Parent–child conversations about letters and pictures

Robins, Sarah; Treiman, Rebecca; Rosales, Nicole; Otake, Shoko

doi:10.1007/s11145-011-9344-5

Cited by 17 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…For AK, it appears as if the effect of SES is mediated GAL alliteration, GRH Rhyming Socioeconomic differences in code-focused emergent… through fall preschool skills, as SES was no longer a significant predictor after initial status was included in the model. This strongly suggests that SES-related AK gaps are related to experiences outside of school contexts and aligns with literature suggesting that AK development can be facilitated by parents during the early years through conversation (Robins, Treiman, Rosales, & Otake, 2012;Treiman, Schmidt, Decker, Robins, Levine, & Demir, 2015) and shared storybook reading (Sénéchal, 2006). SES also predicted end-of-year PA skills, in line with evidence that the home literacy environment also plays a role in the PA development (Burgess, 2002).…”

Section: Ses-related Differences On Code-focused Skills In Preschoolsupporting

confidence: 85%

Socioeconomic differences in code-focused emergent literacy skills

Strang

Piasta

2016

Read Writ

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In the present study, we examined patterns of code-focused emergent literacy skill growth for children from lower and higher socioeconomic (SES) families enrolled at a high-quality early childhood center. Measures of letter name knowledge, letter sound knowledge, alliteration, and rhyming were collected at three time points over the course of the year. Additionally, standardized measures of print knowledge and phonological awareness were collected at the end of the year. Growth curve analyses indicated SES-related differences in initial status, but no differences in rate of growth. Initial status predicted end-of-year print knowledge. Both initial status and SES predicted end-of-year phonological awareness. These results suggest that gaps in code-focused emergent literacy skills exist earlier than previously documented with no evidence of compensatory or Matthew effects.

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Section: Ses-related Differences On Code-focused Skills In Preschoolsupporting

confidence: 85%

Socioeconomic differences in code-focused emergent literacy skills

Strang

Piasta

2016

Read Writ

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“…In surveys, parents and teachers of US preschoolers report that they tend to identify letters by their conventional names, such as /ɛm/ for 〈M〉, rather than by the sounds that they make in words, such as /m/ for 〈M〉 (Ellefson, Treiman, & Kessler, 2009; we use angled brackets to enclose letters, when it is important to be clear on their specific shapes, and slashes to enclose IPA symbols for phonemes). Consistent with the survey findings, analyses of conversations in preschoolers’ homes suggest that US parents do not often speak about letters as making sounds, although they do speak about letters by name (Robins, Treiman, Rosales, & Otake, in press). When US children enter kindergarten, as they normally do in the fall after they have passed their fifth birthday, they can often name a number of letters, performing better on uppercase ones than on lowercase ones (Ellefson et al, 2009; McBride-Chang, 1999; Worden & Boettcher, 1990).…”

supporting

confidence: 58%

“…The errors partly reflect the complexity of the long vowel’s spelling, a characteristic of the English writing system that holds across cultures. The stress that is put on letter names in the US, as documented in surveys of parents and teachers (Ellefson et al, 2009), analyses of letter-related conversations that occur in homes (Robins et al, in press), and studies of young children’s knowledge of letter names versus sounds (McBride-Chang, 1999, Treiman et al, 1998), also promotes errors like tam for tame in US children. That is, letter name knowledge is one contributor to the errors but not the only contributor.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Instruction matters: spelling of vowels by children in England and the US

2012

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Letter names are stressed in informal and formal literacy instruction with young children in the US, whereas letters sounds are stressed in England. We examined the impact of these differences on English children of about 5 and 6 years of age (in reception year and Year 1, respectively) and US 6 year olds (in kindergarten). Children in both countries spelled short vowels, as in bag, more accurately than long vowels, as in gate. The superiority for short vowels was larger for children from England, consistent with the instructional emphasis on letter sounds. Errors such as gat for words with long vowels such as gate were more common among US children, reflecting these children’s use of vowels’ names as a guide to spelling. The English children’s performance on a letter knowledge task was influenced by the fact that they are often taught letter sounds with reference to lowercase letters and letter names with reference to uppercase letters, and their spellings showed some effects of this practice. Although emphasis on letter sounds as opposed to letter names influences children’s patterns of performance and types of errors, it does not make the difficult English writing system markedly easier to master.

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“…The previous study by Robins et al (2012) used these transcripts to compare talk about writing and about drawing; here our focus is on talk about letters. All 12 corpora included conversations recorded at home between U.S. parents and children, although two of them also included sessions that occurred in a laboratory setting.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Letter knowledge in parentâ€“child conversations: differences between families differing in socio-economic status

et al. 2014

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When formal literacy instruction begins, around the age of 5 or 6, children from families low in socioeconomic status (SES) tend to be less prepared than children from families of higher SES. The goal of our study is to explore one route through which SES may influence children's early literacy skills: informal conversations about letters. The study builds on previous studies (Robins and Treiman, 2009; Robins et al., 2012, 2014) of parent–child conversations that show how U. S. parents and their young children talk about writing and provide preliminary evidence about similarities and differences in parent–child conversations as a function of SES. Focusing on parents and children aged three to five, we conducted five separate analyses of these conversations, asking whether and how family SES influences the previously established patterns. Although we found talk about letters in both upper and lower SES families, there were differences in the nature of these conversations. The proportion of letter talk utterances that were questions was lower in lower SES families and, of all the letter names that lower SES families talked about, more of them were uttered in isolation rather than in sequences. Lower SES families were especially likely to associate letters with the child's name, and they placed more emphasis on sequences in alphabetic order. We found no SES differences in the factors that influenced use of particular letter names (monograms), but there were SES differences in two-letter sequences (digrams). Focusing on the alphabet and on associations between the child's name and the letters within it may help to interest the child in literacy activities, but they many not be very informative about the relationship between letters and words in general. Understanding the patterns in parent–child conversations about letters is an important first step for exploring their contribution to children's early literacy skills and school readiness.

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Parent–child conversations about letters and pictures

Cited by 17 publications

References 30 publications

Socioeconomic differences in code-focused emergent literacy skills

Socioeconomic differences in code-focused emergent literacy skills

Instruction matters: spelling of vowels by children in England and the US

Letter knowledge in parentâ€“child conversations: differences between families differing in socio-economic status

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