A Study of Kindergarten Children's Awareness of How They Are Learning to Read: Home and School Perspectives (Literacy)
Stewart, Janice Porterfield
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/69075
Description
Title
A Study of Kindergarten Children's Awareness of How They Are Learning to Read: Home and School Perspectives (Literacy)
Author(s)
Stewart, Janice Porterfield
Issue Date
1986
Department of Study
Education
Discipline
Education
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Education, Reading
Abstract
This study investigated children's awareness of how they are learning to read at home and in school. Fifty-six kindergarten children were selected from two schools that used contrasting instruction for beginning reading. In one school the instruction was individualized and emphasized a whole-language approach with language experience activities, reading little books, and phonics instruction. The instruction in the other school was structured around a commercial phonics-based beginning reading program and emphasized whole-class instruction. The children were interviewed and asked three questions designed to tap their awareness of how they were learning to read. The series of testing took place in March and May of kindergarten and in September of first grade. The early reading test was administered to obtain measures on letter, spelling, word, and story-reading knowledge, and a parent questionnaire was used to assess home support for early reading. The children's awareness responses were analyzed using two types of coding systems to determine how they described learning to read or what they said they used when learning to read. For each coding system a holistic judgment was made to classify each statement made by the individual child.
The overall results demonstrated that most children can talk about how they are learning to read at home and in school, and that the responses matched the school instruction. A second finding demonstrated that the children's awareness responses changed over time. A significant interaction between instruction setting and awareness responses indicated that the children who received individualized and small-group instruction gave more integrated responses.
To examine the relationship between home literacy environment and the children's awareness responses, four children were selected for case studies. The children were observed in their homes eight times over a two-month period during the summer for one to two hours. The home literacy environments and interactional patterns were analyzed by identifying six literacy domains. The findings indicate that all the parents provide some type of support for literacy, that some parents are more deliberate in structuring literacy events, and that the children's awareness responses matched the interaction patterns of their home.
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