Digital Manipulatives as Scaffolds for Preschoolers’ Language Development

The study reported here aims at contributing to a deeper understanding of the educational possibilities offered by digital manipulatives in preschool contexts. It presents a study carried with a digital manipulative to enhance the development of lexical knowledge and language awareness, which are relevant language abilities for formal literacy learning. The study took place in a Portuguese preschool, with a class of 20 five-year-olds in collaboration with the teacher. The digital manipulative supported the construction of multiple fictional worlds, motivating children's verbal interactions, and the playing of words and sound games, thus contextualizing the learning of an extensive collection of vocabulary and language awareness abilities. The degree of engagement and involvement that the manipulative provided in supporting children's imaginative play as well as the imitation, in their own play, of the playful pedagogical interventions that the teacher had designed, shows the importance of well-designed materials that support a child-centered learning model. As such, it sustains a discussion on the potential of digital manipulatives to enhance fundamental language development in the preschool years. Furthermore, this paper highlights the importance of multidisciplinary teams in the creation of innovative pedagogical materials.