Nicole Patton Terry

Examining Relationships Among Dialect Variation and Emergent Literacy Skills

This study examined the relationship between nonmainstream American English (NMAE) dialect use and various emergent literacy skills among typically developing children in prekindergarten. Correlation and regression analyses were used to examine the relationship between children’s production of NMAE forms (i.e., dialect variation [DVAR]) and their alphabet knowledge, name writing, print concepts, and phonological awareness. The sample of 4-year-olds was diverse: 57.6% were African American and 33.3% participated in free and reduced lunch programs. Moderate, negative significant correlations were found between DVAR and all measures, except name writing. However, with the exception of nursery rhyme awareness, DVAR did not independently contribute to children’s performance when it was entered into regression models with related emergent literacy skills as predictor variables. The results suggest an indirect role for NMAE use in emergent literacy achievement and that frequency of spoken NMAE production may be secondary to children’s metalinguistic skills.

Progress in Language and Literacy Skills Among Children With Disabilities in Inclusive Early Reading First Classrooms

Quality literacy instruction in preschool can be critical to the future academic success for all children, but may be even more so for children with disabilities. The purpose of this study was to examine progress in emergent literacy skills of young children with disabilities, compared with their typical peers, in an inclusive preschool setting. Participants in this study included 77 prekindergarteners with disabilities and 77 children with no identified disabilities who were matched based on age, teacher, and school. Children were enrolled in inclusive Early Reading First prekindergarten classrooms. Results suggest that although children with disabilities made significant gains mirroring the progress of their typical peers, as a group, they did not catch up to the achievement of their typical peers. Children with disabilities showed the greatest progress in Print Awareness and Recognizing Uppercase Letters. Implications for future instruction and research are outlined.

Corrective Reading as a Supplementary Curriculum for Students With Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Reading deficits among students with emotional and behavioral disorders (E/BD) are well documented. One approach to addressing these deficits has been providing students with intensive and explicit reading instruction. In this study, 31 students with E/BD and reading deficits in self-contained settings were provided with 8 weeks of Corrective Reading plus Language! instruction following a 4-week baseline phase with Language! instruction only. Standardized Reading Fluency, Comprehension, Word Attack, and Letter-Word Identification subtests and general reading achievement results yielded statistically significant reading growth. Weekly oral reading fluency rates grew at a rate of 1.592 words per week during the baseline phase and 3.563 words per week during the intervention phase. Reading achievement gains were consistent across settings (self-contained classrooms and self-contained schools) and the Corrective Reading intervention was perceived as effective and beneficial to teachers and students. Limitations addressed include brief duration of intervention and relatively small sample size. Increasing the length of the intervention and number of participants are presented as future directions for research.

Kid Categories A Comparison of the Category Productions of LSES and MSES Elementary School Children

The current study compares the productivity (number of responses) and the typical responses to taxonomic and slot-filler prompts in 39 African American children from low-income backgrounds and a diverse group of 21 children from middle-income backgrounds. The authors tested the hypothesis that socioeconomic status would exert a global influence on productivity and typicality responses such that children from middle-income environments would generate higher productivity rates and more sophisticated typical responses. They found support for this hypothesis only in categories that appear to be related to exposure to formal contexts. Several categories that reflect basic life experiences displayed similar rates of productivity and typical responses across socioeconomic groups. Findings from this study have implications for the assessment of semantic knowledge in elementary-school-age children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

Psychometric Analysis of the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation-Screening Test: Extension to Low-Income African American Pre-Kindergarteners

The purpose of this study was to extend a previous investigation of the psychometrics of the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation–Screening Test (DELV-S) to include pre-kindergarten children (primarily African American and from low-income households). The previous study (Petscher, Connor, & Al Otaiba, 2012) included a racially and socioeconomically diverse sample of children in kindergarten through second grade. Similar to that study, two factors were found in the present study: one representing morphosyntactic ability and one representing nonword repetition ability. However, unlike the previous study, measurement invariance was not observed in the present sample. As a result, to allow for interpretation of performance in similar samples who would likely use the DELV-S, vertical scaling was used to create a new set of norms for ability scores and a new reference table for fall and spring of the pre-kindergarten school year.

Examining the Effects of Performance Feedback on Preschool Teachers’ Fidelity of Implementation of a Small-Group Phonological Awareness Intervention

ABSTRACT Although a growing body of literature indicates that high-quality preschool and/or prekindergarten programs can improve child outcomes, research evidence suggests that some children may continue to exhibit academic difficulties. While there appears to be overwhelming evidence supporting the effectiveness of performance feedback for improving teaching practices in kindergarten to Grade 12 settings, research is needed on its effectiveness with preschool teachers to address early literacy concerns. Thus, for this study, we used a concurrent multiple baseline across-group design to examine the effectiveness of performance feedback on teachers’ implementation of a targeted small-group phonological awareness intervention. We also examined the impact of targeted small-group instruction on students’ phonological awareness skills. Findings suggested that preschool teachers were satisfied with the performance feedback process and found the phonological awareness intervention to be acceptable and socially valid. The discussion includes implications for future research and practice.

Identifying Head Start Children for Higher Tiers of Language and Literacy Instruction.

The application of Response to Intervention (RtI) to early childhood settings presents many opportunities and challenges; however, it remains unclear how best to implement this framework in settings in which children at risk of academic difficulty are overrepresented, like Head Start. One of the first steps in implementing any RtI process is the effective and efficient identification of children who are in need of additional instructional support (e.g., Tier 2 or Tier 3). This process is critical as it directly affects the amount of resources needed to support children appropriately—a factor that is particularly concerning for programs that primarily serve children who are at risk of social, emotional, or academic failure difficulties. The purpose of this study was to investigate the proportion of at-risk children who may be in need of additional instructional support when screening and norm-referenced measures are administered at the beginning of the year. In addition, the proportion of at-risk children who continued to need additional support after receiving approximately 6 months of Tier 1 instruction was examined.