The authors compared the discourse of 100 Israeli preschool teachers with a group of children during three book-sharing contexts: reading, reconstruction, and telling. During telling and reconstruction, the teachers used more utterances and questions and referred more to concept of book and to the illustrations. During reading, they referred more…

We investigated the impact of story-based activities on literacy skills in pre-school children. The efficacy of story-based activities program were tested by literacy skills survey test. Results showed that, the scores of overall literacy skills and all subsets skills in the study group (n = 45) were statistically significantly higher than the…

The focus of this research was on examining a play-based, child-centered instructional technique known as story telling/story acting (ST/SA) within a Canadian preschool setting. The goal was to examine the changes that occurred in the narrative features of preschool children's stories, and to investigate whether ST/SA fostered emerging literacy…

It is established that transcription skills (handwriting and spelling) constrain children's writing. Yet, little is known about the mechanism underlying this relationship. This study examined the mediating role of bursts and pauses on the link between transcription skills and writing fluency or text quality. For that, 174 second graders did the…

Addressed to early childhood educators in Scotland, this guide shows how adults working in preschool and early primary school settings can maximize children's interest, knowledge, and skills in writing, and actively foster the disposition to be a writer. Following an introduction, the guide is presented in four parts. Part 1, "Teaching…