This study considered the quality and stability of infant and toddler nonparental child care from 6 to 36 months in relation to language, social, and academic skills measured proximally at 36 months ...and distally at kindergarten. Quality was measured separately as caregiver–child verbal interactions and caregiver sensitivity, and stability was measured as having fewer sequential child‐care caregivers. This longitudinal examination involved a subsample (N = 1,055) from the Family Life Project, a representative sample of families living in rural counties in the United States. Structural equation modeling revealed that children who experienced more positive caregiver–child verbal interactions had higher 36‐month language skills, which indirectly led to higher kindergarten academic and social skills. Children who experienced more caregiver stability had higher kindergarten social skills.
The maternal language input literature suggests that mothers with more education use a greater quantity and complexity of language with their young children compared to mothers with less education ...although race and socioeconomic status have been confounded in most studies because of small sample sizes. The current Family Life study included a representative sample of 1,292 children, oversampling for poverty and African American, followed from birth. This study found no race differences within maternal education levels on five measures of maternal language input from 6 to 36 months. Maternal language input variables of number of different words, mean length of utterance and number of wh‐questions were partial mediators of the relationship between maternal education and later child language at school age.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI), a professional development and early reading intervention program delivered via webcam technology, could ...support the early reading progress of English learners (ELs). Participants for the current study were drawn from a larger three-year randomized controlled trial and included 108 ELs from 47 classrooms randomly assigned to treatment and control conditions. Teachers in treatment classrooms used the TRI in one-on-one sessions in the regular classroom for approximately 15 minutes per day. Weekly, and later biweekly, webcam coaching sessions between a TRI coach and each classroom teacher allowed the coach to interact with both the teacher and students in real time and allowed classroom teachers to receive real-time feedback from the coach. Two-level hierarchical linear models suggested that ELs struggling with learning to read in intervention classrooms significantly outperformed their peers in control classrooms on word-level measures of early reading, with effect sizes of .43 and .45, but not on text-level measures. Results also suggested that ELs struggling with learning to read were gaining at the same rate as their nonstruggling peers but were unable to catch up within the study year.
Using a sample of 1,117 families living in low‐wealth rural areas, the current study focused on how home literacy practices for 3‐year‐old children were related to the children's language skills at ...ages 3 and 4. Three types of home literacy practices were explored: parent‐to‐child literacy practices, child literacy practices, and parent literacy practices. Results indicated that a variety of parent‐to‐child and child literacy practices frequently took place. Regression analyses showed that only child literacy practices were positively associated with language outcomes concurrently at age 3 and later at age 4. Findings have implications for early childhood educators and policy makers who may use this information to support literacy practices among families residing in low‐wealth rural areas.
Highlights
Home literacy practices in rural families were explored in relation to children's language skills.
Home literacy practices at age 3 included parent‐to‐child literacy practices, child literacy practices, and parent literacy practices.
Only child literacy practices were significantly associated with children's language skills at ages 3 and 4.
This article describes four key principles from Targeted Reading Instruction (TRI, formerly called Targeted Reading Intervention), an evidence‐based early reading intervention and professional ...development program. Focused on accelerating the growth of students not yet meeting grade‐level expectations, one‐on‐one 15‐minute daily TRI lessons engage students in developing phonemic awareness, phonics knowledge, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and beginning reading comprehension. Four key principles guide TRI, which can be applied to classroom reading instruction. First, all work is done in the context of real words and connected text, placing meaning at the heart of instruction. Second, lessons keep it moving, as they follow a consistent structure, use activities to achieve multiple objectives, and make use of all available resources. Third, TRI teachers let the student do the work, engaging students in productive struggle. Fourth, explicit teaching of skills such as blending provides students with unique strategies to become confident independent readers.
•We examined the classroom practices of rural publicly-funded pre-k programs.•We associated classroom practices with child literacy and language gains in pre-k.•Teacher–child language exchanges were ...positively related to expressive language.•Sound-focused activities were positively related to phonemic awareness.•Small-group settings were positively related to literacy outcomes.
