Verbal interaction with others has been identified as an important forum for children's developing understanding of the thoughts and feelings of others -- their theory of mind. However, conversational interactions in settings and relationships important to young children beyond the home and family have received little attention in research…

In this article, we describe how books addressing social-emotional topics can be used by teachers of young children during class read-alouds to enhance students' social-emotional development. Teachers of young children typically choose books for class read-alouds based on curriculum topics and student interest; however, they may not be aware of…

Children's cognitive development has a neural basis, yet children's learning is facilitated by interactions with more knowledgeable others. Young children experience such interactions in the context of the home learning environment (HLE), when parents support children's thinking and learning during everyday activities. Consequently, one way to…

In the current study the reading speed of the narration and the difficulty of the text was manipulated and links were explored with children's attention to the printed text in shared book reading. Thirty-nine children (24 grade 1 and 15 grade 2) were presented easy and difficult books at slow (syllable by syllable) or fast (adult reading speed)…

Content vocabulary is essential for children's comprehension of informational text. Teachers will need to support children in developing the technical or specialized words they need for informational text and in linking these words to key concepts in content area instruction. This article describes the vocabulary instruction that was observed…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of digital and non-digital storybooks on low-income preschoolers' oral language comprehension. Employing a within-subject design on 38 four-year-olds from a Head Start program, we compared the effect of medium on preschoolers' target words and comprehension of stories. Four digital…

The teaching approach described in this article was originally designed for kindergarten students who are at risk for reading disorders. In a 30-minute session, students practiced attending to and identifying the spelling patterns, pronunciations, and meanings of common morphological suffixes through listening activities, interactive book reading,…

This paper reports on some data on the effects of screen-based interactivity on children's engagement with storybook apps during family shared book reading that were gathered in a 2-year, small-scale ethnographic case study in Spain. Data analysis focuses on the complex interplay between the storybook app's interactive features and the children's…

How school librarians focus on activating critical thinking through traditional literacy development can proactively set the stage for the deep thinking that occurs in all literacy development. The critical-thinking skills students build while becoming accomplished readers and writers provide the foundation for learning in a variety of…

In this article, the authors focus on one important early literacy skill--phonological awareness--and describe how to support its development for all children by intentionally embedding it in storybook reading. Supporting the development of young children's phonological awareness is an important part of helping a child learn to read. Preschool…

Many sixth grade students think they are telling the truth when they complain, "Reading is boring." However, they don't realize what sort of activities encompass reading. As a teacher with a few years of experience, I am finding new ways to engage reluctant readers and show them reading can take many different forms. In this essay, I…

This paper presents a framework intended to link the following assessment development concepts into a systematic framework: evidence-centered design (ECD), scenario-based assessment (SBA), and assessment of, for, and as learning. The context within which we develop this framework is the English language arts (ELA) for K-12 students, though the…

Research Findings: This study examined preschool teachers' literal talk (LT) and inferential talk (IT) during shared book readings in early childhood education (ECE) and early childhood special education (ECSE) classrooms. We aimed to characterize and compare teachers' LT and IT in these 2 classroom contexts and determine whether differences in LT…

Shared-book reading is a well-established intervention to foster vocabulary development. Factors influencing its effectiveness are, however, less well studied, particularly with regard to story-delivery. We contrasted a read-aloud with a free storytelling approach and tested effects on vocabulary learning. In the first study, 83 preschoolers aged…

No one would argue with the proposition that how we process events in the world is strongly affected by our experience. Nonetheless, recent experience (e.g., from the previous trial) is typically not considered in the analysis of timed cognitive performance in the laboratory. Masson and Kliegl (2013) reported that, in the context of the lexical…