Learning Language and Loving It – The Hanen Program® for Early Childhood Educators/Teachers

Learning Language and Loving It helps teachers* make language learning a natural part of everyday conversation, play activities and daily routines in any early childhood or child care setting.

This innovative program addresses the teacher's vital role in facilitating children's social and language development and in fostering peer interaction, pretend play and the development of emergent literacy. While teachers use the knowledge they gain from this program to promote social, language and early literacy development, it is particularly helpful in addressing the needs of children with language delays, special needs or those who are learning a second language.

*Terminology for staff providing child care and early childhood education varies greatly in different provinces and countries. For simplicity’s sake we use the terms educator, child care provider and teacher interchangeably to refer to all relevant professions.

Research shows that in child care or early childhood settings, the amount and quality of interaction between caregiver and child are the most important factors in child well being and development. The Learning Language and Loving It Program integrates the principles of language facilitation and a child-centred approach to early childhood education and child care.

The goals of Learning Language and Loving It go beyond enhancement of language skills. When educators and other professionals working with young children encourage and respond to children's initiations, taking pleasure in their efforts to communicate and explore, not only do they lay the foundation for language learning, but their responsiveness also helps infants become attached and develop a sense of effectiveness and autonomy. Their responsiveness also helps toddlers learn to separate, explore, and develop their mental capacities. They are, in effect, helping children to build trusting relationships, positive self-esteem and effective learning skills.

Program Goals and Strategies
Learning Language and Loving It addresses the need for

	Prevention of Language Delays - by helping teachers create a language-rich, highly interactive environment for children at risk for language delays
	Early Language Intervention - by helping teachers provide children who have identified language delays with a highly interactive language-learning environment geared to each child's individual language level and conversational style
	Language Enrichment - by helping teachers provide typically developing children with an enriched language-learning environment that builds on their existing language skills and promotes the development of the learning of language

	How to create an enriched, interactive language-learning environment for all children in their care
	Their vital role in facilitating children's language, social and literacy development
	Specific strategies they can use during their common, daily interactions with the children in their care  (especially those children who have language delays and special needs) to enhance language, social and literacy development

Who Runs the Program?

Programs are led by Hanen Certified speech-language pathologists who have taken the Advanced Hanen Workshop on Learning Language and Loving It. The Hanen Certified speech-language pathologist leading the program may be assisted by an early childhood education consultant who has attended a Learning Language and Loving It Program and has been trained to help run the program.

Who Should Attend?
Learning Language and Loving It is designed for early childhood educators/teachers, child care workers and anyone who works with and/or cares for young children.

 

Up to 20 teachers can be accommodated in a program. This usually involves combining staff from two or three child care centres. To promote consistency, all staff members at a child care centre are encouraged to attend the program. Directors of some centres support their staff’s participation in the program by offering an evening meal, child care or time in lieu.

The Learning Language and Loving It Program can also be taken by groups of child care providers who care for up to five children in their homes. The fact that these providers work out of their homes limits the number of program participants since video feedback sessions are conducted in the provider's home, making it difficult for the speech-language pathologist to accommodate more than eight providers in one program.
 

Program Format
The format of Learning Language and Loving It is intensive. For this program to be effective, teachers need to be involved for an extended period of time to learn the principles on which the program is based, to try out the strategies in the classroom and then to learn to apply the program's strategies flexibly and across contexts.

The Program Includes:

	an orientation meeting where teachers learn about the Hanen approach and what the program involves
	5 - 8 group training sessions for the teachers (usually 2-1/2 hrs each) held every other week in the child care centre, usually in the evening. Group training sessions are designed to teach program content, which involves heightening teachers' awareness of their own and the children's interactive behaviour and teaching them practical strategies and practices that enhance language, social, and literacy development. All sessions involve experiential learning activities, which ensure all participants' active involvement. Session components include a combination of: interactive presentations by the Hanen Certified speech-language pathologist; hands-on simulated practice of strategies taught during the session; viewing of videotapes filmed in the child care centre, as well as the Learning Language and Loving It Teaching Tape to analyze use of strategies by teachers; and small and large group discussions.
	4 - 6   individual videotaping and feedback sessions conducted by the speech-language pathologist in the child care centre in the weeks between group training sessions During each videotaping and feedback week, every teacher in the program is videotaped for five minutes during a daily routine or play activity with a group of children (usually including a child who has special needs or whose social and/or language development is cause for concern). Arrangements are made for teachers to leave the classroom later that day to review their videotaped interactions with the speech-language pathologist for approximately 30 minutes. The primary focus in reviewing the videotaped interaction is to foster the teacher's ability to observe and self-evaluate her interaction with the children and to collaboratively develop concrete recommendations for how she can modify her use of the strategies to better facilitate the children's interactions and language learning.
	Teacher evaluation of the program Teachers' feedback on the program is obtained both during and after the program. Feedback obtained during the program is used to respond to the needs expressed by teachers. For example, if a review of program content or information on a particular issue is requested, the speech-language pathologist will try to accommodate this request. Feedback obtained at the end of the program is collated and used to improve subsequent programs.

Learning Resources
The program is supported by the illustrated guidebook, Learning Language and Loving It: A Guide to Promoting Children’s Social and Language Development in Early Childhood Settings (Weitzman, 1992), as well as instructional videotapes. These are available to anyone interested in promoting children’s social and language development in early childhood settings. Visit our Learning Resource Centre for a complete description of our books, videos and other materials, or browse some sample pages from the Learning Language and Loving It guidebook. 

To order Hanen materials, click here.

 

What Educators Say   "Through watching my tapes and receiving feedback, I am now more aware of each child’s individual needs and I adjust my interactive style to meet those needs."   A Teacher in Alberta, Canada

 

 

 

 

 

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