A Profile of Preschool Emergent Literacy Based Upon Children’s Performances and Family Literacy Practices

• In Event: Evaluating a Statewide Community-Based Initiative to Enhance School Readiness: A Kindergarten Profile

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
Report findings from the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening Pre-K in (a) name writing, (b) alphabet recognition, (c) print and word awareness, and (d) rhyme awareness. In addition, self report questions related to literacy activities (book reading and storytelling) in the home from the guardian questionnaire were also analyzed.

Perspectives or theoretical framework (Please see symposium overview)

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
Not all children completed every subtest on the PALS, thus, the total number of children completing each of the five subtests ranges from 1,063-1,136. Responses of 1,063 guardians to the question In a typical week, how often does the guardian or a family member read books or tell stories to the child were also analyzed.

Results/Conclusions
Direct child measures. In the AKRS sample, out of 1,063 children assessed, the overall mean for name writing was very high (6.78 out of 7) with only 2.1% of children not being able to write a near conventional form of their name. Similarly, results for 1,132 children on the subtests of upper and lower case letter recognition and letter/sound association indicated that over 80% of children knew most of the upper and lower case letters of the alphabet. However, in the area of print and word awareness findings for 1,100 children indicated that only 65.5% of students performed at the appropriate developmental level. Similarly, results for 1,064 children found that only about half of the students (55.4%) performed at levels predictive of later success in first grade on rhyme awareness.
Literacy activities in the home. Survey results indicated that 46.3% of guardians read 3-6 times a week with their children and 42.2% engaged in storytelling during the same period.
Conclusions. While beginning kindergartners in Arizona knew most of their letters and could write their names, under performance on the more difficult literacy abilities assessed by the Print and Word Awareness and Rhyme Awareness subtests indicate that even the home literacy activities may not necessarily be transferring to more sophisticated literacy knowledge. This may be due, in part, to the general tendency of many parents to focus upon the identification of letter names and sounds rather than engaging children more fully in comprehension of the text and the explanation of vocabulary, abilities which correlate much more highly with literacy success in the upper elementary grades. This finding has import for early literacy instruction in the state especially since this domain of print and word awareness was also found to be a consistent predictor of school success in recent meta-analyses conducted by the National Early Literacy Panel (National Institute for Literacy, 2008).

Authors

• David B. Yaden, The University of Arizona

• Adriana Diane Cimetta, The University of Arizona