Journal of Early Childhood Literacy Enhancing language The … · 2020. 3. 22. · in literacy...

Journal of Early Childhood Literacy

2018, Vol. 18(4) 545–569

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DOI: 10.1177/1468798417694482

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Article

Enhancing languageand print-concept skillsby using interactivestorybook readingin kindergarten

Einat NevoWestern Galilee College, Israel

Vered Vaknin-NusbaumWestern Galilee College, Israel

Center for the Study of Society, University of Haifa, Israel

Abstract

The effectiveness of a short interactive storybook-reading intervention programme

delivered by a kindergarten teacher to develop language and print-concept skills was

examined in 30 Hebrew-speaking kindergarten children exhibiting different levels of

emergent literacy skills. Post-intervention, the intervention group showed a clear

advantage over a control group on most measures, including vocabulary, morphology,

phonological awareness and print concepts. Pre-test motivation to read was predictive

of post-test performance in these same language and print-concept skills. The study

suggests that a short intervention programme, using stories and embedded activities,

can enhance language and print concepts in kindergarten children; and that motivation

to read is equally important in the development of their language and literacy abilities.

Keywords

Language, print concepts, motivation to read, kindergarten, intervention, storybook

reading

Exposing young children to initial literacy skills using a structured and grad-uated programme (Marr et al., 2012) has been found to help protect themfrom failure to learn to read (Nicholson, 2005), and to be effective when

Corresponding author:

Einat Nevo, Department of Education, Western Galilee College and University of Haifa, P. O. Box 2125,

Acco 24121, Israel.

Email: [email protected]

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applied prior to entry to school (Serry and Oberklaid, 2015). Research hasshown that interactive storybook reading effectively develops young children’sliteracy skills (Dickinson and Tabors, 2001; Wasik and Hindman, 2011; Wolf,2008), enriching vocabulary (Biemiller, 2001, 2006; Gonzalez et al., 2014;Wolf, 2008), awareness of word structures (Carlisle, 2010; McBride-Changet al., 2008; Nagy et al., 2014; Perfetti, 2007) and print concepts (Lefebvreet al., 2011; Wasik and Hindman, 2011). However, interactive storybookreading by itself is not sufficient to develop literacy skills and requires instruc-tion, accompanying activities and motivation on the part of the children(Gibbs and Nicholson, 1999; Gonzalez et al., 2014; Guthrie, 2004; Lepperet al., 2005; Morgan and Fuchs, 2007; Nicholson and Ng, 2006). Most spe-cialists agree that the quality of instruction, especially in the early grades, canbe a critical factor in children’s academic success thereafter (Darling-Hammond, 1999; Marr et al., 2012; McCutchen et al., 2002; Pollard-Durodola et al., 2015). Models of interactive storybook reading are basedon the assumption that an adult’s instructional expertise expands children’sliteracy skills and conversational abilities beyond what they accomplish inde-pendently (McCutchen et al., 2002; Pollard-Durodola et al., 2015). We set outto confirm this assumption in a study of interactive storybook telling deliveredto native Hebrew-speaking kindergarten children with and without explicitinstruction, playing games and engaging in other enjoyable activities. Otherfactors also found to contribute to successful interactive storytelling interven-tions that were included in the study are detailed below.

Interactive storybook reading: Languageand print-concept skills

In interactive storybook reading, an adult reads a story aloud, explains itscontent and vocabulary and integrates open-ended questions in a cycle of feed-back and confirmation. Such an activity has been shown to teach children abouttheir world through active engagement in telling and discussing the story, itscharacters, events and vocabulary (Pollard-Durodola et al., 2015). Not surpris-ingly, then, interactive storybook reading is a common and essential toolin literacy intervention programmes aimed at cultivating language and print-concept skills in kindergarten as part of a general education programme.

Most intervention studies have focused on children at literacy risk, despitethe findings that both high and low literate children can benefit from such aprogramme (Nicholson and Ng, 2006). Aram and Biron (2004) compared twoprogrammes for 71 Hebrew speakers aged three to five years from low

546 Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 18(4)

socioeconomic backgrounds in 66 sessions (20–30 minutes each), involvinggames and creative activities: one used children’s books to focus on the lan-guage and concepts in them, the other used letter knowledge, phonologicalawareness and functional writing activities. Children in both programmesperformed significantly better than a control group (CG) without these activ-ities on phonological awareness and orthographic awareness, and bothimproved their vocabulary and general competencies of language and listeningcomprehension. A later Hebrew study (Aram, 2006) compared the contribu-tions to vocabulary and alphabetic skills of three programmes: storybook read-ing, alphabetic skills and a combination of the two, and found that all threegroups performed better than a CG on name writing, letter knowledge andphonological awareness; the alphabetic skills group performed better than theother groups on word writing, letter knowledge and initial letter retrieval; thestorybook-reading group outperformed only the CG. The combined pro-gramme produced better results than the storybook-reading programme forinitial letter retrieval and book vocabulary. Another Hebrew study based onstories (Korat and Shamir, 2007) compared two programmes: a short electro-nic-book intervention programme and a regular joint story-reading pro-gramme, both administered in three sessions of 25–30 minutes each: bothprogrammes improved children’s ability to understand stories and theirvocabulary. Their vocabulary improvement was significantly greater than thatof a CG. In other words, an intervention programme based on storytellingcontributed to story understanding and vocabulary skills regardless of how itwas delivered (computer vs adult). It is noteworthy that the intervention pro-grammes in these three studies in Hebrew influenced children’s performance inonly a few language and emergent literacy skills.

