Poster #116 - The Role of Oral Storytelling in Supporting Low-Income Preschoolers’ Academic Language

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Language, Communication

Integrative Statement

The preschool years are a critical period for the development of the language and literacy skills that are predictive of children’s school readiness and overall academic success (Storch & Whitehurst, 2002). In recent years, research has demonstrated that from the time they enter preschool, low-income children, and in particular those from ethnic-minority backgrounds, score below their more affluent peers on measures of school readiness (Snyder & Dillow, 2013; West et al., 2000). As this gap in achievement grows over time, policymakers have sought ways to support the school readiness of children at-risk of experiencing school failure. One promising avenue of intervention work has focused on supporting preschoolers by building on the cultural funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) they bring with them into the classroom. Reading Success Using Co-Constructive Elaborative Storytelling Strategies (R-SUCCESS; Authors) is an innovative classroom storytelling program that trains teachers to bridge home-school practices by using rich, elaborative language as they incorporate culturally-relevant oral storytelling during their circle-time routines. The current study explored the effectiveness of R-SUCCESS in supporting preschoolers’ school readiness, by comparing the academic language skills of children who were enrolled in R-SUCCESS classrooms with children enrolled in control classrooms as they engaged in a semi-structured play routine.

Participants included 236 low-income, ethnic-minority preschoolers (Mage = 46.31 months, SD = 6.67; 56% girls; 78% Latino) who were enrolled in classrooms (N = 12) that participated in a larger intervention project, where half of the classroom teachers had been trained in R-SUCCESS (53% of the children) and the remaining teachers had been trained in a reading-based control during the first 3-months of the year. Teachers then implemented their assigned program twice-a-week for the following 6-months. At the end of the year, children engaged in a spontaneous narrative production using a story stem from The MacArthur Story Stem Battery (Emde et al., 2003). Investigators enacted the story prompt using dolls and props and asked the child to complete the rest of the story by “tell[ing] me what happens next.” Interactions were audio-recorded, transcribed and verified using CHAT conventions. Coding and analysis of story stems is ongoing and focuses on the following indices of academic language skills: Context, chronology, and theme, using an adaptation of Reese et al., (2011) coding of narrative coherence; vocabulary diversity, using VOCD programs available through the CHILDES system; and sophisticated/rare language, through a recently validated list of common words for preschoolers (Authors, under review).

Preliminary results show that children who received the classroom storytelling intervention (i.e., R-SUCCESS) shared stories with more sophisticated context and chronology, as compared to children in control classrooms. By contrast, there do not appear to be between-group differences in theme. Moreover, preliminary findings suggest that children in R-SUCCESS classrooms had higher vocabulary diversity scores and used more rare/sophisticated language than their peers in control classrooms. Results are discussed in relation to the importance of adopting a strengths-based approach to supporting low-income, ethnic-minority preschoolers’ academic language skills, and the implications that this has for both policymakers and educators.

Authors

• Nathalia Sanchez, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Cassie Wuest, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Adina Schick, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lauren Scarola, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Gigliana Melzi, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author