The article “Building Preschool Children's Language and Literacy One Storybook at a Time”, introduces reality of preschool and I could relate heavily to almost every word in it. The low wages make living off of one full time job financially stressful. Another huge problem facing this field is the high turnover rate which I can attest to. The preschool class is frequently a temporary position for teachers who are in the process of earning their degrees and certificates to teach in an elementary setting. For me, it was a middle ground which propelled me into pursuing education. While I was working at “The Goddard School” I often times felt as though there were high expectations and low necessary resources. I frequently used money out of my own pocket in order to decorate the classroom and provide materials the students needed to complete the engaging activities I had planned. The lack of professional development available and opportunity for growth often causes teachers to move to older ages or to different careers entirely. Not to mention the fact that it is stressful emotionally, since teachers in this age group are so intimately involved in their student's lives and development. Having said all of that I firmly believe that the children in the end are the reason why I stayed in that job for as long as I did on a day to day basis I truly enjoyed my job, I had the opportunity to smile everyday I walked into work.

     The brain development occurs rapidly at this age which is why language attainments are critical. There are multiple factors that the article focuses on in which shared storybook reading is essential in properly developing. It is the vehicle for language and literacy instruction that already exists typically in the preschool day, it is teacher guided and child focused. The article introduces CBAM which stands for Concerns-Based Adoption Model (pg 27, Beauchat, K. A., Blamey, K. L., & Walpole, S. (2009 ). CBAM researchers assume that as a new practice is introduced, individuals tend to focus on the new practice to be enacted. The findings are measured using Innovation Configuration which identifies the components of practice and implementation techniques and their effectiveness. These specific practices are associated with improved achievement.

     In this particular study the book, “Tabby Tiger” was used to execute CBAM practices and was studied across 15 classrooms. Oral language development is the first skill mentioned that is achieved by hearing sophisticated comments that children can relate to their prior knowledge. Giving examples can propel their own language development, asking open ended questions and prompting questions to expand children's explanations can help do this as well(pg 28, Beauchat, K. A., Blamey, K. L., & Walpole, S. (2009 ).

 
   Next comes comprehension development which can be targeted when teachers ask children questions before, during and after reading(pg 28, Beauchat, K. A., Blamey, K. L., & Walpole, S. (2009 ). By using this method of questions in different parts of the story teachers are helping students develop oral language and language that is about text meaning. Questions asked in the beginning of the story could include prior knowledge, questions in the middle of the story could require children to recall information from earlier in the book, and questions at the end of the story should connect the book all together.

     Building a child's vocabulary is easily achieved when teaching words explicitly. For example, pointing to pictures while reading the text or asking the child to point out the word that was just read. These concrete examples connect the word with a picture or physical concept of the meaning(pg 28-32, Beauchat, K. A., Blamey, K. L., & Walpole, S. (2009 ). Teachers can also target phonological awareness during and after reading, the key is to focus on working with rhyming, syllables and initial words. Next comes book and print conventions are essential to teach forms, features and functions of print for example how to properly read from left to right can be taught modeling it explicitly(pg 32, Beauchat, K. A., Blamey, K. L., & Walpole, S. (2009 ).

     Finally the article discusses the concept of letter and then word identification, going hand in hand with alphabet recognition, understanding that letters are used to represent words and that words are units of meaning (pg 32, Beauchat, K. A., Blamey, K. L., & Walpole, S. (2009 ). These are all concepts which are necessary to form the solid foundation for reading, a skill needed for the rest of the student's life. I learned a lot about the process of storybook reading throughout this article, identifying what I already practice and things that I need to work on contributing to the experience.

I think the following link is excellent at displaying the major themes of the article!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDlhvnCvkRg