“Let’s Write Each Other Messages”: Association Between Involvement in Writing in a Preschool Online Forum and Early Literacy Progress

ABSTRACT

Research Findings: The study examined the association between the amount of preschoolers’ (N = 174, M = 5.5 years old) writing in online forums with their parents’ support and their progress in early literacy skills and interest in literacy. Parents participated in a workshop about writing development, the importance of writing activities, and effective ways to support children’s writing. The researchers created an internet forum in each preschool. Parents were asked to help their children write posts and respond to friends’ posts in the forum for ten weeks (twice a week). We evaluated children’s early literacy skills (letter knowledge, phonological awareness, word spelling, and vocabulary) and interest in literacy before and after the initiative and children’s self-regulation before the initiative. The results showed that while, on average, children’s participation in the forum was lower than expected, participation levels were significantly associated with the children’s progress in early literacy skills and interest in literacy, controlling for demographic variables, self-regulation, and the children’s initial literacy skills. Practice or Policy: Our study suggests considering digital writing as an additional writing tool for preschoolers. Further, it highlights the potential of online writing forums for practicing writing and promoting young children’s early literacy skills.

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory perceives development as evolving from children’s interactions in their surrounding contexts (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1986; Rosa & Tudge, 2013). Other research has similarly stressed the importance of children’s frequent interactions with their families, teachers, and peers for learning and development (e.g., Tudge et al., 2017). Today, children are developing in a rich digital environment that influences their daily experiences and interactions (Kareal & Klema, 2006; Wang et al., 2010) and creates new platforms for learning (e.g.,Chauhan, 2017; Plowman et al., 2010; Sung et al., 2016). The interactive media that surrounds children in the 21^st century can serve as tools or systems to support learning in various domains like literacy (Hartle, 2020). Online forums are an interactive media based on communicating with peers via writing, and they increase students’ motivation to write (Huffaker & Calvert, 2003). In the current study, we explored parent-child writing interactions using online forums within their preschools and young children’s early literacy development. We considered the use of online forums in preschools (children around 5-years-old) as a medium that can motivate parents to support children’s writing and children’s desire and willingness to participate in writing interactions. To do so, we implemented an initiative comprising two parts: (1) A workshop for parents where we guided them on their centrality in their children’s early literacy development, the nature of writing development, the importance of their early writing support, and ways to support children’s writing using a keyboard. (2) Online forums for each preschool where parents were asked (for ten weeks) to help their children write a message to their friends and react to a message that a friend wrote each week. We encouraged the parents weekly by WhatsApp messages to help their children participate and write in the forum.

To date, research has yet to evaluate the benefits of online forums as a platform where parents of preschoolers, who have yet to learn to read and write formally, support their children’s writing and communication with their peers. Writing integrates major early literacy skills such as letter knowledge and phonological awareness (Diamond et al., 2008; National Early Literacy Panel US, 2008). Mastering early literacy skills is an important developmental task that lays the foundation for later academic learning (C. E. Snow, 2017). As such, in the current study, we studied the activity in the forums and assessed the contribution of the amount of this home literacy activity to preschoolers’ early literacy progress.

Early Literacy

Early literacy refers to children’s knowledge of the spoken and written language before formal schooling. Major early literacy components are oral language skills, letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and early writing (e.g., Whitehurst & Lonigan, 2002), which together predict children’s later literacy achievements (e.g., Storch & Whitehurst, 2002). Oral language refers to the ability to produce and comprehend spoken language, including vocabulary, morphology, and grammar. There is evidence that a larger expressive vocabulary in preschool foresees literacy achievements in school (Lee, 2011). Letter knowledge incorporates children’s recognizing and naming letters, familiarity with their sounds, and ability to write them graphically or type them on a keyboard. Phonological awareness (PA) is the sensitivity to the sound structure of words and the ability to manipulate sounds within words. Letter knowledge and PA in preschool are good predictors of children’s reading and writing acquisition in the first and second grades (Aram, 2005; Leppanen et al., 2006; Schatschneider et al., 2004). Early writing refers to children’s first representations of spoken language via written symbols and letters (Puranik et al., 2014), writing names (e.g., Gerde et al., 2012), understanding of letter-sound mappings (written letters stand for sounds) (e.g., Puranik et al., 2018) and composing a message (Quinn et al., 2021). Children’s early writing in the preschool years is a good predictor of their later reading and writing skills in school (Albuquerque & Alves, 2019; Kessler et al., 2013).

Overarching the specific early literacy components lies children’s interest in literacy (e.g., interest in letters, letter sounds, reading, and writing). Children tend to participate more and persist longer in activities that they find interesting (Fulmer & Frijters, 2011; Wigfield & Cambria, 2010). Preschoolers’ interest in literacy and enjoyment of early literacy activities contributes to their literacy skills (e.g.,Bracken & Fischel, 2008; Carroll et al., 2019; Conradi et al., 2014; Martini & Sénéchal, 2012).

Early literacy develops in the contexts closest to the child – school and home. While literacy is taught in school through a well-planned curriculum, at home, it is more integrated with everyday communication, games, etc. (e.g., Martini & Sénéchal, 2012; Myrtil et al., 2019).

Home Literacy Practices

The term “Home Literacy Practices” captures a variety of activities like parents’ joint book reading with children, teaching children the alphabet, familiarizing them with environmental print, guiding them in spelling their names and other words, enriching their vocabulary through verbal communication, supporting their phonological awareness via rhyming games, and more.Tamis LeMonda et al. (2019) found in a longitudinal study that the frequency and the quality of literacy activities with children (e.g., book-reading, storytelling, and teaching letters, words, or numbers) and the availability of literacy learning materials at home when children were four- and five-years-old predicted their academic skills in the 5th grade. There is evidence that parent-child shared-book- reading (frequency and quality) is related to children’s early literacy, mainly expressive and receptive vocabulary and story comprehension (e.g., Bus et al., 1995; Mol et al., 2008; Vander Woude et al., 2009). Researchers also explored parent-child practices related to letters and print (Martini & Sénéchal, 2012; Puglisi et al., 2017; Weigel et al., 2006) and found that the frequency of these activities predicted the children’s letter-writing, spelling, and spontaneous writing skills (e.g., Puranik et al., 2018). In our study, we focused on parent-child early writing processes that integrates basic literacy skills (vocabulary, phonological awareness, and letter knowledge)

Parent-Child Writing Activities

Children participate in writing activities at home, such as writing names, lists, notes, tags, and birthday cards (e.g., Neumann et al., 2012; Puranik & Al Otaiba, 2012). Children’s free choice to present their ideas in print increases their motivation to write (Gutman & Sulzby, 1999; Love et al., 2007). Parents engage in joint writing with their children either on their own initiative (e.g., “now please write your name on your drawing”) or as a response to their children’s questions (e.g., “I want to write our names”). The quantity of parent-child writing activities is meaningful to children’s literacy development (e.g., Hood et al., 2008; Puranik et al., 2018; Sénéchal et al., 2017).

Writing is a mentally challenging task (e.g., Berninger et al., 2006; Treiman, 2017), especially for preschoolers who try to explore the sound-letter relationships in their early writing (Elimelech & Aram, 2020; Levin & Bus, 2003). During writing interactions, parents help their children understand the principles of writing (Levy et al., 2006; Neumann et al., 2009,2012; Neumann, 2016). There is evidence across numerous languages that the nature of parents’ writing support predicts children’s early literacy skills across orthographies (e.g., Arabic – Aram et al., 2013a; Bemba – Kalindi et al., 2018; Chinese – Lin et al., 2009; English – Bindman, 2014; Hall et al., 2015; Spanish – Levin et al., 2013). It also predicts children’s literacy achievements in the first years of school (e.g., Aram et al., 2013b).

Levin and Aram (2013) studied the effects of different writing support routines provided to Hebrew-speaking preschoolers for eight weeks (twice a week) on gains obtained in early literacy skills (letter naming, sounds of letters, word segmentation, word spelling, and word decoding). They found that writing support that provided information both on the process of sound-to-grapheme mapping and on the naming and letters’ retrieval promoted children’s early literacy beyond their self-regulation and early literacy level at the baseline level. Accordingly, in the current study’s initiative to help parents support their children’s writing effectively, we taught them (in a workshop) the basics of effective writing support, which is characterized by providing warm, gradual help and constant encouragement to the child to segment the word into its sounds, connect each sound to the corresponding letter, and independently produce the letters.

Home Digital Literacy Activities

Young children’s literacy activities at home nowadays go beyond the use of traditional literacy tools (e.g., paper books, pencils, papers, magnet letters) and include digital devices (e.g., smartphones, computers, tablets) and interactive applications (Griffith et al., 2020), which can promote various early skills including early literacy and mathematical principles (Alghazo et al., 2010; Flewitt et al., 2015; Herodotou, 2018). Digital books (E-books) are increasingly becoming part of children’s bookshelves (Hill et al., 2016), and shared reading of these books has been found to children’s vocabulary (Korat & Shneor, 2019). During the COVID-19 pandemic, electronic access to books increased, such as parents reading with their children on an online platform that was sent by the kindergarten teacher (Harvey, 2021). As to writing, keyboards function as digital writing tools. Using them promotes children’s automatic letter production (Berninger et al., 2009), “liberates” preschoolers from the graphic demands of writing, and increases their interest in literacy and motivation to write (Aram, & Chorowicz Bar-Am, 2016; Zhang & Quinn, 2020). Studies that take a sociocultural perspective tend to find the advantages of a keyboard as a useful writing tool that is related to children’s cultural life (Hultin & Westman, 2013). Elimelech and Aram, (2020) showed the benefits of a digital game in which children used a keyboard to spell words over the course of one month (2 sessions per week) in promoting the children’s early literacy skills (letter knowledge, phonological awareness, word reading, and word writing).

In the current study, we created closed online forums (within each preschool) as a digital space for the children to practice writing while corresponding with their friends. Forums can be an effective additive learning tool. They can create online spaces for peer learning, which is considered a leading pedagogical principle (Jolliffe, 2015). Discussions can continue over time and contain many responses and participants (Liu, 2012). There is some evidence that participation in online forums is effective in promoting academic achievement (Minichiello & Hailey, 2013; Sudarmo, 2020). For example, Zheng and Warschauer (2015) found that participation in an online discussion group, as part of the school curriculum, improved fifth-grade students’ literacy achievements. Reviewing the literature, we did not find studies that explored online forums for preschoolers. The current study aimed to help fill this gap by creating and examining closed forums for preschoolers.

Parental Support of Children’s Digital Activities

Young children’s involvement in digital activities requires intentional guidance to optimize learning (Donohue, 2017; Hartle, 2020). It is important that interactive media and digital activities are high quality, age-appropriate, and supervised by adults (NAEYC and the Fred Rogers Center, 2012; Nobre et al., 2019). Beyond the quality of the media, there is the quality of the adults’ support. Adults can make the digital world fruitful for children’s development if they listen to the children, join their interests, and equip them with appropriate tools (Guernsey, 219). Since parents serve as mentors for their young children in the digital world (Donohue, 2017), they need to be guided (Elias et al., 2022). Consequently, in our initiative, we used a workshop to teach parents the principles of effective writing support we included the workshop in our initiative. Workshops are an efficient way to raise parents’ awareness (e.g.Hurley et al., 2021) and teach them specific skills (e.g.Shayne & Miltenberger, 2013). For example, LaCour et al. (2013) found that a workshop on principles of dialogic reading, along with 20 books given to the parent to read at home, effectively promoted children’s interest in reading. At the same time, parents often hesitate or refuse to commit to participate in programs that require them to attend a large number of meetings (e.g.Baker et al., 2011; Mendez et al., 2009; Mendez, 2010; Morawska & Sanders, 2006), so we limited the workshop to a single session. Following the workshop, we created a digital online platform in each preschool – a forum where parents were invited to practice writing support and write with their children using a keyboard. We studied children’s early literacy progress beyond their self-regulation.

The Role of Self-Regulation

Self-regulation is the ability to control and direct attention as well as inhibit automatic responses thoughts, emotions, and actions. High levels of self-regulation enable children to function well in challenging tasks and are important for school success (e.g., Lin et al., 2003). Studies have documented positive relationships between self-regulation and early literacy skills (e.g., Blair & Razza, 2007; Chung & McBride Chang, 2011; Puranik et al., 2019). Being aware of the impact of children’s self-regulation on children’s willingness to cooperate with adults in their lives (e.g., Eisenberg et al., 2010), and its effectiveness in participation in learning activities (e.g., McClelland & Cameron, 2012; Robson et al., 2020), we controlled for this variable.

Study Aims and Hypotheses

Based onBronfenbrenner’s (1979) that views a child’s development within the systems surrounding her, we studied how involvement in writing in an online forum relates to children’s early literacy. In our study, the microsystem was the parent-child writing activity in the forums. The mesosystem was the support the parents received via a workshop where the researcher guided them on how to support their children’s writing. The exosystem was the preschools’ peer-group Google forums, which included the children in the preschool and their parents. Lastly, the macrosystem was the culture of online social networks that is very active in Israel.

Our study aimed to find out:

1. What will be the amount and the nature of parent-child writing activity in an online forum: What will be the scope of the activity (number of words), the number of posts and responses that the children will write to others, and the number of responses that the children will receive for their writing.

   a. Given the lack of previous research on these issues, these questions remained open.

2. How would the scope of the children’s activity with their parents on the forum predict progress in the children’s early literacy skills (letter knowledge, phonological awareness, word spelling, expressive vocabulary) and interest in literacy beyond the child’s age, the family’s socio-economic status (SES), the child’s level of self-regulation and early literacy skills before participating in the initiative. We chose maternal education as the SES variable because it reflects the family’s SES well and relates to children’s early literacy skills (e.g., Mendive et al., 2017).

   a. We hypothesized that the amount that the child would participate in the online writing forum (with the help of a parent) would predict progress in their early literacy skills and interest in literacy activity, controlling for the family’s SES, the child’s age, self-regulation, and each of the early literacy pretest scores.

Method

Participants

Eight preschools within central Israel from the same neighborhood participated in the study. All the parents in these preschools were invited, and about 74% participated. Participants were 174 middle-SES, Hebrew-speaking children (90 boys, 84 girls) and their parents. Their mean age was 5.5 years old (M = 65.7 months, SD = 6.61). Most of the children came from two-parent families (86.8%) with two to three children (84%) and were the first or second-born children (80%).

The mothers’ mean age was 37.5 years (SD  = 4.26). Mothers’ education ranged from high school (20.1%) through Associate’s degree (14.90%), B.A. (33.3%), and M.A. (21.8%) to Ph.D. (2.9%). Fathers’ mean age was 39.1 years (SD  = 4.41), and their education ranged from high school (33.3%) through Associate’s degree (13.8%), B.A. (25.3%), and M.A. (18.4%) to Ph.D. (1.1%).

