Category: Language Development

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Kindergarten Language Development Programme Evaluation

Enhancing children’s reading outcomes: The interplay of topic background knowledge and parent-child interaction

Reading comprehension often depends on prior topic knowledge, as evident in everyday experiences like understanding technical manuals. Dong and colleagues studied how topic background knowledge (TBK) and parent-child storybook reading styles affect kindergarteners’ Chinese language skills, reading interest, and reading anxiety. TBK allows children to relate their experiences to the new information presented in the book. The study compared the effects of high-level TBK (H) and low-level TBK (L) across two interaction types: dialogic reading (DR), where adults and children discuss the story, and typical reading (TR).

The research randomly allocated 346 families (mean age of children: around 5.5 years) from the southern cities in China into four groups: H-DR, H-TR, L-DR, and L-TR They engaged in 25-minute reading sessions twice a week over eight weeks using the same eight storybooks. Children in high-level TBK groups (H-DR and H-TR) received pre-learning activities relevant to the reading material, while low-level groups (L-DR and L-TR) received activities using unrelated materials. Additionally, DR-group parents participated in workshops to enhance their interactive reading techniques, and hints of DR were provided along with storybooks.

The results, after controlling for background characteristics, revealed that:

  • DR groups: High-TBK children outperformed low-TBK children in all outcomes.
  • TR groups: High-TBK children showed better receptive vocabulary and listening comprehension.
  • Among high-TBK groups, DR outperformed TR across all measures.
  • In low-TBK groups, DR showed advantages only in vocabulary and listening comprehension.

This study highlights the benefits of prior knowledge of a book’s content combined with high-level interactive reading on children’s oral language skills and affective outcomes during parent-child reading sessions.

 

Source: Dong, Y., Chow, B. W.-Y., Xia, G., Mo, J., & Dong, H. (2025). Contribution of topic background knowledge to language learning outcomes through parent–child dialogic reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 60(1), e608. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.608… Read the rest

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Educational Administration and Leadership Language Development Primary School Education Programme Evaluation

A meta-analysis of effective Spanish reading interventions

A meta-analysis conducted by our Best Evidence in Brief (BEiB) colleagues José Luis Arco-Tirado, Amanda Neitzel, and the late Bob Slavin, examined the effects of Spanish reading interventions for students in grades K–6. The review, published in Review of Educational Research, included studies focused on class- or school-based interventions aimed at improving reading skills among students whose first language was Spanish. The analysis included only high-quality studies that met rigorous criteria, such as the use of experimental or quasi-experimental designs and quantitative standardized measures of reading achievement.

The final best-evidence synthesis and meta-analysis was based on 11 studies with 51 effect sizes. Overall, Spanish reading interventions showed a significant average effect size of +0.49 on reading performance. While results varied considerably, the researchers explored grade level and outcome type as potential moderators of the effect. However, due to the small number of studies, no significant differences were found between grades K–2 and 3–6 or across the five categories of outcome type.

The authors concluded, on one hand, that some effective interventions for improving Spanish reading comprehension are available to help readers in K–6 education. On the other hand, more rigorous evaluation studies have to be implemented to expand the pool of proven reading practices available for teachers and educators in Spanish-speaking countries.

 

Source (Open Access): Arco-Tirado, J. L., Fernández-Martín, F. D., Hervás-Torres, M., Jiménez-Fernández, G., Calet, N., Defior, S., Neitzel, A. J., & Slavin, R. E. (2024). A Best-Evidence Synthesis and Meta-analysis on Effective Reading Programs in Spanish. Review of Educational Research, 00346543241297668. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543241297668… Read the rest

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Language Development Primary School Education Programme Evaluation

Cost and impact of a Spanish-language literacy intervention

Spanish-speaking English learners sometimes struggle to develope proficiency in their native language. These students need support to strengthen their Spanish language skills, enabling them to read in their first language and later transfer this ability to English literacy. Descubriendo la Lectura (DLL: Recovering Reading) is an early intervention program designed for Spanish-speaking first graders at risk of literacy failure. It provides one-on-one Spanish-language tutoring, offering tailored, individualized instruction for 30 minutes daily by trained teachers. The goal is to improve early reading and writing outcomes for the lowest-achieving English learners (ELs). Teachers track each student’s progress throughout the program and at the end of the school year, ensuring consistent, high-quality instruction.

A recent study evaluated the financial resources required to implement the DLL program for first grade EL students in public schools. The cost analysis was based on a three-year randomized control trial in 24 schools across seven districts in four U.S. states. The study involved 19 DLL teachers and 8 teacher leaders who served a total of 199 students. The data were categorized into five groups—personnel, facilities, supplies, equipment, and other inputs—to estimate the costs of implementing DLL, calculate cost-effectiveness ratios (CERs), and compare DLL’s cost-effectiveness to similar programs.

The average cost per student for DLL was $7,120, with schools serving fewer students incurring higher per-student costs, and larger schools seeing lower costs. Personnel expenses for teachers and teacher leaders accounted for 93% of the total cost. DLL’s estimated impact on the IdO (the Spanish version of the Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement) was substantial (ES = +0.91), and on the Logramos (the Spanish-language Iowa Test of Basic Skills) total language arts score (ES = +0.23), both statistically significant. By multiplying the impact estimates by $1,000 and dividing by the average annual per-student cost ($7,120), the CERs showed an effect size of +0.03 for Logramos and +0.13 for IdO per $1,000 invested. Thus, a 1-standard-deviation increase in achievement, as measured by IdO, costs approximately $7,824 per student, while for Logramos, it costs about $30,957 per student.

These figures align with the estimated costs of other Spanish-language literacy programs, such as Éxito Para Todos (Success for All). The findings highlight the importance of using data to customize instruction, implementing high-quality instructional materials aligned with classroom content, and fostering strong teacher-student relationships to address each student’s unique learning needs.

