Beginnings of Reading: The Effects of the Preschool Reading Center

This study examined the effects of the daily Reading Center in a preschool classroom on 16 children over a school year. Objective variables, related to the Center and derived from the interface between the concepts of developmentally appropriate practice and emergent literacy, were measured. The Center was found to be developmentally appropriate since it was child-centered in terms of the interaction with children, adults and materials, voluntary participation, child-selected words, and individualized instruction based on a pretest for 20 beginning reading skills (i.e., emergent literacy). Concurrently, the Center had features of a teacher-centered activity with the implementation of a rather specific instructional procedure. The experimental children showed marked gains in their acquisition of the 20 beginning reading skills while their matched controls, in other classrooms, who did not have the Reading Center experience, showed a slight increase. The advantages are discussed of a detailed behavior analysis on related independent, dependent, and accompanying measures for a thorough understanding of the results.