Within the current decade, the number of Hispanic students has doubled so that about 16% of the total student population within the United States are Spanish-speakers (U.S. Census Bureau, 2017). With this growing population comes a responsibility to understand and implement best practices for educating these students. Because literacy is a building-block for learning, one integral part of this responsibility consists of developing valid and reliable means of assessing pre-reading skills that are predictive of later reading abilities (Lonigan, Burgess, & Anthony, 2000; Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1994). English-language learning children are being identified for having reading difficulties and disabilities two to three years later than their English-proficient peers (Chu & Flores, 2011). As a population, they are also overly misidentified as having reading difficulties/disabilities and being unnecessarily placed into a special education system (McCardle, Mele-McCarthy, Cutting, Leos, & D’Emilio, 2005b; Sanatullova Allison & Robinson-Young, 2016). Per a nationwide survey of Speech-Language Pathologists, one large contributing factor for this dilemma is the lack of appropriate assessment instruments (Roseberry-McKibbin, Brice, & O’Hanlon, 2005). Phonological awareness is the ability to focus on and manipulate units of spoken language (words, syllables, onsets, rimes, and/or phonemes). It is one of the most significant predictors of later reading abilities. A large body of evidence provides support for this within the English language but also within other alphabetic languages, such as Spanish (e.g. Carillo, 1994; Durgunoglu, Nagy, Hancin-Bhatt, 1993; Schneider, Kuspert, Roth, Vise, & Marx, 1997). Thus, assessments of phonological awareness have been shown to be reliable measures that predict later reading abilities in Spanish-speaking children and English-proficient children alike (Farver, Nakamoto, & Lonigan, 2007). There are many standardized assessments available to test phonological awareness as an emergent literacy skill in English. In congruence with the previously mentioned nationwide survey, Spanish assessments of phonological awareness are less abundant. Additionally, these tests tend to be expensive, time-consuming to give, and require training of the administrator. These tests are static in nature and regularly require the child to comprehend complex administrative instructions which is often problematic for children with limited language skills in Spanish and/or English (Barker, Bridges, & Saunders, 2014). The current study aims to build upon existing data regarding development of the DAPA-S by evaluating the validity of a shorter version of the DAPA-S (the DAPA-S Short Form) with children from Spanish-speaking backgrounds. The DAPA-S Short form was designed with the purpose of retaining all the test items of the full version but with an altered structure which allows for significantly shorter administration time. The DAPA-S and the shorter version were both designed as Spanish dynamic assessments of phonological awareness which are computerized, have simple instructions, provide information about a child’s ability to learn from instruction, and do not require speech responses. The twelve participants that were involved in this study were given the DAPA-S Short Form as well as other assessments related to phonological awareness or emergent reading. Three of those participants did not complete the study due to poor attendance or behavioral challenges. Therefore, this study reports on nine participants who completed the full assessment battery. To investigate concurrent validity, correlational analysis was performed with the DAPA-S Short Form scores and scores from a measure of phonological awareness, the Test of Phonological Sensitivity in Spanish (TOPSS; Brea, Silliman, Bahr, & Bryant, 2003). The Elision, Rapid Automatic Naming, and Letter Name/ Letter Sound subtests from the TOPSS were administered. No significant correlations were observed between either subtest from the DAPA-S Short Form and any of the subtests from the TOPSS (r = .49 for Elision, r = .36 for RAN, r = .43 for Letter Name/Letter Sound subtests). Therefore, concurrent validity was not established as measured in this study. To investigate convergent validity, correlational analysis was performed with the DAPA-S Short Form subtests and the scores from a measure of Spanish emergent reading skills, the Letter-word Identification (LWID) subtest from the Woodcock-Muñoz Language Survey – Revised (WMLS-R; Woodcock, Muñoz – Sandoval, Ruef, & Alvarado, 2005). Significant correlation was observed between the First Syllable subtest of the DAPA-S Short Form and the test of emergent literacy (r = .87, p < .01); no significant correlation was observed for the Last Syllable subtest of the DAPA-S Short Form (r = .44) and the test of emergent literacy. Therefore, the First Syllable subtest from the DAPA-S Short Form demonstrates good convergent validity, while the Last Syllable subtest did not. Data suggests that the DAPA-S Short Form demonstrates excellent internal reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = .99 for both subtests) but requires modifications and further testing with a larger sample size in order to be considered as a valid measure of phonological awareness. If developed through further research, the DAPA-S Short Form as well as the full version of the assessment could prove to be invaluable tools in educational and clinical settings.

