Abstract
Children from disadvantaged homes often come to school unprepared because of a lack of emergent literacy development typically developed at home and preschool. This includes emergent reading, emergent writing, print motivation, language development, vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, and alphabet knowledge. Therefore, I conducted a case study of a middle class 3-year-old boy for eight months to observe how he develops emergent literacy. His emergent literacy concepts and skills were assessed every two months and his literacy related experiences at home and preschool were noted and studied to determine their influence on his growth. Sources of Data Assessments were given five times. Emergent reading was assessed with the Print Awareness Inventory (Searfoss & Readence, 1994) and Concepts about Print observation task (Clay, 1993). Writing samples were analyzed to determine emergent writing. Receptive and expressive vocabulary was determined with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Revised 4 (PPVT-R4) (Dunn & Dunn, 2007) and Expressive Vocabulary Test (EVT) (Williams, 1997), respectively. Oral language development was determined with Monroe’s Oral Language Scales (Monroe, 1951) and a category oddity task (Lonigan, Burgess, Anthony & Barker, 1998). The Phonological Sensitivity Assessment (Lonigan et al., 1998) was used to determine phonological awareness. Letter name and sound tests based on Clay’s letter name identification task (Clay, 1993) were used to determine alphabet knowledge. Also, notes about literacy experiences were taken mostly daily and analyzed to determine categories, patterns, and themes. Conclusions Reached Across the eight months, there was significant growth in most areas. At the beginning, the child was at the concepts of print stage of emergent reading. He grew from stanine 3 to stanine 4 on the Concepts about Print observation task because of pretend reading. Writing forms advanced from scribbling to nonphonetic letter forms because of drawing and writing. Growth in vocabulary was most dramatic. Receptive and grew from percentile 77, stanine 6, to percentile 99, stanine 9. Expressive vocabulary grew from percentile 84, stanine 7, to percentile 96, stanine 9. Oral language skills progressed from labeling to sentence construction. Growth in oral language and vocabulary was due to storybook reading. The child became phonologically aware of words and then syllables because of several factors. He knew all uppercase letters at the beginning of the study, and grew from identifying 69.23% of lowercase letters to 76.92% because of direct teaching, but knew few letter sounds. Themes explored included the differential educational experiences of the home and preschool, role of popular culture, and technology. Implications for future research was discussed.