The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of teaching paraeducators to read to preschool children in a manner that facilitates the development of language and literacy skills on the quality of reading that occurs and on children's participation. This study examined the role of the readers' behavior before and after training and prompting in evoking children's participation in a low SES preschool setting. The participants included 6 at-risk preschool children as well as 2 paraeducators. An A-B-A withdrawal design was used to evaluate the effects of a book reading treatment on the readers and the children. Results revealed that both paraeducators and children produced significantly more total utterances per minute, particularly meaning-focused utterances as well as code-focused utterances in storybook reading sessions during treatment. Results indicated that changes in training and support the paraeducators received across the different experimental phases were responsible for changes in adult readers' verbalizations during book reading. These changes also were associated with increases in child verbalizations and participation during book reading. This approach to training paraeducators and providing prompts in books can be utilized to make better use of preschool personnel as effective interventionists, particularly as facilitators of language and literacy development. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Communication Disorders in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Fall Semester, 2006. / November 6, 2006. / At-Risk Preschool Children, Paraeducators, Joint Storybook Reading, Language, Literacy / Includes bibliographical references. / Howard Goldstein, Professor Directing Thesis; Stephanie Dent Al Otaiba, Outside Committee Member; Lisa Scott, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_182051 |
| Contributors | Jackson, April Louise (authoraut), Goldstein, Howard (professor directing thesis), Al Otaiba, Stephanie Dent (outside committee member), Scott, Lisa (committee member), School of Communication (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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