<p>Forskning visar att det är viktigt för barn i förskoleklass att få språklig stimulering i sin vardag. I vår studie jämförde vi två pedagogers språkstimulerande arbete i två förskoleklasser. Vi ville se om pedagogerna arbetade efter samma metoder som de förespråkade. Därför observerade vi naturliga situationer i två förskoleklasser samt intervjuade en pedagog ur varje klass. Jämförelsen visade att pedagogerna hade kunskap om den språkliga medvetenheten och arbetade medvetet för att stimulera detta hos barnen. De arbetade båda enligt Bornholmsmodellen som är en komplett metod för att öka barns språkliga medvetenhet. Den ena pedagogen arbetade även efter en ny metod kallad FonoMix, en metod som kopplar ihop munrörelser och bokstavsljud. Den andra pedagogen arbetade medvetet med tecken som stöd, då hennes förskoleklass var en språkförskoleklass för barn med språkliga avvikelser.</p>

This thesis consists of three separate papers broadly examining how different environmental and child variables affect language and literacy acquisition in two or more orthographies. The first paper is a quantitative meta-analysis of studies that have examined the effects of shared book reading on language, emergent literacy skills, and reading achievement with preschool children. The results suggest that shared book reading explained approximately 7% of variance in all the language and literacy measures combined. The mean effect size of shared book reading was slightly larger for the combined language measures (d = 0.77) than for the combined emergent literacy measures (d = 0.57), or the combined reading achievement measures (d = 0.63). An examination of the effects of shared book reading on specific language, emergent literacy, and reading skills revealed that shared book reading is more related to some skills than others. The second paper examines the effects of home literacy (shared book reading, teaching activities, and number of books), children’s task-focused behaviour, and parents’ beliefs and expectations about their child’s reading and academic ability on Kindergarten children’s (N = 61) phonological sensitivity and letter knowledge and on Grade 1 word reading. The results showed that after controlling for nonverbal IQ and vocabulary, parent teaching activities prior to Kindergarten predicted significantly letter knowledge; parents’ beliefs about their children’s reading ability predicted significantly phonological sensitivity and Kindergarten word reading; and children’s task-focused behaviour predicted significantly letter knowledge and Kindergarten and Grade 1 word reading The third paper reports on a cross-linguistic longitudinal study that examines the environmental, behavioural, and cognitive predictors of Grade 3 word reading fluency, passage comprehension, and spelling in children learning to read in an orthographically inconsistent language (English) and in an orthographically consistent language (Greek). Results indicated that home literacy factors did not directly predict Grade 3 reading or spelling skills for either the English- or Greek-speaking samples. Task-focused behaviour directly predicted spelling for the Greek-speaking sample. Vocabulary was more important for reading and spelling in English than in Greek. Letter knowledge was more important for spelling in Greek and for passage comprehension in English. / Special Education

Following a growing concern among education stakeholders about the lack of a reading culture and low literacy levels among Rwandans in general and university students in particular, the aim of this thesis is to increase the awareness of Rwandans about the development of a reading culture and early literacy. To achieve this aim, four studies with participants representing different experiences related to reading culture were performed. These qualitative studies draw on different perspectives on the development of a reading culture and emergent literacy by using open-ended questionnaires and interviews. The thesis takes sociocultural and emergent literacy theories as points of departure. The first study investigates students’ reflections on their previous reading experiences, and discuss ways to develop literacy and a reading culture in Rwanda. The next one sheds light on parents’ involvement in literacy practices at home and the third study concerns what literacy knowledge teachers expect from their pupils when they start nursery and lower primary school. An example of a literacy event (storytelling) is given in the fourth study where children’s narratives of fairy tales are followed by their discussions on gender issues, which in turn can develop the children’s interest in reading. This can also help them relate texts to their life and teach them to think critically. In sum, the studies show that there is a limited reading culture in Rwanda. That is attributed to the colonial and post-colonial education system, reliance on verbal communication, limited access to reading materials, and ultimately the low status of the mother tongue Kinyarwanda within the sociolinguistic configuration of Rwanda. Also, the participating students and teachers point out the necessity of involving parents more in the creation of an environment that nurtures children’s emergent literacy development so that it becomes a shared responsibility translated into a teacherparent partnership for children’s success at school. Hence, the findings inform the use of this thesis which is to promote literacy and a reading culture in Rwanda by engaging the whole nation in a national effort to build a sustainable culture of reading. To paraphrase the old African saying ‘it takes a village to raise a child’, I want to conclude by saying that it takes a nation to develop a culture of reading.

