Fostering language skills: a parental book reading intervention

Parents will receive: a) a phone call (2-3 minutes) by an experienced interviewer that will encourage parents to participate in this initiative and will explain the important benefits of parental reading for their children in terms of cognitive development and educational opportunities; b) one free book to read per week distributed by the school teacher (selection of 16 book titles); c) written materials with information on effective reading techniques (one brochure each week during the first two months); d) text messages every week with tips and suggestions for an enjoyable reading (6 to 10 weekly messages starting in the third month). Teachers are allowed to present the books to the children but not to read them regularly.

2017-11-06

2018-05-20

Primary outcomes: language skills, measured by a test of receptive vocabulary and a test of narrative competence.
Secondary outcomes: parental book reading frequency; parental and child enjoyment for book reading

The measure of receptive vocabulary is built by the team to focus on the vocabulary of the books. It consists of 16-20 words-stimuli: for each of these words, there are three confounders. The child is shown the four images and has to point the image corresponding to the word-stimuli named by the interviewer.

We draw a random sample of 22 public, REP/REP+, pre-primary schools in the 18/19/20th arrondissements of Paris (the areas corresponding to the disadvantaged neighbourhoods of the city). REP/REP+ schools are schools characterised by a high share of disadvantaged families. We invite the school principals by phone in September: this call is also used to screen out schools that already have a regular initiative of book borrowing to the families. Then, we visit the schools to present the experiment to the teachers and to organise the pre-treatment test and the distribution of parental consent forms, which contain also a small questionnaire (parental education, language spoken at home, parental reading frequency, parents' and child enjoyment for parental book reading). The teachers collect these forms between September and October and only if parents sign them their children are eligible. In october the children are administered a test of receptive vocabulary and asked about parental book reading frequency. The above-described intervention lasts between November and early May. In May/June we have the post-treatment test: the same test of receptive vocabulary, plus a measure of narrative competence (still to be defined, the model is the model is the Renfrew bus story test). Additionally, the parental questionnaire with the questions on reading frequency and enjoyment is administered to the parents also in June.

We draw a random sample of 22 public, REP/REP+, pre-primary schools in the 18/19/20th arrondissements of Paris (the areas corresponding to the disadvantaged neighbourhoods of the city). REP/REP+ schools are schools characterised by a high share of disadvantaged families. We invite the school principals by phone in September: this call is also used to screen out schools that already have a regular initiative of book borrowing to the families. Then, we visit the schools to present the experiment to the teachers and to organise the pre-treatment test and the distribution of parental consent forms, which contain also a small questionnaire (parental education, language spoken at home, parental reading frequency, parents' and child enjoyment for parental book reading). The teachers collect these forms between September and October and only if parents sign them their children are eligible. In october the children are administered a test of receptive vocabulary and asked about parental book reading frequency. The above-described intervention lasts between November and early May. In May/June we have the post-treatment test: the same test of receptive vocabulary, plus a measure of narrative competence (still to be defined, the model is the model is the Renfrew bus story test). Additionally, the parental questionnaire with the questions on reading frequency and enjoyment is administered to the parents also in June.

Within each school, half of the classes are assigned to the treatment and half to the control status. We use the "randbetween" function in Excel.

Each class in the school is the randomization unit

Yes

Around 80 classes, comprising both classes with only children aged 4 and mixed-age classes ('multi-niveau'), where only children aged 4 participate in the study.

Around 900 children

450/450

effect size of 0.20. Based on Powerup software, accounting for clustering, availability of pre-test measures and individual and school-level predictors of the outcome, and randomisation design (clustered with bloking at the school level)

Analysis plan