The children were in their last year in preschool. In Israel, preschools are physically and pedagogically detached from elementary schools. Classes contain around 28 children with one teacher and one assistant. They operate from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., six days a week. The teachers hold a degree that is equivalent (at least) to a bachelor’s degree. Formal reading and writing instruction begins in first grade. The national preschool early literacy curriculum refers to oral language, communication skills, book immersion activities, and alphabetic skills, early writing, and reading (Levin et al., 2007). Yet, the teachers focus on language and communication skills, read books to children, introduce the ABC, and play rhyming games with children; they engage children very little in writing activities (Sverdlov et al., 2014). As to information and communication technologies (ICT), it is not part of the Israeli preschool curriculum.

Procedure

The study received the approval of the Israeli Ministry of Education, Tel Aviv University’s ethics committee, and the approval of each of the participating families. We contacted eight preschool teachers within one central city, and they invited all the parents in their class to participate in an educational initiative to promote early literacy skills.

Before and after the initiative (described below), we assessed children’s literacy skills (letter knowledge, phonological awareness, word spelling, and expressive vocabulary) individually in the preschool, and parents completed a questionnaire about their children’s interest in literacy at home. We assessed children’s self-regulation in the preschool only before the initiative.

The Initiative

The initiative included two parts: (1) parents’ participation in a single workshop, and (2) parents supporting their children to write messages in a closed online forum for ten weeks. These are detailed below.

The Workshop

The workshop aimed to help parents acknowledge their centrality as their children’s early literacy supporters, teach them about the effectiveness and the simplicity of supporting children’s early writing in Hebrew, as well the accessibility of using digital devices for writing interactions throughout the day. The workshop started with appreciation to the parents for joining the initiative and stressing their centrality in their children’s early literacy development. It included the following six elements in a fixed order. (1) We discussed the importance of a good atmosphere that the parents create, supporting the child’s ideas, and empowering the child. We talked with them about the importance of creating short writing interactions that suit their children’s attention span. (2) To help parents understand that children show different writing skills and that these writing levels are developmentally suitable to preschool children, we discussed writing development, gave parents examples, and stressed the importance of respecting their child’s writing level and helping in accordance with this level. (3) To support parents’ awareness of the importance of joint writing, we discussed with them the contribution of early writing to literacy development. We divided the parents into small groups (3–5 parents) and asked them to suggest writing activities at home. When they returned to the whole group, they shared their ideas for writing activities with the group, and if needed, we added ideas. (4) We talked with the parents about their role as their children’s writing supporters and presented the principles underlying high-quality parental writing support in Hebrew, focusing on grapho-phonemic support (encouraging the child to segment the word into its phonological unit and connect the unit to a letter’s name) and printing support (encouraging the child to print the letter independently). We aimed that the parent-child interactions will be fun and stress-free. We told parents that the children should be as independent as possible and that spelling mistakes are acceptable at this age as long as the word is readable. We told them that they could tell their child how to write the word correctly in the future but not erase the children’s writing. (5) We talked with the parents about internet forums and the opportunities they provide for parent-child writing interactions. We also discussed ethics on the forums (e.g., the importance of respect and empathy). (6) We described our initiative of writing with the children in an online forum, explained that they can use different digital tools (i.e., computers, cellphones, tablets), and asked them to write with their children in their preschool’s forum on different occasions referring to their daily experiences at least twice a week: One new post (initiative) and one response to another child’s post (response).

At the end of the workshop, we gave the parents printed materials explaining the initiative and written instructions on how to use the forum. We invited them to contact us whenever they have a question or difficulty. We conducted the same two-hour workshop in each of the eight preschool classes and opened a closed online forum (Google Group) for each preschool right after the workshop.

The Online Forum

Each preschool had a closed online group (forum), where only the parents of a specific class and the researcher could participate. The parents received an invitation (instructions and a link) to the forum by e-mail and on paper. Participants could write posts on new topics (initiatives), write comments to each other (response), and attach different files (e.g., photographs). The names of the preschool children (not their parents) appeared as the participants (see Figures 1 and 2). The group’s main page showed all the participants’ posts’ titles (initiatives’ titles). When clicking on one of the post titles, a web page opened that included the full post – title, content, and responses, if received. The children were excited about the forums – they talked about them and asked their parents to write with them. Each week the researcher wrote a reminder to the participants encouraging them to post on the forum (write new messages and respond to messages). The forum was open for ten weeks, and parents could help their children write using different digital writing tools (i.e., tablets, smartphones, and computers). A page from the forum: Translation of Figure 1 the first part of the figure portrays the forum’s main page. The second part portrays a correspondence between children on a topic initiated by one child.

Figure 1. A page from the forum as it appeared in Hebrew.

Figure 2a. A page from the forum: Translation of Figure 1 this first part of the figure portrays the forum’s main page.

Figure 2b. This second part portrays a correspondence between children on a topic initiated by one child.

