equity in literacy must start early - ready at five · interactive writing • interactive writing...

12/14/17

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Equity in Literacy Must Start Early

Nell K. DukeUniversity of Michigan

Plan for this Session

• Inequity in literacy• More reasons to start early in literacy• 10 practices that foster literacy development

in preschool• Looking ahead to K to 3. . .

Ready At Five School Readiness Symposium

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ToomanychildrenintheUnitedStatesareenteringschoolwithouttheskillstheyneedtothrive.

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

All lowestSESquintile white black hispanic

Percentageofstudentslowproficiencyinmathandliteracy,2010ECLS-Kkindergartencohort

lowprofiencyinmath

lowproficiency-literacy

Source:Bassok &Latham2016,Basedonanalysisof2010ECLS-Kdata

More Reasons to Start Early with Literacy

• Literacy knowledgeis an excellentpredictor ofchildren’s laterschoolachievement.

• Literacy provides away for children tolearn about theworld around them.


• Literacy buildslanguage knowledge.


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More Reasons to Start Early with Literacy• Literacy can serve

many purposes athome and in earlychildhood education.

More Reasons to Start Early with Literacy• Literacy can

supportcultural andidentitydevelopment.


• Literacycan be asourceof greatjoy toyoungchildren.

[Showed Video]


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incarceration

health problems

unemployment

academic problems

social problems

dropping out

death


Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators General Education Leadership Network Early Literacy Task Force (2016). Essential instructional practices in early literacy: Prekindergarten. Lansing, MI: Authors.

literacyessentials.org


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Some photographs in this part of the presentation are from Bennett-Armistead, Duke, and Moses (2007) and Duke, Moses, Billman, Zhang, and Bennett-Armistead (2012).

Duke

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Duke

What Can Be Developed from Playing with Sounds in Words? • Phonological Awareness is conscious

attention to the sounds of spoken language• Includes awareness of:

§ Words§ Syllables (unit of pronunciation consisting of a vowel

alone or a vowel with a consonant)§ Onset and Rime (onset is the consonant sound of a

syllable that comes before the vowel, rime is vowel sound and everything that comes after it)

§ Phonemes (smallest unit of sound)Duke


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What Can Be Developed from Playing with Sounds in Words? Phonemic blending and phonemic segmentation appear to be especially important to learning to read and write:• phonemic blending is needed for

decoding (after “sounding out,” the phonemes need to be blended to make a word)

• phonemic segmentation is needed forspelling

• initial phoneme segmentation needed for“___ is for ________” to be meaningful D

uke

Syllables Rhyming Individualor beats phonemes

Beginnings Ends Middles

Recognition Generation

Blending Segmenting Manipulation

Duke


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Available free at: http://w

ww.naeyc.org/yc/files/yc/file/

201503/YC0315_Block_O

nline.pdf

Despite all these Complexities• We should still teach letter names (Piasta,

Purpura, & Wagner, 2010).• But we should be explicit about their

limitations when necessary.• And we should also place a lot of emphasis

on letter-sound associations.

Duke

Some Resources

An Article:Piasta, S. B. (2014). Moving to assessment-guided differentiated instruction to support young children’s alphabet knowledge. The Reading Teacher, 68, 202–211.

A Book:

Duke


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Name Writing Texts that are Personally Meaningful to Children

Interactive Writing• Interactive writing involves young children in

contributing to a piece of writing led by theteacher.

• It is synonymous with or similar to (dependingon whose description you read) shared writingor “sharing the pen.”

• There are multiple studies indicating thatinteractive writing fosters literacydevelopment. (Let’s look at the endnotes!) Duke


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Scaffolded Writing, in brief

(e.g., Bodrova & Leong, 1998)• Ask the child the message she/he would like

to write.• Repeat this message with the child.• Draw one line for each word using a

highlighter or pen.• Have the child write one “word” per line

(however the child can).• Read and reread the message as needed.

Duke

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Linking Standards, Assessment, and InstructionStandard What does this

standardmean?

How can I observe or assess for this standard?

How can I support children in meeting this standard?

Duke

A Classic Supporting Study

Bell, Y. R., & Clark, T. R. (1998). Culturally relevant reading material as related to comprehension and recall in African American children. Journal of Black Psychology, 24, 455-475.

Duke


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• 109 first- through fourth-graders who wereAfrican American

• Three conditions:• Black characters, African American

themes• White characters, traditional/Euro-

American themes• Black characters, traditional /Euro-

American themes• Recall measure• Comprehension measure

Duke

• Higher comprehension, but not recall, withBlack characters

• Higher comprehension and recall withAfrican American themes

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e


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Collaboration with families in promoting literacy

A two-way street• Families can inform our work with children.• We can inform families’ work with children.

Common (and incorrect) perceptions• The parents just don’t care about their

children’s achievement.

• The family is lazy.

• The problem is that they don’t speak English.

• The children have no background knowledge

or vocabulary.

Real-world Literacy PracticesLiteracy for Life Project (Anderson,

Purcell-Gates, Lenters, & McTavish, 2011-2012)

• Intergenerational program• Focused on families who are immigrants

or refugees• Sensitive to cultural backgrounds• Sensitive to low levels of literacy• Focused on real-world literacy practices

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Real-world Literacy Practices

”We defined real-world literacy activity as

the reading, writing of, or listening to (a)

real-world texts for (b) real-world purposes

within (c) real-world social activity

contexts” (p. 79).

Anderson, J., Purcell-Gates, V., Lenters, K., McTavish, M. (2011-2012). Real-world literacy activity in pre-school. Community Literacy Journal, 6(2), 75-95. DOI: 10.1353/clj.2012.0022

Real-world Literacy Practices“The children did gain significantly in their literacy knowledge compared with the norm as measured by the Test of Early Reading Ability -3 (Reid, Hresko, & Hammill) . . .” (p. 78)

Anderson, J., Purcell-Gates, V., Lenters, K., McTavish, M. (2011-2012). Real-world literacy activity in pre-school. Community Literacy Journal, 6(2), 75-95. DOI: 10.1353/clj.2012.0022

Beyond Bedtime Stories. . .


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Engaging Families in Children’s Literacy Development: A CompleteWorkshop Series** I receive no royalties for sale of this product.

A collaboration with Kathryn Roberts and Gail Jordan; and Kate provided some of the slides that follow.

Five SessionsSession 1: Introduction: Literacy Happens in the

Home

Session 2: Literacy Happens in the Living Room

Session 3: Literacy Happens in the Kitchen

Session 4: Literacy Happens in the Bedroom and Bathroom

Session 5: Literacy Happens Out and About

Session Structure• Meal and social time

• Welcome and introduction (10 – 15 minutes)

• Video viewing and discussion (15 minutes)

• Literacy activities overview (15 minutes)

• Family participation in literacy activities (50

minutes)


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Literacy Activities OverviewTwo activities for each of the following:

• Concepts of Print

• Phonemic Awareness

• Letter-Sound Identification

• Oral Language

• Comprehension

• Writing

ResultsChildren whose families were randomly assigned to

the experimental group scored statistically significantly higher at post-test (with Mann Whitney) on the:

• expressive subscale of the Test of SemanticSkills-Primary (TOSS-P)

• print and word awareness on the PhonologicalAwareness Literacy Screening (PALS-PreK)

• comprehension passages, set B

Summary

• Inequity in literacy is apparent early.• There are many reasons to attend to early

literacy.• Specific practices have been shown to foster

literacy development in preschool.


equity in literacy must start early - ready at five · interactive writing • interactive writing...

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