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5. Preventing Reading Difficulties Before Kindergarten
Pages 137-171

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From page 137...
... preschool children slated to attend an elementary school where achievement is chronically low; (4) children suffering from specific cognitive deficiencies, hearing impairments, and early language impairments; and (5)
From page 138...
... Parents' Beliefs and Attitudes There is increasing evidence that parental beliefs and attitudes regarding literacy and reading in particular influence children's literacy development (DeBaryshe, 1995; Baker et al., 1995; Spiegel, 1994)
From page 139...
... . Studies of children's early language development indicate that parent-child influences are reciprocal: children influence the ways that adults behave toward them, and adults influence children's learning experiences and opportunities (Lewis and Feinman, 1991; Belsky et al., 1984)
From page 140...
... 140 PREVENTING READING DIFFICULTIES IN YOUNG CHILDREN BOX 5-1 An Example of Parent-Child Literacy-Oriented Interactions A visit to the home of Jaime, 5, and Danny, 3: Danny has just gotten up from a nap and is lying on the floor, not quite awake yet; Jaime has been watching Mister Rogers and is playing with his blocks and dinosaurs in the living room. In the corner there is a little book shelf with 20 or so children's books, including three that are due back to the library the next day.
From page 141...
... PREVENTING READING DIFFICULTIES BEFORE KINDERGARTEN 141 Danny climbs on a chair and takes up the pencil. He begins to write, intent ly, and makes a series of squiggles: "Hey, buddy, that's pretty good," Dad says.
From page 142...
... Simple transfer includes activities such as storybook reading and participation in writing shopping lists. Parents reading to and with children -- called dyadic book reading -- has been widely studied (e.g., Chomsky, 1972; Laosa, 1982; Anderson et al., 1985; Teale and Sulzby, 1986)
From page 143...
... (1995:245) note that "Parents' descriptions of their children's early efforts to engage in literacy activities often reflected amusement but also suggest awareness of the value of such behaviors." Finally, parents help children to develop oral language precursors to literacy by means of linguistic and cognitive mechanisms.
From page 144...
... In examining four parent education models that included HIPPY, researchers found that they all included effective components addressing cultural awareness, interagency collaboration, and the development of close ties between home and school (Baker and Piotrkowski, 1996)
From page 145...
... Family Literacy Programs Family literacy programs seek to enhance literacy within families. In contrast, an intergenerational literacy program fuses adult literacy with preschool programs to enhance the literacy growth of adults and children who may be unrelated (Daisey, 1991)
From page 146...
... The Even Start family literacy program had the greatest impact on availability of reading materials in the home, parents' expectations of their children's success in school, and skills related to children's readiness for school, although researchers evaluating the program cautioned that it is difficult to attribute the positive effects to the program alone. In a review of the literature, as well as firsthand studies of a sample of 11 Even Start1 family literacy projects, researchers note 1Even Start refers to legislation that was passed in 1988, appropriating funds to initiate, continue, and evaluate family literacy projects.
From page 147...
... The final critical feature is the necessary funding to ensure that these programs can be sustained over time. A research synthesis on family literacy programs notes that "documented research consistently supports the finding that participants in family literacy programs are benefited by increased positive literacy interactions in the home between parent and child as a correlate of their participation" (Tracey, 1994)
From page 148...
... studied the literacy environment in child care programs. Day care providers were targeted because of their role in providing care for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers; in many situations, the language and literacy needs of these children
From page 149...
... . Of these measures, children in the readingaloud group performed significantly better on letter names, phonemic awareness, and concepts of writing.
From page 150...
... Head Start programs provide or arrange comprehensive services for children and families, including a "developmental" curriculum, psychological and social services, nutrition and health, and parent involvement and education. Programs designed for children in poverty, including large-scale public programs, were found to produce immediate effects for reading achievement of about 0.5 standard deviation (White and Casto, 1985; McKey et al., 1985; Ramey et al., 1985)
From page 151...
... The results to date suggest that this is a promising approach to reducing young children's risk for future reading difficulties. Is phonological awareness training helpful for improving this ability in 4- to 5-year-old preschoolers who are at risk for reading difficulties?
From page 152...
... , involved several steps, all of which were completed for a single phoneme/letter before proceeding to the next one to be learned. The first steps involved oral exercises in phonological awareness alone: repeating aloud words beginning with the target phoneme, with extra emphasis on enunciating the first phoneme (e.g., /b/-/b/-ball)
From page 153...
