Increased implementation of emergent literacy screening in pre-kindergarten
A discussion of the role of early literacy assessment in preschool, an examination of key features of preschool literacy assessments, and a presentation of selected findings from the statewide use of a literacy screening tool
Reports & Papers
Effective behavior management in preschool classrooms and children's task orientation: Enhancing emergent literacy and language development
A study of relationships among preschool teachers' behavior management, children's task orientation, and both children's emergent literacy and language development, as well as the extent task orientation moderates the relationship between teachers' behavior management and children's emergent literacy and language development, based on data from 398 children from low-income backgrounds and 67 preschool teachers
Reports & Papers
Descriptive-developmental performance of at-risk preschoolers on early literacy tasks
A description of findings from the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening: Pre-Kindergarten (PALS-PreK) in Virginia, which evaluated the early literacy achievement of at-risk preschool children
Reports & Papers
Literacy behaviors of preschool children participating in an early intervention program
An investigation into the emergent literacy skills of preschoolers who participated in an early intervention program, based on a sample of 2,759 children from the Virginia Preschool Initiative (VPI)
Reports & Papers
Super Why Summer Camp assessment findings: Summer 2008
An evaluation of the emergent literacy outcomes of participation in Super WHY! Reading Camp, a week-long summer literacy program for preschool-age children, based on pre- and post-test assessments of 454 children who participated in 2008
Reports & Papers
Investigating the behavioral outcomes of an early literacy intervention for at-risk preschool children
An experimental study investigating the impact of an early literacy intervention program on the behavioral development of at risk preschool children enrolled in Head Start
Reports & Papers
Birthday effects and preschool attendance
A comparison of young-for-grade students to old-for-grade students on both early literacy upon kindergarten entry and their probabilities of being retained in kindergarten, and an examination of the relationship between early education attendance and those comparative differences, based on data from 1,474 economically disadvantaged first-time kindergarteners who attended 468 public schools in Virginia in the fall of 2007
Reports & Papers
How many letters should preschoolers in public programs know?: The diagnostic efficiency of various preschool letter-naming benchmarks for predicting first-grade literacy achievement
A study of the association between end-of-preschool letter-naming abilities and risk status on first-grade measures of word reading, spelling, and reading comprehension, and an examination of optimal end-of-preschool letter-naming benchmarks for the children in the sample, based on data from 371 children in Virginia and Ohio
Reports & Papers
Does intensity matter?: Preschoolers' print knowledge development within a classroom-based intervention
A study of the relationship between intensity of intervention, specifically number of intervention sessions per week and the amount of practice provided per session, and print knowledge learning, based on data from 367 randomly selected children from 55 preschool classrooms over the course of 30 weeks
Reports & Papers
Pathways to reading: The role of oral language in the transition to reading
A study of the relationship between preschool oral language skills and reading performance in early elementary school, based on data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development
Reports & Papers
Informational text use in preschool classroom read-alouds
A categorical study of texts read in early childhood classrooms and an analysis of their correspondence to state standards from 733 randomly selected texts identified from the reading logs of 84 teachers in 2 states participating in a larger, 30-week book-reading study called Project Sit Together and Read (STAR) for at-risk students
Reports & Papers
Does context matter?: Explicit print instruction during reading varies in its influence by child and classroom factors
A study of the relationship between preschool teachers' explicit print instruction during shared reading and children's language abilities, and a second study of the relationship between language abilities and classroom quality, classroom literacy environment, and attention skills, based on data from 379 children and their 59 teachers throughout Virginia and Ohio
Reports & Papers
Mother-child bookreading in low-income families: Correlates and outcomes during the first three years of life
An investigation of the impact of mother-child book reading on low income young children's cognitive and language development as well as an examination of book reading in relation to the Early Head Start intervention using data from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project
Reports & Papers
Teacher qualifications, classroom practices, family characteristics, and preschool experience: Complex effects on first graders' vocabulary and early reading outcomes
A study of the association of teacher qualification and observed classroom practice as they relate to children’s vocabulary and early reading skills, based on an ecological model incorporating children’s language and word recognition skills prior to school entry, their home and preschool learning environments, and family socio-economic status
Reports & Papers
Use of decontextualized talk across story contexts: How oral storytelling and emergent reading can scaffold children’s development
An examination of mother-child dialog during storytelling, story-creating, and story-reading exercises, including reasoning, word-usage, the relationship between type of talk and complexity of language used, and the association between maternal literacy and decontextualized talk, in a sample of 33 primarily African American mothers and their preschoolers
Reports & Papers
The differential effects of preschool: Evidence from Virginia
A study of the association between attendance in a state-funded prekindergarten program and both literacy through first grade and the likelihood of kindergarten repetition, and an analysis of these differences among groups of children of different races and disability statuses, based on an analysis of data from a cohort of children at approximately 1,000 Virginia schools
Reports & Papers
Third national Even Start evaluation: Program impacts and implications for improvement
Findings from the third national evaluation of the federal Even Start family literacy program, including a description of the program and its participants, and a discussion of program impacts based on data from an experimental study of Even Start's effectiveness in 18 projects
Reports & Papers
Home literacy exposure and early language and literacy skills in children who struggle with behavior and attention problems
A study of the relationships of the behavior and attention problems and of the early home literacy environment, as well as of the interaction between the two, to the language and literacy skills of 4-year-olds, based on data for 1,364 children from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development
Reports & Papers
An exploration of the relationship between preschool experience and the acquisition of phonological awareness in kindergarten
An exploratory study of the impact of preschool experience on young children's acquisition of phonological awareness in kindergarten comparing test results of four cohorts of children with different preschool experiences, including Head Start, a Montessori preschool, a state-initiated preschool program, and a group of children without any preschool experience
Reports & Papers
Analysis of state K-3 reading standards and assessments: Final report
An examination of the extent to which state kindergarten through third grade (K-3) reading standards and assessments address five components essential to effective reading instruction (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension), based on an analysis of a stratified, random sample of states' reading standards and on the content of reading assessments in states with statewide assessments
Reports & Papers
The relation of child care to cognitive and language development [Abridged]
An abridged reprint of a study of the relationship between cognitive and language development and quality, amount, and type of child care, based on data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care
Reports & Papers
Preschool teachers' sense of community, instructional quality, and children's language and literacy gains
A study of the relationship between teacher sense of community and both the language and print concepts gains of students, and an examination of the moderating influence of instructional quality, based on data collected from the classrooms of 75 public prekindergarten or Head Start teachers in two states
Reports & Papers
Conceptualizations of readiness and the content of early learning standards: The intersection of policy and research?
An analysis of 46 state-level early education standards documents to investigate the specific areas of development addressed in order to determine how different states conceptualize school readiness
Reports & Papers
A second year of one-on-one tutoring: An intervention for second graders with reading difficulties
A study that expanded the Virginia Book Buddies program, initially designed to improve first graders' reading achievement, to include second graders with below-average reading skills
Reports & Papers
State pre-k assessment policies: Issues and status
A discussion of considerations for and approaches to the assessment of young children and a study of state prekindergarten child assessment policies in the 2011-2012 school year, based on a survey of state prekindergarten program personnel
Reports & Papers
