The proper name as starting point for basic reading skills

Does alphabetic-phonetic writing start with the proper name and how does the name affect reading and writing skills? Sixty 4- to 5½-year-old children from middle SES families with Dutch as their first language wrote their proper name and named letters. For each child we created unique sets of words with and without the child’s first letter of the name to test spelling skills and phonemic sensitivity. Name writing correlated with children’s knowledge of the first letter of the name and phonemic sensitivity for the sound of the first letter of the name. Hierarchical regression analysis makes plausible that both knowledge of the first letter’s name and phonemic sensitivity for this letter explain why name writing results in phonetic spelling with the name letter. Practical implications of the findings are discussed

Supporting Literacy and Digital Literacy Development in Early Childhood Education Using Storytelling Activities

Educators have increasingly adopted formalized approaches for teaching literacy skills in early childhood education. In line with an emergent critique of this approach, the present study investigated the design and effectiveness of a literacy intervention that blended Gagné’s nine events of instructional design with storytelling. Three classes in a public preschool in Indonesia participated in an experimental study involving 45 children, aged 5–6 years. Across 3 weeks, one experimental condition received storytelling activities and a second experimental condition received digital storytelling activities. The control condition received regular literacy classroom activities. Before, and after, the 3-week storytelling intervention, measures of literacy and digital literacy skills were administered to all groups. In the digital storytelling condition, children’s literacy skills increased significantly compared to children in the control condition. Other exploratory data analyses suggested that both types of storytelling activities enhanced digital literacy skills. The findings need to be replicated with an extended series of storytelling activities that involve larger groups of participants

Perception of the cursive handwriting movement in writers and pre-writers

International audienceThe objective of this study was to confirm the existence of knowledge relating to the cursive writing movement for French pupils in 3rd year of kindergarten, 2nd grade and 5th grade of elementary school. 141 pupils were asked to watch a visual presentation of cursive handwriting to determine whether they were able to detect violations of two rules of handwriting: continuity and sequentiality of the cursive handwriting movement. Our results showed progressive development of the understanding of characteristics of the cursive handwriting movement, with different developmental trajectories of knowledge for the different rules. The ability to detect continuity of the cursive writing movement developed earlier than the ability to detect sequentiality. Correct decisions were not always accompanied by correct justifications, which developed more slowly than detection of rule violations

Text and cognition.

In T. Nunes and P. Bryant (Eds.)