Addressing the Higher Level Language Skills for the Common Core State Standards in Kindergarten

Kindergarten is a critical year, providing a foundation for children’s success in school. With a common set of standards, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), finalized and made available to states for adoption critical skills in numeracy and literacy will be uniformed from kindergarten through high school. Some children enter school with a sufficient foundation to support success in kindergarten and subsequent years. However, some children either because of lack of exposure during preschool years (e.g., Aikens & Barbarin, 2008; Hart & Risley, 1995; Schacter, 1979; Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998) or because of language delays associated with developmental disabilities or delays (e.g., Catts, Adolf & Weismer, 2006; Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Kuhn & Stahl, 2003; Nation & Snowling, 1998; Yuill & Oakhill, 1991) are already far behind their peers upon entrance into kindergarten. The current study investigated the effects of presenting a multilevel approach to storybook reading on a broad range of language skills over 32 weeks of intervention for children at-risk for reading. Specifically, growth in overall language, semantics, syntax, letter awareness, and phonology was explored. Thirty-six at-risk kindergarten students comprised a group that either received intervention utilizing scaffolded talk across a continuum of increasingly more decentered meanings or represented a comparison group. The results of the study revealed that the intervention group made statistically significant gains in overall language, semantic, and syntax skills. A visual inspection of gain composite scores revealed that majority of the intervention groups increased near or at least one standard deviation of change from pre- to posttest; these gains were not evident in the comparison group. The result of the study indicated that utilizing scaffolded talk across a continuum of increasing more decentered meanings in kindergarten hold potential to address the language goals of the CCSS

An investigation of a programmed method of beginning reading instruction utilizing phrases and sentences as basic verbal units

Reading has long been recognized as the one skill basic to all other educational endeavors. Reading instruction occupies a position of primary importance in first grade curriculum and continues to receive only slightly less emphasis throughout the remainder of the primary years. Reading instruction has been and continues to be a topic of much discussion, debate, theorizing, and investigation. Some major areas of investigation have included the following: (1) the optimum age for beginning reading instruction, (2) the relative effectiveness of various conventional techniques of reading instruction, and (3) other more experimental approaches to reading instruction

Prediction error boosts retention of novel words in adults but not in children

How do we update our linguistic knowledge? In seven experiments, we asked whether error-driven learning can explain under what circumstances adults and children are more likely to store and retain a new word meaning. Participants were exposed to novel object labels in the context of more or less constraining sentences or visual contexts. Both two-to-four-year-olds (Mage = 38 months) and adults were strongly affected by expectations based on sentence constraint when choosing the referent of a new label. In addition, adults formed stronger memory traces for novel words that violated a stronger prior expectation. However, preschoolers' memory was unaffected by the strength of their prior expectations. We conclude that the encoding of new word-object associations in memory is affected by prediction error in adults, but not in preschoolers

The Effects of Felt Piece Manipulative Integration on Preschoolers’ Abilities to Retell Stories

The purpose of this action research project was to determine the effect of felt piece manipulative integration on preschoolers’ abilities to retell stories. A preschool class was taught retelling skills and story grammar elements. The class was exposed to a fairy tale five times and then each student was assessed on retelling abilities and the number of story grammar elements recalled without the integration of manipulatives. The class was then exposed five times to another fairy tale by the same author and was assessed on the same skills while having access to felt piece manipulatives that represented the story grammar elements taught, including characters, setting, and the feelings of the characters. Comparisons were made between the number of elements recalled and reported when children were assessed without felt piece manipulatives verses the number recalled and reported with felt piece manipulative integration. Analysis of the data collected suggests that integration of felt piece manipulatives has a positive effect on increasing the number of story grammar elements reported during assessments by preschool students

Becoming Literate: The Acquisition of Story Discourse

Educators and researchers are focusing their attention on children\u27s knowledge of reading and writing acquired prior to formal instruction. Many research projects have described the parallel between children\u27s acquisition of spoken and written language. As a result of extensive research during the last twenty years, educators\u27 understanding of how children learn to read and write has changed drastically

Supporting early literacy through attachment-based parenting: An intervention project

A Four-month intervention project consisting of regular parent training meetings and weekly take-home parent-child interactive literacy activities was implemented to examine the association between quality of mother-child interaction and preschoolers\u27 early literacy development for five families enrolled in a state subsidized preschool program. The Palm Vista Family Home Literacy Program located in the high desert region of San Bernardino County was offered free of charge to all parents and their preschool aged children who were enrolled

The Effect of Developmental Factors on the Use of an Electronic Communication Device.

