Literacy activities and critical thinking are two fundamental aspects in the growth and development of primary school students. Parents also play a vital role in children's lives, as they are considered their children's first educators. The time that family members spend together is invaluable and must be used to lead to the harmonious development…

Numerous studies on reading comprehension with monolingual children have shown that oral language, such as vocabulary, is an important factor in predicting reading comprehension success. However, few studies have looked at the reading comprehension performance of bilinguals, and less is known about the contributors to its success, linguistic or…

In March of 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, drastically changing teaching and learning. Children were immediately placed in emergency remote learning, and parents became facilitators of their children's learning while children were in their virtual learning space. This study explored families' experiences with…

Over the past two decades, U.S. states have widely adopted early literacy policies. These policies have shown short-term success in enhancing K-3 literacy skills. However, the reasons behind their widespread adoption and the factors driving their success are poorly understood. This three-paper dissertation focuses on Michigan's Read by Grade Three…

We examined the bidirectional relations between home literacy environment, reading interest, and children's emergent literacy and reading skills in a sample of 172 English-speaking Canadian children (M[subscript age] = 75.87 months) followed from Grade 1 to Grade 3. Results of cross-lagged analysis revealed that the reading comprehension…

Seemingly small reading delays in early childhood have the potential to compound into more considerable reading difficulties later in childhood (Bast & Reitsma, 1998; Foster & Miller, 2007). Children growing up in at-risk households are especially vulnerable to falling behind in reading. The objective of this study was to explore the…

It is known that parent involvement contributes to children's overall educational achievement as well as their literacy development. Home literacy, in particular, is critical in helping children who read below grade level. Studies also found that the quality of the interaction between the child and parent is as important as interactive…

Purpose: This study examines the extent to which the Home Literacy Environment (HLE) as measured by reading habits and resources, library use, and subscriptions or materials, as well as parental reading beliefs predict both language skills (i.e., vocabulary) at kindergarten and students' trajectories of growth from kindergarten (K) to grade 3…

Children with a rich home literacy environment generally show better reading comprehension. For children in the higher grades of primary school, this relation is thought to be indirect. We propose a model in which this relation ran via children's higher order language and cognitive skills (i.e., expressive verbal ability and mentalizing ability)…