Person:

Snow, Catherine

This study investigated predictors of growth in toddlers’ vocabulary production between the ages of 1 and 3 years by analyzing mother – child communication in 108 low-income families. Individual growth modeling was used to describe patterns of growth in children’s observed vocabulary production and predictors of initial status and between-person change. Results indicate large variation in growth across children. Observed variation was positively related to diversity of maternal lexical input and maternal language and literacy skills, and negatively related to maternal depression. Maternal talkativeness was not related to growth in children’s vocabulary production in this sample. Implications of the examination of longitudinal data from this relatively large sample of low-income families are discussed.

Advanced literacy is a prerequisite to adult success in the twenty-first century, By advanced literacy we do not mean simply the ability to decode words or read a text, as necessary as these elementary skills are, Instead we mean the ability to use reading to gain access to the world of knowledge, to synthesize information from different sources, to evaluate arguments, and to learn totally new subjects, These higher-level skills are now essential to young Americans who wish to explore fields as disparate as history, science, and mathematics; to succeed in postsecondary education, whether vocational or academic; to earn a decent living in the knowledge-based globalized labor market; and to participate in a democracy facing complex problems,

The literacy challenge confronting children, their families, and schools in the United States has two parts. The first is the universal need to better prepare students for twenty-first-century literacy demands. The second is the specific need to reduce the disparities in literacy outcomes between children from disadvantaged backgrounds and those from more privileged homes.

This issue of the Future of Children explores the literacy of America's children and how to improve it. We begin this introductory essay by reviewing briefly why literacy is so important in today's world and why the concept of literacy needs to be broadened to include a set of competencies that go well beyond the ability to recognize words and decode text. We end with a summary of the other articles in the issue and briefly consider what steps policy makers might take to respond to the urgent needs we cite

En este artículo se investigan algunas cuestiones metodológicas relativas al estudio del lenguaje infantil y se presenta la instrumentación y el software desarrollados en el proyecto CHILDES (Sistema de Intercambio de Datos del Lenguaje Infantil). El sistema proporciona potentes herramientas para investigar en el marco de la metodología de Registro, Transcripción y Análisis de Muestras de Habla Espontánea (RETAMHE). Se proporciona información del sistema de codificación (CHAT) que permite introducir finas distinciones en el proceso de transcripción, al tiempo que se exponen los requerimientos básicos (minCHAT) para crear archivos CHAT. El paquete de programas (CLAN) específicamente diseñados para analizar esos archivos que contienen transcripciones de muestras de habla, incluye recuentos de frecuencias, búsqueda de palabras, análisis de la interacción, etc. El núcleo de comandos y opciones de CLAN constituye el sistema minCLAN, del que se ofrecen algunas pautas. Se trata con todo ello de facilitar los primeros pasos para aprender a usar los instrumentos metodológicos de CHILDES.

Time to Act, a 2009 report of the Carnegie Corporation’s Council on Advancing Adolescent Literacy, concludes that U.S. students are ill-prepared for the literacy challenges of 21st century higher education, employment, and citizenship. The poor performance of U.S. high schoolers in international comparisons contrasts sharply with the relatively good performance of U.S. 4th graders. The success of 4th graders, and indeed the recent rise in 4th grade NAEP scores, is believed to reflect the success of federal and state policies focused on primary literacy. It seems we have learned to teach students to read at the 4th grade level without preparing them for subsequent literacy challenges. As a result, a high proportion of middle and high school students are struggling. These strugglers are overrepresented in urban districts, among students living below the poverty line, and among ethnic and linguistic minorities. Improving reading for understanding in the post-primary grades requires exposing students who read at all levels to new instructional elements that focus on higher-order comprehension skills (e.g., analysis, synthesis, critique, problem-solving). To target these higher order skills, teachers need (1) a better understanding of the component skills required and how they develop, (2) a set of digestible instructional activities that, if well executed, build these skills, and (3) opportunities to learn the classroom discussion procedures that support student progress. High quality discussions are critical to three basic components of reading comprehension: perspective-taking, complex reasoning, and academic language skill. Word Generation (WG) is a research-based vocabulary program for middle school students designed to teach words through language arts, math, science, and social studies classes. The program consists of weekly units that introduce 5 high-utility target words through brief passages designed to spark active examination and discussion of contemporary issues. WG was designed with the understanding that promoting classroom discussion can result in particular kinds of academic benefits, such as improved word knowledge, reasoning, and expression. The IES funded evaluation of WG (as part of the Reading for Understanding initiative) is a school-level experimental study that includes two cohorts of schools randomized to treatment and control conditions. The first cohort has been studied for three years and the second cohort for two years; we present findings after the end of the 2nd year of the study and at the end of the 3rd year of the study

Much of what we know about children’s language and literacy development derives from efforts to assess those skills. In fact, language and literacy development might be taken as a case study in the history of assessment—a local domain which displays the full range of tensions, challenges, and approaches that have characterized the field of behavioral assessment, and in particular, the assessment of young children. In this chapter, we discuss language and literacy assessment in young children as an illustrative special case of issues that extend far beyond the language/literacy domain. In that larger domain, as in this specific one, three key questions organize the information: For what purposes should we assess young children? What aspects of their functioning should be assessed? And how do we carry out assessments so as to get good, reliable information with only modest burden on the adult assessor or the child?

