The Creative Curriculum® for Pre-K - Criterion 2.3
Loading navigation...
Criterion 2.3: Language and Literacy
Curriculum materials are designed to support students with the development of essential language and literacy skills.
Indicator 2.3a
Curriculum materials are designed to support receptive and expressive language development through rich oral language experiences.
The Creative Curriculum for Pre-K materials meet expectations for supporting receptive and expressive language development (2.3a).
The materials include daily structures such as Large Group Meetings, Question of the Day, Interactive Read-Alouds, Small Groups, and Choice Time, which create frequent opportunities for children to talk, listen, and share ideas (Volume 1: The Foundation, pp. 82–84). Read-Alouds are designed as interactive experiences, with teacher prompts to predict, retell, and explain story events, guidance for repeated readings, and bilingual vocabulary supports (Volume 3: Literacy, pp. 44–47). Pre-reading activities, such as alliteration games (Light, Investigation 3, Day 3, p. 80), further strengthen vocabulary and phonemic awareness.
Expressive language is intentionally supported through structured activities. For example, Author & Illustrator (Light, Investigation 2, p. 52) guides children in writing stories and sharing them with a partner who illustrates their books, supporting storytelling and collaborative discussion. Intentional Teaching Cards LL03 and LL09 encourage children to describe objects in detail, use descriptive words in outdoor exploration, and build group stories one idea at a time. LL10 guides children in acting out and narrating familiar stories. In the Block Area, teachers prompt children to explain their building choices and describe their structures, while the Dramatic Play Area uses props like menus, telephones, and grocery lists to spark dialogue, negotiation, problem-solving, and collaborative storytelling (Volume 2: Interest Areas, pp. 85, 107).
Receptive language is embedded across routines and activities. Teachers prompt children to follow multi-step directions in movement activities (LL11), listen carefully during “mystery bag” games (LL05), and recall details during shared book reading (Volume 3: Literacy, pp. 42–47). The Message Board (Volume 3, p. 34) and interactive routines such as “Mighty Minutes” provide additional opportunities for listening, discussion, and the use of new vocabulary.
The materials also include strategies to support dual language learners. Teachers are encouraged to use children’s home languages, pair visuals and gestures with spoken English, and invite children to share words or phrases from home (Volume 1: The Foundation, pp. 104–105). Across all contexts, teachers are guided to model rich vocabulary, ask open-ended questions, repeat and expand on children’s statements, and scaffold conversations, helping children build more complex language structures.
Overall, The Creative Curriculum for Pre-K provides a wide variety of intentional, developmentally appropriate strategies and activities to support oral language. The materials consistently integrate expressive and receptive language development across routines, interest areas, small groups, and whole-group experiences, giving children multiple, meaningful opportunities to practice and expand their oral language skills.
Indicator 2.3b
Curriculum materials provide intentional opportunities to engage with common, academic and content-specific vocabulary words and related concepts.
The Creative Curriculum for Pre-K materials meet expectations for supporting vocabulary (2.3b).
Each part of every Teaching Guide includes an At-a-Glance chart that identifies the key vocabulary (in both English and Spanish) the teacher should introduce/reinforce during that part of the study. For example:
Grocery Store Study
-English: grocery store, recipe, grocery list, customer, research
-Spanish: supermercado, receta, lista de compras, cliente, investigación
Seeds Study
-English: fruit, core, segments, pit, stone, grass, dandelion, carpologist
-Spanish: fruta, corazón, segmentos, hueso, carozo, césped, diente de león, carpólogo
The materials offer educators some guidance on introducing vocabulary. For example, in the Teacher Guide for “Architecture” Investigation 3. On Day 4, the vocabulary includes elevator and escalator, and teachers are given guidance on how to teach the words. The materials state, “introduce the words elevator and escalator, which both help people move between floors in a building. Explain that an elevator is a small room that goes up and down, and an escalator is a set of stairs that rotates to move people up or down.” Additionally, teachers are guided to ask some questions to support student understanding including “are there any places in our building where we have to go up and down?” Lastly, the activity requires students to go on a walk and identify any stairs, ramps or other ways people move up or down in the building.” (p. 78)
For the Read-Alouds that include optional suggestions book-discussion cards, the cards include an explicit list of vocabulary associated with the Read-Aloud and guidance for supporting vocabulary learning through the first, second, and third reads. Each read has a specific way to support vocabulary instruction. For example:
In the Read-Aloud, Get Set! Swim!, the first read guides teachers to “expand vocabulary by pointing to pictures, using gestures to dramatize, and provides a selection of words to focus on, including but not limited to rival and stilts. The second read guides teachers to “expand vocabulary by using more verbal explanations in support of words such as dreamy and rival, and reinforce some previously introduced words by pointing to pictures and dramatizing in support of words such as waggled and thundering. The third read suggests expanding vocabulary: focused on three words, including rival, waggled, and triumphantly.
