Developing Early Comprehension ─ Laying the Foundation for Reading Success

How does early comprehension develop in young children, and how can we better prepare preschoolers to become successful readers? This important volume compiles today's best research on the often-overlooked topic of prereader comprehension: what we know about it now, and what we need to know to build a stronger foundation for childrena€?s future reading skills. More than two dozen literacy experts clearly describe theoretical models of early comprehension, demystify current research, recommend effective practices for boosting comprehension, and identify critical research priorities for the near future. An essential text and reference for reading specialists, program administrators, SLPs, preservice professionals, and researchers, this volume is key to helping children develop the early comprehension skills that support later reading success.

• the importance of teaching all young children comprehension strategies
• connections between vocabulary development and listening comprehension
• the relationship of academic talk to reading comprehension
• how social pretend play helps children cultivate skills essential for comprehension
• development of executive function skills important for academic success assessment of comprehension skills in prereaders
• how young children become literate in a digital society
• the benefits of using academic talk and informational texts in pre-K classrooms
• ways to support early comprehension for multilingual students and those with special needs
• parentsa€? and teachersa€? complementary roles in developing childrena€?s comprehension

Dr. Barrueco is Assistant Professor of Psychology and Fellow of the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America. Dr. Barrueco specializes in the prevention and early intervention of developmental difficulties, particularly among language-minority, immigrant, and migrant children. Much of her grant-funded research has focused on early bilingual, socioemotional, and acculturative processes within the Latino community.

Throughout her training and career, Dr. Barrueco has been dedicated to learning and utilizing advanced statistics to advance scientific knowledge and practice with young immigrant children and families. This approach is rooted in a community-based participatory research framework involving strong collaborations with families and the local and national programs that serve them. This is reflected in her involvement in local and national studies with Head Start, Early Head Start, and Migrant and Seasonal Head Start as well as her appointments as Board Vice Chair of the DC Bilingual Public Charter School and on the Advisory Committee of the American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Immigration.

Andrea DeBruin-Parecki is nationally recognized for her work in the field of family literacy. She developed the Adult–Child Interactive Reading Inventory (ACIRI), a reliable and valid tool that measures the interactive reading skills of an adult and a child during storybook reading (available from Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.). She has designed family literacy programs and has acted as a consultant across the country. In addition to the ACIRI, she created the Early Literacy Skills Assessment, a comprehensive, reliable, and valid tool in the form of a children's storybook that measures phonological awareness, the alphabetic principle, comprehension, and concepts about print. She has expertise in the areas of emergent literacy, assessment, literacy within at-risk and minority populations, and the motivation of at-risk populations. She was a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Guatemala. Her work related to literacy development in young children and families has been published and presented at national, regional, and state conferences.

After 5 years of experience teaching in elementary schools in the Philadelphia area, David K. Dickinson, Ed.D., attended the Harvard Graduate School of Education and then served as Director of Teacher Education at the Child Study Department at Tufts University and joined the Education Department at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he received tenure. He moved to the Education Development Center (EDC) in 1994 to join the team that developed the Early Childhood Generalist certificate for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. In 1995 he established the New England Research Center on Head Start Quality, which examined the impact of Head Start on children's language and literacy development and on families, with special attention to the development of children whose first language is Spanish. He and Catherine Snow received the initial funding that launched the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development in 1987, and he directed the school portion of the study during the preschool years. Drawing on early results from this study, he and colleagues at EDC developed the Literacy Environment Enrichment Project, an approach to helping preschool teachers and their supervisors adopt more effective practices to support children's language and literacy. He and others at EDC are developing and researching a version of this program that will be delivered using the Internet in combination with interactive television. His work has been published in numerous articles, and he has edited two other books, Bridges to Literacy: Children, Families and Schools (Blackwell, 1994) and Handbook of Early Literacy Research (co-edited with Susan Neuman, Guilford Press, 2001).