California Preschool Learning Foundations - ECEZero2Three ...

LANGUAGE AND LITERACY
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the external and internal features of
narratives.
Children’s comprehension and production
of narrative is an important
foundation for learning to read (Burns,
Griffin, and Snow 1999; Whitehurst
and Lonigan 1998). Narratives are
pervasive in children’s language, play,
and thinking and tend to be naturally
supported by parents and teachers.
However, narrative competence can be
expanded through designed interventions
(Yussen and Ozcan 1996).
Exposure to wordless picture books
provides both instructional opportunities
for children and a window into the
process for teachers. When reading
wordless picture books and books with
print, preschool children use a common
set of strategies to grasp meaning:
they make use of prior knowledge and
experiences, pay attention to intertextual
cues and multiple perspectives,
rely on story language and rituals, and
implement active, playful behavior as
a part of the reading process (Crawford
and Hade 2000). Children’s efforts to
make sense of the pictures in wordless
picture books form the foundation
for the reading comprehension and
meaning-making skills needed later to
be successful readers (Paris and van
Kraayenoord 1998). Children’s narrative
comprehension of wordless picture
books has been shown to be an effective
way to assess children’s comprehension
when they are still not able to
decode (Paris and Paris 2003).
Storybook reading, both of wordless
picture books and books with print,
when combined with interactive language
activities, has other benefits
as well. Active discussion of stories
before, during, and after shared reading
has been shown to improve children’s
understanding and recall of oral
stories (Cochran-Smith 1984; Mason
and Allen 1986; Morrow 1984; Morrow
and Smith 1990). Book reading
also contributes to general language
development, whether it is practiced at
home (Chomsky 1972; Raz and Bryant
1990; Sénéchal and others 1998; Wells
1985a; Whitehurst and others 1988)
or in the classroom (Dickinson 2001;
Dickinson, Hao, and He 1995; Dickinson
and Keebler 1989; Dickinson and
Smith 1994; Martinez and Teale 1993;
Teale and Martinez 1986). Within the
classroom, studies conducted with
preschool children have shown that
intervention-enhanced teacher-child
interactions have positive effects on
the children’s language skills (e.g.,
syntactic forms at the sentence level)
(Arnold and Whitehurst 1994; Karweit
1989; Valdez-Menchaca and Whitehurst
1992). This enhanced development
of language abilities may in turn lead
to enhanced comprehension (Elley and
Mangubhai 1983; Feitelson, Kita, and
Goldstein 1986; Feitelson and others
1993; Morrow 1984, 1988).
Shared reading activities provide an
adult with the opportunity to introduce
key components of the reading task to
children and to support their learning
of these key issues. Research has
shown that such practices as shared
reading, when conducted over time,
provide children with a sense of the
purposes of literacy (Gee 1992; Heath
1983), the values associated with
shared reading (Snow and others
1991), and the processes and skills
involved in shared reading (see the
preceding paragraph). While storybook
reading has often been considered
an introduction to literacy (Adams
1990), the practices and styles of
interaction that emerge during shared
reading set the foundation for the
Preschool Learning Foundations, Volume 1 • California Department of Education