Current Projects

Overview

Dyslexia Screening Questionnaire (DysQ) Project*

The goal of this project is to create a bilingual screening questionnaire to identify 6-year-olds at-risk for dyslexia. We intend for this measure to be used in pediatrician's offices at the 6-year-old wellness visit. This project will increase early identification of dyslexia, and in turn give these children access to resources to prevent academic difficulties. We are running participants for this project and have availability to schedule your child today! If you are interested in participating in this project, please click here to access our flyer or email us using the information on our contact page! 

EMBRACE Project

The goal of this project is to increase reading comprehension in Latino children using the EMBRACE iPad or online intervention. In addition the program trains parents on asking questions during book reading with their children to increase comprehension. This interactive intervention app provides families with short stories to read with their child in English and in Spanish. The program provides guidance throughout reading for parents, teaching what kinds of questions they should be asking their kids during reading to increase their comprehension. We hope to be recruiting families for this intervention soon, and will update our site with flyers to register when we begin! Click here for more information about this project.

Reading Comprehension in Monolingual and Bilingual Children (MBRC) Project*

The purpose of this project is to bring together multidisciplinary researchers to address poor reading comprehension. In collaboration with Arizona State University, preschool and kindergarten predictors of poor reading comprehension were identified in 6th graders to enable identification of the most at risk children even before they learn to read. This study analyzes early predictors of reading comprehension after students have learned to read fluently. It also tests the controversial proposal that some children are late-emerging
‘poor comprehenders’ with reading comprehension deficits appearing in 6th grade despite no prior evidence of problems. We also hope to determine whether results of these studies differ for children who entered preschool speaking English or speaking primarily Spanish. We are currently not recruiting for this project. Please feel free to reach out for more information about this project. Click here for more information about this project.

BSF Project

For this project, we are working in coordination with the US Israel Binational Science Foundation to investigate models of bilingual teaching for preschool aged children. We are examining language transfer depending on which language is introduced first in a narrative language intervention. We are currently conducting transcription and analyses for this project, and not recruiting. Please feel free to reach out for more information about this project. Click here for more information about this project.

EYEPlay* 

What began with a simple idea has become over a decade-long exploration of what it means to teach drama for preschoolers: What is the clearest way to transfer drama facilitation skills to teachers? How can drama support language learning? How can drama support emergent bilingualism? How do you measure effective drama facilitation? How do you measure children’s learning and social/emotional development when they participate in drama-based lessons? These questions have fueled this projects growth and expansion across the country in the last decade. 

The program design today is a direct result of the active participation of hundreds of classroom teachers, teaching artists, researchers and, of course, children. To date, it has been implemented in 122 classrooms, including 24 bilingual/dual language classrooms in Arizona and Florida. For more information about this project, please click here.

* Project in coordination with Arizona State University

 

PAST Projects

This page contains past projects and projects not currently being facilitated at USF.

Language and Reading Research Consortium

The Language and Reading Research Consortium (LARRC) was a five year project five-year project led by Ohio State University (OSU) . The grant compromised of a multidisciplinary set of studies designed to increase fundamental understanding of the role of lower-and higher-level language skills in listening and reading comprehension and knowledge of how to effectively increase language knowledge and comprehension skills in preschool through grade three through systematic classroom-based interventions. Project activities spanned four states and involved more than 3,000 preschool to third grade children in more than 300 classrooms. For more information about the project, click here.

Spanish Screener for Language Impairment in Children (SSLIC) Project

The goal of this project is to test the reliability and validity of a Spanish screener for language impairment. This iaddress the limited number of standardized measures available to evaluate children for this condition and qualify them for services either in a private or school settings. English-only measures and some Spanish measures have found to be inappropriate for use with bilingual or Spanish-only speaking children. With this project we hope to bridge the gap in access to proper and fair assessment for these children to prevent under and over-identification of children with language impairment. For more information about the project please click here.