Early Literacy Research and Practice

1. Reading Comprehension and Implications for Early Literacy Early LiteracyResearch and Practice

2. Overview • Early Foundational Skills and Later Reading Achievement • Getting on Track Early with Preschool • Using Research to inform Best Practice in Preschool through Third Grade

3. Why focus on reading comprehension? • Crucial for long-term academic success. • Importance of reading skill in the work force, risk of unemployment. • Readers are more likely to engage civic activities, alienation from the society.

4. Early Literacy Research and Reading Comprehension Defining the problem and looking toward solutions

5. Achievement gap: Variation in children’s reading comprehension skill • Socio-economic status (SES) • (e.g. Bowey, 1995; Hecht, Burgess, Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 2000; Raz & Bryant, 1990; National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), 2010; Noble, Farah, & McCandliss, 2006; White, 1982) • English-language learners (ELL) • (e.g. NAEP, 2010; Snow & Biancarosa, 2003)

6. Foundations of children’s reading comprehension • Transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn” by 3rd grade • 4th grade slump in reading • (e.g. Chall, 1983; 1996; Chall, Jacobs, & Baldwin, 1990; Dickinson, McCabe, Anastasopolous, Peisner-Feinberg, & Poe, 2003; Snow & Uccelli, 2009)

7. Foundations of children’s reading comprehension • Basic reading/decoding skills • Oral language skills • (e.g. Dickinson, McCabe, Anastasopolous, Peisner-Feinberg, & Poe, 2003; Dickinson & Tabors, 2001; Kendeou, van den Broek, White, & Lynch, 2009; National Early Literacy Panel (NRLP), 2009; National Reading Panel (NRP), 2000; Roth, Speece, Cooper, 2002; Scarborough, 2001; Snow, 1991; Storch & Whitehurst, 2002)

8. Foundations of children’s reading comprehension • Decoding • Early literacy-related skills: Phonological awareness, letter-word recognition, mastery of alphabetic principle, print concepts etc. • (e.g. Ehri, Nunes, Stahl, & Willows, 2001; Storch & Whitehurst, 2002; Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998) • Great deal of information on how to support early literacy skills and teach decoding • (e.g. Bus & van Ijzendoorn, 1999; Chall, 1987; NRP, 2000; Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998)

9. Foundations of children’s reading comprehension • The National Research Council’s Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children: Early literacy-related skills • (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998)

10. Foundations of children’s reading comprehension • Oral language skills (production and comprehension) • Vocabulary • (Dickinson, McCabe, Anastasopolous, Peisner-Feinberg, & Poe, 2003; Dickinson & Tabors, 2001; NRP, 2000) • But also need for other oral language skills: Syntax, narrative and academic language • (e.g. NELP, 2009; Feagans & Applebaum, 1986; Scarborough, 2001; Dickinson & Tabors, 2001; Walker, Greenwood, Hart & Carta, 1994)

11. Underscoring the Link between Oral Language and Reading Comprehension

12. Relationship between narrative oral language and later reading success • Significant relationships between early narrative and later reading skill • (e.g. Demir, Levine, Goldin-Meadow, in preparation) • Other questions: • Relations between narrative skills and later writing/composition • Relation between vocabulary, syntax, academic language and later reading comprehension • Differential links to decoding versus comprehension

13. Effects of input on development of oral language skills • Effect of parental input on: • Vocabulary development • Syntax development • Narrative development • Academic language use • (e.g. Haden, Haine, & Fivus, 1997; Hart & Risley, 1995; Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Seltzer, & Lyons, 1991; Huttenlocher, Vasilyeva, Cymerman, 2002; Peterson & McCabe, 1992; Rowe, Levine, Fisher & Goldin-Meadow, 2009)

14. Key domains for Early Literacy and linking Preschool to Elementary School • Early literacy knowledge • Phonemic awareness • Phonics • Print concepts • Word identification • Oral language • Vocabulary comprehension and production • Syntax comprehension and production • Narrative comprehension and production • Language use: academic language use

16. Recommendations for the Continuum of Literacy Instruction Prek-3rd • Coordinated school-wide practices for teaching reading • Defining what students will learn when- the curriculum and goals in a continuum from PreK-3rd grade and beyond (CCSS; the last slide) • Evidence-based decision making • Collecting data on the students’ abilities as they relate to the defined curriculum • Development of Teacher Expertise • Assuring that teachers have access to the goals and curriculum and are knowledgeable about these aspects of early reading • Assuring that teachers have professional development support that is on-going and based in their actually data as well as the goals and the curriculum

17. Coordinated practices for teaching reading Typical challenges: Address these challenges by creating: A common language and curriculum/standards One singular Continuum from PreK-3rd grade and beyond Shared definitions of comprehension terms and trajectories Visible teacher leaders that can serve as models • Private autonomous practice • Different programs from PreK to Elementary school • uncoordinated instruction and assessment from classroom to classroom; even teacher to teacher

