Education Week – Sarah D. Sparks
“The ability of African-American preschoolers to tell vivid, complex stories predicts those children’s literacy skills later on when they’re in kindergarten, says new research from the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute in North Carolina. This link between “oral narrative” skills and early literacy was not seen in Latino, Asian, or white children, which was surprising, said Nicole Gardner-Neblett, an investigator with the institute and one of the study’s authors. Oral narrative skills may be important for children of other races as well, but the importance may show up in areas other than kindergarten literacy, she said. To measure the effects of oral narrative on kindergarten literacy, the researchers used a federal study that has tracked children born in 2001. About 6,150 children were evaluated by the researchers. The children were separated into four racial categories—European-American, Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American—and further divided by household income into poor and non-poor.”(more)