Emotion vocabulary development is a skill that can be targeted in preschools using shared book reading. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a shared book reading intervention on the development of preschool children's emotional vocabulary. Five typically developing 4-year-old children participated in the study. A single-case…

In this manuscript we show how readalouds can significantly enrich student vocabulary and comprehension by demonstrating enhancements that will foster student learning and language development. We anchor our examples to empirical evidence demonstrating that the content of a readaloud (i.e., the what we teach) as well as the quality of the…

Read-aloud is a reading activity that is occurs most often in the early years classroom. Research suggests that read-aloud continues to be of value in the upper grades. Read-aloud provides opportunity for middle grade students to engage and connect to a range of literature. It increases motivation and improves accessibility for the range of…

In this manuscript we show how read alouds can significantly enrich student vocabulary and comprehension by demonstrating enhancements that will foster student learning and language development. We anchor our examples to empirical evidence demonstrating that the content of a read aloud (i.e., the what we teach) as well as the quality of the…

Domain-specific vocabulary knowledge is an important precursor to overall knowledge acquisition, which is essential to reading and comprehending grade-level texts. There are a number of malleable factors within the classroom that can be shaped by teachers and policy makers, yet additional empirical evidence is needed to uncover and evaluate those…

The development of 4- to 6-year-olds' narrative skills was investigated in relation to their receptive vocabulary, grammar, and home literacy environment. At Time One, 82 children aged 4 to 6 years completed standardised assessments of cognitive ability, vocabulary, and grammar. Narrative production and comprehension were assessed by the narration…

Memorizing spelling lists and looking up words in the dictionary and then using the words in a sentence is a traditional strategy used for vocabulary acquisition. However, because the students do not learn words in context, their application of knowledge and understanding from this method is uneven. Because picture books may be used for pleasure…

We explored whether knowledge building through read alouds of a conceptually coherent (CC) set of texts might support children's incidental acquisition of vocabulary in these texts and listening comprehension of related texts. Eleven classrooms of first (n = 83) and second grade students (n = 112) were randomly assigned to read alouds of either a…

We explored (a) emergent bilingual students' talk-turns during read-alouds, (b) how earlier talk-turns were related to later talk-turns, and (c) how talk-turns varied across more versus less culturally relevant books. One teacher and her four students' read-alouds across two sessions each were video-recorded and transcribed. Emergent coding was…

This experimental study aimed to replicate and extend a previous efficacy study of an elementary grade content literacy intervention that demonstrated positive effects on students' vocabulary knowledge depth, argumentative writing, and reading comprehension. Using a cluster (school) randomized trial design, this replication experiment was…

This study compared the effects of the reading-while-listening condition and the reading-only condition on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' acquisition of the four dimensions of vocabulary knowledge: form recognition, grammar recognition, meaning recall, and collocation recognition. Accordingly, 24 words within four frequency groups…

Language and literacy skills are critical for academic success. Shared book reading is an evidence-based practice for improving a range of language and literacy skills in young children, including those with or at risk for learning disabilities. This article describes how teachers and speech-language pathologists (SLP) can collaborate to support…

Previous research suggests that activating background knowledge immediately prior to read-alouds in Kindergarten is an important strategy for improving children's learning (e.g. Cervetti & Hiebert, 2015). But, because children's background knowledge varies considerably at the individual level, teachers are also often providing relevant…

Studies of proficient readers have shown that the use of certain strategies (e.g., relating personal background knowledge to text, attending to headings and images, and summarizing) is important for comprehension of challenging texts (Afflerbach, Pearson, & Paris, 2017; Duke et al., 2011; Goldman et al., 2016; Shanahan, Shanahan, &…

There is growing recognition of the need to end the debate regarding reading instruction in favor of an approach that provides a solid foundation in phonics and other underlying language skills to become expert readers. We advance this agenda by providing evidence of specific effects of instruction focused primarily on the written code or on…