Opportunities to learn a variety of vocabulary are evident across different activities and resources. For example:
In the Teacher Guide for Light during the “exploring the topic” section, day 1, pg. 15, students get the opportunity to learn more about the vocabulary word light during the Choice Time/Guided Discovery. The activity guides teachers to “display a few flashlights, invite the children to explore the flashlights," and “talk to the children about what they notice about the light.” Teachers are also provided with a model of how they could ask a question related to the prompt” The materials state, “Ama, you are shining the light under the shelf. What do you see under there?”
During Read-Alouds, Focused Project Learning, and other activities such as Book Discussions, teachers are provided with guidance on teaching new words and discussing them during these activities. For example, in the Teacher Guide “Percussion Instruments” during the Focused Project Learning activity, in Investigation 1, day 3, pg.42. During the activity, the teacher is guided to review the question of the day and discuss how a drumstick can be used to scrape (rub against) or strike (hit) instruments. Scrape and strike were the two vocabulary words identified in the lesson.
The materials include robust opportunities for students to learn vocabulary using non-verbal tools. For example, in the Book Discussion card “Adelita and the Veggie Cousins,” teachers are guided to “reinforce some previously introduced words by pointing to pictures and dramatizing.” In the Teacher Guide, “Architecture” Investigation 1, day 2, p.32, during Choice Time, teachers are guided to display photo cards of buildings with interesting architectural features from around the world. To help explain the vocabulary words dome and pagoda, teachers are guided to “point out the dome and the pagoda” and explain “that a dome is a large, round roof shaped like the half of a ball, and a pagoda is a type of tower found in Asia.”
Overall, The Creative Curriculum for Pre-K materials provide intentional, repeated, and well-supported opportunities for children to learn and use new words across studies, routines, and learning contexts. Vocabulary is clearly identified in advance in all teaching guides, and teachers are consistently guided to introduce, explain, and reinforce word meanings through explicit instruction, questioning, hands-on exploration, and repeated exposure during Read-Alouds, Project Learning, and Choice Time. The inclusion of multiple instructional strategies, such as gestures, visuals, dramatization, real-world exploration, and structured rereads, supports children’s understanding of vocabulary and related concepts.
Indicator 2.3c
Curriculum materials are designed to support students in recognizing and manipulating sounds and words in spoken language.
The Creative Curriculum for Pre-K materials partially meet expectations for supporting students in recognizing and manipulating sounds and words (2.3c).
The Foundation Volume 4: Language & Literacy (pp. 15-16) defines phonological awareness and explains how it develops, progressing from simple skills (e.g., listening) to very complex skills (e.g., manipulating individual sounds in words). There is a chart that shows the difference between beginning phonological awareness skills and more advanced skills.
The Read-Aloud section of the daily schedule includes Playing with Pre-Reading Skills. The guidance includes a short activity to build phonological and phonemic awareness. Some Playing with Pre-Reading skill lessons have lessons in the Teacher Guide or use Mighty Minute activities. For example:
In the Cameras Study (p. 28), there is a lesson on identifying alliteration. The teacher holds a container and asks each child to choose a small classroom item. The teacher says a letter sound, and children look at their item and place it in the container if it starts with that letter sound.
In the Grocery Store Study (p. 24), teachers are guided to play “I spy” with rhymes. For this activity, the teacher says, “ I spy something that rhymes with bat”. Then the teacher asks the children to look around the classroom and point out an item that rhymes with the word. They say, e.g., hat/mat, hook/book, sock/block, etc.
In the Grocery Store Study (p. 28), teachers are guided to conduct an activity focused on identifying alliteration. For this activity, teachers are guided to “collect several classroom objects that begin with the same letter sound and a few that begin with different sounds, e.g., toy, truck, bear, blanket, rug, book. Ask the children to listen for the /b/ sound at the beginning of the word and tap their lap when they hear it. Hold up each item and say its name, emphasizing the beginning sound.
Some Mighty Minute Activities include MM294 Count the Syllables, MM288 Rhyming Towers, MM212 Words That Rhyme, and MM264 Change the Name.
Some additional opportunities to develop phonological awareness and phonemic awareness skills are found during other instructional times in the teaching guides:
In the Architecture Study during Choice Time: Independent Discovery–Toys and Games Exploring the Topic, Day 3: Teachers display a collection of classroom objects that have different numbers of syllables in their names, e.g., stapler, marker, block, book, paintbrush, spatula, etc. Children are invited to work together to sort the objects by the number of syllables in their names.
An example of an activity that uses letters is in the Teacher Guide, Seeds, Investigation 1, Day 3, p. 44. Prior to the Read-Aloud, students participate in a letter-correspondence activity focused on stop sounds. Teachers are guided to collect letter cards with stop sounds and to explain them to students. Teachers are told to “explain that all of the sounds are stop sounds–which means that you cannot hold the sound without the -uh at the end. Teachers are also told to model the process by holding up some of the cards, saying the stop sound without the -uh, and allowing students to repeat each sound a few times. Lastly, teachers are prompted to allow students to practice new letter sounds to the tune of Bingo.
The materials also include a set of phonogram cards to support teachers as they practice letter-sound aspects with children. These cards include 31 phonograms with their related sounds, example words for each sound, and information identifying each sound as a stop or continuous, and as voiced or voiceless.
The Foundations Volume 4: Language & Literacy (p. 17) connects sound learning to children’s writing, “Children also develop understandings about sounds, letters, and words as they attempt to write. When writing a shopping list, a child may initially write a single letter to represent an entire word (e.g., M for milk)...You might hear the child say the words slowly to listen to the sounds while writing.” Volume 4 (p. 32) also directs teachers to promote letter–sound association and phonological awareness while guiding children’s writing.
In the “Seeds Study" (p. 67), teachers are prompted during Discussion and Shared Writing to “self-talk” about hearing the /wh/ sound in white and writing it with w and h. ITE LL81 “Greeting Cards” prompts teachers to support children in sounding out words as they write. “Listen to the word hello. It starts with the /h/ sound. Can you write a /h/ to start the word hello?”
Overall, The Creative Curriculum for Pre-K materials offer a range of opportunities to support the development of phonological awareness. Activities such as alliteration, rhyming, and syllable counting effectively engage children in oral language experiences that build their ability to hear and manipulate sounds in spoken words. The materials also include some meaningful connections to letters. While these connections and writing opportunities are present, they occur less frequently, resulting in instruction that is strongest in building phonological awareness through oral language, with more limited emphasis on applying these skills through letters and writing.
Indicator 2.3d
Curriculum materials are designed to support students in developing alphabet knowledge and concepts of print.
The Creative Curriculum for Pre-K materials partially meet expectations in developing alphabet knowledge and concepts of print (2.3d).
The Foundation Volume 4: Language & Literacy includes a section that shares “What does research say?’ (pp. 29-30) about the alphabet. The same volume (p. 31) provides information about the teacher’s role in promoting knowledge of letters and words. Knowledge of print (p. 22) is defined as “how print is organized and used to convey meaning” and under conventions of print (p .23) a list of important concepts that what readers and writers must understand is included such as “print is read from left to right and top to bottom, letters are written in two forms: uppercase and lowercase, letters represent sounds, etc. An example of modeling writing during a large-group meeting with a focus on concepts of print is provided (pp. 126-127)
Some activities in the Teaching Guides support alphabet knowledge and concepts of print. For example:
Alphabet Knowledge
-LL03 Letter Cards
-LLO5 Jumping Beans
-LL07 Letters, Letters. Letters
-LL13 Foam Paint Letters
Concepts of Print
-LL20 Baggie Books
-LL23 Playing with Environmental Print
-LL40 What was for Breakfast?
