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

Click here to go to all skills for ages 33-36 Months.

Produces the following morphemes: Uncontractible copula (“Who’s here? I am.”)

Situations for Observation of Skill

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

Elicitation Strategy

Ask the child a question with the verb is as a stand-alone word (not combined with another verb). For example, play a hide-the-object game and ask, “What is in the box?”

Behavior Observed

The child uses the verb is without a connecting verb: I am; he is; the X was.

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/.