This is what I’m reading for professional development. This year, I’m going to share with you the top takeaways. Girls develop language skills before boys. In many cases, the boy brains ability to read and write is about one and a half years behind the girl brains ability. Wow. That makes sense on why girls are typically easier to teach. Babies who use sign language have improved language skills and higher A IQs. The first step to reading is listening to language. Babies try to put sounds together at about eight months. By that time, there should have been a lot of conversation between baby and others. Books should have been read on a daily basis. All of these things do make a difference. So I’ve had questions on when do you start reading to your child when they’re born. You read from the time they’re born. Books must be present in the home and read to an infant and toddler in order for them to develop their vocabularies, have background knowledge, and develop an appreciation for the sounds of the words. During those first few years, it’s important to talk to the baby, explain exactly what you’re doing and why. So this is really, really huge. Something called the 30 million word gap. And actually, that research is in here as well. According to Hart and Risley, that is in 1995. The limited vocabulary of children of lower socioeconomic status comes from the lack of elaboration during conversations with parents. And caregivers. Their research states that children from professional families hear about 11 million words per year. Middle class children hear about 6 million words per year. Welfare children hear about 3 million. Children that hear more words before age 3 will experience improved student achievement later in school. So talk, talk, talk to your child. Read, read, read, sing, sing, sing. It’s so important. Oh, you know what? That’s what it says up here. Talk, talk, talk, read, read, read, read to the child every day. The child on your lap and read into his or her ear. This way they see the appropriate way to hold a book. Sing, sing, sing. When you talk to babies, look directly at them and pause for responses. Read nursery rhymes, rhyming story books. This one’s good. Helping students identify similarities and differences is the number one way to raise student achievement. I thought that was really interesting. I did not know that. Make sure you’re using extended questions. So a lower level be like, what’s the boy’s name? A higher level is going to be, how do you think the boy felt? So those where they have to really describe what they’re thinking. The importance of downtime for children. As we promote activities for youngsters to wire their brains for success, we must also allow them time to work on these connections. As adults, we give ourselves brain breaks to help refocus and refresh our minds. So, so should we do this with our Young students. Yes, I actually did a whole PD on this so that I’m hearing this again. There must be movement to anchor thought. Therefore, these seemingly short attention spans may be lengthened by adding movement to the learning. The professional development I did said that your students are really going to learn so much more if they can move before you have them learning. So ideally, if you can go to recess and then come to your large group activity, that’s going to be best. Some researchers suggest that age 5 is the end of the period for optimal physical and motor growth. Scientists believe that in this area, there may be time when it’s too late to make the perfect connection for ideal motor skills. Oh, this is probably the most important one. If you need, um, more reason to do free choice centers in your school. Free play is vital to development and learning. Recent studies suggest that children who learn through play do better in their later years in school. Oh, I love this because it’s a big advocate of chores. Um, I also read a study. Look, I’m giving you all these studies. 85% of the people in the study had to do chores as a kid. But out of those 85% that had to do chores, only 20% of them make their own kids do chores. Chores are a huge way that you can help your child feel needed. And part of The family. It gives them responsibility and it gives them a good work ethic. A university of Toronto study found that kids who have routine chores to do are likely to be more considerate of others. Those are my takeaways.