Educating Young Children Volume 1 - Winter 2026 | Page 72

their own actions, words, and play. The children and I reflected on themes like missing home, and we explored the feelings associated with making a new friend and having someone to confide in. Our whole-group discussion served as an important introduction to the text. It also tapped children’ s oral language skills and comprehension as they made connections to the narrative.

To encourage more targeted explorations during small-group time, I specifically focused on reading comprehension, oral language skills, and print awareness. I also scaffolded children’ s understandings in different ways. These included

› Asking open-ended questions. To aid children’ s developing reading comprehension, I asked them to analyze the characters’ actions and motivations. My questions included“ Why do you think Lubna gave her pebble to Amir?” and“ What did she want him to feel?” For oral language development, I encouraged children to use richer vocabulary:“ Besides happy or sad, what other feelings did Lubna have in the story?”

› Providing visual prompts. To build print awareness, I used picture cards from the book. I asked the children to sequence the cards and describe what was happening in each picture. This reinforced their understanding that illustrations contribute to a narrative. I then cross-referenced the cards with the book:“ Let’ s find the page where Lubna meets Amir. What clues did the illustrator give us with the pictures on that page to show they were becoming friends?”

› Offering sentence starters. I asked children to fill in the sentence“ Lubna felt ______ because _____.” This helped them express their understanding of the story and strengthened their oral language skills by encouraging them to use more complex sentence structures. It also helped to scaffold children as they worked to articulate their feelings.