Enhancing Emergent Literacy Skills of Preschoolers From Low-Income Environments Through a Classroom-Based Approach

Abstract

Enhancing children’s literacy achievement has been identified as a top priority in education policy and research. Recent federal policies and legislation, such as the No Child Left Behind Act and the Reading First Act, have placed special emphasis on academic readiness for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The present project evaluated the effect of the Stony Brook Emergent Literacy Project, an approach that combines teacher training, classroom-based activities, and teacher-evaluated performance using rubrics to target preschoolers’ emergent literacy skills. Ten Head Start classrooms were matched and randomly assigned to implement the Literacy Project or serve as the comparison group. Teachers in Literacy Project. classrooms implemented 20 group activities and evaluated children’s mastery of skills during the activities through rubrics. Children were assessed on their emergent literacy skills by independent evaluators at the beginning and end of the school year. Classrooms that implemented the Literacy Project demonstrated gains in children’s emergent literacy skills over the course of the academic year. Results demonstrate the effect of implementing the Literacy Project on children’s growth in emergent literacy skills and emphasize the utility of including explicit emergent literacy instruction in early childhood.

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