Early Literacy Development: Research and Implications

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Early Literacy DevelopmentResearch and
Implications

• David K. Dickinson
• Peabody College of Education, Vanderbilt
  University
• California Preschool Instruction Network

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Consider Further Training .

• There is a serious shortage of doctoral level
  personnel with knowledge of early literacy
  development.
• Students accepted into Vanderbilts PhD program
  for training future researchers pay no tuition
  and receive stipend support for five years.
• In the future we might offer a doctorate in
  educational practice (EdD) designed to allow you
  to continue in your current position.
• Contact me or the Vanderbilt U. website Peabody
  College of Education, Teaching and Learning
  Department.

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Getting Off to a Strong Start is Vital
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Strong Reading Skills Are Essential for Academic
Success

• Reading skill is required for success in all
  other academic areas (including math).
• Poor readers are far more likely to be retained.
• Children who are held back are far more likely to
  drop out.
• Failure to graduate (even if you get a GED)
  reduces career opportunities.

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Early Skills Predict Later Literacy

• Early skills predict later reading comprehension
• gr. 1 vocabulary ? gr. 11 comprehension
  (Cunningham Stanovich)
• gr. 4 vocabulary ? gr. 12 reading (Snow et. al.)
• Kindergerten vocabulary ? gr. 7 comprehension
  (Dickinson Tabors, 2001)
• 88 of kindergartners with reading difficulty
  are poor readers in 4th grade (Juel, 1988).
• Skills that support reading ability are stable
• Levels of phonemic awareness are stable during
  elementary school years and beyond. (Torgesen,
  Wagner)
• Relative vocabulary levels are stable. (Biemiller)

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Weak Literacy Skills Have Long-term Implications

• Adults with low literacy skills
• Unemployment (50 decrease in weeks worked)
• 7x more likely to be poor
• 4-5x more likely to be on public assistance
• Decreased political participation 40 lower
  voting
• Poor health outcomes
• 50 of those in prison have serious reading
  problems (National Center for Learning
  Disabilities)

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Challenges Our Society Faces
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Vocabulary Experience Varies Hart Risley,
Meaningful Differences, Brookes Publishing
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Vocabulary Learning Between 30 and 36 months
(Hart Risley, 1995)

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Phonological Awareness Skills Begin to Diverge in
the Preschool Years
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Many Children from Low-Income Homes Start School
Seriously Behind in Language Skills

• Four-year-old Head Start children, on average,
  score at levels equivalent to children age 210.
• Many children (Even Start, bilingual/ELL)
  children begin school even farther behind in
  English.

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Achievement Gap Among 9 Year Old Children NAEP
Long-term Trends Show a Persistent but Narrowing
Gap
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Why Do Some Struggle?

• Poverty
• Stressed lives, limited time for children
• Fewer books, educational activities
• More health challenges, depression
• Parents have limited education
• Less likely to provide extensive cognitive
  enrichment.
• Less aware of need for the kinds of interactions
  that foster early literacy.
• Parents may have limited knowledge of English
• Schools have limited resources and many children
  with great needs

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Challenges, Not Deficiencies

• Children who show slower language and early
  literacy development
• Have the ability to learn.
• Can make rapid progress when provided strong
  support.
• Families of these children
• Want their children to be successful.
• Have the capacity to provide children more
  enrichment with your help.

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Challenges Teachers Face
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Classrooms Often Do Not Provide Optimal Support

• Research
• Children have few conversations with teachers.
• Teachers tend to use a limited variety of words.
• Extended conversations are rare.

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Early Language and Literacy Classroom Observation

• Basic Early Childhood
• Classroom Climate
• Opportunity for child choice
• Contents of classroom
• Classroom management
• Physical environment
• Separate Element
• Using Technology

• Language, Literacy, Curriculum
• Oral Language Support
• Presence of Books
• Book Reading Practices
• Support for Writing
• Curriculum Support
• Approach to Assessment
• Facilitating Home Support for Literacy
• Valuing Diversity

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ELLCO Ratings of Dimensions of Classroom Quality
(n 133)
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Percentage of Time Teachers Used Advanced
Purposes During Free Play Meal Time (n 61)

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Challenges Teachers Face

• Many children and few adults
• management challenges
• limited time for individualized conversations
• Lack of knowledge and awareness
• knowledge of the importance
• skills are more tangible and often tested
• awareness of how one interacts is extremely
  difficult
• How one uses language has deep roots in ones
  history, personal, cultural and racial identity.

