This research aims to explore a meta-analysis of experimental studies examining the effect of shared book reading on children's phonological awareness skills. An initial pool of 3397 articles was identified from 17 databases. After removing 396 duplicated articles, 3,001 were screened for titles and abstracts, whereas 2,964 inadequate articles…

Research Findings: Early childhood teachers' talk is a key ingredient in children's early language and literacy development, but there has been little systematic synthesis of observational studies that examine relationships between teacher talk and child oral language. In this systematic review of 54 studies, we investigate and synthesize the…

Research Findings: The home literacy environment and particularly shared reading are central determinants of children's emergent literacy skills and predictors of their later reading development. Although the importance of frequent shared reading is well established, there is little knowledge about the age at which reading to children starts…

Book giveaway programs provide free books to families with infants to encourage caregivers to begin reading to their children during infancy. This meta-analysis of 44 studies retrieved from 43 articles tests the effects of three major book giveaway programs: Bookstart (n = 11), Reach Out and Read (n = 18), and Imagination Library (n = 15). Effect…

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) often demonstrate delays in early language and literacy skills. Shared reading, the practice of adults reading aloud to children while using behaviors (e.g., asking questions) that are meant to promote interaction between the adult and child, is an intervention that has had positive effects on those…

Although an abundant literature documents preliterate children's word learning success from shared storybook reading, a full synthesis of the factors which moderate these word learning effects has been largely neglected. This meta-analysis included 38 studies with 2,455 children, reflecting 110 effect sizes, investigating how reading styles, story…

Research findings on the presence of a therapy dog in the classroom are summarized. The authors reviewed 30 articles, book chapters, and other sources on the topic of the various uses of dogs in classrooms, published between 2001 and 2017. Ages studied ranged from 3 years to adolescence (high school). In our analysis, three categories of…

A systematic review of the literature related to instructional strategies to improve reading skills for students with intellectual disabilities was conducted. Studies reviewed were within three categories; early reading approaches, comprehensive approaches, and one method approach. It was concluded that students with intellectual disabilities are…

Read aloud is a testing accommodation that has been studied by many researchers, and its use on K-12 assessments continues to be debated because of its potential to change the measured construct or unfairly increase test scores. This study is a summary of quantitative research on the read aloud accommodation. Previous studies contributed…

The ever growing interest in the development of foreign or second (L2) oral proficiency in a computer-mediated communication (CMC) classroom has resulted in a large body of studies looking at both the direct and indirect effects of CMC interventions on the acquisition of oral competences. The present study employed a quantitative meta-analytic…

The purpose of the present study was to conduct a comprehensive study of book genres used in preschool classrooms. Text titles gathered from the reading logs of 84 preschool teachers were analyzed and coded for genre (narrative, expository, or mixed). Expository or mixed texts were then further examined according to topics covered. Analyses…

Research provides evidence that fathers can promote the development of their children's literacy skills, including reading books to them that are appropriate, engaging their children in discussions about books they read, recording in a notebook the books the children have read and encouraging their children to read more books. This review presents…

Research support for providing a read-aloud accommodation (i.e., having an individual read test items and directions aloud) to students with disabilities has been somewhat limited, particularly when merely examining effects of the accommodation on overall test scores for general groups of students with disabilities. We examined data on…

Reviews research on children's early storyreading experience along the following dimensions: historical perspective, the significance of read-aloud, parent-child read-aloud, and teacher-student read-aloud. Shows a need for more naturalistic studies of read-aloud, more studies exploring connections between read-aloud at home and school, more…

The 10 articles in this book examine how comprehension is affected by what the reader brings to the text, the manner in which the text is structured by the author, and the contextual variables that shape the meaning derived by the reader. Specific topics covered in the articles are (1) background knowledge and comprehension, (2) learning how to…