18. Evidence-based decision making in schools Typical challenges: Address these challenges by: Implementing a diagnostic, and progress monitoring assessment based on your defined curricular goals and develop a systematic approach for collecting instructionally informative data Identifying individual and collective student strengths and areas of need Creating systems for early ‘flags’ to organize support for struggling students • Assessment data is often late and has minimal instructional implication • Within a classroom teachers will often have students varying greatly in their abilities

19. Development of Teacher Expertise Typical challenges: Address these challenges by creating: Professional development opportunities to address which literacy components must be included in teaching reading and information on how these components interact Systems to collect instructionally informative data on these components Support systems to analyze data and plan evidenced based reading instruction • Preparation for teaching reading • Literacy exposure and development in the home

20. References • Bowey, J.A. (1995). Socioeconomic status differences in preschool phonological sensitivity and first-grade reading achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 87, 476-487. • Bus, A.G., & Van IJzendoorn, M.H. (1999). Phonological Awareness and Early Reading: A Meta-Analysis of Experimental Training Studies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 403-414. • Chall, J. S. (1987). Introduction. Elementary School Journal, 87, 243-245. • Chall, J. S. (1996). Stages of reading development (2nd ed.). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College. • Chall, J. S., Jacobs, V. A., & Baldwin, L. E. (1990). The reading crisis: Why poor children fall behind. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press. • Demir, O.E., Levine, S.C., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (In preparation). Relations between early narrative and later reading comprehension. • Dickinson, D.K., McCabe, A., Anastasopoulos, L., Peisner-Feinberg, E., Poe, M. (2003). The Comprehensive Language Approach to Early Literacy: The Interrelationships Among Vocabulary, Phonological Sensitivity, and Print Knowledge Among Preschool-aged Children. The Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 465-481. • Dickinson, O.K., & P.O. Tabors, eds. 2001. Beginning literacy with language: Young children learning at home and school. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes. • Ehri, L., Nunes, R. S., Stahl, S., & Willows, D. (2001). Systematic phonics instruction helps students learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel’s meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 71, 393-447. • Feagans, L., & Appelbaum, M. I. (1986). Validation of language subtypes in learning disabled children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 78, 358-364 • Haden, C. A., Haine, R. A., & Fivush, R. (1997). Developing narrative structure in parent–child reminiscing across the preschool years. Developmental Psychology, 33, 295–307. • Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the every- day experience of young American children. Baltimore: Brookes.

21. References • Hecht, S.A., Burgess, S.R., Torgesen, J.K., Wagner, R.K., & Rashotte, C.A. (2000). Explaining social class differences in growth of reading skills from beginning kindergarten through fourth-grade: The role of phonological awareness, rate of access, and print knowledge. Reading and Writing, 12, 99-128. • Huttenlocher, J., Haight, W., Bryk, A., Seltzer, M., & Lyons, T. (1991). Early vocabulary growth: Relation to language input and gender. Developmental Psychology, 27, 236–248. • Huttenlocher, J., Vasilyeva, M.,Cymerman, E., & Levine, S. (2002). Language input at home and at school: Relation to child syntax. Cognitive Psychology, 45, 337–374. • Kendeou, P., van den Broek, P., White, M. J., & Lynch, J. (2009). Predicting Reading Comprehension in Early Elementary School: The Independent Contributions of Oral Language and Decoding Skills. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101, 765-778. • Lonigan, C.J., & Shanahan, T. (2009). Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. Executive Summary. A Scientific Synthesis of Early Literacy Development and Implications for Intervention. Washington, DC: National Institute for Literacy • Noble, K.G., Farah, M.J., & McCandliss, B.D. (2006). Socioeconomic background modulates cognition-achievement relationships in reading. Cognitive Development, 21 (3), 349-368. • Peterson, C., & McCabe, A. (1992). Parental styles of narrative elicitation: Effect on children's narrative structure and content. First Language, 12, 299-321. • Raz I.S., & Bryant P. (1990). Social background, phonological awareness and children's reading. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 8(3):209–225. • Report of the National Reading Panel National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (2000). Washington, DC. • Roth, F. P., Speece, D. L. & Cooper, D. H. (2002). A longitudinal analysis of the connection between oral language and early reading. Journal of Educational Research, 95, 259–272.

22. References • Scarborough, H. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In S. B. Neuman & D. K. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research (pp. 97– 110). New York: Guilford Press. • Snow, C.E. (1991). The theoretical basis for relationships between language and literacy development. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 6, 5-10. • Snow, C. E., & Biancarosa, G. (2003). Adolescent literacy and the achievement gap: What do we know and where do we go from here? New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York. • Snow, C.E., Burns, S. & Griffin, P. (1998). (Editors). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. • Snow, C. E., & Uccelli, P. (2009). The challenge of academic language. In D. R. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of literacy (pp. 112–133). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. • Storch, S. A., & Whitehurst, G. J. (2002). Oral language and code-related precursors to reading: Evidence from a longitudinal structural model. Developmental Psychology, 38, 934–947. • Walker, D, Greenwood, C., Hart, B., & Carta, J. (1994). Prediction of school outcomes based on early language production and socioeconomic factors. Child Development, 65(2), 606-621. • Whitehurst, G.J. & Lonigan, C.J. (1998). Child development and emergent literacy. Child Development, 69, 848-872.