ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 will consider the multiple ways young learners may be communicating within the early childhood environment. Readers will be encouraged to consider how a child with reduced speech clarity and language delays and disorders resulting in reduced verbal communication may benefit from communication strategies or tools to effectively share ideas, ask questions, or comment. Fostering all communication modalities ensures each child feels empowered to effectively communicate and participate with peers and adults in the early childhood environment. Early childhood environments cultivate language learning and communication opportunities within routine activities. The chapter will provide ideas for increasing effective communication for each child during routine activities in the early childhood classroom. Early childhood educators can positively impact the functional and effective communication of each child through provision of multimodal communication opportunities, the use schedules, visuals, and building of background knowledge and vocabulary.
