Educating Young Children Volume 1 - Winter 2026 | Page 71

Differentiation ensures every child is growing in literacy, especially multilingual learners and children with disabilities. For instance, educators can support multilingual learners in a small-group setting by using bilingual books, visual aids, and peer partnering to support language skills. The goal is not to attain perfect pronunciation, word choice, or grammar. Rather, it is to actively engage each child and build their confidence with reading.

When working with children with disabilities, educators can use adapted materials; for example, large-print or tactile books and assistive technology like communication boards. They also can modify small-group activities by breaking tasks into smaller steps and incorporating multimodal elements to make stories more engaging. These strategies ensure that all children, regardless of their backgrounds or abilities, have rich, meaningful, small-group experiences.

Lubna and Pebble is the story of a young refugee girl, Lubna, who finds comfort in a stone she names Pebble. She treats the stone as her best friend, sharing her fears and secrets with it. After she meets a boy named Amir, they become friends and play together. When it comes time for Lubna and her father to leave the refugee camp, she gives her beloved pebble to Amir, so he will continue to have a friend and source of comfort.

When I read this book to children during our whole-group time, I facilitated embodied discussions of emotions and experiences, such as mimicking the cold wind and shivering. My goal was for the children to become fully immersed in this story, expressing it through