Understanding Teacher Behaviors to Support Language/Literacy Development During Shared Book Reading

• In Event: Shared Book Reading: Book Qualities, Interventions, and Teacher Behaviors that Shape Effectiveness

Abstract

Shared book reading is a widely recommended practice in pre-k as it can help foster school readiness skills, such as language/literacy skill development. However, the quality of teachers’ book reading practices has been shown to vary widely (Dickinson & Smith, 1994; Martinez & Teale, 1993; McGill-Franzen, Lanford, & Adams, 2002). Moreover, research suggests that simply reading the text is not as effective as an interactive reading style (NELP, 2008). These findings underlie the importance of understanding the types of teacher talk that are happening in classrooms during shared book reading experiences.
In this paper we seek to explore what types of teacher talk in regard to questioning, behavior, and meaning occur during the shared book reading. Additionally, we seek to delve into literacy talk to explore the types of literacy talk occurring in the shared book reading sessions, and if there were significant differences in the mean use of literacy talk between teachers who are exposed to a literacy intervention, called TeacherRead, and control group teachers who are not exposed to the intervention. Finally, we want to see if fidelity to the TeacherRead intervention for treatment teachers is associated with shared book reading quality.
Participating teachers were from the New York City (NYC) Pre-K For All program and represent treatment and control participants in the TeacherRead study. 71% of teachers had teaching experience of 5 or more years, 81% of teachers had a Master’s degree, and the majority of teachers were Caucasian (52%) or Latino (29%).
Videotaped shared book reading sessions by 99 preschool teachers who were part of the TeacherRead study were collected. All teachers read aloud a text entitled Rain (Ashman, 2013), a NYC Pre-K For All Unit of Study text. Each recorded shared book reading session was coded using an observational coding scheme, the Systematic Assessment of Book Reading (SABR 2.2; Zucker, Pentimonti, Tambyraja, & Justice, 2018). The tool captures the frequency of key behaviors that are known to promote young children’s language and literacy skills. Coders were found adequately reliable in independently coding three training transcripts (Range = 81-94% agreement). Additionally, each recorded shared book reading session from treatment teachers was coded for its fidelity of implementation to the TeacherRead instructional targets. A teacher earned one fidelity point per language/ literacy prompt he/she delivered during the shared book reading session. Teachers’ fidelity score was a summation of their points earned out of the 7 language/ literacy prompts.
Full data will be presented. Preliminary analysis revealed that on average teachers most frequently asked literal Wh-questions, produced an expected amount of Behavior comments, and most frequently discussed Character References and Cognition. Additionally, we found that there was a significant difference in the mean use of literacy talk between TeacherRead treatment and control group teachers.

Author

• Danielle Shaw Attaway, American Institutes for Research -District of Columbia
  Presenting Author