The purpose of this article is to describe the professional development (PD) model for preschool literacy and language instruction that took place in a 3-year, 2-tiered Early Reading First project in 9 Head Start and community-based school classrooms. In our tiered model, the Tier 1 level was classroom instruction and Tier 2 was intervention…

This meta-analysis examines to what extent interactive storybook reading stimulates two pillars of learning to read: vocabulary and print knowledge. The authors quantitatively reviewed 31 (quasi) experiments (n = 2,049 children) in which educators were trained to encourage children to be actively involved before, during, and after joint book…

An interview with David Olson concerning his current research on the relation between the oral conversational language of preschool children and the formalized language of written texts. (RAE)

Unproven beliefs about the process of reading and its instruction and about the effects of maturation and social structure on learning have obscured the question of what children know about how to read. An alternate conceptualization proposes that to learn to read children must obtain experience in three reading contexts: the use of print and its…

Examines beginning readers' story dictation processes and products over a 16-month period. Investigates level of story structure, conventional expressions, internal responses, spatial-temporal setting, verb tenses, variety of tenses, connectives, anaphora, and dictation process adapting to a scribe. Finds overall development in ability to…

The result of an international symposium conducted in Canada, this book contains articles by experts in the fields of anthropology, linguistics, psychology, sociology, and education on the subject of preschool children and literacy. The book is divided into three sections dealing with literacy and culture, learning to be literate, and literacy and…

This paper describes the home and school experiences of 12 children from bilingual (mostly Chinese/English) homes who, before beginning first grade, demonstrated advanced ability to comprehend written English. Results demonstrate that lack of fluency in oral English should not exclude children from advanced instruction in reading. (Author/JDD)