-LL46 Storyboard
-LL60-Writing with Wordless Books
Other sections of the Teaching Guides also support alphabet knowledge and concepts of print, such as in the “ Seeds Study” Investigation (Day 1, p. 36). The Letter Sound Trouble activity encourages children to generate words beginning with a specific sound and locate the matching letter in an alphabet book. In the same study (Exploring the Topic, Day 1, p. 16), the Making My Name activity invites children to explore the letters in their teacher’s name before sequencing the letters in their own names, supporting early letter recognition and understanding of print order. Similarly, in the Percussions Investigation (Day 3, p. 24), the Letters, Letters, Letters activity allows children to use alphabet stamps and magnets to connect spoken sounds to written letters through hands-on exploration.
The materials also integrate alphabet and print activities into some Read-Alouds and Playful Routines. In the Percussions Teacher Guide (Investigation 3, Day 3, p. 76), teachers are guided to use alphabet books to prompt letter identification and sound repetition. Additional playful learning opportunities appear in the Mighty Minutes activities, such as:
-MM213 Looking for a Letter
-MM244 Alphabet Bag
-MM279 Letter, Letter, Sound
-MM300 Letter Clues
Overall, The Creative Curriculum for Pre-K materials include a variety of reading and writing activities that engage children with letters and print, supporting emerging alphabet knowledge and basic concepts of print. Children interact with letters and written language through guided discovery activities, intentional teaching experiences, read-alouds, classroom materials, and playful routines such as Mighty Minutes. These experiences provide meaningful opportunities for letter recognition and interaction with print. However, opportunities for instruction are not consistently organized within a regular daily or weekly routine. As a result, support for developing alphabet knowledge and print concepts is present, but opportunities vary in frequency and consistency across the materials.
Indicator 2.3e
Curriculum materials support children’s comprehension and understanding through a variety of high-quality texts and genres.
The Creative Curriculum for Pre-K materials meet expectations for supporting children’s comprehension (2.3e).
The materials include 44 texts, comprising 34 literary texts and 10 informational texts. This reflects a strong emphasis on narrative and story-based reading experiences, while intentionally incorporating informational texts to build background knowledge, vocabulary, and early content understanding.
Across the texts, authors and illustrators represent a range of racial and ethnic identities, with White and Latino/Hispanic creators most frequently represented, alongside Black/African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, Biracial, Multiracial, and Other identities. Several informational texts are credited to teams at Teaching Strategies, rather than individual authors or illustrators. Texts include a mix of female, male, and collaborative author/illustrator teams.
Text summaries show that the Pre-K texts feature a wide range of child protagonists, including boys, girls, mixed-gender groups, families, classrooms, and animal characters often used to represent human experiences. Protagonists reflect multiple racial and ethnic identities, and many texts center on themes of belonging, friendship, emotions, family structures, classroom routines, and community. Several texts intentionally focus on diverse families and social relationships, helping young children see themselves and others reflected in the stories while building a foundational understanding of identity, empathy, and cooperation.
Materials also include High Five Bilingue, a bilingual magazine that offers unique stories, poems, puzzles, and activities designed to support children’s literacy development in English and Spanish.
Each daily plan provides guidance for one read-aloud. It may feature a book from the collection or the classroom library, with additional guidance for sharing it with children, or list a book with an accompanying Book Discussion Card. The Curriculum Guide suggests that the classroom library area include “35 books that reflect diverse cultures and topics, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.” (p. 42). The Teaching Guides provide interactive experiences to support understanding of a variety of text-structured read-alouds, with explicit prompts that foster comprehension, vocabulary development, and critical thinking. For example, in the Grocery Store Guide (p.20), teachers read Mama Panya’s Pancakes and guide students in exploring vocabulary and making connections to a family’s experience shopping at a village market. In the Cameras Guide (Investigation 2, p. 66), teachers use before-, during-, and after-reading questions for Scrap Metal: A River Clean-Up Story, including prompts that help children analyze the text and illustrations. Similarly, in the Light Guide (p. 76), during The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig, teachers model identifying story elements, such as the problem and solution.
The materials integrate both fiction and nonfiction texts across studies. Nonfiction books are chosen for clear features that support understanding of informational text structures. In the Cameras Guide (p.60), Smile! Making Memories with the Camera introduces labeled visuals and explanations, while the Architecture Guide (p. 52), What Should We Build? invites students to respond to detail-focused questions and think about how buildings fit different environments. Informational texts like Illuminate! Seeing Our World With Lights (Light Guide, p.36) uses visuals and simple questions to help children explore concepts such as light sources, while realistic fiction such as When This World Was New (Architecture Guide, p.20) supports discussions about immigration, family, and adjusting to new environments.