... It appeared that the amount of benefit per hour of tutoring was essentially equivalent for the 4- and 6-year-old high-risk samples, indicating that little would be gained by delaying instruction until school age. Given that 4- and 5-year-olds, even those from high-risk backgrounds, can successfully be trained in phonological awareness and letter-sound associations, is this sufficient to permit a young child to discover the alphabetic principle and use it to read simple words?
From page 154...
... However, even if they mastered the letter-sound associations, children who had not succeeded on the phonological awareness training did not meet the criterion for knowing the alphabetic principle. In short, "neither phonemic awareness nor knowledge of the correspondence between letters and phonemes is sufficient for the emergence of initial insights into the alphabetic principle.
From page 155...
... The evidence that preschool can have a beneficial effect on children's early language and literacy development is heartening, but we need to know whether preschool experiences have similarly positive results for all subgroups of children at risk. Low-income African American and Hispanic children, particularly Spanish-speaking Hispanic children, have similar immediate benefits from preschool
From page 156...
... Important points to consider are that the African American children may be attending Head Start programs of lower quality, may subsequently attend poor schools, or may have less developed vocabulary to begin with and thus need even more intensive interventions than the European American children. They may benefit less from Head Start classrooms in which standard English is used because they are more comfortable with a dialect of English (African American Vernacular English)
From page 157...
... However, the asset may turn into a risk for young Hispanic children getting ready for reading, if learning a foreign language comes at the expense of building on very early home language development in ways that promote the metalinguistic experiences needed for alphabetic reading. When toddlers are stretching their language capacities, putting together their native language expertise in ways that will promote their future success at reading, learning a second language cannot take the place of learning with one's own first language.
From page 158...
... Programs have therefore been developed in hospitals, clinics, and community centers to lower prenatal, perinatal, and postnatal risks for mothers and their infants. These programs provide services such as prenatal care, nutritional supplements for pregnant women and children, hospital-based services, and home visits to enhance natural caregiving.
From page 159...
... For example, the early detection of deafness correlates with higher reading scores among profoundly deaf children, regardless of the onset of deafness (congenital versus after birth) (Padden and Tractenberg, 1996)
From page 161...
... PREVENTING READING DIFFICULTIES BEFORE KINDERGARTEN 161 formally 1995)
From page 162...
... Having been exposed to waiting room readers or to guidance by the pediatrician had no association with literacy orientation. In a report on the effectiveness of pediatric literacy programs, Needlman (1997)
From page 163...
... . EARLY INTERVENTION FOR CHILDREN WITH PHYSICAL AND COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENTS In our discussion in Chapter 4 of risk factors associated with early reading difficulties, we identified children who are deaf or hearing impaired, who have language impairments, and who have cognitive deficits as needing early intervention that may reduce their risk of reading difficulties.
From page 164...
... Parents and preschool teachers can enhance deaf children's communicative and reading ability growth by beginning very early to communicate with these children through finger spelling and manual signing. Although there is evidence suggesting that highly skilled college deaf readers show speech coding during reading (Hanson et al., 1991)
From page 165...
... . In one study, this weakness was not found to be associated with the child's exposure to and participation in literacy activities; instead, the children with specific language impairment apparently learned less about
From page 166...
... . To date, one intervention study has produced impressive short- and long-term gains in phonological awareness by children with specific language impairment, compared with untreated samples of preschoolers with specific language impairment and those with normal language abilities (Warrick et al., 1993)
From page 167...
... . One preschool program built on a developmental model that had positive follow-up results in reading achievement for children with cognitive deficits is High/Scope model (see Box 5-2)
From page 168...
... Daily routine · General characteristics (e.g., consistent transitions) , planning time, work time, clean-up time, recall time, small-group time, outside time, and circle time.
From page 169...
... The mediated instruction group had significantly higher verbal and memory scores and scores on mean length of utterance derived from language samples. In follow-up studies, significant differential effects were found on two measures of cognitive ability, favoring the mediated instruc
From page 170...
... Well before formal reading instruction is appropriate, many informal opportunities for learning about literacy are available, to varying degrees, in most American homes and child care settings. Ideally, these opportunities mean that children have acquired some level of awareness of print and of the utility of literacy, that they may have some specific knowledge of letters or frequently encountered words, that they have developed some capacity to play with and analyze the sound system of their native language, and that they are motivated to use literacy.
From page 171...
... Parents and other caregivers should spend time in one-on-one conversation with young children, read books with them, provide writing materials, support dramatic play that might incorporate literacy activities, demonstrate the uses of literacy, and maintain a joyful, playful atmosphere around literacy activities. For most children, these primary prevention efforts will ensure that they are ready for formal reading instruction.


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