American workforce as a whole (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2012)

• Many migrant workers have an average income below the national poverty line (Castillo, 2012)

• **U.S. is shifting from manufacturing, industrial society to service-oriented, high-tech society, many blue-collar jobs requiring little education but paying well are disappearing/being outsourced

www.reviewjournal.com 2015**• 63% of all job openings by 2018 will require

workers with at least some college education• The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that total

employment is expected to increase by 20.5 million jobs from 2010 to 2020. Jobs requiring a master’s degree are expected to grow the fastest, while those requiring a high school diploma will experience the slowest growth over the 2010- 20 time frame.

Blue collar positions…** Are ↓

Adults w/ low literacy skills ↓ choices

In many countries like the Philippines, many jobs such as fishing and farming that do not require literacy skills

Homelessness is a factor for many children**

• Homeless children and youth lack a fixed, regular, and adequate night time residence

• Live: cars, parks, public places, abandoned buildings, or bus or train stations

• Homelessness: inability of people to pay for housing; impacted by both income and affordability of available housing (National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2012)

My husband Mike and my son Mark and I…**

• Have been privileged to work directly with members of the homeless community through a church ministry

II. POTENTIAL NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF POVERTY**• Homelessness → irregular attendance

• Lack of food→learning problems, and stunted physical growth

• Neighborhood problems, such as increased exposure to crime and violence, post-traumatic stress syndrome, inferior schools, fewer safe places for children to learn, play, and explore

When it is dangerous outside…**• Children stay indoors, watch TV

• Some low-SES children watch up to 11 hours of TV a day

If you were a single, low-SES mom in a dangerous neighborhood, how would you fill your preschool child’s 14-hour day? (day care…..? Assume you have 4 children)**

• **Family stress, including parental depression, fighting, potential neglect and abuse of children

• Fewer learning resources such as books, quality child care, good libraries

• Home and work responsibilities take priority over school

• Fewer extracurricular activities, travel opportunities

• **Asthma

• Exposure to lead

• Prematurity

• Lack of access to health care, including dental care

Research has shown that (Owens, 2016):

We know from research that:**• The overall warmth and affect of a home,

which promote caregiver-child bonding, are the very foundation of language development

Remember that responsiveness is not just verbal…**

• Maternal emotional responsiveness and attachment are absolutely foundational for building linguistic and cognitive skills as well as resiliency, optimism, and hope

Westby, 2015

III. SITUATIONAL VS. GENERATIONAL POVERTY

Generational poverty: (Urbanventures.org, 2015)

They have an external locus of control:

Situational Poverty:

There is an internal locus of control:**• They can influence the future by making good

choices now

• People believe they can shape their own fate

• Open toward intervention

In order to move out of generational poverty…

IV. ORAL LANGUAGE SKILLS OF LOW-SES CHILDREN**

• Research has found that SES is more critical to a child’s language development than ethnic background

• The factor most highly related to SES is the mother’s educational level

Research:**

• Early communication experiences differ based on family income to such a degree that SES can predict a child’s academic performance during the school-age years

Low-SES caregivers who have little education…**

• Tend to provide less oral language stimulation for their children

• Hart and Risley (1995, 2003) studied children from professional, working-class, and welfare homes

• They found that in a 365-day year, children from professional families heard about 4 million utterances; children from welfare families heard about 250,000 utterances

Hart and Risley extrapolated that…**

• In order for the welfare children to gain a vocabulary equivalent to that of children from working class homes, these welfare children would need to attend a preschool program for forty hours per week where they heard language at a level used in professional homes

Other research has found that…

Low-SES caregivers…**• Are also more likely to slap or spank their

children rather than using verbal discipline

• These children then grow up to solve problems by means of physical aggression rather than discussion

Low-SES children tend to have:**• Low vocabulary skills

• Poorer grammar

• Pragmatics problems (e.g., being “rude,” interrupting, not using conventional manners or saying things such as “please” and “thank you”)

Westby, 2015—we need to teach academic talk:

Westby 2015 continued:

Scheule, 2015:

We can also use teachable moments**

• Dr. R. to Jeffrey: “Please finish your paper so we can play our game.”