Similar results have been reported in other languages. Young childrenimproved their phonemic awareness and developed their orthographic skillsafter participating in direct instructional programmes (Bailet et al., 2013;Justice et al., 2003; Nicholson and Ng, 2006; Ziolkowski and Goldstein,2008). Simmons et al. (2008), for example, found that kindergarten childrenin an intensive, small-group intervention centred on phonemic awareness,phonemic decoding, word reading and spelling responded early and posi-tively. By the end of kindergarten, their average absolute performance levelspositioned them for trajectories of later reading performance that exceededthe 50th percentile on most measures, and the changes were generally sus-tained over time. Still other researchers (Lefebvre et al., 2011) found that astorybook-reading intervention programme delivered four times per week for10 weeks, 20–30 minutes per session, using explicit facilitation strategies,

Nevo and Vaknin-Nusbaum 547

could enhance vocabulary, print awareness and phonological awareness in low-income family preschoolers. Likewise, Hilbert and Eis (2014) found that chil-dren aged four to five at literacy skill-development risk improved their printknowledge and vocabulary by following a regular storybook intervention pro-gramme (60 sessions, two to three lessons per week prior to the beginning offormal reading instruction). Zucker et al. (2013) found that the frequency ofshared classroom reading was positively and significantly related to youngchildren’s (mean age 4.3 years) receptive vocabulary growth, as was the inclu-sion of extra-textual conversations around the text. Hassinger-Das et al. (2016)found that four-year-old children improved their receptive and expressivevocabulary knowledge following a short intervention programme based onshared book reading and vocabulary games. Children with poor receptivevocabulary in a pretest examination showed greater improvement.

Only a few of the intervention programmes to date have included morpho-logical awareness (Apel and Diehm, 2014; Senechal et al., 2008), but interest incultivating this skill in young children is growing (Apel and Diehm, 2014;Carlisle, 1995; McBride-Chang et al., 2008). Despite evidence that morpho-logical awareness is important in predicting and fostering children’s earlyvocabulary learning (McBride-Chang et al., 2008) and reading acquisition(Apel and Diehm, 2014; Carlisle, 1995; Nagy et al., 2014; Vaknin-Nusbaumet al., 2016), and is related to interactive storybook reading (Senechal et al.,2008; Vaknin-Nusbaum and Nevo, 2017), most interventions are not based onthis activity. A recent study by Vaknin-Nusbaum and Nevo (2017) shows animpressive improvement in morphological awareness and literacy skills amongpreschool and kindergarten children following an interactive storybook inter-vention programme delivered by their home class teacher. Lyster et al. (2016)show a that morphological awareness programme delivered in preschool con-tributed to reading skills at the end of first grade and in sixth grade. Theresearchers suggest that cultivating morphological awareness at a young agecan have long-term effects on children’s reading skills. In light of these studies,morphological awareness was also included in our intervention.

Interactive storybook reading: Instructorand reading motivation

Another important component of an intervention is reported to be familiaritywith the children and the professionalism of the person who delivers it(McCutchen et al., 2002). Most studies have employed outside experts orresearch assistants to run intervention programmes in kindergartens


(Nicholson and Ng, 2006). Aram (2006) and Vaknin-Nusbaum and Nevo(2017) presumed that children would participate more actively in a programmegiven by their teacher than by an outsider, and that the teacher would in alllikelihood continue to apply the programme in the future. Still another benefit ofhomeroom teacher-administered programmes is the new strategies the teacherlearns while training for and delivering the programme: how best to read stories,keep the children’s attention, increase their understanding of a story and providelanguage and literacy activities for use during and after reading a book. Trainingitself has been found to enrich interventions with multiple strategies for develop-ing language and print-concept skills (Girolametto et al., 2007; Justice et al.,2010; Vaknin-Nusbaum and Nevo, 2017).

Motivation to read is yet another component that has received little attentionand but play a central role in literacy development (Gambrell, 1996; Marinaket al., 2015). Young children who enjoy reading choose to engage in literacytasks more often than children who do not, and as a result become more skilled(Gambrell, 1996; Morgan and Fuchs, 2007), even in first grade (Wilson andTrainin, 2007). Indeed, early literature-based programmes that foster students’enthusiasm for books have been found to be more likely to succeed whenliterature activities are enjoyable (Morrow and Weinstein, 1986; Wigfield,1997). Thus, it is important to examine children’s motivation to read or par-ticipate in literacy activities in general. Clearly, much remains to be examinedregarding the relationship between literature-based programmes and literacymotivation (Strickland, 2001), especially among young children (Marinaket al., 2015; Mata, 2011). This is another component of the current study.

The current study

The present research sought to determine whether a short (nine-week) lan-guage and print-concept intervention, delivered by a kindergarten teacherthrough interactive storybook reading, could improve children’s vocabulary,morphology, phonological awareness, print-concept skills and motivation toread. Participants were native Hebrew-speaking kindergarteners who enteredthe programme with a diverse range of emergent literacy skills.