Measures

Participation in the Forum

We counted the number of weeks, posts, and words each child wrote throughout the initiative. We also counted the number of responses the child received to his/her posts. The analysis of online discourse focused on reducing text into categories and central themes (Holtz et al., 2012). We mapped the communication intention of the writers according to the nature of their approach to the group (question or information sharing). Categorizing the posts’ themes was based on their title and contents. We grouped them into central categories (sharing family experiences, greetings, fun activities, feeling, and communication). Clear criteria were formulated for each of the categories. For example, sharing experiences was defined as sharing an event that took place or was about to take place that related to the child and family experience or of close friends. Two education students assessed the reliability of the coding on 247 posts. They reached a 73% agreement in analyzing the new posts’ content and 100% on the responses.

Early Literacy Skills

Letter Naming

The researcher presented the 22 Hebrew letters (excluding the five final letters) in random order on cards and asked the child to name each letter (e.g., “what is the name of this letter?”). The total number of correct responses served as the letter naming score. Inter-item reliability was Cronbach’s α = .97 at the pretest and α = .97 at the posttest.

Initial Letter Identification

The researcher orally presented 17 words of a consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) structure (e.g., gad, pil) and asked the child to name the initial letter (e.g., what is the first letter of the word gad?). We counted the child’s correct responses. Inter-item reliability was Cronbach’s α = .96 at the pretest and α = .96 at the posttest.

Phonological Awareness (PA)

(Levin & Aram, 2013). The researcher orally presented 17 CVC words (e.g., red, bis, yom) and asked the child to isolate the final phoneme (e.g., what is the smallest sound you hear at the end of the word red?). The total number of correct responses served as the PA score. Inter-item reliability was Cronbach’s α = .99 at the pretest and α = .99 at the posttest.

Word Spelling

The researcher asked the child to write his or her name and seven words, each on a separate paper (e.g., “please write the word, X”). These words (nouns) are part of young children’s spoken vocabulary (e.g., ice cream, pencil) and they comprised all the Hebrew letters. The words included 26 consonants and 12 vowels. Hebrew is a consonantal Semitic language known as an abjad. In consonantal languages, all the consonants and only some of the vowels are represented by letters. A child learning to write in Hebrew will first spell primarily consonants and only later will add vowels (Levin & Bus, 2003; Levin et al., 2006). Children’s spelling score was a combination of two scores: The total number of correct consonants (out of 26) and the number of correct vowels (out of 12). Inter-item reliability was Cronbach’s was α = .99 at the pretest and α = .98 at the posttest.

Expressive Vocabulary

We used a definitions task (Aram, 2005; C. Snow et al., 1989; Hebrew version) to assess the children’s expressive vocabulary. The researcher asked the child to define 14 words (e.g., flower, bicycle, bird, watch). She asked the child for the meaning of each word (e.g., what is a flower?). Each definition was analyzed for its richness by summing the number of correct components in the definitions: defining characteristics (e.g., a cat is an animal), descriptive features (e.g., “it is sparkling,” “the bicycle has a bell”), functioning (e.g., flying – for a bird, riding for the donkey), comparisons (e.g., this hat is also a hat), and examples (e.g., a clock – an alarm clock). Each component was awarded one point. Inter-item reliability was Cronbach’s α = .85 at the pretest and α = .87 at the posttest. To assess inter-rater reliability, two coders (M.A. students in child development) analyzed 15% of the pretest and 15% of the posttest definitions. Inter-rater reliability was kappa =.85.

Interest in Literacy

Parents filled out a questionnaire about their child’s interest in literacy (based onMartini & Sénéchal, 2012). They rated 14 statements (e.g., “My child is interested in letters;” “My child loves to complete rhymes in stories;” “My child likes to copy words”) on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = disagree completely, 5 = agree to a large extent). The mean score across the 14 statements served as the child’s interest in literacy score. Inter-item reliability was Cronbach’s α = .89 before and α = .91 after the initiative.

Self-Regulation

We assessed self-regulation using the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders (HTKS) task (Ponitz et al., 2008), which requires three self-regulatory competencies for success: attention, working memory, and inhibitory control. It was used in previous studies as a valid measure of self-regulation (e.g., McClelland et al., 2014). The researcher asked the children to play a game where they were instructed to do the opposite of what the researcher said, requiring them to remember and attend to directions while inhibiting their natural response to the examiner’s instructions. For example, if the researcher instructed them to touch their head, instead of following the command, children were to do the opposite and touch their toes. Overall, the researcher gave 30 commands for actions. Each action was scored on a 3-point scale: 0 = wrong response; 1 = wrong response with immediate correction; 2 = correct response. The total across actions was summed and served as the self-regulation score. Self-regulation was assessed only prior to the initiative, and the reliability among items was Cronbach’s α = .92.

Results

We first present children’s participation in the forum, the content of the posts, and the responses to the posts. It should be noted that when we discuss children’s participation in the forum, we refer to parent-child writing interactions because children could not write in the forum without their parent’s support. This is followed by the descriptive results of children’s early literacy skills before the initiative and the change in each measure following it. Last, after a presentation of the correlations between the controlled measures (SES, age, self-regulation) and the change in children’s scores, we present a series of hierarchical regression analyses predicting children’s progress in each of the measures based on their pretest early literacy scores and the amount of their participation in the forum.