This study addressed a poorly understood variable of voice output communication aid (VOCA) use, namely mnemonic development. Forty children without disabilities, aged from 49 to 60 months, were required to use an IntroTalker (Prentke Romich Company) to participate in a one-on-one storybook reading task with the investigator. They were provided with sixteen messages to use during a scripted reading of The Three Bears. Children could use a trained verbal elaboration strategy or generate their own methods to retrieve messages. Immediate and delayed responses of children under two training methods were compared, and the contribution of developmental factors, including metamemory, were evaluated. In the control method, Direct Instruction (DI), children learned to retrieve messages via an error-free method including simple repetition of a verbal elaboration mnemonic. In the experimental method, Active Problem Solving (APS), children were first led through a series of steps alerting them to the limitations of non-symbolic retrieval strategies and allowing them to make retrieval errors, thus discovered the relative value of various retrieval strategies. Next, they were taught to retrieve the remaining messages in the same way as the DI children. Children with low metamemory skill were less accurate in their retrieval of messages, and produced more Self-corrected Responses when trained under the APS condition. Children receiving APS training showed an initial retrieval advantage on the first story-retelling immediately following training; however, on the second day retrieval by DI subjects matched APS. It was concluded that DI children experienced a de facto active problem-solving condition on the first day, when they produced many errors, thereby enhancing the value of the verbal elaborations they had been trained to use. Effects of perceptual, semantic and syntactic development, and of conflicts between the canonical and experimental Three Bears script were evident. Although the use of a normally developing population is controversial in the area of augmentative communication, the strategy was found to produce valuable insights into the errors made by children. Overall, the task was easy for most of the children, thereby supporting the use of VOCAs with young children

From the Book Page to the Big Screen: An Exploration of Literature-to-Film Adaptions and Their Use in the Classroom

Many classic titles of children’s literature have been adapted into feature film presentations. Although often regarded as a mere form of entertainment, movies can and should be incorporated into the elementary classroom as supplementary material to be paired with their corresponding works of literature. The four examples provided include Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, The Giver by Lois Lowry, and Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie. Each of these four works originated as a book that was later recreated into a film format with varying degrees of accuracy to the original story. Through a close examination of the author, theme, classroom application, and film connection, a greater appreciation is gained for the integration of film in the language arts classroom

Home and school literacy partnerships : building stronger tomorrows hand in hand

This project aims to bring quality literacy interactions into homes of young children. These literacy interactions are important because research has shown that quality literacy experiences during the early childhood years impact a child\u27s emergent literacy learning. Because children are not yet in formal schooling, many of these interactions can take place in home so family involvement is critical. The project is threefold: (a) to increase the quantity and quality of literacy interactions in the home, (b) to help parents become more informed contributors of their children\u27s emergent literacy development, and (c) to promote more family involvement and two-way communication with schools. Three approaches to implementing this project will be taken. First, newsletters will be used to inform parents on developmentally appropriate literacy strategies, literacy skill development, and literacy activities. Secondly, literacy take-home bags will be used to promote more family involvement using appropriate literacy materials that are paired with instructional strategies and activities. Lastly, literacy nights will be held to promote family literacy education, build stronger home-school partnerships, and allow for more meaningful two-way communication to take place

Supporting Emergent Writing in Kindergarten

The development of emergent writing and the factors which support writing were studied. Five ways that teachers support emergent writing in the classroom were identified and used as the foundation for the developed activities in this project. The activities were designed by the author for use in kindergarten and can be adapted to fit other primary levels. Recommendations for supporting emergent writing in classrooms were given. ii