Developing Children's Oral Language Skills through Dialogic Reading

Abstract

Mrs. Thomas was a lead teacher in a public prekindergarten classroom where slightly more than half of her students were eligible for special education services due to a developmental delay (DD), language impairment (LI), or some other diagnosed disability. The remaining students qualified for public prekindergarten via the Title I School Readiness program based on their families' poverty status. Thus, Mrs. Thomas was aware of the at-risk nature of her students and their varying levels of ability. Despite having students with DD and/or LI in her classroom, the district did not provide additional speech and language therapy for these children, even if they had language goals on their individualized education programs (IEPs). Although Mrs. Thomas had over 20 years of experience with prekindergarten and kindergarten children and certifications for both early childhood education and K-12, she did not have special education certification. However, she was very familiar with the IEP process and had worked with a number of students with varying disabilities. Concerned about her students' language development and how to handle their varying levels of language ability, she turned to the What Works Clearinghouse, the online web site of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) for evidencebased practices. She learned that dialogic reading has had very positive effects for language development in young children in a variety of settings (U.S. Department of Education, 2007), so she decided to implement the strategy in her classroom.

Dialogic Reading of a Novel for Children: Effects on Text Comprehension

“…Lonigan (1998, see also Cabell, Justice, Konold, &McGinty, 2011) offered a typology of the skills related to what they call 'emergent literacy', which consists of the set of skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary for reading and writing. The skills related to emergent literacy were divided into two types by the authors: 'inside-out' skills -knowledge of graphemes, phonological awareness (e.g., recognizing rhymes), and syntactic awareness (e.g., recognizing grammatical errors), -and 'outside-in' skills -semantic and conceptual knowledge (e.g., vocabulary, general knowledge), comprehension of narratives, knowledge of the conventions of the printed word Various studies directed toward classroom practice rely on the assumption of the positive effects of shared reading (reading aloud by an adult to one or more children) for the development of language skills (e.g., Flynn, 2011;Morrow, 2009). However, systematic studies are needed to verify, (e.g., to know that reading is done top to bottom and left to right) and emergent reading (e.g., when the child pretends to read before being formally literate).…”

Parent question use during shared reading time: How does training affect question type and frequency?

“…Recall questions that require the child to make connections across words, pictures, or pages are emblematic of the next most sophisticated type of prompt and provide an opportunity to assess for memory, comprehension, and understanding of story sequence (Flynn, ). Our findings indicate that parents were already using this strategy at baseline and continued to use it over time.…”

Meaningful informed consent with young children: looking forward through an interactive narrative approach

“…This can be achieved through 'sustained shared thinking', 'dialogic reading' and 'cycle telling'. (Flynn, 2011;Puroila, Estola, & Syrjälä, 2012). Whitehurst (2012) described the adult's role in dialogic reading as helping the child become the teller of the story, with the adult taking the role of "listener, questioner and audience" (para.…”