## North Carolina Early Learning and Development Progressions: Birth to Five

#### Domain: NC Foundations for Early Learning: Language Development and Communication (LDC)

#### Subdomain: Learning to Communicate

#### Goal: Children use most grammatical constructions of their home language well.

#### Skill Progression: Use most grammatical constructions of home language well

#### Age: 33-36 Months

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### Produces compound sentences (two or more independent clauses or simple sentences combined by and, but, or) such as “I ate and I went to bed.

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the child in daily routines. Record or write down the conversation for later analysis.

Elicitation Strategy

Elicit complex sentences by stating, “I wonder why those animals are heading to the barn. (e.g., “They are going to the barn because they want to sleep.”) Ask questions such as, “Which baby is that?” to elicit dependent clauses.

Behavior Observed

The child creates complex sentences by combining two simple sentences, (e.g., “I’m going outside, and I’m going to swing.”) They also incorporate dependent clauses (e.g., “I’m going outside so I can swing.”)

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Encourage early childhood educators and parents to model complex sentences, particularly ones using but, or, because, then, etc. These words allow children to express more complex relationships.

North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2015

©2015 by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.