Participation in the Forum

All the children’s parents participating in the workshop (N  = 174) were invited to write with their children in the forums. We asked them to write two posts a week (one new post and one response to a post written by another child). Children’s participation ranged widely from zero to 271 words (M = 43, SD = 54.95). Of the 174 children whose parents participated in the workshops, 29 (16.66%) did not write at all, and 145 (83.44%) wrote in the forums. Regarding weeks, 66.66% did not write at all, 58.05% participated between one to four weeks, 19.54% participated between five to eight weeks, and 5.75% participated nine to ten weeks in the forum. The number of responses that children received to their posts ranged from zero (28.15% of the posts), through one to five (44.83%) and six to ten (17.82%) to eleven to twenty-three (9.20% of the posts), with a mean of 4.15 (SD  = 5.25). Most children received at least one comment throughout the activity.

The posts that children wrote divided into three main types of communication intentions: information sharing like, “I like to see fireworks” (87.90% of the posts); questions like, “How was your Passover holiday?” (6.53%), and a combination of both like, “I like Sam the fireman, do you?”(5.27%). The content of the posts was mostly positive. While the content varied, more popular themes included shared family and fun activities, such as, “Yesterday I visited my grandparents” or “Today I saw the movie Moana” (33.65% of the posts); greetings like, “Have a nice weekend” or “Good morning to everyone” (15.77%); general communication messages to the preschool group or to specific child/ren like, “What did you do today?” or “Assaf and Ido have fun playing with you” (13.65%), and sharing feelings and desires like “I like my friends” (12.31%).

Most of the new posts (67.88%) received at least one response, yet, even though parents were asked in the workshop to respond once a week to posts that did not get responses, there were posts that were left without responses. Open-ended questions (e.g., “What kind of games do you like? I love Lego”), as well as posts that dealt with events and feelings attached to them (e.g., “Next week I will have my birthday and I am happy,” or “I sprained my leg and cried”), raised many responses. In the responses, children mainly encouraged the child who wrote the post like, “good for you” (41.39% of responses) or shared similar experiences like, “I also hurt my knee” (29.82%). We found a high correlation between the number of responses that children received and the number of words they wrote in the forums (r = .71, p = .000). The more children received comments the more they wrote, and vice versa. All the posts were readable, yet many included spelling mistakes.

Children’s Literacy Skills

Table 1 describes the children’s interest in literacy, early literacy skills, and self-regulation (a controlled measure) before the initiative. It also presents the change scores (posttest minus pretest) following the initiative’s completion in children’s interest in literacy and in children’s literacy skills.Table 1 shows that before the initiative, parents reported that on average, their children had a moderate interest in literacy activities (M = 3.76 on a 5-point scale). Regarding early literacy skills, on average, the children recognized the names of 16.03 letters (about 73% of the letters) and named 10.25 initial letters (about 59%). Their spelling level was low as children wrote an average of 10 correct consonants out of 26 consonants and only two correct vowels out of 12. On average, children identified 5.94 final phonemes of the one-syllable words (about 35%), but the variance was large. For expressive vocabulary, children showed familiarity with the words and referred to their components (e.g., for the word “cow:” “has four legs, black dots and says ‘moo’”). Children’s scores on the self-regulation measure ranged from 0 to 60, with a medium-high average.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics: Children’s measures before the intervention and their change scores from pretest to posttest in the interest in literacy and early literacy skills (N = 174).

	Pre-test Scores			Change Scores from Pretest to Posttest
	Possible Range			Range
	Min	Max	M (SD)	Min	Max	M (SD)
Interest in literacy^1	1	5	3.76 (0.72)	−1.43	1.14	0.00 (0.50)
Letter knowledge
Letter naming	0	22	16.07 (7.62)	−9	22	1.10 (3.28)
Initial letter	0	17	10.25 (6.86)	−14	16	1.10 (3.76)
Spelling
Consonants	0	26	10.32 (10.44)	−7	25	2.17 (5.67)
Vowels	0	12	2.00 (3.09)	−4	11	0.69 (2.00)
Final phoneme	0	17	5.94 (7.71)	−6	17	2.44 (5.48)
Self-regulation^2	0	60	39.51 (12.81)

Note: ¹ N = 162; ²Controlled measure that was assessed only at pretest.

Regarding children’s change in literacy measures following the 10-week initiative, regardless of the level of their participation in the online forums, we found a large variance. As can be seen in Table 1, on average, the children progressed on most literacy measures (except interest in literacy). Yet, some children showed large progress in their scores and others showed a decrease.

Amount of Children’s Online Writing and Their Early Literacy Progress

Before running regression analyses to predict the progress in children’s literacy scores by the amount of their writing in the forums, we examined the association between the control measures (child’s age, self-regulation, and SES) and the change in children’s early literacy skills and interest in literacy. We found that the child’s age and self-regulation as well as the family’s SES did not correlate significantly with children’s progress in early literacy skills and their interest in literacy (except for SES and the change in spelling consonants r = .17, p = .03). Therefore, we did not introduce these measures into the regressions. In the regressions’ first step, we entered the child’s pretest score on each measure. In the second step, we added the number of words the child wrote with a parent’s help in the forum. The dependent variables were each of the progress (change) scores on the early literacy measures and children’s interest in literacy. Table 2 presents the regressions’ outcomes.

