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A small change in how teachers and parents read aloud to preschoolers may provide a big boost to their reading skills later on, a new study found.
That small change involves making specific references to print in books while reading to children – such as pointing out letters and words on the pages, showing capital letters, and showing how you read from left to right and top to bottom on the page.
Preschool children whose teachers used print references during storybook reading showed more advanced reading skills one and even two years later when compared to children whose teachers did not use such references. This is the first study to show causal links between referencing print and later literacy achievement.
"Using print references during reading was just a slight tweak to what teachers were already doing in the classroom, but it led to a sizeable improvement in reading for kids," said Shayne Piasta, co-author of the study and assistant professor of teaching and learning at Ohio State University.
"This would be a very manageable change for most preschool teachers, who already are doing storybook reading in class."
Piasta conducted the study with lead investigator Laura Justice, professor of teaching and learning at Ohio State, as well as co-investigators Anita McGinty of the University of Virginia and Joan Kaderavek of the University of Toledo. Their results appear in the April 2012 issue of the journal Child Development.
The study is part of Project STAR (Sit Together And Read), a randomized clinical trial based at Ohio State to test the short- and long-term impacts associated with reading regularly to preschool children in the classroom.
The study involved more than 300 children in 85 classrooms who participated in a 30-week shared reading program. As a group, the children came from low-income homes, started with below-average language skills and were at substantial risk for later reading difficulties.
The children were separated into three groups: high-dose STAR (four reading sessions per week), low-dose STAR (two reading sessions per week) and a third comparison group who also had four reading sessions per week. All teachers in the three groups read the same 30 books to their students.
Teachers in the two STAR groups were trained to make specific print references while reading the books. Teachers in the comparison group were told to read as they normally would, and were not prompted to make print references.
Results showed that both one and even two years later, preschoolers in the high-dose STAR classrooms had higher word reading, spelling and comprehension skills than did children in the comparison group. The benefits were not as clear for those in the low-dose STAR classrooms, although they did seem to have slightly better skills than those children in the comparison classrooms.
Piasta said it was particularly notable that students in the high-dose STAR classrooms scored higher on tests of reading comprehension.
"If you're getting kids to pay attention to letters and words, it makes sense that they will do better at word recognition and spelling," she said.
"But the fact that they also did better at understanding the passages they read is really exciting. That suggests this intervention may help them become better readers."
How do print references help preschoolers become better readers? Piasta said research suggests it helps children learn the code of letters and how they relate to words and to meaning.
"By showing them what a letter is and what a letter means, and what a word is and what a word means, we're helping them to crack the code of language and understand how to read," she said.
While this study shows the value of using print references with preschoolers, research suggests very few teachers and parents do this systematically, according to Piasta.
An earlier study by Justice and her colleagues showed that untrained teachers reference print about 8.5 times per reading session – compared to up to 36 times for those who were trained.
Parents are even less likely to make print references while reading to their children. One study suggests that parents use such references only about once during a typical 10-minute reading session.
"One of the best things about the power of print referencing is how easy it would be to implement during shared reading in the classroom," Piasta said.
"Compared to a lot of interventions, this only requires a small adjustment to teachers' typical reading style. But it pays large dividends in reading skills."
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Youths from African American, Native American, and Latino backgrounds are underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (known as STEM subjects). Although having a mentor of the same ethnicity is widely seen as one way to engage these youths in STEM subjects, no study has asked these young people if they consider having a mentor who shares their background to be important. Now a new study of African American and Latino youths has found that having a "matched" mentor does matter, but only if having such a mentor is considered important by the adolescent.
The short-term longitudinal study was carried out by researchers at the University of Minnesota and the University of California, Santa Cruz. It appears in the journal Child Development.
Ethnic-minority teens' ability to imagine themselves in STEM careers could be hindered by the comparatively small number of ethnic-minority teachers and professors in these fields. This study sought to answer the question of whether having a matched-background mentor would help overcome that perceived barrier.
The researchers surveyed 265 high school students who were attending a four-week summer residential science camp in California called COSMOS—the California State Summer School for Mathematics and Sciences. The teens were ethnically diverse and very high achieving—most had GPAs at or above 4.0; about a quarter were from underrepresented minorities (African American and Latino).
Students filled out surveys at the start and end of camp, answering questions about their prior contact with mentors of the same background, their desire to have a mentor who shared their ethnicity, and their feelings about being a science student. Teens had contact with mentors from a variety of ethnic backgrounds throughout the course of the camp.
The study's results revealed a lot of variability in adolescents' contact with same-ethnicity mentors and how important it is to them to have such mentors. About 65 percent of underrepresented students said they had such a preference, compared with 45 percent of White students. While the study confirmed the assumption that ethnic minorities prefer to have mentors who share their background, it also suggested that there are individual differences in students' desires.
Further, taking preference into account mattered. Among those students who said having a shared-background mentor was important who had contact with such a mentor during the camp, feelings of belonging as science students increased.
"Seeing and interacting with successful figures enables adolescents to envision themselves in similar roles, thereby strengthening their identities," explains Moin Syed, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, who led the study. "Having a strong sense of identity as a science student may be particularly important for underrepresented minority students, given the immense barriers they experience to pursuing careers in STEM fields."
Mentoring programs that assign mentors on the basis of race and ethnicity should be sure to ask students about their preferences and matches should be made accordingly, suggests Syed. "Doing so may help maintain underrepresented students' interests in STEM fields."
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Far too many K-12 students have inadequate writing skills, and the current efforts to improve instruction in the United States may be more challenging than anticipated, research from Michigan State University shows.
According to an initial sample of seven states, the existing standards for teaching writing vary widely in comparison to a new set of common standards that are in the process of being implemented by most states.
Study co-director Gary Troia of MSU, along with Natalie Olinghouse at the University of Connecticut, said educators and policymakers in many parts of the country will have to make significant changes to bring existing curriculum, materials and teacher training in line with the Common Core State Standards for writing and language.
The new K-12 standards are intended to improve instruction in mathematics and English language arts, including writing, nationwide.
“Everyone needs to know how to write well, and we are not doing a good enough job to prepare students,” said Troia, associate professor of education. “What we are finding is that states are going to be faced with a misalignment between the content standards and curriculum materials they are using and what the Common Core requires them to cover.”
The research team has a $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to study writing standards, assessments and student performance in all states except Maryland, Texas and the District of Columbia, which elected not to participate. Their first findings, presented at the American Educational Research Association meeting April 17, reflect an analysis of states representing a range of demographics and writing test results: California, Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Florida, New York and Massachusetts.
The researchers also evaluated the scope and quality of the Common Core writing standards, expected to be implemented in 46 states by 2014. They found the common standards are easy to interpret, succinct and balanced in terms of covering content across grades and topic areas. However, some important aspects of writing, such as student motivation, peer and teacher feedback, and mastery of an expanded range of writing purposes, are not included in the Common Core.
“Things that do matter at an early age like spelling and handwriting are not addressed very well,” said Troia. “States have to think about whether they want to add anything to the common standards as opposed to implementing them as is.”
Policy research has shown that content standards affect what is taught and how students perform. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, up to two-thirds of U.S. students are not considered proficient in writing.
“That presents a pretty bleak picture, and yet the expectations for writing in college and the workplace are being ramped up,” Troia said. “The Common Core can provide consistency and a lot of opportunities to enhance instruction, but there are gaps as well and we don’t want those to be ignored.”
The four-year study also is exploring how states’ writing standards and assessments reflect research knowledge about best practices as well as the types of writing skills students are expected to demonstrate after graduation.
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