Teacher Accommodation of Academic Language During Head Start Pre-Kindergarten Read-Alouds

Abstract

Little analytical scrutiny has been devoted to teacher accommodation of academic language at the early childhood level, despite being a critical school-level factor to consider when addressing at-risk learners’ academic needs. The present study investigates how fifteen Head Start teachers support three components of academic language during whole-class read-alouds of narrative storybooks: academic vocabulary, conceptual knowledge, and complex syntax. Pairing a corpus-based analysis of linguistic features and content analyses of teachers’ extratextual utterances, we describe teachers’ strategies for accommodating at-risk children’s early experiences with linguistically and syntactically complex texts. Our findings indicate that teachers simplified the language of the texts to accommodate student need, while also providing examples of academic talk through defining terms and providing conceptually-rich talk. Although teachers provided rich support for academic vocabulary, less accommodation was made for complex syntax. Practical and theoretical implications are addressed.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by grant #R324E060088A from the US Department of Education awarded to Ann Kaiser and the David K. Dickinson, and Vanderbilt’s Experimental Education Research Training Grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES; Grant No. R324E060088) and the Department of Teaching and Learning at Peabody College.