Intentional Teaching: Supporting Literacy

Summary

The video demonstrates intentional teaching in preschool, focusing on purposeful planning, using teachable moments, and integrating literacy throughout the day. Teachers are presented as active partners in children’s learning: they observe and listen, respond to children’s interests, and create opportunities to extend play and thinking.

Main Ideas and Practices

• Plan with purpose and adapt to children. Teachers consider children’s interests, developmental levels, and relevant preschool standards when planning. They observe children regularly and use what they notice to shape and individualize learning experiences.
• Create engagement. Teachers show genuine interest and use expressive voices, movement, facial expressions, and attention to keep children involved. They provide open-ended materials—such as cardboard pieces, paper-towel tubes, and familiar household objects—that invite children to explore and experiment.
• Use questions to encourage thinking and language. Questions can help children observe, compare, predict, solve problems, and consider different possibilities. Examples include asking what children notice, what they could do with a material, or what might happen if they add a different color.
• Listen and validate children. Teachers pause and tune in to what children say and do. Acknowledging children’s ideas and asking them to “tell me more” helps them feel respected and encourages further conversation.
• Recognize and use teachable moments. Everyday classroom events can become learning opportunities. Teachers build on children’s actions or interests by introducing vocabulary, offering explanations, and prompting further investigation.
• Extend play and connect ideas. Teachers help children take an activity further—for example, by carrying tubes from one play area to another, adding a phone book to telephone play, or exploring how a ramp works. These extensions can link language, science, math, and fine-motor skills.
• Integrate learning across topics. A study, theme, or activity can bring together several areas of learning. The video gives examples such as using a recipe book to connect different skills and including literature in a yoga routine.
• Make literacy part of the whole classroom day.
  • Keep books accessible across different play areas and choose books connected to classroom materials and children’s interests.
  • Build vocabulary through conversation and by introducing useful words, such as “muffled,” during play.
  • Use songs, rhymes, pretend words, and alliteration to help children notice sounds in words.
  • Turn waiting times into opportunities for rhyming or alliteration games.
  • Support children’s understanding that print carries meaning by involving them in making shopping lists, writing shared rules, and signing their names.
  • Provide opportunities to enjoy books independently, with friends, and at home. A classroom lending library and books in English and Spanish help connect literacy with families.
• Be present while following children’s lead. Teachers build relationships by participating in play, getting down to children’s level, and letting children guide the activity. The video emphasizes that this helps children become more engaged and independent.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Opening and closing narrator: Introduces the video’s focus and refers viewers to the New Jersey preschool classroom teaching guidelines.
• Preschool teachers and educators: Describe and demonstrate planning, questioning, listening, extending learning, and supporting literacy.
• Children in the classroom: Participate in the activities and respond during play and learning.
• Source cited: New Jersey Preschool Classroom Teaching Guidelines, identified in the video as the basis for the series.