The study included the following hitherto less examined aspects of literacyintervention studies in Hebrew and other languages:

1. Targeting a general population and not one at risk. This is because information issparse about the effectiveness of literacy intervention programmes in a moregeneral population of children (Marr et al., 2012; Nicholson and Ng, 2006;


National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities, 2005; Vaknin-Nusbaum andNevo, 2017).

2. Cultivation of morphological awareness. This is based on the finding that inter-active storybook reading accounted for unique variance in children’s morpho-logical knowledge after controlling for child nonverbal intelligence, parenteducation and parent literacy (i.e. book exposure; Senechal et al., 2008).

3. Delivery by the homeroom teacher. In contrast to most studies to date, whichwere administered by researchers or research assistants (Nicholson and Ng,2006), our intervention programme was delivered by a kindergarten teacher,who was part of the children’s natural environment and thus positioned tocontinue to implement the programme after the present research was completed.

4. Exploration of motivation to read. A decline in motivation to read can harmchildren’s willingness to participate in literacy activities (Marinak et al., 2015;Mata, 2011), which underscores the importance of ensuring that interventionprogrammes do not harm children’s motivation to read. Therefore, children’smotivation to engage in reading activities was evaluated after completion of theintervention.

Research questions and hypotheses

The following research questions were asked:

1. To what extent do children in the intervention programme improve their lan-guage (vocabulary, morphology and phonological awareness) and print-conceptskills as compared with a CG? We hypothesized that children who participate inthe intervention programme will improve their literacy skills to a greater extentthan the CG because of the explicit instruction that will be given to the childrenby the intervention group (IG) teacher (explanation, games and activities).

2. To what extent do children in the intervention programme improve their motiv-ation to read compared with a CG? We hypothesized that improvement inmotivation to read would be higher in the IG than in the CG thanks to theaccompanying enjoyable activities (mostly games) in the former.

3. Does reading motivation at the beginning of the school year predict languageand print-concept skills at the end of the school year? Previous studies havefound that motivated children tended to be more involved and engaged inliteracy activities, therefore they had better chances of improving their literacyknowledge, and vice versa (Marinak et al., 2015). We hypothesized that motiv-ation at the beginning of the school year would predict children’s achieve-ments in language and print concepts at the end of the year in both theintervention and control groups.


Method

Study design

The study used a quasi-experimental pre–post design consisting of an IG and aCG. The IG comprised kindergarteners who participated in an interactivestorybook-reading intervention programme that explicitly targeted language(morphology, vocabulary and phonological awareness) and print-conceptskills. The CG comprised kindergarteners who received the standard kinder-garten literacy and language programme. By the flip of a coin, a kindergartenwas assigned to the IG or the CG.

Participants

Thirty Hebrew-speaking children, 15 in the IG and 15 in the CG (seven boysand eight girls in each group), attending different kindergartens in two townsin northern Israel, were enrolled in the study with parental approval. Theywere tested at two time points: in January–February 2015 (time 1), and fourmonths later, after the intervention, in May–June 2015 (time 2). At time 1,the mean age of the children was five years and three months (standarddeviation [SD]¼ 0.41), with no group difference (t(28)¼ 0.49, p¼ .631).The children were all native Hebrew speakers with no known language ordevelopmental problems. According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics(2014), residents of these towns are mainly of middle socio-economic status.In both towns, children are assigned to a specific kindergarten according tohome address, usually without the possibility to choose differently. Each kin-dergarten is an independent unit and both are obliged to adhere to the cur-riculum of the Israel Ministry of Education.

Both kindergarten teachers held M.Ed. degrees and had 10 years of experi-ence as kindergarten teachers. Children in both groups were exposed to inter-active storybook reading, but the IG group received more explicit instructionthat involved literacy aspects, as detailed in the Procedures Intervention sec-tion below.

Material

Language parameters and print concepts were chosen based on their accept-ance as good predictors of reading acquisition (National Early Literacy Panel,2008, a committee of the Israel Ministry of Education composed of educators


and academics), and these were administered to each child individually. Mosttests were adapted from the Shatil (2002) language battery and emergentliteracy abilities for Hebrew-speaking children, which was constructedbased on a sample of 349 children and is used to identify children at literacyrisk. The vocabulary test was built on the target words from the interventionprogramme; thus, a criterion-referenced test rather than a norm-referencedtest was chosen as the measure of vocabulary for its suitability to monitorprogress in a specific area (McCauley and Swisher, 1984). Because profes-sionals today seek intervention strategies that reliably represent children’sability to use language in developmentally appropriate and naturalistic con-texts (Justice et al., 2010), the entire procedure was presented to the childrenthrough oral and social games that resemble daily-life learning in kindergar-ten. The instruments are available from the first two authors.