Although publicly-funded prekindergarten (pre-k) programs have been designed to promote children’s school readiness, programs have tended to support early literacy skills to a greater degree than early language skills. Given the importance of both language and literacy skills for children’s reading acquisition and academic achievement, the present study sought to understand whether different pre-k classroom instructional practices were related to gains in language and/or literacy skills. Teacher–child language exchanges, children’s engagement in domain-specific learning activities, and the use of different types of activity settings were examined in 63 pre-k classrooms for 455 children living in six rural counties in the Southeastern United States. Hierarchical linear models showed that gains in expressive language were positively associated with teacher–child language exchanges and negatively associated with large-group activities. Gains in phonemic awareness and initial-sound knowledge were positively related to sound-focused activities and small-group settings. Gains in reading decoding skills were also positively associated with small-group settings. Implications for research, teacher practice, and professional development are discussed.
Factors such as weak early literacy skills and living in poverty may put young students at risk for reading disabilities. While home literacy activities and access to literacy materials have been ...associated with positive reading outcomes for urban and suburban students, little is known about home literacy environments of rural early elementary school students living in poverty and their relationship to foundational reading skills for struggling and nonstruggling readers. This study examined how home literacy environments might relate to rural kindergarten and first grade students’ reading performance. Parents of 1,108 kindergarten and first grade students in the rural Southeast completed questionnaires on the frequency of home literacy activities and access to literacy materials. Multilevel model analyses revealed that home literacy activities and access to literacy materials were positively related to basic word reading skills, passage comprehension, and spelling. Implications for families and educators are discussed.
This study explored the extent to which kindergarten and first grade teachers provided individualized reading instruction to struggling readers during a unique one–on–one reading instruction task. ...Three outcomes of teachers’ instructional strategies were captured: code–focused strategies, meaning–focused strategies, and level of challenge. Child skills in decoding and vocabulary/oral language as well as teacher qualifications of education, experience, and knowledge of reading were examined in relation to the three instructional strategies. Multilevel analyses showed relationships between child skills and reading instructional strategies, with teachers generally using code–focused and meaning–focused strategies, as well as an appropriate level of challenge, with children who struggled less with early reading. Although teacher education was not associated with any of the reading instructional strategies, teacher experience and knowledge of reading was associated with meaning–based instruction and the level of challenge provided to struggling readers.
•Examined the language by mother in a picturebook task with her child in the home.•Examined caregiver–child language in the child care setting.•Caregiver–child language interactions buffered children ...against poor language when mothers used lower levels of language.
Recent research has suggested that high quality child care can buffer young children against poorer cognitive and language outcomes when they are at risk for poorer language and readiness skills. Most of this research measured the quality of parenting and the quality of the child care with global observational measures or rating scales that did not specify the exact maternal or caregiver behaviors that might be causally implicated in the buffering of these children from poor outcomes. The current study examined the actual language by the mother to her child in the home and the verbal interactions between the caregiver and child in the child care setting that might be implicated in the buffering effect of high quality childcare. The sample included 433 rural children from the Family Life Project who were in child care at 36 months of age. Even after controlling for a variety of covariates, including maternal education, income, race, child previous skill, child care type, the overall quality of the home and quality of the child care environment; observed positive caregiver–child verbal interactions in the child care setting interacted with the maternal language complexity and diversity in predicting children's language development. Caregiver–child positive verbal interactions appeared to buffer children from poor language outcomes concurrently and two years later if children came from homes where observed maternal language complexity and diversity during a picture book task was less.
•Multiple arrangement usage was prevalent for rural sample from high-poverty areas.•Multiple arrangements were positively related to letter-word identification.•Multiple arrangements were positively ...related to negative behaviors.
Non-parental child care prior to kindergarten is a normative experience for the majority of children in the United States, with children commonly experiencing multiple arrangements, or more than one concurrent child care arrangement. The experience of multiple arrangements has predominantly been shown to be negatively related to young children’s health and behavioral outcomes. The present study examined the use of multiple concurrent arrangements for children in the Family Life Project, a representative sample of families living in six high-poverty rural counties. Using the full sample of 1292 children who were followed from six months to kindergarten, this study examined the associations between the number of child care arrangements averaged across six time points and children’s behavioral and academic outcomes in kindergarten. After including a number of control variables, regression results suggested that a greater number of arrangements prior to kindergarten were related to higher levels of teacher-reported negative behaviors, but not positive behaviors, and letter-word decoding skills, but not mathematics skills, though effect sizes were small. Moderation analyses by child care type and quality were conducted, with no evidence emerging that findings varied by type or quality of care.
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