Although substantial research has established how to teach word reading, the research base for teaching skills related to language and reading comprehension is more limited. We report a multistate experiment of a supplemental, whole-class, language-focused curriculum delivered in prekindergarten and kindergarten classrooms that was designed to…

This study reports on the effectiveness of an organised set of storytelling activities that aimed to enhance early literacy development. There were three conditions in the study. In the control condition, regular literacy development activities took place. In one experimental condition, the set of activities included oral storytelling. In the…

This study aims to document the implementation of sign bilingualism and co-enrollment education in a kindergarten in Quzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, to identify the major characteristics of the programme, and to report findings of children's language in terms of vocabulary and surveys on the views and attitudes of the stakeholders of the…

Purpose: This study investigated component skills in oral language development utilizing and validating a new assessment battery in a large (N = 800) and representative sample of Greek students 4-7 years of age. Method: All participants enrolled in public schools from four geographical regions (Attica, Thessaly, Macedonia, and Crete) that varied…

The role of parental involvement in the sense of home-based or school-based programs for supporting children's early literacy development and education in the Greek state school context has not been well established. The "PIECE" (Parental Involvement for the Engagement, Cooperation and Empowerment) program is a novel inclusion program…

Rejection by peers has devastating effects on children's social-cognitive development. As language difficulties have been found to be one of the underlying causes of peer rejection, the present study focused on the relation between these two variables. Specifically, this study was the first to test a hypothesized model connecting children's level…

This article discusses how children in New Zealand make meaning in their spontaneous pretend play from kindergarten (four years old) through to their first year of primary school (five years old). The findings discussed here are taken from a wider project investigating children's storytelling where 12 child participants were video recorded during…

Prior research on reading difficulties has mainly focused on word decoding problems. However, there exists another group of children -- poor comprehenders (PCs) -- who have normal word decoding abilities but difficulties in reading comprehension. Less is known about PCs especially in non-alphabetic languages such as Chinese. This study identified…

Research to guide text structure interventions for the primary grades is very limited, yet as early as in kindergarten, many state standards increasingly emphasize exposure to challenging expository texts. The purpose of the present study was to provide preliminary evidence of the feasibility and promise (or the effects) of three brief text…

Understand the science of reading and how to implement evidence-based instruction to increase the reading and writing achievement of pre-K-6 students, including those at risk for reading difficulties. Fully revised and updated, this core text covers the research base for structured literacy instruction and practical guidance on the essential…

In this study, we elicited grammatical forms (oral production) from a group of child heritage speakers of Spanish (N = 45) in English and Spanish, using the morphosyntax subtest of the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment (BESA), (Peña et al. 2014). A cross-sectional design was used with 25 participants in kindergarten and 20 in first grade. All…

There has been increasing interest in both Canada and the United States in implementing all-day Kindergarten programs. Education policy makers stress the need for countries to take initiative in educating children so they are more successful once they begin their formal schooling process. But is a longer school day the only solution to the problem…

In this 1-year longitudinal study, the authors explored the development of narrative skills between the oral and written form. The authors aimed to assess the predictive power of textual narrative competence on early narrative text-writing skills taking into account the impact of spelling ability. Eighty children ("M" age = 5.3 years,…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to retrospectively examine the preschool language and early literacy skills of kindergarten good and poor readers, and to determine the extent to which these skills predict reading status. Method: Participants were 136 children with language impairment enrolled in early childhood special education classrooms.…

This article reports on collaborative action research in twelve northern rural and Indigenous communities in four Canadian provinces. Pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, grade one, and Aboriginal Head Start teachers worked with university researchers in three universities to create action research projects with the aim of supporting children's oral…