The use of popular culture environmental print to increase the emergent literacy skills of prekindergarten children in one high-poverty urban school district
Limited studies have focused on using popular culture environmental print in the
literacy curriculum to teach early literacy skills to prekindergarten students. This study
examined whether using popular culture environmental print to explicitly teach alphabet
knowledge and print concepts increased the achievement of these skills. After a nine week
intervention was implemented, data were collected from 56 urban prekindergarten
children in a control and experimental group.
The use of popular culture environmental print appeared to increase the
achievement of print concepts and alphabet knowledge in prekindergarten children from
one urban high-poverty school district. Data revealed an increase in the mean rank of
the experimental group on the post-test of alphabet knowledge. Additionally, English as
a second language learners expanded their knowledge of alphabet letters after the
popular culture environmental print intervention. Also, a statistically significant
difference appeared to exist between the control and experimental groups’ means on the
knowledge of print concepts. Descriptive statistics revealed increases in print concept
means of the control and experimental groups from the time of the pre-test to the posttest
as tested by the Preschool Word and Print Awareness Assessment (PWPA). A statistical significant difference between the groups the children were in and
the early literacy skills of alphabet knowledge and print concepts were determined at the
end of the popular culture environmental print intervention. The increase in print
concepts and alphabet knowledge appeared to be due to utilizing popular culture
characters children observed at home. The popular culture characters garnered the
attention of the children and became a source of motivation for increasing emergent
literacy skills. Also, through explicit teaching of print concepts and alphabet knowledge
with the popular culture environmental print, the children expanded their knowledge of
these emergent literacy skills
