Education Commons^™

Enhancing Preschoolers' Executive Functions Through Embedding Cognitive Activities In Shared Book Reading, Steven J. Howard, Thomasin Powell, Elena Vasseleu, Stuart J. Johnstone, Edward Melhuish

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Given evidence that early executive functioning sets the stage for a broad range of subsequent outcomes, researchers have sought to identify ways to foster these cognitive capacities. The current series of studies sought to design, develop, and provide evidence for the efficacy of embedding cognitive activities in a commonplace activity-shared reading of a children's book. The book, Quincey Quokka's Quest, required children to control their thinking and behavior to help the story's main character through a series of obstacles. The first study investigated effects of reading with embedded cognitive activities in individual and group contexts on young children's executive functions …

Examining The Interpretations Children Share From Their Reading Of An Almost Wordless Picture Book During Independent Reading Time, Jessica Mantei, Lisa K. Kervin

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This paper shares findings from part of a larger project exploring students' interpretations of children's literature during independent reading time. Examined in this paper are interpretations by students in Grade 4 (aged 9-10 years) about the messages conveyed in the almost wordless picture book 'Mirror' by author and artist Jeannie Baker. 'Mirror' shares a multicultural perspective on life through its portrayal through collage of the lives of two families living in different countries. Data were collected as semi-structured interviews and observations recorded as field notes. Chambers' (1994) 'Tell Me' framework informed the question schedule of the semi-structured interviews, which were …

Reading The Mind Of Children In Response To Food Advertising: A Cross-Sectional Study Of Malaysian Schoolchildren's Attitudes Towards Food And Beverages Advertising On Television, See Hoe Ng, Bridget P. Kelly, Chee Hee Se, Sharmela Sahathevan, Karuthan Chinna, Mohd Noor Ismail, Tilakavati Karupaiah

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Background

Television food advertising (TVFA) is the most dominant medium in the obesogenic environment promoting unhealthy food choices in children.

Methods

This cross-sectional study investigated children’s attitudes towards TVFA by examining four well-cited induction factors namely advertisement recognition, favourite advertisement, purchase request, and product preference. Malaysian urban schoolchildren (7 to 12 years) of equal ethnic distribution were voluntarily recruited (n = 402). Questionnaire administration was facilitated using a food album of 24 advertised food products.

Results

Majority of children were older (66.2 %), girls (56.7 %) with one-third either overweight or obese. TV viewing time for weekend was greater …

Investigating The Optimal Amount Of Interactive Reading For Improved Mental And Behavioural Self-Control, Elena Vasseleu, Steven J. Howard

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Abstract presented at The Inaugural Early Start Conference, 28-30 September 2015, Wollongong, Australia

The Seven Messages Of Highly Effective Reading Teachers, Brian L. Cambourne

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

In 1982, the late, great NZ reading researcher Marie Clay identified a group of children having difficulty learning to read as "tangled tots (with) reading knots". She was referring to children who, despite having no condition that potentially affected their ability to learn, didn't seem to benefit from reading instruction. She hypothesised that such children "had tangled the teaching in a web of distorted learning which blocked school progress".

The Effects Of Fathers' And Mothers' Reading To Their Children On Language Outcomes Of Children Participating In Early Head Start In The United States, Anna E. Duursma

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

It is well known that reading aloud affects children 's language and literacy development. Little is known though, about fathers reading to their children. This study examined paternal and maternal bookreading frequency among 430 low-income families and investigated whether paternal bookreading and maternal bookreading predicted children 's early language and cognitive development and emergent literacy skills. Results demonstrated that mothers read more frequently to their toddlers than fathers but approximately 55% of fathers reported reading at least weekly to their children. Paternal bookreading at 24 and 36 months significantly predicted children's language and cognitive skills at age 36 months as …

Digital Retell: A Strategy To Encourage Responsive And Reflective Reading, Lisa Kervin

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

The 'read and retell' strategy has been promoted for some time as a way to support readers in comprehending various genres, language structures within these and interpretation of these as readers capture key information and understandings in written, visual or oral form. Computer-based technologies afford the reader a range of ways to record and reflect upon understandings as new knowledge is shared in multi-modal ways.

Vygotsky And Linguistic Relativity: The Case Of Chinese And English Reading, John F. Ehrich

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

This paper argues the case of linguistic relativity through a Vygotskyan socio-cultural perspective. A major tenet of Vygotskyan socio-cultural theory is that sign systems (e.g., language) are psychological tools, which after a period of internalization, result in a transformation of inner processing. The logical extension of Vygotskyan socio-cultural theory is that the internalization of different sign systems, such as Chinese logographic characters or English alphabetic script, should invariably result in the development of distinct types of inner processing. This argument is essentially one of linguistic relativity, or the idea that the nature of language itself can impact on cognitive processing. …

What Adolescents Are Reading And What Their Teachers Are Not: Between The Deformed Discourse And Disdain Of The Graphic Novel, Philip R. Fitzsimmons

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

It was only at the beginning of this year that I realised that I had spent all of my teaching and research life talking with children under the age of twelve years, and even within this group it was mostly with children under six. While I had come to understand a great deal about literacy acquisition (Geekie, Cambourne and Fitzsimmons 1999) and elementary school reading development (Harris, Turbill, Fitzsimmons and McKenzie 2001), as my own teenage daughter constantly reminded me, all I knew was ‘ankle-biter speak’. Determined to change this, I began working with a group of students in a …

Visions For Literacy Learning: The Quest For Meaningful Use Of Computer-Based Technology In Reading And Writing Experiences, Lisa K. Kervin, Jessica Mantei

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

No abstract provided.

Vygotskyan Inner Speech And The Reading Process, John F. Ehrich

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

There is a paucity of Vygotskian influenced inner speech research in relation to the reading process. Those few studies which have examined Vygotskian inner speech from a reading perspective tend to support the notion that inner speech is an important covert function that is crucial to the reading process and to reading acquisition in general. However, Vygotskian notions on inner speech, in particular, syntactic and semantic aspects of inner speech (e.g., predication, word sense and agglutination), have not been investigated in relation to the study of the decoding aspects of silent reading. In this paper, an argument is presented that …