This brief report summarizes Austin Independent School District prekindergarten (pre-K) students' achievement on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-IV (PPVT) and Test de Vocabularío en Imagenes Peabody (TVIP) in Fall 2014. The PPVT and the TVIP measure knowledge of receptive (i.e., hearing) vocabulary in English and Spanish.

Shared-book reading is a well-established intervention to foster vocabulary development. Factors influencing its effectiveness are, however, less well studied, particularly with regard to story-delivery. We contrasted a read-aloud with a free storytelling approach and tested effects on vocabulary learning. In the first study, 83 preschoolers aged…

Research Findings: This study examines lexical- and sentence-level dimensions of academic language to describe teachers' natural use of academic language and its association with vocabulary growth in 489 at-risk 4-year-olds enrolled in Head Start preschool classrooms. Using transcripts derived from video recordings of book-reading sessions in 52…

A sample of Austin Independent School District prekindergarten students showed growth from Fall 2014 to Spring 2015 on a nationally normed test for receptive vocabulary. These results were found for students in a Head Start program as well as those not in Head Start.

Purpose: This study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of a social intervention that integrates peer-mediated approaches and the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS). Method: Effects were evaluated using a series of A-B designs replicated across 4 children with severe autism and limited verbal skills. Seven peers without…

In this thesis, I present three related papers that collectively investigate the instructional supports on screen and in the media viewing context that influenced English and heritage language vocabulary knowledge in DLLs. In study 1, I examine how specific pedagogical approaches used in educational media might benefit DLLs. In study 2, I…

We examined the relations between teachers' use of comments during book reading sessions in preschool classrooms and the vocabulary growth of children with low and moderately low language ability. Using data from a larger randomized controlled trial, we analyzed comments defined as utterances that give, explain, expand, or define. Comments were…

An emerging body of research examines language learning of young children from experiences with digital storybooks, but little is known about the ways in which specific components of digital storybooks, including interactive elements, may influence language learning. The purpose of the study was to examine the incidental word learning and story…

There are currently 2 principal models of publicly funded prekindergarten programs (pre-K): targeted pre-K, which is means-tested, and universal pre-K. These programs often differ in terms of the economic characteristics of the preschoolers enrolled. Studies have documented links between individual achievement in school-age children and the…

Two experiments examined Czech children's comprehension of grammatical number marking in verbs. Children were presented with picture pairs involving one or multiple participants in the same action, and were asked to point to the picture described by a recorded sentence. Experiment 1 (N = 72, age 3;0-4;7) tested four types of sentences, some of…

Theory and empirical work suggest inclusion preschool improves the school readiness of young children with special needs, but only 2 studies of the model have used rigorous designs that could identify causality. The present study examined the impacts of the Boston Public prekindergarten program-which combined proven language, literacy, and…

Each year in the fall and spring semesters, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and the Test de Vocabulario en Imágenes are administered to a sample of pre-K students in AISD. The following report provides Fall 2013 results for each vertical team of schools.

This study investigated: 1) the influence of alphabet instructional content (letter names, letter sounds, or both) on alphabet learning and engagement of English only and dual language learner (DLL) children, and 2) the relation between children's initial status and growth in three underlying cognitive learning processes (paired-associate,…

This study described the commenting practices of Head Start teachers, and the relationship of comments to the expressive and receptive vocabulary growth of children with below-the-mean language ability across one year of preschool. Participants included 52 Head Start teachers, and 489 children (247 early intervention candidates and 242 Head Start…

Research Findings: This study examined associations between the expressive vocabulary of classroom peers and children's own vocabulary knowledge using conceptual scoring in a linguistically diverse sample of 4-year-olds who attended universal preschool programs in a metropolitan area. Higher peer conceptually scored expressive vocabulary was…