This qualitative study investigated parents' awareness of and involvement in their prekindergarten child's literacy development. In addition, the feasibility of parents using a home literacy portfolio for the purpose of exchanging literacy information with teachers at a parent/teacher conference was examined. Participants included six parent/child dyads, who qualified for a Texas public school prekindergarten program by meeting the requirements for either free or reduced lunches or for the English-as-a-Second Language program. Research tools included audiotaped interviews with parents and with teachers; observations at parent/child workshop sessions, which were also videotaped; and work samples, including a home literacy portfolio from each child. Findings indicate that parents are involved in their children's literacy development. Also, at home, children participate in both open-ended literacy activities and drill-oriented literacy activities, with most of the activities falling into the open-ended category. According to the findings, all of the parents were more aware of their child's literacy achievements after attending the parent/child workshop and developing a home literacy portfolio. In addition, the home literacy portfolio proved to be a useful tool for sharing information at parent/teacher conferences. Parents and teachers exchanged literacy information at the parent/teacher conference. In the process of explaining the portfolios, the parents …

The purpose of this study was to investigate the story retelling abilities of preschool children who have experienced storybook reading and storybook reenactment bilingually, in English and Spanish, and preschool children who have experienced storybook reading and storybook reenactment in English only. This is a clinical case study employing both quantitative and qualitative measures comparing four treatment groups. Three evaluation instruments were developed by the researcher and used for posttesting; a story comprehension test, a story retelling guidesheet/scoresheet, and a storybook literacy response evaluation. In addition, participant observation and teacher interviews were used to gather qualitative data regarding learning center extensions of the target text and teacher beliefs and practices about the use of storybooks. The findings from this study show that scores for children who experienced storybook reading and storybook reenactment were significantly better on both the story retelling and story comprehension measures. In addition, a larger proportion of children who experienced storybook reading and reenactment were found to perform at the second level of literacy response on the Levels of Literacy evaluation. No differences were found in relationship to the language used on any of the dependent measures. Findings fromqualitative data showed that children were involved in limited …