Links between Preschool Childrens Interest in Literacy Activities and Emergent Literacy Skills

1
Links between Preschool Childrens Interest in
Literacy Activities and Emergent Literacy
Skills Alison E. Baroody, Karen E. Diamond,
Soo-Young Hong Department of Child Development
and Family Studies, Purdue University

• Childrens Literacy Interest and Outcomes
• Recent studies indicate that childrens
  interest in literacy activities is related to
  emergent literacy skills in young children.
• Child-reported interest in literacy activities
  was associated with letter knowledge in
  kindergarten children however, it was not
  related to receptive language (Frijters, Barron,
  Brunello, 2000).
• Parent-reported preschool child interest in
  literacy activities was associated with
  childrens receptive language in preschool age
  children (Farver, Xu, Eppe, Lonigan, 2006)
• Few studies have directly assessed preschool
  childrens interest in literacy.
• Most studies have assessed interest indirectly
  (e.g., parent reports).
• A few studies that have assessed interest
  directly have done so in older populations of
  children (e.g., kindergarten) from mostly white
  middle-class families.
• The aim of this study was to examine the
  relationship between child-reported interest in
  literacy and emergent literacy skills in
  preschool children from low-income families.

Childrens Interest
Analyses
Conclusion

• Since the scores for alphabet knowledge and
  letter knowledge were strongly correlated (r(96)
  .87, p lt .000), an aggregate score for these
  two measures was created by taking the mean of
  the z-scores.
• Standard scores were used for the PPVT-III.
• First, correlations were conducted between
  childrens interest in literacy and childrens
  outcomes (i.e., letter knowledge composite
  variable and receptive language).
• Next, regressions were conducted while
  controlling for childrens age and gender.

• Findings from this study support previous
  research indicating that childrens interest in
  literacy is related to some emergent literacy
  skills.
• Preschool children who express a greater
  interest in literacy activities also tend to have
  greater letter knowledge.
• This finding is consistent with other research in
  which older childrens interest in literacy
  activities was related to beginning reading.
• Results from this study do not support findings
  from other studies suggesting that preschool
  childrens interest in literacy activities is
  related to childrens receptive language. These
  inconsistent findings may be due to different
  methods of assessing childrens interest (i.e.,
  parent report vs. child report).

• Childrens Interest was assessed using the
  Childrens Interest Measure (Baroody, Diamond,
  Hong, 2006).
• 15-item measure covering interest in reading,
  letters, math, and science.
• Children were shown a picture of each activity
  and then asked if the they liked the activity a
  lot, a little, or not at all, an approach similar
  to collecting sociometric assessments (e.g.,
  Asher, Singleton, Tinsley, Hymel, 1979)
• 6 items (i.e., reading and letter items) formed
  the literacy scale (? .72), which is the focus
  of this study.

Results

• Items from Childrens Interest Measure
• Reading
• Listening to your teacher read books at
  group/circle time
• Reading books
• Looking at books in the library/book corner
  during choice time
• Letters
• Learning about names of letters
• Learning about words that rhyme
• Learning the sounds that letters make

Implications

• Further research is needed to determine why
  different methods (e.g., parent reported child
  interest vs. child reported interest) produce
  different results.
• The relation between childrens interest in
  literacy activities and letter knowledge is
  particularly important since letter knowledge is
  considered a good predictor of reading
  development (Wagner, Torgesen, Rashotte, 1994).
• The relation between preschool childrens
  interest in literacy and letter knowledge may
  have implications for educational practices and
  curricula, thus this topic warrants further
  investigation.

• 100 preschool children (mean age 58.7 months,
  SD 5.1, 51 boys)
• White 69, Latino 17, Black/African
  American 9, American Indian 5.
• Children came from low-income families (Mdn
  15,000-19,999 annual household income)
• 36 of parents/caregivers did not have a High
  School degree or GED.
• All children were enrolled in Head Start or
  local child care centers

Sample
Figure 1. Item from the Childrens Interest
Measure Reading books.
Emergent Literacy

• Childrens emergent literacy skills and interest
  in literacy activities were assessed in either
  Spring 2006 (n 42) or Fall 2006 (n 58) of the
  preschool year.
• Receptive language was measured using the
  Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III (PPVT-III).
• Letter Knowledge was measured using the
  Letter-Word Identification subtest of the
  Woodcock-Johnson III.
• Alphabet knowledge was measured using the Head
  Start FACES assessment.

These data were collected as part of the
Childrens School Success Project (CSS Odom,
Butera, Diamond, Hanson, Horn, Lieber, Palmer,
2003 )