• Jeffrey: “No, b---”

• Dr. R.: “Jeffrey!” (etc.)

• Jeffrey (starts crying) “But my dad always calls my mom that!”

• Dr. R: “Honey, I understand what happens at home. But there are different rules at school” (etc.)

V. LITERACY SKILLS OF LOW-SES CHILDREN**

• Families may be too poor to buy books

• Parents’ low educational level leads to less reading

• Also, reading style is affected. Research shows that low-SES parents use lower level language, tell children to pay attention without interrupting, and ask very basic, straightforward questions that don’t require much thought

According to Moran (parenting.com)**

• A child growing up in a middle-class neighborhood will own an average of 13+ books

• Low-income communities average about one book for every 300 children

Having reading difficulties:

Thus…**• Reading and writing skills are often low

—very basic and concrete• There is difficulty with

decontextualized language

Many low-SES children…**• Have substantial

difficulty with phonological awareness skills

VI. CONSIDERATIONS IN ASSESSMENT OF LANGUAGE SKILLS**

• Low-SES children get overreferred to special education

• Many standardized tests of language skills are biased against low-SES students

• There can be grammatical bias

• Test tasks are often highly decontextualized (“Tell me everything you can about a bird.”)

In addition…

In order to validly evaluate the language skills of low-SES children, we can use:

VII. CONSIDERATIONS IN LANGUAGE INTERVENTION**

• Reach out to families, by giving them lists of resources like youtube videos

• We can also send books home

• We can send home short DVDs that demonstrate language stimulation techniques

We need to focus on developing:

We also need to teach basic safety**

Caesar and Nelson (2013)**• Described a highly effective program called

SALSA—Supporting Acquisition of Language and Literacy Through School-Home Activities

• This study assessed the efficacy of a simple literacy-building program with migrant Hispanic families who had limited English, low literacy levels, high mobility, and challenges with poverty

• **The SALSA project explored how a parent-child journaling activity could be used to build a home-school partnership

• Experimental group—given children’s books and also did a home journaling activity on the weekends

• Control group—just books, no journaling

The experimental group:**• Was given (at the end of each week) red SALSA

bags, with spiral notebooks, colored pencils, and other inexpensive drawing supplies

• Parents were asked to talk with their children about their activities and produce simple drawings about everyday events and activities, adding written notes (when possible) in Spanish and/or English

• **The weekend gave the parents and children time to complete the assignment; children brought the bags back to Head Start on Monday

• In the control classroom, preschoolers brought home green SALSA bags with books and were encouraged to talk about the books with their parents (no journaling)

A fantastic article:**• Neuman, S.B., & Wright, T.S. (2014). Teaching

vocabulary in the early childhood classroom. American Educator, Summer 2014, 4-13.

Neuman and Wright (2014) suggest that to increase vocabulary for literacy, we use knowledge networks

We can also use categories**

• Marine Life

• Fish

• Whale

• Shark

• Farm Animals

• Cow

• Chicken

• Pig

According to Neuman and Wright (2014)

Neuman and Wright 2014:**• Research has shown that with low-SES English

Language Learners, multi-media instruction significantly narrowed the gap between ELLs and non-ELLs in knowledge of target words

• The addition of dynamic visuals and sounds in video accompanied by informational books provides children with multiple strategies for acquiring word knowledge

Key Steps in Teaching Vocabulary Words:

VIII. INCREASING EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING SKILLS (teachers &

SLPs)**• Low-SES students are vulnerable in this

area due to environmental and physiological factors

They have a lot of chaos in their lives…**

Executive Functioning Involves:**• The problem-solving processes that are utilized at

the outset of a novel, nonautomatic task

• Goal-directed behavior that we engage in to be successful in life

• Thinking about and planning for the future, and considering our choices and their consequences

We can help children develop these skills by:

Teach kids to ask:**• What is the problem I am having

right now?