Table 2. Hierarchical regression analyses predicting progress in early literacy scores (N = 174).

	Interest in literacy (β)		Letter naming (β)		Initial letter (β)		Spelling consonants (β)		Spelling vowels (β)		Final phoneme (β)		Oral language (β)
Step 1
Pre-test score	−.27**		−.42***		−.32***		−.31***		−.27**		−.31***		−.27**
Step 2
Pre-test score	−.36***		−.44***		−.35***		−.33***		−.32*		−.33***		−.31***
Number of words	.28**		.23**		.15*		.17*		.25***		.09		.17*
	ΔR^2	R^2	ΔR^2	R^2	ΔR^2	R^2	ΔR^2	R^2	ΔR^2	R^2	ΔR^2	R^2	ΔR^2	R^2
Step 1		.07**		.17***		.10***		.10***		.07**		.10***		.07**
Step 2	.07**	.14**	.06**	.23**	.02*	.12*	.03*	.13*	.06***	.13***	.01	.10***	.03**	.10*

N*p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001.

Table 2 shows the contribution of the participation in the forums, controlling for the child’s pretest score on each variable. The child’s pretest score on each variable in Step 1 predicted 7% to 17% of children’s progress over the ten weeks. In each of the predicted measures, the lower the children’s score before participating in the initiative, the more progress they made over the ten weeks of writing. The second step shows that the amount of participation in the forum (the number of words the children wrote with their parents) added a significant 2% to 7% to children’s predicted progress in early literacy skills (except for final phoneme retrieval). That is, the more the children wrote in the forum over the ten weeks (with their parent’s help), the more they progressed.

Discussion

According to Bronfenbrenner, development is based on the child’s interactions with wider environmental systems (Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994). In this study, we focused on early literacy development within the context of parent-child writing interactions in a 10-week closed online forum for the preschool. The online forum was created following a workshop on early writing support and was available for ten weeks. The results showed that participation in the forums was moderate. The content of the children’s messages was mainly information sharing; open-ended questions received more responses and responses from other children were related to more frequent writing. Beyond the children’s early literacy skills before the initiative, the amount of children’s participation in the forums (parent-child writing interactions) was associated with their progress in interest in literacy, letter knowledge, spelling, and expressive vocabulary. The contribution of writing participation in the online forums was modest but significant. Interestingly, the family’s SES, the child’s age, and self-regulation did not contribute to the progress in the children’s literacy skills or interest in literacy over the ten weeks.

Data for the present study were collected before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the outbreak, education frameworks have been trying to explore alternative teaching and communication methods. Distance learning is especially difficult for preschool children (e.g.Duran, 2021). When interviewed about distance learning, parents of preschoolers expressed their children’s need for social interaction with other children (Stites et al., 2021). The present study offers the possibility of a communication and learning platform that can be integrated into the daily life of the preschool and constitutes a platform for distance learning and maintaining contact between the children in times of crisis.

Participation in the Forums

The level of parents’ readiness to help their children write in the forums during the ten weeks was somewhat disappointing. There is a lack of research regarding parents’ awareness of their preschool children’s learning online (Kumpulainen & Gillen, 2020). The parents in our study volunteered and participated in the study and took part in the two-hour workshop that discussed the importance of joint writing and taught them how to support their children’s writing effectively. The online forums made writing interactions easier for parents as they could write with their children anywhere – on a mobile phone, tablet, or computer. Yet, 16% of the parents did not write with their children at all, 56% wrote between 2–49 words, 16% wrote between 50–99 words, and only 11% wrote over 100 words. These findings indicate that most parents joined the initiative but did not maintain their involvement for ten weeks. It may be that our request for parents to be active at least twice a week for ten weeks without immediate reinforcements (e.g., weekly personal phone calls or home visits) was too demanding. There is evidence that parents find it hard to stick to literacy programs. For example, De la Rie et al. (2017) reviewed family literacy intervention studies and found that across 31 studies where attrition rates were reported, parents’ persistence in programs that combined literacy activities with their children varied greatly, with an average of 11.3% of parents not completing a program. They found that as the intervention required parents to be more active, the participation rate was lower, and parents explained it by a lack of time and many obligations. Our request for ten weeks of activity may have been too intensive for these busy parents.

Another possible explanation relates to the perceptions of literacy development. In Israel, children begin to learn to read and write in first grade. Parents and preschool teachers tend to see preschool as a time primarily dedicated to free play and are somewhat ambivalent regarding the direct teaching of literacy skills before first grade (Sverdlov & Aram, 2016; Weigel et al., 2006). It may be that even after the workshop, some parents did not understand or agree with our request to write with their children. Perhaps the idea did not match their personal perceptions of age-appropriate literacy development.

