Authors: Kelly Purtell, PhD, Shayne Piasta, PhD, Rachel Schachter, PhD, Jessica Logan, PhD
About the brief
We know that early literacy skills are an important predictor of a child’s success in kindergarten and beyond. Many of these skills can be tracked to later test scores and academic success, but little research has examined code-focused (letter knowledge and phonological awareness) and language skills and whether they can predict performance on school-based assessments. Crane researchers examined the skills of over 700 Ohio children in the fall of their preschool year and measured how gains in these skills across the year predicted their performance on kindergarten and Grade 3 measures of literacy achievement.
“The skills that children are bringing to early childhood education and the gains that they’re making across that year matter for elementary school, especially in terms of literacy.”
Preschoolers’ skills examined by this study
Main findings
- While children’s initial levels of code-focused and language skills predicted their kindergarten literacy skills, only gains in their code-focused skills predicted these kindergarten literacy skills.
- While initial levels of code-focused and language skills predicted Grade 3 reading achievement, gains in both of these types of skills were not predictive of Grade 3 reading achievement.
Together, these findings suggest that children’s skills and skill development during early childhood education shape their later reading performance but that their influence is stronger in kindergarten than in Grade 3.
Recommendations
Practitioners/Teachers: Provide multiple and wide-ranging literacy and language learning opportunities in early education settings that target both code-focused and language skills.
Policymakers: Align early education and early elementary school practices and curricula to ensure learning opportunities match children’s skills.
Researchers: Pursue more research regarding birth to 3 language and pre-literacy learning in ECE contexts with a focus on how ECE teachers can set the foundation for later literacy and language development.