3-074 - Turning everyday family practices into effective language and literacy interventions for preschool and kindergarten children

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Intervention programs that capitalize on pre-existing family routines and practices are typically easier to implement and sustain over time, are more meaningful and relevant for participants, and have better effects on children’s language and literacy development than those interventions that impose new and unrelated series of behaviors that contradict or are not aligned with home practices (Fullilove et al., 2000; Janes & Kermani, 2001). This symposium examines 3 intervention programs for preschool and kindergarten children based on everyday family practices.

The first paper focuses on family mealtime conversations and investigates whether parents can be taught to use decontextualized language (e.g., abstract talk). Parents and children who received the program increased their decontextualized language during mealtimes significantly more than did parents and children who did not receive the program. The second paper focuses on family food practices (e.g., grocery shopping) and investigates whether parents can be taught to use food practices as opportunities to develop language and literacy through emergent writing and conversations. Children whose parents attended the program had larger vocabulary gains than did children whose parents did not attend the program. The third study focuses on incorporating the traditional stories shared by Latino families into the classroom setting and investigates the effectiveness of oral storytelling in the classroom. Children in intervention classrooms had better language, reading comprehension and narrative skills than did children in control classrooms. Together, these papers explore how effective intervention programs can build on the home environment to increase children’s language and literacy skills.

Sub Unit

• Education, Schooling

Chairs

• Diana Leyva, Davidson College

• Gigliana Melzi, New York University

Discussant

• Carol Scheffner Hammer, Columbia University

Individual Presentations

• Ready for kindergarten: A training program designed to encourage parent-child conversation during the preschool years - Presenting Author: Kathryn Leech, Harvard University Graduate School of Education; Ran Wei, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Jeffrey Harring, University of Maryland; Meredith Rowe, Harvard Graduate School of Education

• What families bring to the table: Using food practices to foster children’s language and literacy skills - Presenting Author: Diana Leyva, Davidson College

• Supporting Latino Children’s Reading Readiness Through Co-Constructive Elaborative Storytelling - Presenting Author: Gigliana Melzi, New York University; Adina Schick, New York University, Department of Applied Psychology; Lauren Scarola, New York University