Research has shown that interactive book reading in early childhood classrooms contributes to children's language development. High quality interaction during book reading has been shown to be even more beneficial for children's language development, but more research is needed on which interaction practices really work, as there is great…

Much attention has been paid to storybook reading as a context for supporting preschoolers' emergent language and literacy. Inferential thinking is essential to listening comprehension and to reading comprehension. Understanding the story deeply and reasoning about events and characters are central to children's enjoyment and to comprehension…

Potentially serving as the primary national literacy initiative, the Reading Seed Programme (RSP) by PUSTAKA Negeri Sarawak aims to enculturate a reading culture from an early age. For instance, RSP was invented to promote reading culture by having the pregnant mother read to their infant until the child was three years old. The process is vital…

Although young children from low-income families may (or may not) have fewer quality literacy experiences at home before attending preschool or kindergarten, instruction from an exemplary teacher matters most for emergent comprehension development. This single, intrinsic case study describes how one exemplary teacher's interactions with her…

Multilingual children living in areas with low socioeconomic status (SES) are at an increased risk of having speech, language and communication needs (SLCN). Many multilingual children with SLCN in Sweden have insufficient basic vocabulary knowledge in the majority language, preventing them from achieving the school's learning goals. However,…

This study investigated the effects of a parent-implemented dialogic reading approach--Reading to Engage Children with Autism in Language and Learning (RECALL)--on the engagement in reading and inference-making ability for preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Thirty-one preschoolers (mean age = 5.90 years, SD = 0.69; 26 boys, 5 girls)…

The purpose of this pilot study was to explore whether exposing pre-readers to an unfamiliar event in a brief, play-based, session would enhance comprehension of a story based on that event. Twenty-four typically developing participants (9 males; 15 females), aged 30-51 months (M = 39.13, SD = 6.02) were randomly assigned to free-play and…

Research documents the benefits of reading aloud to children and suggests that the more children are engaged during the read aloud experience the greater the benefit to their language and reading development. Children's engagement during a read aloud can be increased by creating anticipation regarding the story, making predictions about what will…

Research (Evans & Saint-Aubin, 2005) suggests systematic patterns in how young children visually attend to storybooks. However, these studies have not addressed whether visual attention is predictive of children's storybook comprehension. In the current study, we used eye-tracking methodology to examine two-year-olds' visual attention while…

Literacy researchers often include young children in the research process. Yet discussions about the complexities of gaining and keeping assent are often missing in research reports. In this paper, we report on our attempts to make the assent process, a typical requirement for Institutional Review Boards, an educative experience for children in a…

Children normally feel unable or less confident to express their ideas clearly, freely, and critically both orally and in writing when learning a language. Research has demonstrated that children's early exposure to Bloom's Taxonomy levels in stories has a "remarkable power" on them (Dickinson, et al. 2012) and helps develop their…

In the classroom experiences described in this article, grade three students were introduced to storytelling through the interactive read aloud of a mentor text and a storytelling demonstration, followed by daily collaborative activities involving listening, speaking, reading, and writing, culminating in dramatic storytelling performances. The…

This study aimed to examine which genres parents are reading to children and for themselves. Furthermore, it aimed to examine mothers' and fathers' shared reading strategies for different book genres in relation to children's language and literacy development. Parents shared a narrative and an expository book with their preschool-aged children.…

Kindergarten teachers use a variety of strategies that focus on vocabulary development. A common and effective practice to introduce new vocabulary to kindergarteners is reading storybooks to children, what is commonly known as "read-alouds" (Bus, van Ijzendoorn, & Pelligrini, 1995; Christ & Wang, 2010; Newton, Padak &…

Parents and caregivers can maximize children's engagement with educational television programming by co-viewing and discussing concepts and issues during and following episodes, and parents and caregivers can poach ideas and processes from these programs and apply them to their own interactions with children. School librarians might also consider…