Stories are complex linguistic constructions through which we share our interpretations of the social world. The ability to comprehend and produce stories is referred to as narrative competence. Narrative competence is rooted in social interactions in the preschool years that foster a sense of story structure and familiarity with story language. It has been shown to play a critical role in reading and writing achievement in the elementary school years since the language of literacy, like the language of storytelling, is predominantly decontextualized. The mastery of decontextualized language poses a significant challenge for children who enter kindergarten with little previous exposure to the majority language. The storytelling ability of these children was the focus of the present study. The study's primary aim was to examine second language narrative competence across the kindergarten years by comparing the fictional stories generated by a cross-section of EL1 and ELL junior and senior kindergarten children in response to a wordless picture book from the point of view of macrostructure (story structure), microstructure (story language), and the use of evaluative language. Grade and gender differences across and within language groups were also considered. A second aim of the study was to examine the relationship between narrative competence and receptive vocabulary and between narrative competence and print-based emergent reading skill. Overall, the results suggested that the ELL children's narratives were comparable to those of their EL1 counterparts with respect to most measures of microstructure, and with respect to macrostructure and evaluative language use. The one clear language-based difference favouring the EL1 children related to morpho-syntactic quality. Age-related differences were obtained on most measures and the results suggested parallel developmental trajectories across language groups. Gender was found to play a more prominent role in ELL than EL1 narrative performance. Few aspects of narrative were predicted by receptive vocabulary, suggesting dissociation between word- and discourse-level skills, particularly among the ELL children. On the other hand, emergent literacy scores predicted several aspects of microstructure, macrostructure and evaluative language use. The study provides evidence that various aspects of narrative competence might be differentially related to vocabulary and emergent literacy skills in ELL and EL1 kindergarten children.

Stories are complex linguistic constructions through which we share our interpretations of the social world. The ability to comprehend and produce stories is referred to as narrative competence. Narrative competence is rooted in social interactions in the preschool years that foster a sense of story structure and familiarity with story language. It has been shown to play a critical role in reading and writing achievement in the elementary school years since the language of literacy, like the language of storytelling, is predominantly decontextualized. The mastery of decontextualized language poses a significant challenge for children who enter kindergarten with little previous exposure to the majority language. The storytelling ability of these children was the focus of the present study. The study's primary aim was to examine second language narrative competence across the kindergarten years by comparing the fictional stories generated by a cross-section of EL1 and ELL junior and senior kindergarten children in response to a wordless picture book from the point of view of macrostructure (story structure), microstructure (story language), and the use of evaluative language. Grade and gender differences across and within language groups were also considered. A second aim of the study was to examine the relationship between narrative competence and receptive vocabulary and between narrative competence and print-based emergent reading skill. Overall, the results suggested that the ELL children's narratives were comparable to those of their EL1 counterparts with respect to most measures of microstructure, and with respect to macrostructure and evaluative language use. The one clear language-based difference favouring the EL1 children related to morpho-syntactic quality. Age-related differences were obtained on most measures and the results suggested parallel developmental trajectories across language groups. Gender was found to play a more prominent role in ELL than EL1 narrative performance. Few aspects of narrative were predicted by receptive vocabulary, suggesting dissociation between word- and discourse-level skills, particularly among the ELL children. On the other hand, emergent literacy scores predicted several aspects of microstructure, macrostructure and evaluative language use. The study provides evidence that various aspects of narrative competence might be differentially related to vocabulary and emergent literacy skills in ELL and EL1 kindergarten children.

Forskning visar att det är viktigt för barn i förskoleklass att få språklig stimulering i sin vardag. I vår studie jämförde vi två pedagogers språkstimulerande arbete i två förskoleklasser. Vi ville se om pedagogerna arbetade efter samma metoder som de förespråkade. Därför observerade vi naturliga situationer i två förskoleklasser samt intervjuade en pedagog ur varje klass. Jämförelsen visade att pedagogerna hade kunskap om den språkliga medvetenheten och arbetade medvetet för att stimulera detta hos barnen. De arbetade båda enligt Bornholmsmodellen som är en komplett metod för att öka barns språkliga medvetenhet. Den ena pedagogen arbetade även efter en ny metod kallad FonoMix, en metod som kopplar ihop munrörelser och bokstavsljud. Den andra pedagogen arbetade medvetet med tecken som stöd, då hennes förskoleklass var en språkförskoleklass för barn med språkliga avvikelser.

Early Reading First is a federal initiative that seeks to buffer against the detrimental effects of poverty on children‟s academic outcomes by incorporating all of the elements supported by scientifically-based reading research to address the present and future reading gaps of high-risk preschool children. The tenets of ERF are teacher professional development, high quality language and print-rich environments, the teaching of emergent instruction of emergent literacy skills based on scientifically based reading research (SBRR) and the early identification of reading problems through the informed use of appropriate assessment measures. The present study was designed to assess the effectiveness of ERF enriched preschool classrooms located in a small city in a Southwestern state on both short- and mid-term early literacy outcomes of high risk preschoolers in a treatment condition and a comparison group. A total of 239 children participated in the study; 110 children in the ERF treatment group and 129 children in the "practice as usual" contrast group. The longitudinal effect of the ERF intervention on participating students (from pre-kindergarten through the middle of first grade) was investigated via multilevel modeling. Four multilevel models were developed for two subtests of the Tejas Lee (Francis, Carlson, and Cardenas-Hagan, 2006): Spanish alphabet knowledge (i.e, identificación de las letras) and Spanish story comprehension (i.e., comprensión auditiva); and two subtests of the Texas Primary Reading Inventory (TPRI; Center for Academic and Reading Skills, 2004): English Alphabet Knowledge and English Story Comprehension. Results of the present study support the findings reported by similar prior studies, indicating that while ERF effectively increases students' alphabet knowledge, greater effort is necessary toward programming for increasing student outcomes on story comprehension.

