Investigating Profiles of Lexical Quality in Preschool and Their Contribution to First Grade Reading

This longitudinal study investigated profiles of lexical quality domains in preschool children and the extent to which profile membership predicted reading comprehension in first grade. A latent profile analysis was conducted to classify 420 preschool children on lexical quality domains, including orthography, phonology, morphosyntax, and vocabulary. Regression analysis was used to determine whether profile membership was associated with first grade outcomes across reading comprehension and its components (i.e., listening comprehension and word recognition). Results revealed five profiles of lexical quality which were predictive of all three outcomes in first grade. Children in low lexical quality profiles performed more poorly on the outcome measures than children in the higher lexical quality profiles. Additionally, profile membership did differentially predict later reading outcomes. These results suggest that lexical quality profiles are associated with reading and therefore may offer a means of early identification of children who are susceptible to future reading difficulties

Forging a New York City Practice Rooted in a Social Agenda

Need architects adhere to a social agenda, or any agenda at all? Driven by an ideal of achieving harmony of material and form, architects seek to improve the built environment. How can an architect’s ambitions of reaching “the ideal,” and an impulse to inject theoretical architectural ideas into projects, collide with practical realities of creating progressive educational centers, or housing the homeless and other underserved groups

Telling Our Stories: Cultural Influences on Narratives

Much of education is dependent on comprehending and producing narratives. Narratives around the world differ in terms of functions, structure, content, and styles of telling the stories. If students are to be successful in mainstream schools, they must be able to comprehend and produce narratives with the functions, structures, content mainstream, and style of Western culture. Therefore, it is critical that educators and speech-language pathologists explicitly teach students to comprehend and produce Western-styles stories. However, educators and speech-language pathologists must be alert to how cultural differences may influence students’ comprehension and production of narratives. This requires careful observation and exploration. One should not assume that students from a particular language or cultural groups will demonstrate patterns mentioned in this chapter because there is considerable diversity within cultures. While teaching mainstream narratives, they need to be cautious so they do not denigrate the narratives of the students’ home cultures. Self-identity is developed through exposure to and production of narratives. Therefore, it is also critical that students from diverse cultures have opportunities to see themselves in stories

Beyond the Words: Making Inferences

Making inferences is the cornerstone of social discourse and reading competence. Many students who are English learners or students with autism spectrum disorders, specific language impairment or hearing loss become fluent text decoders but they have significant difficulty “reading between the lines” or making appropriate inferences from texts. A variety of factors are essential for making inferences. Students must be aware of the need to make inferences – that not all the necessary information is in the text. They must have world knowledge involving an understanding of the physical and psychological temporal and cause-effect relations between people, objects, and events; they must be able to access this knowledge and integrate it with what is in the text; they must have the linguistic skills to follow references and comprehend the connective words and syntactic structures that signal relationships; and they must have sufficient working memory to integrate all these elements. This presentation will describe (1) the linguistic and cognitive skills involved in making text inferences; (2) types of inferences; (3) the nature of difficulties in making inferences exhibited by students with a variety of cognitive and language impairments; and (4) evidence-based strategies to promote the ability to make inferences from texts. Outcomes: Participants will be able to: explain the cognitive and linguistic underpinnings for making inferences describe and analyze the inferencing abilities of students with language impairments employ strategies to develop students\u27 abilities to make inference

Language Difference vs Language Disorder: Assessing English Learners

To a large extent, determining whether an English learner has a language/learning disability is a process of elimination. There are no tests that can definitely tell us whether the student has a language/learning disability. Inappropriately identifying an EL student as having a language/learning disability can result in stigmatization or reduced access to academic content, but waiting too long to identify a student who truly has a language/learning disability can be the beginning or the extension of a cycle of communicative, academic, and/or social failure. Assessment of EL learners requires collaboration between classroom teachers and speech/language pathologists. This session will cover (1) factors that complicate the assessment of English learners; (2) multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) and performance-based assessment; (3) process assessments, and (4) dynamic narrative assessment

Frameworks for Understanding Cultural Variations in Behaviors, Beliefs, and Communication: Implications for Students from Diverse Backgrounds

Services for students with impairments are typically based on the values, beliefs, and communication patterns of dominant, mainstream populations. If services for students and their families from culturally/linguistically diverse backgrounds are to be considered acceptable and effective, they must be designed to account for these cultural variations. Anthropologists and psychologists have developed constructs to explain key behavioral and belief dimensions along which cultures vary, e.g., individualism/collectivism, power distance/hierarchical relationships, analytic/holistic cognition. Researchers in cultural neuroscience are investigating the neurophysiological and neurogenetic associations with these variations in behaviors/beliefs as a means of understanding the mutual influence of cultural and genetic factors on mind, brain, and behavior. This presentation will describe (a) frameworks for understanding cultural variations in values, beliefs, and communication styles, (b) neurophysiological/neurogenetic relationships to these cultural variations in behaviors and beliefs, and (c) implications of these cultural variations on the assessment and intervention of students from diverse backgrounds. Learning Outcomes—at the end of this session, participants will be able to: Describe constructs of cultural variations in behaviors, beliefs, and communication Describe the influence of cultural and genetic factors on mind, brain, and behavior Explain the implications of cultural variations in communication style on the assessment and intervention of culturally/linguistically diverse student

Lexical-Level Predictors of Reading Comprehension in Third Grade: Is Spelling a Unique Contributor?

Purpose: Considerable research effort has focused on understanding reading comprehension and reading comprehension difficulties. The purpose of this correlational study was to add to the small but growing body of literature on the role that spelling may play in reading comprehension, by investigating the full range of lexical-level literacy skills and whether spelling makes a unique contribution. This study also explored whether these relations vary with the spelling scoring metric. Method: Data were collected from 63 children attending Grade 3 in a Midwestern state. In addition to measuring reading comprehension, word recognition, and vocabulary, 4 spelling scoring metrics were examined: the number of words spelled correctly, the number of correct letter sequences (CLS), and Spelling Sensitivity Scores for elements and for words. Results: All spelling metrics were significantly correlated with reading comprehension. Results of hierarchical regressions showed that spelling was a significant, unique predictor of reading comprehension when the CLS metric was used. The scoring metrics were differentially related to reading comprehension. Metrics that gave credit based on orthographic precision only (number of words spelled correctly and CLS) were more highly related to reading comprehension than metrics that scored not only on orthographic accuracy but also on phonological and morphological accuracy (Spelling Sensitivity Scores for elements and for words). Conclusion: These results indicate that spelling is related to reading comprehension and have theoretical and clinical implications for the use of spelling assessment

Supporting Children\u27s Language and Literacy Through Collaborative Shared Book Reading

Language and literacy skills are critical for academic success. Shared book reading is an evidence-based practice for improving a range of language and literacy skills in young children, including those with or at risk for learning disabilities. The aim of this paper is to describe how teachers and speech-language pathologists (SLPs) can collaborate to support young children’s learning through shared book reading. An overview of shared book reading is presented, followed by a description of the collaboration, implementation of the shared book reading sessions, as well as instruction that can take place after the reading. By collaborating through shared book reading, teachers and SLPs can enhance their overall instructional quality to more effectively support the language and literacy needs of children with or at risk for learning disabilities