23. Dr. Elizabeth Sulzby -- Emergent Literacy and Language Development

My guest today is Dr. Elizabeth Sulzby whose research focus is on early language and literacy development in Pre-Kindergarten. She talks about research studies she did with preschoolers in NYC years ago where teachers do repeated readings of storybooks—even those with complex language and story structure—and study children’s rereadings and retellings. These studies formed the basis for her emergent reading classification scheme. We also talk a bit about emergent writing development in prekindergarten and its parallels to reading development. Later, I’m joined by my colleagues Gina Dignon and bilingual educator Clarisa Leal for a conversation about practical takeaways for young children and multilingual learners.

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Read a full transcript of this episode and learn more about Jennifer Serravallo.

AccessEmergent Literacy: Writing and Reading

More on Dr. Sulzby’s KLP Literature Program

The Reading Strategies Book 2.0

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More about this episode’s guest:

Elizabeth Sulzby is best known for her pioneering work in emergent literacy. Prior to coming to the University Michigan in 1986, Sulzby was associate professor with tenure at Northwestern University. During 1996-97, she was a visiting professor at Leiden University, the Netherlands, where she collaborates with A.G. Bus and Marinus H. Van IJzendoorn in studies of attachment and emergent literacy. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and her M.Ed. from the College of William and Mary. She did post-B.A. study in philosophy at Harvard University after receiving her B.A. in philosophy and English from Birmingham-Southern College. 

Sulzby is the author, with W. H. Teale, of Emergent literacy: Writing and Reading, and has published her research on children's emergent reading and writing development in numerous journals.  Her studies of emergent bookreading and emergent writing have been conducted with diverse groups of children aged 2-7, including African American, Spanish-English bilingual immigrant, Appalachian, and European American children.

Research in emergent literacy has led Sulzby in a number of related directions. She has studied the transition from emergent to conventional literacy, designing techniques for assessing literacy from toddlers to early elementary grades in a manner consistent with emergent literacy insights. Her studies, with Bus, van IJzendoorn, Teale, and Kaderavek have bridged the parent-child intervention studies and children's independent emergent readings. 

Her research has been funded by the Spencer Foundation, NIE/OERI, the Research Foundation of NCTE, and by various computer and software companies, including IBM, Apple Computer, and Jostens. Sulzby is a Fellow in the APA and NCRLL and has served on many editorial and research review boards. Recently, she served on OERI's advisory group for a center for early literacy agenda, NCEE's New Standards Primary Literacy Panel and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council's Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). 

Special thanks to Alex Van Rose for audio editing this episode. 

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