•Early and later reading and language skills were investigated in a 15-year longitudinal study.•Vocabulary was generally a strong predictor of later vocabulary and reading development.•Children’s ...oral narrative skills measured at school entry related to their reading comprehension performance at age 16.•Findings show links between vocabulary, early literacy, oral narrative and reading comprehension skills.
Previous research suggests that (a) individual differences in reading and language development are stable across childhood, (b) reading and vocabulary are intertwined, and (c) children’s oral narrative skill contributes to later reading comprehension. Each of these three phenomena is assessed using a longitudinal design spanning 15 years, from when children were 19 months old until they were 16 years old. Alongside measures for maternal vocabulary, a host of language and (early) reading measures, including vocabulary, early literacy development, oral narrative skill, and reading comprehension, were administered across eight time points to a sample of 58 children. Specific early language and reading skills were generally strongly correlated over time. Reading comprehension at age 12 was predicted by vocabulary at 19 months and emergent literacy at school entry. Vocabulary at 19 months of age predicted early literacy skills prior to school entry and reading comprehension at age 12 years, as did school entry literacy skills. Controlling for maternal and infant vocabulary, children’s oral narrative skill around school entry related uniquely to reading comprehension 10 years later. Findings provide new evidence for the long-term interplay between early language, literacy, and later reading and vocabulary development.
Listening comprehension and word decoding are the two major determinants of the development of reading comprehension. The relative importance of different language skills for the development of ...listening and reading comprehension remains unclear. In this 5-year longitudinal study, starting at age 7.5 years (n = 198), it was found that the shared variance between vocabulary, grammar, verbal working memory, and inference skills was a powerful longitudinal predictor of variations in both listening and reading comprehension. In line with the simple view of reading, listening comprehension, and word decoding, together with their interaction and curvilinear effects, explains almost all (96%) variation in early reading comprehension skills. Additionally, listening comprehension was a predictor of both the early and later growth of reading comprehension skills.
In this study, we aimed to determine the early cognitive and home environmental predictors of reading in Turkish‐speaking children. A total of 362 children participated in the study. We monitored the ...children for 3 years and assessed the home environmental variables and cognitive skills in kindergarten, reading fluency at the end of the first grade, and reading comprehension at the end of the second grade. We found that home literacy environment and socioeconomic status predicted early literacy skills in kindergarten as they also predicted reading fluency and reading comprehension through early literacy in later years. In addition, we found that phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and rapid naming predicted reading fluency, while language and verbal working memory predicted reading comprehension. The results of the study showed us that it is important to consider reading and reading comprehension in Turkish‐speaking children holistically, together with cognitive skills and home environmental variables.
Practitioner Points
Early cognitive and home environmental factors affect the development of reading and reading comprehension in Turkish‐speaking children.
Early home literacy environment and socioeconomic status predict reading success through early cognitive factors.
Phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and rapid naming are essential variables for the development of reading fluency in Turkish, a highly transparent language.
•In-person Head Start attendance during COVID-19 was low compared to pre-pandemic.•School readiness skills growth was similar to that seen in pre-pandemic studies.•In-person attendance is positively ...linked to higher school readiness skills in some domains.
The COVID-19 pandemic's impact on preschool children's school readiness skills remains understudied. This research investigates Head Start preschool children's early numeracy, literacy, and executive function outcomes during a pandemic-affected school year. Study children (N = 336 assessed at fall baseline; N = 237-250 assessed in spring depending on outcome; fall baseline sample: mean age = 51 months; 46% Hispanic; 36% Black Non-Hispanic; 52% female) in a network of Head Start centers in four states (Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) experienced low in-person preschool exposure compared to national pre-pandemic norms. Children experienced fall to spring score gains during the pandemic-affected year of 0.05 SD in executive function, 0.27 SD in print knowledge, and 0.45-0.71 SD in early numeracy skills. Descriptively, for two of the three early numeracy domains measured, spring test score outcomes were stronger among children who attended more in-person preschool. We discuss implications for future research and policy.
This article examines what happens when first grade students (age six) interact and talk with each other while writing individual texts. The data for the study comprises observations and ...video-recordings from 26 writing lessons in two different first grade classrooms in Norway. The study builds on sociocultural theories of writing that argue that writing is an activity that unfolds within writing communities in which each writer’s knowledge and skills have the potential to become a shared resource for the participants. The analysis found that students’ interactions can be grouped into five categories: copying, unsolicited advice, subteaching, mutual commenting and ignored initiatives. Within these different patterns of interaction, students seemed to explore and practice writing in varying ways; so it is therefore useful for teachers to be aware of what type of interaction is occurring. The findings indicate that students’ interaction elicits many benefits, as students are found to practice spelling, handwriting, and composing; use and develop their writing metalanguage; and experience being writers in a writing community. At the same time, interaction can make students socially vulnerable, and advice from peers can be too focused on correctness and can be unwelcome.
In Early childhood education, play is considered as the heart of instruction and learning prepare. Play moreover critical in obtaining children language and literacy ability, person with higher level ...of proficiency have higher opportunity in their life success. This is a qualitative research study analysing teacher's conceptualization of play in the literacy teaching and learning process. An interpretative and descriptive qualitative research is the design of this study. A qualitative study was undertaken because this technique allows researchers with ways and means considering different views of the research subject therefore producing rich, in-depth and elaborate data. This, small research has been conducted in Indonesian settings on the utilize of play in educating proficiency in early childhood instruction classrooms. Information was obtained through one-on-one, one-hour in-depth interviews from a few teachers in five early childhood education institutions. Examination of the information uncovered those early education teachers agree on utilizing play as an instrument in educating literacy concepts
According to the Home Literacy Model (Sénéchal and LeFevre, 2002, 2014), young children can be exposed to two distinct types of literacy activities at home. First, meaning-related literacy activities ...are those where print is present but is not the focus of the parent-child interaction, for example, when parents read storybooks to their children. In contrast, code-related literacy activities focus on the print, for example, activities such as when parents teach their children the names and sounds of letters or to read words. The present study was conducted to expand the Home Literacy Model by examining its relation with children's engagement in literacy activities at home and at school as Finnish children transitioned from kindergarten to Grades 1 and 2. Two facets of children's engagement were examined, namely, children's independent reading at home and their interest in literacy activities. Children (
= 378) were tested and interviewed at the ends of kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2. Mothers completed questionnaires on their home literacy activities at each test time, and they reported the frequency with which their children read independently twice when children were in grade school. Tested was a longitudinal model of the hypothesized relations among maternal home literacy activities (shared reading and teaching of reading), children's reading skills, independent reading, and their interest in literacy activities/tasks as children progressed from kindergarten to Grade 2. Stringent path analyses that included all auto-regressors were conducted. Findings extended previous research in four ways. First, the frequency of shared reading and teaching of reading at home predicted the frequency of children's independent reading 1 year later. Second, children with stronger early literacy skills in kindergarten read independently more frequently once they were in Grade 1. Third, parents adapted, from kindergarten to Grade 1, their teaching behaviors to their children's progress in reading, whereas shared reading decreased over time. Fourth, children's own reports of interest in literacy activities were mostly not linked to other variables. Taken together, these results add another layer to the Home Literacy Model.
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