• Why am I having this problem?

• What can I do about it?

Help students to think as follows:**

• The choice I made was____• The consequence of this choice

was____.• Next time, I could choose to

_____.• I could also choose to____.

To help students move out of poverty…**

• We can be caring, involved role models

IX. DEVELOPING A GROWTH MINDSET

When children are little: **

• High levels of warmth and nurturance from caregivers promote bonding, attachment, and a secure foundation

• However, when children reach early adolescence, they are motivated by a very different kind of nurturance

• This includes being taken seriously and challenged to work hard and improve themselves—a growth mindset

The research of Carol Dweck**

• Divided people into 2 types: those who have a fixed mindset, and those who have a growth mindset

• Those with a fixed mindset believe that intelligence and other skills are inborn and static, or not amenable to change

Those with a growth mindset…

• **We have believed for years in a “fixed brain,” or that we are born with a certain fixed amount of innate intelligence

• Recent findings in neuroscience and cognitive psychology have shown that the brain has a great deal of plasticity and can be taught, even into older age

• (I love the story of a student’s grandma, who began studying Spanish when she was 80!)

In Dweck’s research…

Students in the experimental group…

Again, the experimental students heard that:

In other words…

The researchers reported that:

For example:

Students were taught that:

At the end of the year…

The researchers concluded: **

• It is important, particularly if this era of high stakes testing continues, for students to understand that these tests assess current skills and not long-term potential to learn

• This is critical since many students make take their disappointing achievement test scores as a measure of their fixed, underlying ability and become discouraged about their academic futures

Interestingly, the researchers also commented that:

We can help students by… **

• Teaching them about the new science of brain plasticity and the new view of talent and giftedness as dynamic attributes that can be developed.

• Too often, the brain is believed to be static, and talent and giftedness are seen as permanent, unchanging personal attributes that automatically bring later success

•

Process praise is best:

**

• Process praise contributes to much better outcomes than intelligence or product praise

• “You are such a hard worker. I’m really excited about how you’re stretching yourself now and working to learn hard things.”

• It may take more time for you to catch on to this and be comfortable with this material, but you if you keep at it like this you will.”

• “

**

• Thus, when we teach new skills, it is important for us to emphasize that skills in this area are acquired through instruction and personal application

• This is not to deny that students may learn at different rates, but it is meant to emphasize that these skills are not the domain of a special few

Examples of what to say: **• “Let’s go around and have each of you share something

hard you learned today that you didn’t know before.” • “Who had a good struggle? Let’s share what we

struggled with today” • “Get ready for a terrific struggle! Are you ready? Here

we go.” • “That was a lot of hard work. Can you just imagine all

the connections you grew to-day?” • “Who thinks they made a really interesting mistake?” • “Who else made a terrific mistake that will help us

learn?”

Me with a defiant (and huge!) 15-year old with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and a

history of violence: **

• Dr. R.: “Kiree, I want you to do 50 productions of sentences with slow, careful speech.”

• Kiree: “No way. I can’t.”

• Dr. R. (after the hour was up): “Just so you know, you did 120 good productions. You didn’t even think you could do 50! Look at you! “

Recent research concludes: **

• Low-SES students can succeed when they receive constant encouragement and messages about how hard work, grit, and perseverance can change things for the better

• It’s all about character, conscientiousness, and good habits—and these can be developed!

How have I applied this?**

**

My latest:**

PowerPoint Outline**• I. Background and Introduction• II. Potential Negative Effects of Poverty• III. Situational vs. Generational Poverty• IV. Oral Language Skills of Low-SES Children• V. Literacy Skills of Low-SES Children• VI. Considerations in Assessment of Language

Skills• VII. Considerations in Language Intervention• VIII. Increasing Executive Functioning Skills• IX. Developing a Growth Mindset