 

Source: Borman, G. D., Brodziak de los Reyes, I., Borman, T. H., Houghton, S., Park, S. J., Zhu, B., & Martin, A. (n.d.). The costs and impacts of Descubriendo la Lectura: Evidence from a multisite experimental study. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 0(0), 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2024.2358824… Read the rest

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Higher Education K-12 Education Language Development

Will individuals who read well also write well?

Kim and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis to explore the relationship between reading and writing skills, particularly focus on how this relation varies by linguistic grain size, measurement of reading comprehension and written composition, and grade levels. Using robust variance estimation to address the nested structure of effect sizes, the analysis included 395 studies with 646 unique samples, totalling 2,265 effect sizes, and found a strong average correlation of 0.72 between reading and writing.

Across various linguistic grain sizes (units or chunks of language), the results showed that word reading and spelling had the strongest relation (r = 0.82), while reading comprehension and written composition had a moderate relation (r = 0.44). Other moderate correlations included spelling and text reading fluency (r = 0.59), word reading and written composition (r = 0.42), and text reading fluency and written composition (r = 0.33).

Further investigation highlighted relations between different of reading comprehension tasks and various composition dimensions. Among various measures of reading comprehension, writing quality had stronger correlations with oral-retell (r = 0.55), open-ended questions (0.49), and multiple choice (r=0.48) than the cloze task (0.37). Regarding dimensions of written composition, reading comprehension correlated more strongly with writing conventions (0.55), writing quality (0.46), and writing syntax (0.41) than with writing productivity (r0.23).

Developmentally, the word reading and spelling relation was significantly stronger for primary grade students (r = 0.82) than for university students and adults (0.69). However, the relation between reading comprehension and various dimensions of written composition did not differ by grade levels.

The findings suggest that reading-writing relations are not uniform and vary across different linguistic components and developmental stages. This meta-analysis provides a detailed and nuanced picture of these relationships.

 

Source: Kim, Y.-S. G., Wolters, A., & Lee, J. won. (2024). Reading and writing relations are not uniform: They differ by the linguistic grain size, developmental phase, and measurement. Review of Educational Research, 94(3), 311–342. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543231178830… Read the rest

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Kindergarten Language Development Programme Evaluation

Supporting early reading skills via parent shared reading with a focus on sounds

Reading is fundamental to children’s success in school, but how do we support its growth in the early childhood years (from ages 0-5) and specifically, how do we support parents in helping their children develop these early literacy skills? Schaughency and her colleagues investigated this question in an article in Reading Research Quarterly, analyzing results from an RCT of 69 parents and their 3.5-4.5 year old children in New Zealand. Parents were randomly assigned to one of three groups for 6 weeks: 1) shared reading of books focused on sound and phonological awareness (“Strengthening Sound Sensitivity”; SSS); 2) shared reading focused on comprehension (Rich Reading and Reminiscing; RRR); or 3) the control group with recommendations for non-reading activities.

Follow-up impacts assessed after one year showed that the SSS condition (focused on sounds rather than comprehension) had significant positive impacts on children’s letter sounds (d = 0.74), decoding pseudowords (d = 0.85) and word reading (d = 0.66), book level (d = 0.82), and teachers’ judgments of students’ reading readiness (d = 0.60), but not phonemic awareness. The impact also varied by children’s age – while all children benefited from sound-focused reading, those aged 65 months (the average age) or older benefited even more. This evidence does come from a small sample, although families were recruited from eight different early childhood centers and involved a short intervention (only 6 weeks), but the long-term follow-up for impacts strengthens the findings.

 

Source: Schaughency, E., Linney, K., Carroll, J., Das, S., Riordan, J., & Reese, E. (2023). Tender shoots: A parent-mediated randomized controlled trial with preschool children benefits beginning reading 1 year later. Reading Research Quarterly, 58(3), 450–470. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.500… Read the rest

Categories
Language Development Maths and Science Learning Primary School Education

Measuring mathematical language: Lessons from elementary classrooms

Mathematical language plays an important role in helping students understand math concepts, as it serves as both a communication tool and a foundation for problem-solving skills. In a working paper released by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, researchers provided the first large-scale quantitative analysis of mathematical language use in upper elementary classrooms. Conducted across 1,657 math lessons in 317 classrooms over three years, the research employed natural language processing (NLP) to examine how frequently teachers and students used mathematical vocabulary during lessons.

The study found wide differences in the use of mathematical language among teachers. Some teachers used mathematical terms much more frequently than others, modeling mathematical language 127 times per lesson on average. However, the study suggests that merely exposing students to mathematical vocabulary does not significantly lead to greater student usage of those terms. Teachers in the 75th percentile used 28 more mathematical terms per lesson than those in the 25th percentile, which amounts to approximately 4,480 additional exposures to mathematical terms over the course of a school year. This higher use of mathematical language was associated with improved student test scores, particularly when teachers employed additional strategies to engage students with these terms.

The study’s findings suggest that encouraging student use of mathematical language requires more than just teacher modeling. Instead, effective math instruction stems from a broader set of practices that go beyond vocabulary use. While the study points to a correlation between teacher use of mathematical vocabulary and student achievement, it emphasizes that future research should explore the quality of vocabulary use and its impact on long-term learning outcomes.

 

Source (Open Access): Himmelsbach, Zachary, Heather C. Hill, Jing Liu, and Dorottya Demszky. (2024). A Quantitative study of mathematical language in upper elementary classrooms. (EdWorkingPaper: 24 -1029). Retrieved from Annenberg Institute at Brown University: https://doi.org/10.26300/1zcm-d071… Read the rest