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What Abilities Support Literacy?
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Building Blocks for Literacy
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The Reading Process

• Decoding
• Phonemic awareness to figure out how letter
  sounds relate to words.
• Letter names and letter-sounds to figure out what
  sounds to say
• CAT K A T
• Spoken Vocabulary
• Understand what the words mean once you say them
• CAT

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Components of Early Literacy
Reading Writing
World Knowledge
Uses of Print
Self Regulation
Sound-symbol correspondence
Phonemic Awareness
Extended Discourse
Rich Vocabulary
Phonological Sensitivity
Letter knowledge
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Literacy is Created From Many Strands

• What do these children understand about how
  print works? About books?
• What skills are they developing?
• How has their teacher supported them?

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Strong Language Is At the Core of Early Literacy
Development
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Why Focus on Language?

• Literacy development
• Language-based interactions are central to early
  literacy learning.
• Language skills are central to long-term literacy
  success.
• Social and emotional development
• Language abilities are vital to development of
  social competence and self-regulation.
• Social competence and self-regulation are key to
  long-term adjustment and academic success.
• Support for literacy-related used of language is
  not always optimal in homes and classrooms.

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Oral Language From Conversations to Literacy

• Conversations
• Short turns
• Check understanding
• Shared experiences knowledge
• In the same location
• Gesture
• Eye gaze
• Intonation signals how you feel, marks importance

• Reading
• No turns!
• You monitor alone
• Cannot assume shared knowledge
• Not shared location
• No voice to signal feeling or importance
• Rely on words, syntax (grammar), world knowledge

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Oonga Boonga

• Louise kept crying until her tears ran like
  rivers to the sea.
• Louise kept crying until her wails shook the
  pictures off the walls.
• Louise kept on crying until her sobs woke all the
  dogs and cats on the block.
• Louise kept on crying till the birds flew out of
  the trees and the squirrels scampered away.

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Over in the Meadow

• Over in the meadow, in the sand, in the sun,
  lived an old mother turtle and her little turtle
  one.
• Over in the meadow, where the stream runs blue,
  lived an old mother fish and her little fishes
  two.

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Relationships and Social Development Are Tied to
Language and Literacy Development
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Language and Social Development and
Self-Regulation

• Language is social. It is used to
• Create and deepen relationships.
• Solve problems.
• Share experience and knowledge.
• Play with friends.
• Language helps with self regulation
• It helps with understanding emotions of oneself
  and others.
• It can provide self-control strategies.
• Stronger language skills are related to better
  self regulation ability.

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Self-Regulation, Language and Relationships with
Teachers

• Social and self-regulation skills enhance the
  ability to form relationships with teachers.
• The quality of teacher-child relationships in
  kindergarten and grade one have enduring effects
  on children.
• Teacher-child relationships have enduring effects
  on teachers!

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Lunchtime Conversation

• Cindy Hoisington
• Head Start teacher
• Classroom with 12 ELL children speaking 9
  different languages
• Contributing author to Opening the World of
  Learning (OWL)
• Lunchtime after girls had explored snails during
  choice time

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Noteworthy Features

• Intensive focus on the child building a
  relationship between teacher and child.
• Supported and challenged language skills.
• Extended and in-depth conversation exploration of
  a single topic.
• Support for vocabulary learning and precise use
  of language. (eyes open awake)
• Modeled correct grammar (its eyes was/ were
  open)
• Used complex grammar (Last week, when I was )
• Others are encouraged to listen and thereby
• Experience a high level conversation.
• Learn to carry on a conversation with an adult.
• Learn to listen to other children.

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Children Who Are Just Learning English
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Children Who Speak 2 Languages

• Having strong language skills is what matters
  most.
• Basic skills transfer across languages (letter
  knowledge, attention to sounds of words).
• Ways of using of language (to think, to question,
  to learn) transfer
• Parents need to use their strongest language.

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Educational Outcomes

• Children have better long-term academic success
  when they have strong first language.
• English vocabulary predicts later reading.
• It takes 3-4 years to develop language skill
  required for academic success.
• children can learn English in school and from
  peers and siblings.
• Two-way immersion programs provide a strong model
  if they are feasible.
• Preschool teachers must make language their 1
  priority.

