African American kindergartners' spoken narratives: Topic associating and topic centered styles

This article discusses narrative styles of 48 African American low-income urban kindergartners. The starting point for this study was the work of Michaels (1981,1986, 1991) who found that during a classroom activity known as "sharing time," African American first-graders tended to produce narratives that did not cohere around single topics but around a series of loosely and often unclearly related episodes, a style Michaels called topic associating. This was in contrast to the Caucasian first-graders who tended to use a topic centered style. The results of the study presented here, however, reveal that of the 48 kindergarten children, 16 told topic associating stories and 28 told topic centered stories. Although storybook and fairy tale themes and structures were present across the two narrative styles, they were found most clearly in 9 of the topic centered narratives. Results show that although the patterns that Michaels reported were indeed found with these younger, urban, African American children in an uninterrupted storytelling context, these patterns were not the dominant ones. Examples of the styles are discussed, paying particular attention to the thematic and structural characteristics in the topic associating style. Issues concerning contexts for speech and literacy in the classrooms of these and other U.S. students are discussed.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/31890/1/0000842.pd

Investigating the use of digital manipulatives for storytelling in pre-school

Prova tipográficaResearch has identified a need for design of interactive products for children, as well as long-term studies that investigate the effects of its use in the classroom environment. Following the design and development of a digital manipulative system for storytelling, which involved preschool children and teachers, the investigation presented here reports findings from a four-month evaluation of the system that was carried in a Portuguese preschool involving 24 pairs of children. During the four months the researchers were able to observe children’s interaction with the digital manipulative system that was not biased by the novelty of the system or by time constrains. The gathered data showed that children used the digital manipulative system to create stories and play language games, which are activities that foster the development of oral language and emergent literacy, and are formally targeted in the preschool curriculum. The system provided challenge and adventure, motivating children to collaboratively explore and create narratives, empowering each child to actively participate in the task.CIEC – Research Centre on Child Studies, IE, UMinho (FCT R&D unit 317), Portuga

Print awareness of adult illiterates: a comparison with young pre-readers and low-educated adult readers

In this study the print awareness of 25 unschooled adult illiterates in the Netherlands was compared with that of 24 pre-reading children and of 23 low-educated literate adults with approximately four years of primary schooling. The illiterates were interviewed about their experiences with writing and all participants completed six assessments of print awareness in the language they preferred (first or second language). The outcomes revealed that the three groups did not differ in distinguishing conventional written signs from other visual signs, that both groups of non-readers differed significantly from low educated readers but not from each other in knowledge of logos, inscriptions and knowledge of the written register, while the adult illiterates performed significantly better than the children on grapheme knowledge. Adult illiterates in literate societies seem to be well informed about the uses and functions of written language and about what writing looks like, but like young children they are not good at reading environmental print out of context and in explaining what exactly is represented in writing. The variation in reactions within the group of illiterate adults could be related to existing models of emergent literacy. Implications for adult literacy education are discussed

Patterns of Attachment in Frequently and Infrequently Reading Mother—Child Dyads

FSW - Gezinsopvoeding - Ou

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618 [1] p. : il.; 25 cm