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Kindergarten Classrooms
Dramatically Enhance Learning
By Anne McGill-Franzen, Ph.D., and
Richard Allington, Ph.D.
The
Children's Literacy initiative has effectively demonstrated
that the literacy development of urban kindergarten children
can be effectively accelerated by enhancing the quality of
classroom literacy environments. The CLI Philadelphia Kindergarten
Project provided kindergarten teachers in two city schools
with about 500 children's books and 30 hours of training on
reorganizing the school day so that reading to and with children
and writing occurred daily - something often missing in too
many kindergartens. In two other city schools teachers received
the books but no training. Two other city schools served as
control sites and received neither the books nor the training.
The CLI kindergarten intervention produced statistically significant
achievement effects - children enrolled in the CLI Training
schools outperformed the children enrolled in both the books
only and control schools on every measure. Children's vocabulary
achievement was measured on the nationally standardized Peabody
picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT). Other literacy achievement
measures drawn from the Observations Survey of Early Literacy
Achievement (OSELA) - usually used in first grade assessment.
The OSELA includes five separate subtests including assessments
of children's concepts about print (directionality, print
awareness, book features, and so on), letter names, word reading,
writing from dictations, and hearing sounds in words (phonemic
awareness).
To view
data samples of writing dictation assessment.
To view data samples of writing
vocabulary assessment.
The end of year achievement for each set of schools is displayed
below. Note that all OSELA norms are for American first grade
students, the group that assessment was primarily designed
for. Thus, a 6th stanine score, for instance, achieved by
the training classroom children on the CAP, represents a performance
comparable to that of an average first grader or slightly
better (stanine ranks of 4, 5, and 6 are considered within
the normal achievement band).
There were large achievement differences at the end of the
school year (and achievement did not differ between schools
when the children were pretested in September/October). The
CLI training intervention consistently and cost-effectively
produced superior literacy learning (across every achievement
measure). In fact, on every assessment the kindergartners
from the Training schools approached or achieved scores comparable
to normally achieving beginning American first graders!
Early literacy development is critical to later school success.
Unfortunately, kindergarten has been largely omitted from
discussions of accelerating the literacy development of city
school children. When kindergarten programs are restructured
so that children experience rich demonstrations of literacy
and opportunities to engage in literacy activity, their achievement
soars. Every kindergartner in the city deserves such demonstrations
and opportunities.
Two Schools, Same Neighborhood, Very
Different Outcomes.
Another way to examine the effect of the CLI intervention
is to compare the outcomes of children enrolled in kindergarten
classrooms in schools just eight blocks apart. In both schools
better than 2 of 3 children are from low-income families.
Neither school has achievement that ranks among the 75 higher
achieving elementary schools in the city. School A was assigned
Training status and School B was assigned Books Only status.
Compare the average end of year achievement of kindergartners
in each school.
At School A, average kindergarten performance is near, at,
or above the normal range of achievement for first graders
(though these children are just completing kindergarten).
At School B, average achievement on every measure except letter
name knowledge ranks at the very lowest level possible (and
average letter name knowledge achievement is in the next to
lowest ranking compared to a very near top ranking in School
A). Remember that not only are these schools located in the
same neighborhood but also that kindergartners' achievement
in the two schools did not differ in the fall! Remember also
that the classrooms at School B were supplied with the same
children's books as the classrooms at school B. But the teachers
at School B were not offered the Training that the teachers
at School A participated in.
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A
Philadelphia kindergartner builds sentences
in a pocket chart.
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These
comparisons illustrate two findings of this study. First,
providing a literacy-rich kindergarten experience is an effective
early literacy intervention - children's achievement can be
dramatically enhanced when kindergarten are designed to provide
consistently rich language and literacy activities. Second,
the problem is not simply a materials problem. Supplying classrooms
with a large number of children's books had virtually no effect
on language and literacy achievement at School B (and no effect
in the larger study). In other words, the problem in kindergarten
is one of both access to books and teacher expertise.
The kindergarten teachers who received the books and training
in how to effectively use the books in rich literacy demonstrations
and re-organizing their classroom schedules to provide rich
daily literacy activities, were the teachers whose children
showed dramatic improvements in every area tested. The CLI
intervention results indicate that investments to enhance
the quality of Philadelphia kindergarten literacy programs
will produce enormous dividends.
For more on this subject,
see McGill-Franzen, A., Allington, R. L., Yokoi, L., Brooks,
G. (1999). "Putting
books in the room seems necessary but not sufficient."
Journal of Educational Research, 93, 67-94.
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