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Implications for Families

• Loss of a childs first language is common.
• English is the language of popular and peer
  culture.
• Children may use language choice as a means to
  express individuality.
• Children (boys esp.) lose Spanish when it is not
  spoken in the home or at school.
• Siblings language use affects language
  retention.
• Schools and families need to work together to
  build strong L1 and L2 skills.

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What You Do Can Have Long-term Benefits for
Children

• Biology provides us a window of opportunity.
• Preschool classrooms can make a difference.

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Prefrontal Cortex Synaptic Density(from Neural
Plasticity, P. Huttenlocher, p. 45)
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Synaptic Density in Language Areas(from Neural
Plasticity, P. Huttenlocher, p. 45)
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Cerebral Metabolism for Glucose(from Neural
Plasticity, P. Huttenlocher, p. 45)
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Home School Study of Language Literacy
Development

• Questions
• What interactions in homes and classrooms support
  language development?
• What effects do such experiences during the
  preschool years have on long-term literacy?
• Method
• Visited homes classrooms from age 3.
• Audiotaped teachers and children throughout the
  day.
• Assessed language literacy beginning in
  kindergarten. Continued to grade 7.
• Dickinson Tabors, 2001, Beginning Literacy
  with Language, Paul Brookes Publishing Co.
  (www.brookespublishing.com)

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Kindergarten Skills Predict Grade Seven Reading
and Vocabulary from Dickinson Tabors,
Beginning Literacy with Language, Brookes
Publishing
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Preschool Classrooms Can Provide Long-Term
Benefits

• Improved language and literacy skills at the end
  of kindergarten.
• Improved language and literacy skills at the end
  of fourth grade.

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Predicting Childrens Kindergarten Receptive
Vocabulary Scores Using Home Control and
Classroom Variables from Dickinson Tabors,
Beginning Literacy with Language, Brookes
Publishing
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Age 4 Grade 4 Comprehensive Model
Self regulation
Age 4 Group Behaviors
Reading Comprehension
Kindergarten Language
Age 4 T - C talk
Decoding
Print PA
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Practical Applications
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1-1 Teacher-Child Conversations

• Individualized teacher-child conversations (meal
  times, choice time)
• Frequent
• Teacher listens to child
• Teacher encourages clarification
• Extended on a single topic
• Teacher uses varied vocabulary
• Positive, supportive emotional tone (related to
  good conversations)

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Strategies for Improving Conversations

• Stay in one location
• sit down and stay put for a bit
• As a team plan ways to ensure that one member is
  freed to interact.
• Use every minute, including meal times.
• Set personal goals
• Strive for five (back-and-forth exchanges)
• Track which children you and other teachers have
  talked with.
• Talk about important home experiences.
• Talk about past and current curriculum topics.

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Focused and Informative Group Times

• Group discussions
• Informative, interesting
• Group oriented (not long 1-1 interactions)
• Organized, focused and with appropriate
  instructional purposes
• Avoid
• Extended interactions with individual children
• Routines that dont introduce new concepts or
  vocabulary

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Curriculum and Support for Writing

• Curriculum
• Varied and interesting content
• Allow time for in-depth exploration and play
  related to the topic.
• Writing is encouraged and supported
• Integrate writing into play and varied classroom
  areas.
• Time is planned for small groups led by the
  teacher.

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Effective Book Reading and Discussion

• Book reading
• Regular reading
• Read in an engaging manner
• Discussions are focused and provoke thinking
• Later today
• Brief hands-on experience introducing some useful
  techniques

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Work as a Team

• Intentional efforts are required
• Team planning to provide time to talk.
• Provide assistant teachers instructional roles
  and guidance.
• Work to become aware of your own conversations.
• track of extended conversations
• create checklists for others to use when
  observing you
• record yourself and watch and listen consider
  transcribing brief portions.
• Make this a long-term project.

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Guiding Principles

• Teach with intentionality.
• Reflect constantly.
• Believe passionately in the importance of
  your work.

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• Beginning Literacy with Language
• Brookes Publishing. (Dickinson Tabors)
• Handbook of Early Literacy Research, Guilford
  Publishing (Guilford.com)
• Volume I, 2001 (Neuman Dickinson)
• Volume II, 2006 (Dickinson Neuman)
• Opening the World of Learning (OWL) , Pearson
  Early Learning. Openingtheworldoflearning.com
• Schickedanz Dickinson, 2005