The text collection is diverse and culturally responsive. Titles include The Harvest Birds, Adelita and the Veggie Cousins, Olivia Forms a Band, Max Found Two Sticks, The Upside Down Boy by Juan Felipe Herrera, and the bilingual biography Tito Puente, Mambo King. Children also engage with familiar favorites such as The Snowy Day, Feast for 10, Abuela, Mouse Paint, Building a House, and A Chair for My Mother. The Teacher Guides and Book Discussion Cards support the introduction of characters, cultures, and real-world experiences, and scaffold vocabulary and comprehension for dual language learners.
Children encounter high-quality texts across multiple contexts, such as large-group read-alouds, small-group activities, and independent exploration during choice time. Teachers are guided to model comprehension strategies, ask questions about key details and vocabulary, and engage children in retelling, predicting, and connecting stories to personal experiences. Music, rhymes, and movement activities further support literacy by highlighting language patterns and phonological awareness.
Across studies, children are exposed to fiction, informational, and culturally responsive texts in ways that encourage comprehension, vocabulary growth, and early literacy skills. While some aspects, like explicit instruction on narrative structure or nonfiction text features, may be more implicit than systematic, the combination of read-alouds, discussion prompts, book areas, and intentional teaching experiences provides children with multiple meaningful opportunities to interact with print. The text collection reflects an effort to balance literary and informational genres while incorporating creators from varied racial and ethnic backgrounds appropriate to early childhood curriculum materials.
Overall, The Creative Curriculum for Pre-K materials text collection reflects an effort to balance literary and informational genres, incorporates creators from varied racial and ethnic backgrounds appropriate to early childhood, and consistently supports teacher modeling of comprehension and vocabulary strategies.
Indicator 2.3f
Curriculum materials support children’s expression of ideas through drawing and writing, including opportunities for composition, spelling, and handwriting development.
The Creative Curriculum for Pre-K materials partially meet expectations for supporting children’s expressions of ideas (2.3f).
The materials provide opportunities for children to engage in drawing, emergent writing through journaling, labeling, dictation, and play-based activities; however, these experiences vary in quality and consistency. In some studies, children are prompted to draw and write for different purposes. For example, in the Architecture Study (Exploring the Topic, p. 22), children document outdoor observations in journals, introducing writing as a way to record ideas. Similarly, children draw and write in journals inspired by books (Percussion Instruments, p. 23), illustrate favorite scenes and create original stories (Light, pp. 17, 20), and make thank-you cards with written messages (Percussion Instruments, p. 45).
Some investigations more explicitly connect writing to communication. In the Architecture Study (Investigation 2, Day 3), children create construction signs for block structures and discuss how signs help others understand their work. In the Grocery Store Study (Investigation 3, Day 2), children write shopping lists and label food items, using writing to organize and share information. Additional examples include dictating letters to family members (Transportation, Investigation 1, Day 5) and recording plant observations on chart paper (Seeds, Investigation 3, Day 4), which highlight writing as a way to convey ideas to an audience. These experiences demonstrate that the materials sometimes link writing to authentic purposes.
Moderate resources and tools support drawing, pre-writing, and name writing. Children manipulate magnetic letters, alphabet stamps, and name cards in activities such as Making My Name (Seeds, Investigation 1, Day 1) and Letters, Letters, Letters (Percussion Instruments, Investigation 3, Day 3). Writing materials are embedded throughout the classroom environment, with guidance for a Writing Area (Volume 3: Literacy, pp. 94–98), and functional print is included in dramatic play settings, such as recipe cards or order pads. Teachers are occasionally prompted to discuss children’s writing choices and intentions, though this guidance is uneven and not consistently reinforced across studies.
Overall, The Creative Curriculum for Pre-K provides teacher guidance that encourages discussion of children’s writing. Materials include a range of writing experiences with varying levels of consistency. Opportunities for explicit modeling or discussion of writing as a communicative process are not consistently included, and guidance on emergent spelling, handwriting development, and letter formation is not provided.