A Sure Start with Books

Exploring a national book-gifting scheme: parents' and children's reactions

“…Tracking children's performance up to their Key Stage 1 assessment at age seven, Wade and Moore's research suggests that Bookstart children maintained this advantage throughout their first three years of primary education. Mean scores for a range of literacy and numeracy tests showed Bookstart children outperforming their non-Bookstart counterparts by between 1 and 5% (Wade and Moore, 2000). In a similar, locally-based study, Hines and Brooks (2005) found that Bookstart children had acquired consistently higher levels of language and literacy development than non-Bookstart children.…”

“…O'Hare and Connolly (2010), for example, have reported strong evidence of a positive effect of Bookstart on parents' attitudes to reading and books and some evidence of an improvement in parental attitudes to their child reading. The longitudinal study reported by Wade and Moore (2000) and Moore and Wade (2003) has suggested that being involved in the Bookstart programme had led to an improvement of language and literacy performance upon school entry at the age of four. Tracking children's performance up to their Key Stage 1 assessment at age seven, Wade and Moore's research suggests that Bookstart children maintained this advantage throughout their first three years of primary education.…”

“…The ability to read does, of course, make many high cognitive demands and there has been considerable debate about the most suitable age at which to begin formal instruction in this skill. With children aged 0 to 4 years, the emphasis has tended to be on developing their attitudes towards reading rather than their skills in performing it (Wade & Moore, 2000;Hines & Brooks, 2005;Mol et al, 2009). Programmes designed to develop children's relationships with reading, and with books, have proved quite popular.…”

Early Parental Support as Predictor of Early Literacy Skills: A Study from Four Administrative Districts in Ghana

“…Indeed, parental involvement in their child's reading has been found to be the most important determinant of language and emergent literacy (Bus, van Ijzendoorn & Pellegrini, 1995). Furthermore, parents who introduce their babies to books give them a head start in school and an advantage over their peers throughout primary school (Wade &Moore, 2000). Tables 5 and 6 as well as the correlation results in Table 7 measuring different aspects of early literacy skills in this study consistently indicate statistical significant difference between the three groups of Ghanaian children based on parental educational background.…”

Home Environment and Emergent Literacy among Young Children in Iran

“…Exposure to books, magazines, newspapers, and environmental print may influence on children's development of learning to reading (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998). Children with better home literacy environments show higher levels of reading knowledge and skills at kindergarten (Nord, Lennon, Liu & Chandler, 2000) and primary school (Wade & Moore, 2000).…”