Jon Shapiro

Diversity in Parental Storybook Reading.

Reading picture storybooks to preschool age children has long been a major component of early childhood classrooms and is now commonly recommended to parents. The benefits of this practice are thought to include exposure to rich language experiences, the development of narrative, and the development of book and print‐related concepts. These views have become accepted and extended to culturally diverse segments of society, even though most of the research has been conducted with small samples of predominantly white, upper‐middle class families. The present study finds diverse storybook interactions within a static sample and questions the practice of generalizing findings about storybook reading to dissimilar populations. † Correspondence: Tel: (604) 822‐5512, (604) 822‐5513; Fax: (604) 822‐8971; email: jon.shapiro@mtsg.ubc.ca.

Mathematical Discourse in Shared Storybook Reading.

The purpose of the study reported in this article was to explore the mathematical discourse in which four dyads engaged while sharing the storybook One Snowy Night (Butterworth, 1989) while at home or in other locations (e.g., day care centers). Each dyad consisted of a mother and her four-year-old child. Various discourse patterns were evident, and while there were commonalities across dyads, each pair shared the book in unique ways. In two of the dyads, the mother initiated the mathematical discourse; in the other two, the child did. Size, subitizing, and counting were the most common mathematical concepts that emerged. One dyad attended to a single concept of size, and the other dyads attended to more than one mathematical idea. Some parents scaffolded particular problem-solving strategies; others provided more generic support. Based on our findings, we discuss insights and issues and make suggestions for further research.

Supporting Multiple Literacies: Parents' and Children's Mathematical Talk within Storybook Reading.

The purpose of this study was to explore how parents and their young children attended to mathematical concepts as they engaged in shared book reading. Thirty-nine parents and their 4-year-old children from a culturally diverse metropolitan area were videotaped as they readMr. McMouse (Lionni, 1992) andSwimmy (Lionni, 1963). Shared reading episodes were transcribed in their entirety and the data were coded according to a scheme developed by the authors (Anderson, Anderson, & Shapiro, 2004). All families except one engaged in mathematical talk although there was considerable diversity in terms of the amount of talk and the ways in which mathematical concepts were shared. The concept of size arose most frequently, next was different aspects of number, while shape occurred relatively infrequently. Results suggest that shared book reading holds considerable potential for parents to draw attention to mathematical vocabulary and concepts.

Examining the Effects of Gender and Genre on Interactions in Shared Book Reading.

Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate whether fathers and mothers read differently to their four‐year‐old sons and daughters and to examine the effect of genre on the interactions that occurred in parent‐child, shared book reading. Twenty‐five dyads shared two narrative texts and two non‐narrative texts. Results indicated that overall, fathers were more interactive than mothers. Fathers and mothers also differed in terms of the types of interactions and there was some gender/genre interaction effect. As well, parents engaged in more interactions in non‐narrative texts than in narrative texts. The childs gender also affected the number and types of interactions. Implications for practice, theory and future research are proposed.

FACTORS INVOLVED IN THE LEISURE READING OF UPPER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

Reading educators are becoming increasingly concerned with aliteracy. While the desire to create lifelong readers is strong, knowledge of the factors which influence the leisure reading habit is only now a focus of research initiatives. This study of thirty‐nine avid and non‐avid leisure readers examined home and personal factors related to their leisure reading behavior. Differences were discovered for some aspects of attitude toward reading, for motivation and for several home factors.

SEX‐ROLE APPROPRIATENESS OF READING AND READING INSTRUCTION

Abstract Primary grade children were administered a picture measure of attitudes toward reading as a sex‐role appropriate behavior. In Study 1, forty‐two subjects responded to Downings Activity‐Object Opinion Survey from kindergarten through grade two. A significant grade by sex interaction indicated that boys declined in their view of reading as a sex‐role appropriate behavior as they progressed through grades one and two. In Study 2, children receiving whole‐language type instruction were administered the same measure and these results were compared with subjects from Study 1. Significant effects of instruction on childrens views of the sex‐role appropriateness of reading were noted.

The Relationship of Conceptual Tempo to Reading Readiness Test Performance

This study was designed to investigate the relationship of reflection-impulsivity to performance on a standardized readiness measure. 90 first grade boys were administered the Matching Familiar Figures test to determine their conceptual tempo. 37 boys were classified as impulsive while 30 were determined to have a reflective conceptual tempo. After determining that no pre-existing differences on chronological age, mental age, or intelligence quotients were evident between the two groups, the 67 subjects were administered the Gates-MacGinitie Readiness Skills Test. Results of the statistical analyses revealed that the reflective subjects were significantly superior on overall test perfromance and on six of eight subtests. Implications for beginning reading instruction and for further research were drawn.

Extra-textual talk in shared book reading: a focus on questioning

In this study we investigated the frequency and types of questions asked when parents read with their four-year-old children, the relationship between the frequency and types of questions parents and children asked, and the relationship between these and the childrens early literacy knowledge. Forty dyads shared two narrative texts and two non-narrative texts. Overall, there were relatively few questions asked during the shared book reading. Parents asked four times as many questions as children and for the most part, questions appear to have low cognitive demand. Genre had little effect on the frequency of questions and the types of questions asked, in contrast with other research that has shown differences in interactions in shared reading of informational versus narrative texts. In terms of gender, there was very little difference in both frequency and type of questions. No significant relationships were found between the questions asked in the shared book readings and measures of childrens early literacy knowledge (Test of Early Reading Ability 2 and alphabet knowledge). The study is important in that it contributes to an emerging literature that suggests a more tenuous relationship between shared book reading and childrens early literacy knowledge than is sometimes assumed by educators.

Relationships between early literate experience and knowledge and children's linguistic pragmatic strategies

Abstract A three-year study of 67 three- and four-year-olds assessed the impact of literate aspects of home environment and early knowledge about literacy upon strategies for comprehension of directive illocutionary acts. It was hypothesized that children inclined toward what Olson has termed a ‘literate bias’ in language use would tend to locate meaning within the linguistic element of illocutionary acts rather than making appropriate use of context in the comprehension process. Baseline measures of literate experience and knowledge were administered in the first year of the study. These included Shapiros Home Literacy Environment Index, Clays Concepts About Print test, and two subtests of Downings Linguistic Awareness in Reading Readiness battery. Metaliteracy factors were then derived from these and several additional early literacy measures. An illocutionary act comprehension task employed puppet play set in realistic contexts, with the linguistic element of each task item presented both in full and in phonologically-distorted form. This provided a means of assessing the extent to which subjects required intact linguistic information in order to assign illocutionary force to an utterance. Children on the higher ends of the home literacy environment scale and several of the measures of print concepts demonstrated more linguistic rather than contextual dependence, and did so up to a year sooner than children on the lower ends of the scales, regardless of chronological age. The results offer support to the claim that there is a bias in one general pragmatic process for those children who have been more extensively socialized into literate uses of language.

A Comparison of Vocabulary Generated by Grade 1 Students in Whole Language Classrooms and Basal Reader Vocabulary.

Abstract The writing of 52 Grade 1 children in two whole language classrooms was collected for the entire school year. The childrens writing was transcribed into computer files and the vocabulary was organized into a rank order list. This list was compared to the vocabulary contained in the basal reader program used in the school district. The comparison of vocabulary generated by the students with that of the basal readers indicated that high frequency vocabulary was nearly identical. Low frequency words used by the students were judged to be more current than those of the basal readers. Misspellings demonstrated an overgeneralization of phonic principles. It is concluded that whole language instruction does not limit childrens exposure to systematic repetition of important vocabulary.