Early childhood teachers' writing beliefs and practices.

This study examined the early writing beliefs, ideas, and practices of 54 early childhood teachers. Teachers completed a survey designed to examine their early writing beliefs and provided definitions about early writing development through a written response. Teachers were also observed in their classrooms and writing practices were coded for instructional strategy employed by the teacher (i.

Examination of Narrative Language at Microstructural and Macrostructural Levels in Spanish-Speaking Preschoolers.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine narrative language samples of Spanish-speaking preschoolers to analyze changes in microstructural and macrostructural skills in their first language (L1) from fall to spring, relationships between narrative and vocabulary skills in L1, and the extent to which fall skills predict spring performance. Method Participants included 40 Spanish-speaking children who were enrolled in community-based preschool programs. Narrative language retells from the fall and spring were examined, and microstructural and macrostructural components were analyzed using the Narrative Assessment Protocol-Spanish and the Narrative Scoring Scheme, respectively.

Peer effects on low-income children's learning and development.

Using data from a large study of 78 high-quality Head Start classrooms in 12 sites across the U.S., this study examined whether peers' receptive vocabulary skills and teacher-reported social-emotional (S-E) functioning (i.

Factorial Validity and Measurement Invariance of the Test of Preschool Early Literacy-Phonological Awareness Test Among Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children and Hearing Children.

Objectives: Emerging evidence suggests that early phonological awareness in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children with functional hearing is significantly related to their reading acquisition, and the assessment of phonological awareness can play a critical role in preventing reading difficulties. Validation of the scores obtained from standardized assessments when used with DHH students is crucial to support the assessments' intended interpretations and implications of test scores. Using archival data sets, the aim of this study was twofold: (a) to establish the factorial validity of the item scores on the Test of Preschool Early Literacy-Phonological Awareness (TOPEL-PA) for DHH children with functional hearing and hearing children and (b) to test measurement invariance across these groups.

Oral narrative performance of african american prekindergartners who speak nonmainstream American English.

Purpose: This study had 4 primary purposes: (a) to describe the oral narrative performance of typically developing African American prekindergarten children with commonly used macro- and microstructure measures; (b) to examine the concurrent and (c) predictive relations between narrative performance, spoken dialect use, vocabulary, and story comprehension; and (d) to explore change in narrative performance during the school year.

Method: Children provided story retells of Frog Where Are You? ( Mayer, 1969) at the beginning ( n = 76) and end ( n = 146) of the school year. Retells were analyzed using the narrative assessment protocol ( Pence, Justice, & Gosse, 2007), the narrative scoring scheme ( Heilmann, Miller, & Nockerts, 2010; Heilmann, Miller, Nockerts, & Dunaway, 2010), high point analysis ( McCabe, Bliss, Barra, & Bennett, 2008), and other common indices of narrative ability (e.