Engaging Children with Print: Building Early Literacy Skills through Quality Read-Alouds

225 Pages·2010·2.09 MB·English

by  Laura M. Justice PhD

Engaging Children with Print

Engaging Children
with Print
Building Early Literacy Skills
through Quality Read- Alouds
Laura M. Justice
Amy E. Sofka
THE GUILFORD PRESS
New York London
© 2010 The Guilford Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data
Justice, Laura M., 1968–
Engaging children with print : building early literacy skills through quality
read-alouds / Laura M. Justice and Amy E. Sofka.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60623-535-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-60623-536-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Oral reading. 2. Reading (Early childhood) 3. Children—Books and reading.
I. Sofka, Amy E. II. Title.
LB1573.5.J87 2010
372.45′2—dc22
2009049690
About the Authors
Laura M. Justice, PhD, is Professor in the School of Teaching and Learning,
College of Education and Human Ecology, The Ohio State University. She has
published nearly 100 articles, chapters, and reports on early education and lan-
guage and literacy intervention, as well as 10 books. Dr. Justice is a recipient of
the Editor’s Award from the American Journal of Speech– Language Pathology; the
Early Career Publication Award from the Council for Exceptional Children, Divi-
sion for Research; and the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engi-
neering from the United States government.
Amy E. Sofka, MEd, is presently serving as Project Director for two federally
funded research studies: Preschool Experiences in Rural Classrooms (Project
PERC) and Project Sit Together and Read (STAR), both conducted within the
Center for the Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning at the University of
Virginia. She has worked together with Dr. Justice on Project STAR since 2005.
Ms. Sofka is the author of several articles and chapters describing approaches
to supporting children’s development within preschool settings, and has co-
authored tools to assess teacher implementation of these approaches.
v

Preface
We have written this book to provide the public with materials generated
through several federally funded research studies investigating ways to increase
the emergent literacy skills of young children. For more than 10 years, members
of our research team have examined ways to facilitate emergent literacy devel-
opment in young children, using repeated readings of storybooks in ways that
explicitly seek to foster children’s engagement with print. In these various stud-
ies, we have generated and tested a lot of different materials; we envisioned this
book as a means for disseminating the most user- friendly of those materials to
the public.
We conceptualized this book largely as a means to bridge research-to- practice
gaps that pose significant and real challenges to getting science into the hands of
those who work daily with young children, including teachers, day care provid-
ers, speech– language pathologists, literacy coaches, social workers, and parents,
among others. In so doing, this book is meant to be as accessible and usable as
possible, including its summary of research support for the methods presented
here; we refer those who desire greater detail to the research citations included
throughout. We have included materials drawn from our research studies in the
chapters and appendices, and we hope that these materials will be used effec-
tively and liberally to foster young children’s appreciation of, interest in, and
engagement with print on a daily basis. By calling attention to print when read-
ing with young children, adults can help children not only access but appreciate
the world of print that surrounds them from infancy onward.
It is a popular wisdom among the American public that if every child were
read to at least once every day, all children would enter school prepared for
learning. We appreciate the sentiment, but more realistically believe that it is not
simply reading a book to a child that matters most, but rather what that reading
vii
viii Preface
interaction looks like. As long as we are sitting to read with a child, let’s ensure
that we maximize the opportunities for learning that are taking place so that
these interactions really can elevate children’s long-term chances for academic
success. This book is about how we can maximize these opportunities, and it
helps one to do so by providing access to research-based findings regarding how,
exactly, we can read to children in ways that will accelerate their emergent-
literacy development over time.
ACknowLEdgMEntS
We are grateful for the involvement of many fine individuals in our research
activities on reading books with children over the last 10 years. Those deserving
very special mention (and in no particular order) include Helen Ezell, Joan Kad-
eravek, Aileen Hunt, Beth Cottone, Anita McGinty, Steve Petrill, Anita Bailie,
Lori Skibbe, Ryan Bowles, Khara Pence, Xitao Fan, Rashaun Geter, Sonia Cabell,
Tricia Zucker, Jill Pentimonti, Amelia Moody, Alice Wiggins, Marcia Invernizzi,
Chris Lankford, Davida Parsons, Stephanie Curenton, Andrea Canning, Andrew
Mashburn, Bridget Hamre, Robert Pianta, Allison Breit Smith, and Shayne Pia-
sta. Many research assistants at the University of Virginia, The Ohio State Uni-
versity, and the University of Toledo have tirelessly helped to score and enter
data, and their efforts deserve recognition. We also want to give a special “shout
out” to Cathy Van Dyke, a research assistant at the University of Virginia who
helped to assemble the book list in Appendix A. Adelaide Mykel, now age 7
years, also gets a hearty thanks for sharing with us the writing samples that
appear in this book.
Over the last 10 years, financial support for our research has been provided
by the American Speech– Language– Hearing Foundation, the U.S. Department
of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, and the National Institutes of
Health. We are grateful for this support.
We dedicate this book to the many school administrators, teachers, parents,
and children who have participated in our research studies over the last 10 years.
These individuals have given of their precious time for no reason other than to
further our knowledge of what might help more children be successful in the
pursuit of literacy. It is because of them—and we are deeply grateful—that we
can be confident that the ideas and materials presented in this book have devel-
opmental benefits for young children.
Contents
Ch a p t er 1
Entering a World of Print:
Young Children’s Development of Print Knowledge
1
Ch a p t er 2
Fostering Children’s Engagement with Print
21
Ch a p t er 3
Calling Attention to Print: The Nuts and Bolts
45
Ch a p t er 4
Matching Books with Print- Knowledge Targets
64
Ch a p t er 5
Scaffolding Children’s Learning:
Using High and Low Support Strategies
113
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