Language measures

Vocabulary. A receptive vocabulary instrument, similar to those developed inother studies on vocabulary acquisition from storybooks (e.g. Lefebvre et al.,2011), was designed to measure knowledge of three kinds of vocabularywords targeted by the intervention: six phrases, eight rare words (fournouns and four verbs) and six adjectives. All the words were important forunderstanding the story, but were considered rare for kindergarten childrenaccording to the IG and CG teachers, as well as three experts in early literacy(two M.A. kindergarten teachers and one speech and language pathologist).The teacher orally presented a target word to the child, followed immediatelyby three possible answers (correct, the opposite, wrong) in the form of pic-tures or verbal explanations, according to the nature of the target word. Thus,concrete nouns (e.g. sail) were presented by pictures and abstract words (e.g.wretched) by verbal explanations. The child was then asked to choose thecorrect answer from three possible answers, and the teacher recordedthe choice. For example, the teacher said the word pikchit ‘wise’ and thenthe three possible answers tipsha ‘stupid’, eranit ‘alert’ and chachama ‘smart’.Performance was scored as the number of correct answers. The maximumscore was 20; the score was calculated as a percentage. The assessment yieldedmedium reliability: Cronbach’s a¼ .62.

Morphology. Five subtasks assessed the child’s ability on different dimensions ofthe morphological rules of Hebrew inflection; subtasks were determined to be


appropriate to the child’s developmental age in previous developmental stu-dies (Berman, 1984; Berman and Dromi, 1984; Clark and Berman, 1984),and according to the Education Ministry’s expected language achievements(Israeli Joint Committee on Foundation of Early Reading and Writing, 2007):inflection of verbs in the future tense; inflection of irregular plural nouns;possessive inflection; plural inflection of feminine verbs; construct forma-tions. In the inflection of verbs in the future tense task, the child was asked to inflect12 verbs from the present tense to the future tense (e.g. hayom ani holech ‘today I’mgoing’, machar anið elech ‘tomorrow I’ll go’). In the inflection of irregular plural nouns task,the child was asked to inflect 12 nouns in the plural. All noun inflections wereirregular, so their suffixation was not according to grammatical rules (e.g. thefeminine noun ‘egg’ gets a masculine suffix: beytza achat ‘one egg’, harbeðbeytzim ‘many eggs’). In the possessive inflection task, the child was asked to inflectsix nouns according to two grammatical persons – my and his or her, accord-ing to his or her gender (e.g. Haregel sheli bemila achatð ragli ‘My foot in one wordisð’). In the inflection of feminine verbs in the plural task, the child was asked toinflect 12 verbs from singular feminine to plural feminine (e.g. hayalda mistakelet‘the girl is looking’, hayeladotð mistaklot ‘the girls are looking’). Each item inthese four subtests was presented to the child in the context of a phrase thatthe child had to complete. In the construct formation task, the child was asked tochoose the correct form of two possible given forms presented orally (e.g. bubasheasuya miniyar nikret ‘a doll made of paper is called’ bubat niyar/beit bubut ‘paperdoll/dolls’ house’). The child was asked to choose the correct answer, and theadult wrote down the answer chosen.

Each of the five subtasks began with one practice item. The order of theitems in each subtest was randomly assigned. All tasks were presented tothe child through a social game in which he or she had to earn cards tofinish the game. Performance was scored as the number of correct answers,and the maximum score in the morphology test was 54. The test yielded highreliability: Cronbach’s a¼ .86.

Phonological awareness. This test was an initial syllable and phoneme matchingtask, beginning with two practice items. The child was presented with a bookof seven pages with a picture in the middle of each page marked out by a redframe surrounded by seven different pictures. At least two pictures on thepage began with the same syllable as the picture in the middle, and one or twoother pictures began with the same phoneme as the picture’s initial phoneme.The child was asked to circle all the pictures that began with the same sound


as the picture in the middle of the page. For example, the picture in themiddle was of a ballon ‘balloon’, and the seven pictures around it were bait‘house’, banana ‘banana’, berez ‘tap’, buba ‘dall’, gezer ‘carrot’, degel ‘flag’, matana‘present’. The total number of correct answers was 24. Performance wasscored as the number of correct answers. The test yielded high reliability:Cronbach’s a¼ .90.

Print concepts. Wohl’s Hebrew version of the Clay test from the Shatil (2002)battery assessed five print concepts: (1) print and picture differentiation(three questions), (2) letter and symbol differentiation (five questions), (3)onset of reading (three questions), (4) print directionality (two questions)and (5) written language units (letter, sentence, paragraph; five questions).Each child was given a piece of laminated paper with five rows of items on it,each row containing a different task to be marked on the paper with a white-board marker (e.g. circle the letters, circle the first word in the sentence andcircle the longest word). Performance was scored as the number of correctanswers. The maximum score was 18; the score was calculated as a percent-age. The assessment yielded high reliability: Cronbach’s a¼ .81.

Motivation to read. The children’s motivation to read was assessed by the Meand My Reading Profile (MMRP; Marinak et al., 2015), an assessment tooldesigned for kindergarten through to second-grade teachers. This 20-itemmultiple-choice instrument has three subscales: five items that assess thechild’s self-concept as a reader, ten that assess the child’s appreciation ofthe value of reading and five that assess literacy out loud. The teacher readeach statement to the child followed by three possible answers, and thechild was asked to circle the choice that represented his feelings andthoughts about the statement. Two practice items acquainted the childrenwith the instrument’s format. The Likert response scale for the MMRP, whichconsists of three choices ranging from most positive to least positive (Reaand Parker, 2012), was modified for our purposes. Rather than each itembeing numbered, it was paired with an animal icon, and the teacher guidedthe child from item to item by placing her finger on the icon in the left-hand column as she read the MMRP aloud. Cronbach’s reliability analysesindicated scale alphas from .86 to .87 with all items contributing to overallscale reliability. The test yielded high reliability: Cronbach’s a¼ .93.Performance was calculated according to the child’s responses to all 20sentences; the maximum score was 60.


