Building Vocabulary in Kindergarten: Promising Preliminary Evidence from One Emerging Intervention

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 2:15 pm - Gold 4
  In Roundtable Session: Measurement and Assessment in Early Childhood

Abstract

This paper reports on the results of a pilot study of the Kindergarten Vocabulary Intervention (KVI – intervention name and author citations blinded for review) program, a year-long professional development intervention supporting kindergarten teachers in enhancing the quality of vocabulary instruction in their classrooms. KVI includes four whole-group workshops during the school year, twice-per-month in-classroom coaching by an expert educator, and classroom materials, organized around curriculum-friendly themes, to support whole-group book readings and small-group strategy instruction. Findings showed that kindergarten teachers who received KVI made significant gains in their instructional quality, as measured by CLASS, over the year. Moreover, children in their classrooms made significant gains in taught words and significant increases on a standardized vocabulary measure.

Authors

• Barbara Wasik, Temple University

• Annemarie Hindman, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Katy Egan, Temple University