The Effects of Modeling Writing Instruction on Early Literacy Development in Preschool Children

Early literacy, with foundations in oral language, phonological awareness and print knowledge, is essential to later academic achievement (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008; National Reading Panel, 2000). A growing body of research has documented developmental trends for these skills and has provided guidance for interventions in oral language, phonological awareness, and alphabet learning for young children; however, limited research has been performed in the area of writing instruction (Purinak & Wagner, 2011). Utilizing a quasi-experimental design containing a control group, a comparison group, and an experimental group, this study investigates if modeling the stages of writing for preschoolers enhances early literacy skills more than traditional writing instruction or instruction in which writing is absent from the curriculum. Researchers have conducted pre-testing measures of 91 participants. Participants from two experimental classrooms will receive instruction that models the developmental stages of writing. Participants from two comparison classrooms will receive instruction on writing at the adult level only. Participants from two control classrooms will not receive writing instruction from researchers. Participants in the experimental and comparison group will participate in a Picture Story/Word Story activity following a storybook reading until 20 instructional sessions have been provided. For the Picture Story/Word Story activity, children will be encouraged to draw a picture, then write about their drawing. It is expected that the children receiving explicit writing instruction, beyond the adult model, will demonstrate more advanced early literacy skills measured through writing samples and post-assessment than children not receiving explicit writing instruction. Findings from this research will be relevant to the fields of speech-language pathology and education to help identify and implement a more effective form of writing instruction which will provide preschoolers with the literacy foundations needed for later academic achievement