Facts In Action

A team of researchers from the University of Southern California undertook a four-year study of the effectiveness of a preschool early literacy program in one child care center in Los Angeles. The program was designed to provide opportunities for Spanish-speaking four-year-olds to engage in reading and writing activities in the center, at home, and in the surrounding community. Program components included a language and literacy program at the center, ongoing training and support for staff, and parent workshops.

The preschoolers that participated in the program showed significant improvement on a test of print concepts in Spanish. The students demonstrated increased knowledge about the directionality of print, awareness that printed words are read instead of pictures, and ability to identify capital and lower-case letters. Also, 30 percent of these children demonstrated early word awareness by being able to track printed words in a sentence while it was being read aloud to them.

Despite the fact that instruction at the center was primarily in Spanish, at the beginning of their kindergarten year the children outscored children from other preschool programs on tests of English. The researchers suggest that despite the small size of the study, their findings support the theory that early language awareness in Spanish can be transferred to English. Further longitudinal data may reveal that early literacy activities in either language can aid in the acquisition of advanced reading and writing skills as students progress through school.

Source:
"Early Literacy for Inner-City Children: The Effects of Reading and Writing Interventions in English and Spanish During the Preschool Years," D. B. Yaden, A. Tam, P. Madrigal, D. Brassell, J. Massa, S. Altamirano, and J. Armendariz, The Reading Teacher, Volume 54, Number 2, October 2000.

For more information:
look online at www.ciera.org/library/archive/2000-04/art-online-00-04.html.

Facts in Action, October 2002