This transnational comparative study between Costa Rica and the United States provides an in-depth understanding of the similarities and differences of the early literacy practices of educators in the Pre-Kindergarten to Kindergarten classroom settings. Drawing upon Costa Rica's curricular approach to Early Childhood Education, based upon the…

Abstract Few studies have examined how socioeconomic status (SES) affects two essential parts of human development, namely vocabulary and reading comprehension, in children facing severe poverty. The Roma population is the largest minority group in Europe, the majority of whom live in severe poverty. This study compared the development of 322 Roma…

Both early childhood maternal language input and the quality of classroom instruction in elementary school have been shown to be important environmental supports in predicting children's literacy skill development. However, no studies have simultaneously examined these two environmental supports in relation to children's early language skills and…

The present study followed a sample of first-grade (N = 316, M[subscript age] = 7.05 at first test) through fourth-grade students to evaluate dynamic developmental relations between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. Using latent change score modeling, competing models were fit to the repeated measurements of vocabulary knowledge and…

There is accumulating correlational evidence that the effect of specific types of reading instruction depends on children's initial language and literacy skills, called child characteristics x instruction (CxI) interactions. There is, however, no experimental evidence beyond first grade. This randomized control study examined whether CxI…

The Workshop on the Role of Language in School Learning: Implications for Closing the Achievement Gap was held to explore three questions: What is known about the conditions that affect language development? What are the effects of early language development on school achievement? What instructional approaches help students meet school demands for…

Studied the average development of word recognition, reading comprehension, vocabulary, and spelling of poor and better readers during the elementary school period and studied whether differences between these readers increased over time. Results for 3 cohorts of about 900 children each contradict the existence of a Matthew effect for word…

Summarizes and updates original study done on reading and writing development of a preschool child. (SRT)

Efforts to improve the educational achievement of children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, are at the heart of current government policies in the United Kingdom. The Peers Early Education Partnership (PEEP) is an intervention that, since 1995, has worked directly with parents and caregivers of children from infancy to 5 years of…

The present longitudinal study investigated the relationship between pre-school semantic skills (vocabulary, comprehension and sentence construction), phonological awareness and later word decoding and reading comprehension skills. More than 200 Danish children were followed from a speech therapist screening at the age of three, through a…