Syntes: Impact of a content-rich literacy curriculum on kindergarteners' vocabulary, listening comprehension, and content knowledge (2025)

Källa: https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000916 (Journal of Educational Psychology 117(2), 153–175). Authors' 2020 structured abstract of the same trials: https://cehhs.fsu.edu/sites/g/files/upcbnu4516/files/research/Sonia%20Cabell%2C%202020.pdf

Verified content

• [abstract] Two school-randomised trials, the second a replication of the first; 47 schools in large urban US districts; Core Knowledge Language Arts: Knowledge Strand (interactive read-alouds that build science and social-studies knowledge) vs waitlist control; 1,194 kindergarteners; about one semester.
• [abstract] Positive, significant impacts on proximal (taught) vocabulary and on science and social-studies knowledge; children who started with higher receptive vocabulary gained more of the taught words and knowledge. The abstract reports no listening-comprehension effect.
• [authors' 2020 report] Study 1: 23 schools (11 treatment, 12 control) in a mid-Atlantic district, 2017–18; Study 2: 24 schools (12/12) in a Southern district, 2018–19; 82% and 44% free or reduced-price lunch; one hour daily for one semester; topics Five Senses, Plants, Farms, Native Americans, Seasons and Weather; control schools kept their usual read-alouds, which included some science and social studies (p. 2).
• [authors' 2020 report] Pre-test before randomisation; baseline equivalence; minimal missing data, no significant differential attrition; intent-to-treat multilevel models (pp. 2–3).
• [authors' 2020 report] Both studies: "no discernable main effects on standardized measures of ... listening comprehension" (p. 3). Pooled across the two trials (Table 1): Test of Narrative Language ES 0.027 (95% CI −0.092 to 0.147, p = .655); CELF-4 Sentence Structure ES −0.031 (−0.121 to 0.059, p = .502); PPVT receptive vocabulary 0.001 (p = .988); WJ-III Picture Vocabulary 0.085 (p = .016); WJ-III Science 0.116 (p = .044); WJ-III Social Studies 0.01 (p = .831); proximal taught-vocabulary test 0.559 (p < .001).

Limits

• [authors' 2020 report] One semester only; Study 2 continued into first and second grade "to more fully test whether systematic knowledge building using CKLA impacts reading comprehension" (p. 4).
• [assessment] Kindergarten listening comprehension, not reading comprehension; children were not yet reading texts on their own. Taught-topic comprehension was not measured as such.
• [assessment] The published article was not read (APA's open-access PDF is behind a bot check from the box); numbers above come from the authors' earlier report and may differ slightly from the final article.

Added 2026-10-22 by the project (nightly attack run). [abstract] = from the published abstract; [authors' 2020 report] = read in the authors' structured abstract of the same trials; [assessment] = the project's own assessment.