Procedures

Assessments. The battery of tests assessing language skills, emergent literacy andmotivation to read was administered to all participants by two research assist-ants who were teachers with an MA degree. Each child was tested individuallyin two sessions of approximately 20 minutes each in a quiet corner of thekindergarten, one to three weeks before and after the intervention. The testswere presented in random order.

Intervention. The intervention programme was planned by the study authorsand delivered to the children by their teachers in their kindergarten class-rooms. Prior to the intervention, the teachers attended seven sessions (90minutes each) of a required college course for M.Ed. students entitled emer-gent literacy. The course deals with concepts and research findings related toemergent literacy and predictors of reading acquisition: phonological aware-ness, morphological awareness, print concepts, alphabetic knowledge,vocabulary growth, development of narrative abilities, joint-story readingand adult–child conversations. One of the authors met with each IG teacherfor four 60-minute sessions to prepare delivery of the intervention. Duringthose meetings, the author explained the programme in detail, including theactivities and games, such as sorting cards. For example, in one game, thechild was asked to match two picture cards that shared the same initial syl-lable. In another game, the child was asked to choose the correct plural picturecard of a singular noun, and to name it (for more details, see examples inAppendix 1). Three more meetings were held during the programme, and asummary meeting took place when it was completed.

Three books recommended for young children by the Israel Ministry ofEducation were chosen: The Elephant Wanted to Be the Best (Kor, 1993), BrownStripe(Cohen-Asif, 1980) and The Gruffalo (Donaldson, 2000). These books wereconsidered to have the following qualities: (a) suitability for the age range ofthe children participating in the study; (b) potentially new vocabulary; (c)variety of sentence types including complex sentences; (d) complex morpho-logical forms suitable for kindergarten and preschool children; (e) not toolong, so as to allow more teacher–child interactions and (f) not previouslyused in their preschools and kindergartens. All three books were used for boththe IG and the CG.

In the IG, each book was read by the teacher three times to each of threerandom groups of four to six children each. This system was followed in view


of the proven effectiveness of working in small groups (Marr et al., 2012).Thus, each child participated in nine sessions (spread over about twomonths), but not necessarily in the same group in each session. A sessionlasted around 30 minutes and contained interactive book reading thatincluded strategies that actively engaged the child through completion,recall and open-ended WH (what, who, when, where and why) questionsand distancing questions. This kind of reading encouraged thinking beyondthe book’s content by making inferences about the characters’ feelings, con-necting the story’s content to the child’s own knowledge, giving explanations,resolving problems and making predictions. The teacher verbally evaluatedand expanded the child’s response and repeated the initial question at a laterpoint in the session to verify new learning (Lefebvre et al., 2011; Whitehurstet al., 1988). Before and/or after storybook reading, the teacher introducedgames and activities relevant to the book’s language (vocabulary, morphology,phonological awareness) and print-concept skills and encouraged the childrento engage in reading activities.

The vocabulary facilitation activities targeted six or seven rare words fromeach story, chosen for their importance for understanding the story, eventhough the children were not very familiar with them. The teacher meticu-lously explained the words, using a definition, a synonym or an oppositeword (e.g. ‘unkemptly and sloppy is the opposite of dandy’, ‘to weepmeans to cry with sound and to sob continuously’), showing a picture ofthe word or the object of the word and/or miming the word (e.g. to sigh andto be astonished). The teacher then engaged the children in a game (e.g.memory or a domino game) that contained these words. She singled outthese words in isolation and in sentences at least five times to help the childrenremember them. Vocabulary activities were conducted mainly in the firstreading session of each book to foster a better understanding of the story.The vocabulary-targeted words were used in two subsequent sessions on thatbook on morphological awareness, phonological awareness and print-conceptgames and activities.

Morphological awareness activities were the main focus of the secondreading session for each book. Vocabulary has a reciprocal relation with mor-phological awareness, and apparently students who show rapid growth invocabulary knowledge demonstrate rapid growth in morphological awarenesstoo (Bowers and Kirby, 2010; Kieffer and Lesaux, 2012; Ramirez et al., 2014).Three morphological concepts were targeted: future tense, irregular pluralnouns and possessive. The teacher exposed the children to each inflection


type (e.g. When I wear this shirt it is xoltsati ‘my shirt’, now when he wears theshirt it is . . . xoltsato ‘his shirt’) and then encouraged the children to play acard-sorting game involving this inflection and to use words from the threestorybooks (around 12 words).

Print-concept activities were conducted during the first and third sessionsfor each book and targeted eight print awareness concepts: book cover, booktitle, author and illustrator, print and picture differentiation, onset of reading,print directionality, written language units (letter, sentence, paragraph) andletters of the alphabet. The teacher gave explicit verbal and non-verbal cuesand explanations of those print concepts (e.g. showing the children the bookcover and asking them to point to the name of the author or to count thenumber of words in the title of the book). Then the teacher used games(e.g. bingo) and songs to practise those concepts.

