The Impact of Using Reading Storybooks and Writing Journal Activities on Print and Phonemic Awareness of Jordanian Kindergarten Children

This study investigated the impact of reading storybooks and writing journal activitieson print and phonemic awareness of Jordanian kindergarten children. Subjects participatedin book-reading sessions with a print focus, and writing journals. A total of 50 childrenwere recruited for the study from one kindergarten in Irbid City, Jordan. Two intact sectionsof 25 children each served as experimental and control groups. Pre-test measures of children’sprint and phonemic awareness were administered. Subsequently, children in the experimentalgroup participated in 24 small-group reading sessions that included a print focus, and14 writing journals over a 14-week period. As an alternate condition, control-group childrenparticipated in conventional instruction methods only. Post-testing indicated that childrenwho participated in print-focused reading and writing journal sessions outperformed theircontrol group peers on four measures of print awareness (words in print, print concepts, alphabetknowledge and letter discrimination, and literacy terms), and on phonemic awareness(letter sound identification, rhyme, phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation, and phonemicmanipulation), as well as overall performance. Implications and future research directionsare discussed.