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Assessment of Emergent Literacy in Head Start Preschool

Description:
The purpose of this study was to develop an assessment and intervention tool to measure and target children's emergent literacy skills. This project evaluated the use of a dynamic assessment system that Head Start teachers used to assess individual preschoolers' emergent literacy skills. Twenty classroom teaching situations were constructed that allowed teachers to emphasize emergent literacy skills while assessing individual children's performance. The dynamic assessment was designed to give Head Start teachers an understanding of which of their students have mastery of the materials and which need more work in that particular area while exposing children to literacy materials. In this way, teachers could target areas in which students need the most growth and could tailor experiences to individual students' needs and abilities. Three major domains of emergent literacy skills were targeted: print awareness, emergent writing, and linguistic awareness. The goals of this study were to: (1) develop a measure of individual children's emergent literacy skills that will be used by Head Start teachers to track children's literacy development; (2) implement the use of the measure in Head Start classrooms; and (3) validate the new measure using standardized assessment instruments. Children enrolled in Head Start programs for two years in Suffolk County, NY participated in this project. During the first year of the study, the emergent literacy measure was developed and pilot tested. During the second year of the study, ten Head Start classrooms participated in the evaluation and validation of the Dynamic Assessment program. Classrooms were randomly assigned to assessment and control conditions (five in each group). Teachers in the assessment classrooms used the Dynamic Assessment program throughout the year. In order to validate the emergent literacy measure, 130 children from the 10 classrooms completed standardized assessment instruments measuring language and emergent literacy skills in the fall and spring of the second year. A Literacy Activities Checklist was also developed in order to assess teachers' use of literacy activities. Children's growth scores were analyzed in order to evaluate the extent to which project participation had an impact on teachers' use of emergent literacy activities in the classroom and on children's emergent literacy skills.
Resource Type:
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
Principal Investigator(s):
Research Scholar(s):

Related resources include summaries, versions, measures (instruments), or other resources in which the current document plays a part. Research products funded by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation are related to their project records.

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