The phonological awareness activities were conducted during the thirdsession for each book and targeted two phonological skills: segmentationand initial syllable naming. The teacher explained those concepts (e.g. it ispossible to divide the word kelev ‘dog’ into two syllables ke-lev, as well as intosmaller segments ke-le-v). Social activities such as memory games and dom-inoes, or physical activities such as jumping games, served for practising theseconcepts.

In the CG, the teacher read to the entire kindergarten class each of the threebooks three times, once a week, for three consecutive weeks during morningmeetings. Under her guidance, subjects and stories from the books that inter-ested the children were discussed. The content of all other weekly morningmeetings consisted of conversations about other subjects, such as the weather,the children’s experiences and holidays.

Both the IG and the CG also followed the formal curriculum for kindergar-teners, which centres on holidays, the seasons, nature, friendship and emotionaldevelopment. Formal practice in reading or writing is not customary.

Results

Since the number of stimuli in each of the language and print-conceptmeasures varied, all scores were calculated as percentages. Pre-interventiondifferences by group were evaluated by a series of t-tests, and Bonferroniadjustment for multiple comparisons was employed. No significant pre-studygroup differences were detected. The research hypotheses were examinedwith 2� 2 repeated-measures analyses of variance.


Pre-intervention gender differences, evaluated by a series of t-tests, were allnon-significant. Pearson correlations of the pre-intervention variables with agewere non-significant, ranging from r¼�.31 (p¼ .094) to r¼ .30 (p¼ .109),except correlations with motivation to read: r¼ .47 (p¼ .010; usingBonferroni adjustment for multiple comparisons). Thus, gender was notused as a control variable and age was used as a control variable for motivationto read.

Time and group differences, examined by a series of repeated-measuresanalyses of variance, are presented in Table 1. The results show significanttime effects and significant time-by-group interaction effects in all variables.Post hoc analyses for significant interactions were examined by estimatedmarginal means, and these are presented in Table 2. The analyses yieldedresults as follows.

All language measures (vocabulary, morphology and phonological aware-ness) increased significantly by the end of the intervention in both groups,but the increase was significantly higher in the IG than in the CG (as shown inthe effect-size values). Print concepts increased significantly in the IG, whileno change was noted in the CG. Motivation to read increased significantly inboth groups, but the increase was significantly greater in the IG.

Table 1. Means, standard deviations and F values for the study variables by group and time

(N¼ 30).

Intervention group Control group Time Group Time�Group

Variable

Pre

M

(SD)

Post

M

(SD)

Pre

M

(SD)

Post

M

(SD)

F(1, 28)

(g2)

F(1, 28)

(g2)

F(1, 28)

(g2)

Vocabulary 66.97

(8.14)

90.00

(7.33)

69.70

(15.53)

77.88

(14.15)

265.22***

(.905)

1.24

(.042)

60.02***

(.682)

Morphology 65.33

(11.74)

86.44

(6.95)

64.44

(17.17)

76.67

(15.99)

176.97***

(.863)

1.24

(.042)

12.58**

(.310)

Phonological

awareness

66.94

(17.14)

87.22

(12.35)

65.00

(11.33)

74.17

(9.21)

81.84***

(.745)

2.91

(.094)

11.65**

(.294)

Print concepts 2.11

(0.40)

2.71

(0.28)

2.10

(0.34)

2.44

(0.22)

8.17**

(.232)

1.40

(.049)

19.73***

(.422)

Motivation

to read

2.11

(0.40)

2.71

(0.28)

2.10

(0.34)

2.44

(0.22)

8.17**

(.232)

1.40

(.049)

19.73***

(.422)

*p< .05. **p< .01. ***p< .001.


To examine the relation between reading motivation and language andprint-concept skills, change scores were first defined as adjusted residualgains, controlling for pre-test scores. The relationship was examined withpartial correlations, controlling for children’s ages, as presented in Table 3.All correlations were positive and significant, demonstrating that greatermotivation to read was associated with higher scores for vocabulary, morph-ology, phonological awareness and print concepts at each time point, as wellas with change scores. In other words, the greater the increase in motivation

Table 2. F values for significant interaction effects by group

(N¼ 30).

Intervention group Control group

Variable

F(1, 28)

(g2)

F(1, 28)

(g2)

Vocabulary 288.80***

(.912)

36.45***

(.566)

Morphology 141.97***

(.835)

47.58***

(.630)

Phonological awareness 77.63***

(.735)

15.86***

(.362)

Print concepts 23.02***

(.451)

0.97

(.033)

Motivation to read 202.75***

(.882)

63.10***

(.700)

*p< .05. **p< .01. ***p< .001.

Table 3. Partial correlations between reading motivation and language and

emergent literacy total scores, by time (N¼ 30).

Motivation to read

Variable Pre-test Post-test Change score

Vocabulary .47* .58*** .72***

Morphology .40* .57*** .59***

Phonological awareness .52** .65*** .75***

Print concepts .43* .65*** .41*

*p< .05. **p< .01. ***p< .001.


to read, the greater the increase in vocabulary, morphology, phonologicalawareness and print concepts.