Last, the nature of the forum itself (a regular Google forum) may have been less inviting than others. In line with past recommendations (e.g., Berninger & Winn, 2006), the forums were graphically quiet, with no commercials or elaborate animation, but perhaps they were not attractive enough for the parents and the children. Perhaps a platform that is more carefully designed and adapted to preschoolers in terms of background and fonts would invite more parents to write with their children.

The Posts

In their posts, with the help of their parents, children mostly shared experiences with their friends as their parents and older siblings frequently do on social networks. For example, they wrote messages that referred to preschool events and games (e.g., “Did you enjoy the family party today?,” “What board game do you like?”) and everyday life events (e.g., “I visited my grandparents on Saturday”). The main themes that came up in the forums had positive content. Parents monitored the messages’ content and probably encouraged the children to share positive information.

Posts that included questions received more responses than messages formulated as information sharing. Questions tend to create an ongoing dialogue between the writer and the respondents. The number of responses children received related to the number of words they wrote. This finding is consistent with studies regarding students’ communication in educational forums that showed that responses from other students raise the level of motivation for learning, and attract greater participation (e.g., Siklander et al., 2017). There is evidence that online forums can be a platform for social interactions in class and it can help shy children express themselves (Kim et al., 2007). If parents are taught how to guide their children on how to ask questions in online forums, it may increase their participation (posting and receiving responses).

Progress in Early Literacy Skills and Interest in Literacy

The results of our study demonstrate the potential of writing activities at home. While parents did not write much with their children, the more they wrote during the ten weeks, the more the children’s early literacy skills progressed (little but significant progress). Writing activities encourage young children to analyze the sound construction of words and support phonemic segmentation and acquisition of letters while engaging in a meaningful activity (Aram et al., 2021).

The consonantal nature of the Hebrew writing system makes writing a relatively easy task (Katzir et al., 2012). Most words use a single letter to represent a consonant-vowel combination. For example, the word “book” (sefer) is written with three letters SFR representing two sub-syllables (se – fe) and a consonant (r). Therefore, helping preschool children write short messages is a reasonable task. Our study supports research showing that preschool children’s writing experiences with adults support their literacy skills (Bingham & Mason, 2018; Hood et al., 2008; Puranik et al., 2018), and highlights that, technology can be used to practice literacy, with parental involvement (NAEYC and the Fred Rogers Center, 2012).

As to children’s interest in literacy, our study supports research that showed relations between children’s writing with adults’ support and their interest in writing (Dobbs‐oates et al., 2015; Hume et al., 2015). The diversity of literacy activities at home relates to children’s interest in literacy (Neumann et al., 2012). Digital literacy activities are becoming more salient at home (Kumpulainen & Gillen, 2017). In the present study, children met their friends in an online forum. Such platforms catch students’ engagement (Onyema et al., 2019). Children were free to write on issues of their choice, with their parent’s agreement, unlike writing in literacy workbooks or training in copying letters, and the amount of such free writing in the online forums was related to progress in their interest in literacy.

Children with lower initial early literacy skills gained more from participation in the writing forums. Past research has shown that children with lower pretest literacy achievements benefit more from literacy and numeracy interventions (Levin & Aram, 2013; Ramani & Siegler, 2011). We suggest that children with initial literacy knowledge likely gained more from participation and writing in the online forums because the initiative provided their parents with a supportive platform on which to practice early writing with the children. Perhaps they come from families who usually provide them with little support, and the workshop taught the parents about the importance of joint writing and gave them a tool to support their children’s writing.

Regarding the control measures, we did not find correlations between the children’s age, self-regulation, SES, and their progress in literacy skills or interest in literacy after ten weeks. We suggest that the fact that the initiative was short and took place amongst children of the same age and from the same neighborhoods (who attend the local preschool) may have reduced the impact of these background measures.

Limitations and Future Research

As far as we know, this is the first study to examine parent-child joint writing in an online forum for preschoolers. Our study has limitations that open doors to future studies. First, this was not an intervention study with a comparison group. We could only assess the benefits from the variation in participation in our study. Second, the change in the children’s early literacy skills and interest in literacy was relatively low. We suspect that this is because we did not have the resources to speak with the parents weekly, give them feedback, and reinforce them. Indeed children’s participation in the forums was lower than what we hoped for. We recommend that future studies continue supporting the parents throughout the duration of the initiative. Third, we had information regarding the amount of child activity in the forum (new posts and responses), but we do not know how parents supported their children’s writing in the forums. We also do not know what other home literacy activities took place in the children’s homes. Future studies should also videotape parents at home with their children, interview them and collect data on other literacy activities like shared book reading or playing with magnet letters.

In conclusion, the study adds to our understanding of the contribution of adult-child early joint writing to children’s early literacy. It demonstrates the possibilities that the digital world opens to parent-child literacy activities and suggests how the amount of parent-child joint writing stimulates aspects of preschoolers’ early literacy and interest in literacy. Results showed that the extent of children’s writing in the forums with the support of their parents predicted small but significant progress in the children’s early literacy skills, controlling for the children’s initial early literacy scores. The more the children wrote in the online forum, the more they progressed. Given the increasing role that digital technology plays in the lives of young children, digital tools can be an additional meaningful means of supporting young children’s literacy development.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).