The effects of a teacher-led numeracy read-aloud routine on the expressive math-talk of at-risk preschoolers

Many children enter kindergarten with adequate skills in mathematics, but some children, especially children from lower socioeconomic settings or children who are English learners, may be at-risk for meeting kindergarten mathematics expectations. To provide opportunities for at-risk preschoolers to learn mathematical language and concepts, we conducted a study on using mathematics-focused read-alouds with 48 teachers from five rural school districts providing education to at-risk preschoolers. Within this larger preschool study, we conducted pre- and posttests of mathematics content and language knowledge. For this dissertation study, a sub-group of preschool teachers agreed to audio record classroom instruction so I could examine the child math-talk that occurred in classrooms. I focused on four research questions. First, I asked about the contextual effects of using a mathematics-focused read-aloud routine. That is, I explored whether teachers and children made explicit reference to the children’s books used during the read-aloud routine, whether children verbally expressed teacher-selected vocabulary terms from the books, and whether there were discernable changes in the children’s use of mathematics-related terms across the 12 weeks of the project. Results showed teachers and children explicitly referred to the books in 65.8% of transcribed activity sessions, and children used 55.2% of the teacher-selected vocabulary terms. I did not find discernable patterns of change in children’s use of mathematics-related terms. Second, I asked about differences in child math-talk across conditions. For an analyzed sample, the control group had a higher average score for both the frequency and complexity of mathematics-related terminology used. I noted approximately the same average score for density of mathematics language between experimental and control. Third, I investigated which mathematics-related terms preschoolers in participating classrooms expressed in their math-talk. We identified a total of 358 unique terms expressed by preschoolers. In this dissertation, I report the 50 mathematics-related terms the preschoolers used most frequently and the five most commonly used words in each of 14 categories of mathematics-related language. Finally, to understand whether the read-aloud routine led to improved mathematics content and language knowledge of at-risk preschool children, I examined pre- to posttest scores for children in the experimental and control classrooms. I identified statistically significant gains favoring children in the read-alouds classrooms on a proximal measure of mathematics content and a distal standardized measure of early mathematics. I did not, however, identify performance differences between experimental and control classrooms on a proximal measure of mathematics language