Finally, multiple hierarchical regressions were performed to examine theextent to which pre-test language and print-concepts skills predicted post-testreading motivation, and the extent to which pre-test reading motivationpredicted post-test language and print-concept skills. In both cases, age wasentered as a control variable. The regression predicting post-test readingmotivation with vocabulary, morphology, phonological awareness and printawareness proved non-significant (F(5, 24)¼ 2.55, p¼ .055), and none ofthe predictors (except age) were significant. Hence post-test reading motiv-ation was not predicted by pre-test language and print-concept skills.However, pre-test reading motivation was found to be predictive of post-test language and print-concept skills (Table 4). Greater initial reading motiv-ation was predictive of higher vocabulary, morphology, phonological aware-ness and print concepts at post-test.

Discussion

The results of this study provide evidence that a short language and print-concept intervention programme delivered by a kindergarten teacher usinginteractive storybook reading and accompanying activities enhanced languageand print-concept skills in kindergarteners. In agreement with our firsthypothesis, the IG children, who received explicit instruction, exhibited amore rapid improvement in vocabulary, morphology, phonological awarenessand print concepts than the CG children. Although the literacy achievementsof both groups rose over time, the IG scored higher on all measures.The results are in line with other intervention studies conducted in Hebrew

Table 4. Multiple regressions predicting post-test language and emergent literacy skills with

pre-test reading motivation (N¼ 30).

Post-test:

Vocabulary

bMorphology

b

Phonological

awareness

b

Print

concepts

b

Age .05 .10 .11 .05

Motivation to read – total

pre-test score

.43* .42* .48* .75***

Adj.R2 .15 .17 .24 .56

F(2, 27) 3.62* 3.92* 5.62** 19.82***

*p< .05. **p< .01. ***p< .001.


for the same or similar purposes (Aram, 2006; Aram and Biron, 2004; Vaknin-Nusbaum and Nevo, 2017) and in other languages (Bailet et al., 2013; Coyneet al., 2004, 2009; Hilbert and Eis, 2014; Justice et al., 2003; Nicholsonand NG; 2006; Schneider et al., 2000; Ziolkowski and Goldstein, 2008).

Our findings show that interactive storybook reading and activities can alsoserve as a tool to develop morphological knowledge, in line with evidence thatmorphological knowledge can predict literacy achievements (Nagy et al., 2014;Vaknin-Nusbaum et al., 2016) and improve them in different types of readers(Goodwin and Ahn, 2010, 2013; Nagy et al., 2014). The greater gains by our IGthan their CG counterparts on most morphological measures (verb inflections,possessive inflections, construct formation) are in line with the findings of Apeland Diehm (2013), who examined the efficacy of a morphological interventionprogramme on the morphological knowledge and reading skills of kindergar-teners through to second graders from low socioeconomic homes. All children inthat study who received the intervention showed statistically significant gains inmorphological knowledge, with large effect sizes on most measures. Becausewritten texts tend to use words with complicated morphology, and morpho-logical knowledge correlates with vocabulary growth and the ability to under-stand and learn new words (Carlisle, 2010; Wolf, 2008), children’s storybooksmay be particularly appropriate for developing these linguistic abilities at a youngage. It is also reasonable to assume that the various linguistic areas chosen for thecurrent intervention programme connect bidirectionally and contribute to theirmutual development.

Our IG children also appeared to transfer some of the knowledge theygained (phonological awareness, morphological knowledge and print con-cepts) to words that did not appear in the storybooks but were presentedin pre- and post-tests. These results are consistent with Lefebvre et al.’s (2011)finding that explicit strategies incorporated into interactive storybook readingenhanced language and emergent literacy skills in French in low-income chil-dren of average age 4.7 years. The use of interactive storybook reading has alsobeen found to be a useful instrument to cultivate children’s phonologicalawareness (Lefebvre et al., 2011; Ziolkowski and Goldstein, 2008), alphabetknowledge and vocabulary skills (Aram, 2006; Lefebvre et al., 2011).

Presumably, the greater achievements of the IG were due to the instructionand exposure to materials (activities and games) received by the teacher anddelivered to the children. This is in line with McCutchen et al.’s (2002)findings suggesting that deepening teachers’ literacy instruction knowledgecan inspire them to use that knowledge to change classroom practice, whichcan in turn improve student learning. The literacy improvements seen in our


IG were probably also influenced by the fact that the programme was deliv-ered by their kindergarten teacher after specific training and not by an outsideexpert or research assistant. According to Girolametto and co-workers (2007)and Justice and co-workers (2007), training kindergarten educators to deliverintervention programmes is a natural way to facilitate children’s emergentliteracy in a familiar environment, and this leads to more promising outcomeswhen they cover multiple strategies for developing language and print-con-cept skills. Having the children’s teacher carry out the intervention after suit-able training might help to circumvent the phenomenon of in-serviceeducators ‘encouraging’ children to participate more actively in a programme.An additional benefit is the likelihood that the teacher will continue to use thestrategy for years to come.

