Researchers and teachers explored a new form of teacher-child interactions in two early childhood settings as a means of eliciting complex language. The primary mode of assessment in New Zealand early childhood education takes the form of 'learning stories' that teachers write, with photos, and that are collected into a portfolio book. Eight…

Tender Shoots is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) for parents aimed at improving preschool children's oral language skills relevant for later reading. Parents of 72 preschool children (M = 50 months) were randomly assigned to either a Rich Reading and Reminiscing (RRR) condition, a Strengthening Sound Sensitivity (SSS) condition, or an…

"Tender Shoots" compared two book-reading and conversation approaches for parents and preschoolers to an activity-based control group. The "Rich Reading and Reminiscing" (RRR) condition taught parents to converse about the storyline; the "Strengthening Sound Sensitivity" (SSS) condition taught parents to converse…

Research Findings: Home-based early childhood education and care (ECEC) is a popular form of small-group ECEC, with potential to facilitate high-quality conversations during shared book reading. To investigate how home-based early childhood educators (ECEs) take advantage of learning opportunities, educators read two storybooks with children…

In this study, the relations among a range of literacy-related home practices and children's acquisition of language and literacy at the outset of preschool are examined in a sample of linguistically diverse children from low-income families in the United States. Specifically, the study focuses on sources of variation found in mother-child…

Research Findings: This study compared the unique effects of training low-income mothers in dialogic reading versus elaborative reminiscing on children's oral language and emergent literacy. Thirty-three low-income parents of 4-year-old children attending Head Start were randomly assigned to either dialogic reading, elaborative reminiscing, or a…