Although much attention has been devoted to lexical, grammatical, and semantic aspects of child-directed speech, less is known about its pragmatics. This paper describes a longitudinal study of the communicative intents used by parents in interaction with their 14-, 20-, and 32-month-olds (n = 52). With 14-month-olds, parents used a small core set of communicative intents. This set grew in size and sophistication with increasing child age. Comparison with children's intents showed that some commonly used parental communicative intents were rare in children's language at all three ages. As children grew older, parental use of directive intents declined and child-centered acts increased. These findings suggest that child-directed parental speech is simplified pragmatically as well as grammatically and semantically.

Modern teens have pervasively integrated new technologies into their lives, and technology has become an important component of teen popular culture. Educators have pointed out the promise of exploiting technology to enhance students’ language and literacy skills and general academic success. However, there is no consensus on the effect of technology on teens, and scant literature is available that incorporates the perspective of urban and linguistically diverse students on the feasibility of applying new technologies in teaching and learning literacy in intact classrooms. This paper reports urban adolescents’ perspectives on the use of technology within teen culture, for learning in general and for literacy instruction in particular. Focus group interviews were conducted among linguistically diverse urban students in grades 6, 7 and 8 in a lower income neighborhood in the Northeastern region of the United States. The major findings of the study were that 1) urban teens primarily and almost exclusively used social media and technology devices for peer socializing, 2) they were interested in using technology to improve their literacy skills, but did not appear to voluntarily or independently integrate technology into learning, and 3) 8th graders were considerably more sophisticated in their use of technology and their suggestions for application of technology to literacy learning than 6th and 7th graders. These findings lead to suggestions for developing effective literacy instruction using new technologies.

The Collaborative Language and Literacy Instruction Project (CLLIP) is a model of professional development designed to help teachers incorporate research-based practices of literacy instruction, support mastery, and sustained use of these practices through coaching, and serve as a foundation for whole-school reform efforts. We describe the model, intervention, implementation, and subsequent results from an exploratory study in which we tested student literacy outcomes for kindergartners and fourth graders in the classrooms of CLLIP teachers against a matched comparison group. Exploratory results from a rural cohort of elementary school teachers suggest support for skill building in the alphabetic principle, phonemic awareness, fluency, and vocabulary. We discuss outcomes by reflecting on central program features: CLLIP strengthens teachers’ content knowledge and ties that knowledge to subject-specific content for students, has extended duration and support, is tied to state standards, and involves collective participation across a district to advance reform efforts.

Grade retention has been the de facto policy for children with academic difficulties in many Latin American countries [Schiefelbein, E., & Wolff, L. (1992). Repetition and inadequate achievement in Latin America’s primary schools: a review of magnitudes, causes, relationships, and strategies. Washington, DC: World Bank.]. In Costa Rica, 14.9% of public school children were retained in first grade in 2002. In a study of first grade classrooms in Costa Rica, children identified as in need of repeating first grade were found to have lower levels of reading ability [Rolla San Francisco, A., Arias, M., Villers, R., & Snow, C. (in press). The importance of reading skills, prereading skills, and family in teachers’ decisions to retain children: a case study in costa rica. Aula Abierta]. There has been a greater focus in recent years on the importance of prevention of educational difficulties, versus repetition, as the most cost-effective and efficient way of providing educational opportunities to low-income children. There is little rigorous research evaluating the impact of different interventions on the early literacy skills of low-income children in developing countries as a way to prevent posterior academic difficulties.

This experimental study evaluated the differential impact of three early literacy interventions—tutoring, classroom activities, and work with families—on the emergent literacy skills of low-income Costa Rican kindergarteners. Tutoring or a combination of all three interventions were the most effective, while providing high-quality materials to teachers without training had no impact, but more intensive interventions of longer duration will probably be needed to ensure long-term impact on first grade repetition and eventual school dropout. Continuing research will assess the impact of these interventions on student outcomes and repetition rates in first grade, as well as exploring the impact of the more intensive intervention of professional developmen