Our study has demonstrated that the general population of children canalso benefit from participating in an intervention programme delivered insmall groups, as shown by Nicholson and Ng (2006), and not just childrenat literacy risk (Coyne et al., 2004, 2009; Justice et al., 2003; Schneider et al.,2000; Vaknin-Nusbaum and Nevo, 2017) and children from low-incomefamilies (Aram, 2006; Aram and Biron, 2004; Hilbert and Eis, 2014;Lefebvre et al., 2011; Ziolkowski and Goldstein, 2008) – the subject ofmost intervention studies to date.

Motivation to acquire reading proved to be another important aspect ofchildren’s active participation in the intervention programme. In line with oursecond hypothesis, motivation to read improved in the IG and the CG alike.Apparently, involvement in literacy activities that include storybook reading isessential for developing reading motivation. However, when a literacy pro-gramme is delivered in a more explicit and enjoyable way, the motivation toread is boosted even more. It is noteworthy that a byproduct of our interven-tion programme, which was aimed at cultivating language and print concepts,was an increase in the motivation to read. This is crucial since greater motiv-ation to read might lead children to engage more often in literacy tasks(Gambrell, 1996; Marinak et al., 2015), result in higher literacy achievements(Morgan and Fuchs, 2007) and in the long run promote the development ofreading and comprehension skills (Marinak et al., 2015).

In line with our third hypothesis, greater initial motivation to acquirereading (pre-test) predicted higher achievements in vocabulary, morphology,phonological awareness and print concepts at post-test. This finding is in linewith evidence that motivated readers are more likely to become skilled readers(Morgan and Fuchs, 2007; Wilson and Trainin, 2007). These findings under-score the need to assess motivation to read as one of the important aspects of


any literacy intervention programme, to ensure children will continue toparticipate in literacy activities.

Limitations

Some important limitations of the study should be noted. First, only twoclasses, one intervention and one control, participated in the study, limitinggeneralizations of the results. Consequently, more research is needed across abroader range of populations to examine whether these findings hold fordifferent kindergartens, languages and orthographies. Secondly, the interven-tion and control groups were from different kindergartens with differentteachers, which might have introduced a confounder. Although the resultsare promising, longitudinal studies are needed to examine children’s readingskills as an outcome of participating in a short intervention programme inkindergarten. For now, it is unclear whether the effects of the programme willendure, or even intensify, as the children get older.

Conclusions

An intervention programme to improve language and print concepts based oninteractive storybook reading offers an effective way to develop kindergar-teners’ language skills (oral and written) in Hebrew. In addition, morpho-logical knowledge and motivation to acquire reading play an important part inthe development of language skills, and should be embedded in interventionprogrammes aimed at cultivating language. The role of narrative skills inlanguage intervention programmes should also be taken into consideration.The data from this study also indicate that teachers can promote children’slanguage and print-concept abilities and increase their chances of acquiringreading successfully prior to the start of formal reading instruction. Suchprogrammes should be expanded to accommodate broader populations ofchildren – not only those with reading difficulties and those who enter pre-school with poor literacy skills. While our results are promising, longitudinalstudies are needed to examine children’s long-range reading skills and motiv-ation to read as outcomes of participating in an interactive storybook readingintervention programme in kindergarten.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/orpublication of this article.


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Appendix 1

Content of the three shared story sessions of the story The Gruffalo(Donaldson, 2000): Examples of joint activities

Number of session and

language skill Time of delivery Examples

First session – print

concepts and

vocabulary

Before reading T: Who can tell me where the title of the book is?

T: Very good. How about the author’s name?

T: The name of the story [in Hebrew] is The

Dandiest Giant in the World. What does it mean

to be dandy?

T: To be ‘dandy’ means that you care about your

clothes, that you have fancy clothes and are ele-

gantly dressed.

T: I want to show you how I look when I’m

‘impressed’ [the teacher acts out the word

‘impressed’].

After reading T: Why do you think the giant gave his new clothes

to the animals that he met?

T: Do you think the giant acted wisely when he gave

his clothes to the animals?

T: I’ll show you four pictures. When I pronounce the

word ‘‘dandy’’ please point to the picture that

describes that word.

T: I’ll place on the table seven cards that represent

the new words we’ve learned and say them aloud.

Let’s see if you can match the pictures to the

target words.

(continued)


Continued

Number of session and

language skill Time of delivery Examples

Second session

morphological

awareness

After reading T: We’re going to play a game with a ball. I’m going to

roll the ball to you and say a verb in the present

tense. You’ll roll the ball back to me and say the

verb in the future tense. For example, when I roll

the ball I say natan ‘give’, and when you roll it back

you say yiten ‘will give’.

T: We’re going to play a memory card game with

objects in the singular and the plural. For example,

the picture na’al ‘a shoe’ matches the picture

na’alayim ‘shoes’.

Third session – print

concepts and

phonological

awareness

After the third

reading

T: Can someone show me the first word on

this page?

T: How many words can you count on that page?

T: We are going to play a game with parts of words.

We have here a board with a path. The giant

needs to go from the shop to his house. We also

have a pile of pictures of things that we saw in the

book. The giant advances along the path according

to the number of segments in the word. For

example, if you get the picture of mifras ‘a sail’ you

can divide it into mi-f-ra-s and your giant will

advance four steps.


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