The aim of the study is to investigate parents&rsquo / perceptions on emergent literacy. More specifically, the present study examined the perceptions of parents on emergent literacy and the frequency rates of the home literacy activities that parent engage in spending with their children at home to encourage emergent literacy through a questionnaire, which was developed by Nebrig (2007). Translation and reliability checks and a pilot study were implemented before the actual study was conducted. Parents were asked to complete the &ldquo / Home Literacy Activities&rdquo / questionnaire which consisted of 45 home literacy activities that parents can engage in or provide for their children to encourage emergent literacy. Participants of the study were 677 parents who had children between zero to seven years old were reached through home visits and schools. And who were living in Ankara. Results of this study revealed that the majority of participants believed that home literacy activities were important for emergent literacy development of their children. It was reported that parents gave more importance to the structured activities, such as using new and interesting words in conversations with the child more than unstructured activities that can be arranged during daily routines such as pointing out different types of printed materials around the house and in the community. Parents did not prefer spending time in rhyming and phonological awareness related activities as much as the other types of home literacy activities.

There is a considerable body of research showing that before children enter school they are already equipped with language competencies and concepts developed particularly in their sociocultural environment. Although some studies have explored to some extent the lives of Indigenous children in their socio-cultural contexts, most of these studies do not systematically focus on the early years of their socialization processes. Furthermore, in Brazil, researchers have only recently–in the last 15 years–started to look at the child as a capable and competent being. Thus, the purpose of this study was to document and analyze the socialization practices used by and with Mbya Guarani children in the Tekoá [reservation] Marangatu Indigenous reservation in Imaruí, Brazil, particularly within the school and community contexts. The overarching goal of this dissertation study was to explore the role of Indigenous children's socialization processes in the development of bilingualism, biliteracy, or biculturalism within the school environment and how the bilingual school supports or hinders the development of the Guarani language. In this study, children are seen as social actors (Cohn, 2005a; Marqui, 2012; Mello, 2006; Tassinari, 2011), who transmit knowledge amongst themselves, the adults in their lives, and the different contexts in which they live and experience bilingualism and biculturalism, and in some cases, biliteracy. In this qualitative study, I used ethnographic instruments (Heath & Street, 2008; Seidman, 1998) to document in-depth the several literacy practices performed by first- and third-graders in the Escola Indígena de Ensino Fundamental Tekoá Marangatu (E.I.E.F. Tekoá Marangatu). Data include fieldnotes from participant observations, video and audio recordings, literacy samples (in the form of photographs), and informal interviews, which were collected during three months of fieldwork. Through open coding, I delineated specific domains regarding the use of literacy events (Heath, 1982) and the socialization practices of this specific Indigenous community, following previous empirical studies on immigrant and Indigenous children's emergent literacies (Azuara, 2009; Reyes & Azuara, 2008; Reyes, Alexandra, & Azuara, 2007; Teale, 1986). Through the use of narrative inquiry (Schaafsma & Vinz, 2011), I demonstrate how the role of translanguaging (García & Beardsmore, 2009) and the role that peers (Gillanders & Jiménez, 2004; Halliday, 2004; Moll, 2001) took in the socialization processes of these children are some of the important findings of this study. By also interviewing key members of the school, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, I was able to understand more in-depth the importance of maintaining these children's cultural heritage at the same time that they learned their native language. In many instances the children in this study relied on more capable peers to understand the worlds and contexts in which they live. As they interacted with each other and with adults, children translanguaged across these multiple contexts as they brought their funds of knowledge (Gonzaléz, Moll, & Amanti, 2005) into the school setting. The modo de ser e viver [way of being and living] in this Indigenous community was intrinsically connected to how they saw themselves as Guarani and how they have adapted to the ways of living on the reservation. Being Guarani encompassed many aspects of their religion, ways of thinking, cosmology, and thus many times it was difficult to separate all of the aspects that composed the Guarani individual. The constant transformation of this reservation has been reshaping the social structures and activities the Guarani perform on a daily basis, yielding new forms of literacy. Even though Portuguese is the dominant language in the school context, both adults and children used Guarani as a way to escape the homogenization almost required by the outside world. Thus, understanding the role that the bilingual school plays in this community was also a key aspect of this research since both adults and children reinforced the use of Indigenous socialization practices within the school setting as a way to adapt to their way of living and being.