A picture book reading intervention in day care and home for children from low-income families.

Abstract

The effects of an interactive book reading program were assessed with children from low-income families who attended subsidized day-care centers in New York. The children entered the program with language development in standard English vocabulary and expression that was about 10 months behind chronological age on standardized tests. Children were pretested and assigned randomly within classrooms to 1 of 3 conditions: (a) a school plus home condition in which the children were read to by their teachers and their parents, (b) a school condition in which children were read to only by teachers, and (c) a control condition in which children engaged in play activities under the supervision of their teachers. Training of adult readers was based on a self-instructional video. The intervention lasted for 6 weeks, at which point children were posttested on several standardized measures oflanguage ability that had been used as pretests. These assessments were repeated at a 6month follow-up. Educationally and statistically significant effects of the reading intervention were obtained at posttest and follow-up on measures of expressive vocabulary.According to the 1991 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching report, Ready to Learn: A Mandate for the Nation, 35% of children in the United States enter kindergarten unprepared to learn, with most lacking the vocabulary and sentence structure crucial to school success. Although there are some problems with the methods of this report and inherent difficulties in dichotomizing school readiness, there is no doubt that there are very large individual differences in early educational achievement that have long-term consequences for children and society (Alexander & Entwisle, 1988;Stevenson & Newman, 1986).Why are so many children, particularly those from low-income families, deficient in the skills that are critical to school readiness? Children's preschool experience with books may play an important role. Adams (1990, p. 85) estimated that a typical middle-class child enters first grade with 1,000 to 1,700 hr of one-on-one picture book reading, whereas the correspond-

Improving the General Language Skills of Second-Language Learners in Kindergarten: A Randomized Controlled Trial

“…Furthermore, in light of the results showing that the challenges of L2 learners are particularly severe on expressive skills in the second language (Gibson et al, 2012), the children in our study may have had a greater potential for change in expressive skills. If we compare our results to other findings, the lack of effects on receptive language measures has also been the case in other studies on dialogic reading using a similar receptive vocabulary measure (PPVT-R; Dunn & Dunn, 1981;Whitehurst et al, 1994;Whitehurst et al, 1988). However, book reading studies in which receptive vocabulary has been assessed by more sensitive measures (using vocabulary introduced in the book) have demonstrated more positive results (Senechal, 1997;Senechal & Monker, 1995).…”

Executive functions and school readiness intervention: Impact, moderation, and mediation in the Head Start REDI program

“…An interactive reading program was developed, based upon the shared reading program of Wasik and Bond (2001;Wasik et al, 2006) and the dialogic reading program of Whitehurst et al (1994). Teachers read two books per week using interactive strategies, targeted vocabulary with illustrative props, and utilized story retelling to encourage child recall and narrative comprehension.…”

“…In addition, the Head Start REDI program utilized an interactive reading program (Wasik, Bond, & Hindman, 2006;Whitehurst et al, 1994) that also may support EF skill development. In this program, teachers used questions, discussion, and story retelling to encourage child recall and narrative comprehension of stories.…”

“…This explicit behavioral sequence is modeled and reinforced extensively as teachers intervene when children are aroused by a disagreement or frustration, and support them in using self-calming ("turtle") and social problem-solving strategies to work out a plan. Conceptually, these cognitive and behavioral experiences should enhance the maturation of executive control capacities, by supporting the effortful control of emotion and behavior (Greenberg, 2006).In addition, the Head Start REDI program utilized an interactive reading program (Wasik, Bond, & Hindman, 2006;Whitehurst et al, 1994) that also may support EF skill development. In this program, teachers used questions, discussion, and story retelling to encourage child recall and narrative comprehension of stories.…”

Views of Mothers Regarding Interactive Book-Reading Process to Their Children

“…Kitap okumanın çocuğun üzerindeki etkisinin özellikle etkileşimli kitap okuma yaklaşımıyla gerçekleştirildiğinde daha fazla olduğu bilinmektedir. Etkileşimli kitap okuma yaklaşımında; öyküyü okuyan kişinin ve öyküyü dinleyen çocukların zamanla rolleri değiştiği ve okuyan kişinin etkin bir dinleyici olduğu ve soru sorduğu dikkati çekmektedir Whitehurst, Arnold, Epstein, Angell, Smith ve Fischel, 1994a, Whitehurst, Epstein, Angell, Payne, Crone ve Fischel, 1994b. Türkiye'de etkileşimli kitap okuma ile ilgili yapılan çalışmalara bakıldığında etkileşimli kitap okumanın çocukların dil gelişimi üzerine yapılan çalışmaların ön plana çıktığı dikkati çekmektedir (Kotaman, 2008;Akoğlu, Ergül ve Duman, 2014;Şimşek ve Işıkoğlu Erdoğan, 2015).…”