Concepts of print are essential, foundational literacy understandings about words in their written, or print form. Concepts include discerning pictures from written words, reading print from top to ...bottom and left to right with one-to-one correspondence between words read and words in print. Reading aloud from a big book is widely accepted and implemented to teach the concepts of print. We present the repeated singing of a shared text as an alternative or complementary instructional method for teaching concepts of print in the preschool classroom. This article reports major findings that showed substantial developments in preschool student's understanding of print concepts after just 2 weeks of singing a shared text. Additionally, we comment on the joyfulness that song can bring into the early childhood classroom. Based on these findings, we suggest engaging students in repeated singing of a shared text as an instructional approach for teaching concepts of print to preschool students.
The current study aimed to explore the effects of interactive read-aloud with children's picture books on third-grade elementary school students' financial literacy attitude and behavior. A ...pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental research design was employed. The sample of the current research consisted of 46 third-grade elementary school students. We randomly assigned two preexisting third-grade elementary school classrooms to the treatment and control groups that appeared similar considering the pretest scores of the groups. While interactive read-aloud was used in the treatment group, just reading read-aloud activities occurred in the control group. The implementation process took four weeks. Before and after the implementation, the measurement tool was administered to the students in the groups. A one-way analysis of covariance was used for the posttest scores of the students in the groups. The analysis revealed that there was a statistically significant difference in favor of the treatment group.
Reading fluency has been identified as a critical competency for reading success. Accurate and automatic word recognition, one component of fluency, is normally assessed through reading rate (Oral ...Reading Fluency—ORF). While norms for ORF exist through grade 8, norms beyond grade 8 are largely unknown. The present study attempted to establish ORF norms associated with successful adult readers (college graduates), thus establishing a ceiling ORF target range for success in fluency. Results indicate that a word recognition accuracy range of 98–100% and an automaticity range of 138–158 words read correctly per minute on high school level reading material are associated with average performance by college graduates. Results are discussed in terms of implications for monitoring students' progress in fluency in the secondary grades and beyond.
