Concepts of Print Instruction — 2. Understands research-supported instructional approaches and interventions for concepts of print

Historical Context & Motivation

The study of how young children come to understand the conventions and functions of written language has deep roots in developmental psychology and emergent literacy research. Before the 1960s, reading instruction in early childhood was largely dominated by maturationist perspectives that assumed children were not ready to engage with print until they reached a particular developmental stage—typically around age six. This perspective, known as reading readiness, held that educators should wait for children to demonstrate certain prerequisite skills before introducing formal reading instruction, an approach that left many children without critical early print experiences.

The paradigm shift toward emergent literacy in the 1960s and 1970s fundamentally changed how researchers and educators understood young children's interactions with text. Scholars such as Marie Clay, Elizabeth Sulzby, and William Teale argued that literacy development begins at birth and that children actively construct knowledge about print through meaningful interactions with books and environmental text. This reconceptualization placed concepts of print—the understandings children develop about how print is organized, how it functions, and how it relates to spoken language—at the center of early literacy instruction.

The central question that this body of research addresses is both practical and urgent: What instructional approaches most effectively help young children acquire foundational understandings about how print works, and how should reading specialists design interventions for children who do not acquire these understandings through typical classroom instruction? As a Praxis Reading Specialist candidate, your ability to identify, evaluate, and recommend evidence-based strategies for concepts of print instruction is essential.

Core Principles of Concepts of Print Instruction

Concepts of print encompass a broad set of understandings that developing readers must internalize before they can decode text independently. These understandings range from the most basic conventions—such as knowing that a book has a front cover and that pages turn from right to left—to more sophisticated recognitions, including the distinction between letters and words, the function of punctuation, and the understanding that print, not pictures, carries the message. Research-supported instruction in this domain is guided by several foundational principles that inform both universal classroom practices and targeted interventions for at-risk learners.

Visual Explanation: The Concepts of Print Instructional Framework

The diagram above reveals an essential principle for Praxis candidates: concepts of print are not a monolithic skill but rather a developmental continuum that unfolds in a broadly predictable sequence. Children first learn to handle books physically and orient themselves to the page before they attend to the direction of print, and they must understand basic directionality before they can grasp more abstract concepts such as word boundaries and punctuation functions. Effective instruction aligns with this developmental sequence, ensuring that teachers do not skip foundational levels when planning shared reading or intervention activities. The tiered framework at the bottom of the diagram emphasizes that while most children acquire concepts of print through high-quality Tier 1 instruction, some require the additional intensity of Tier 2 small-group instruction or Tier 3 one-on-one intervention programs such as Reading Recovery.

How Research-Supported Instructional Approaches Work

Shared Reading with Big Books

The shared reading approach, pioneered by Don Holdaway in 1979, is perhaps the most thoroughly researched instructional method for concepts of print. In this approach, the teacher reads an enlarged text (a big book or projected text) with a group of children, using a pointer or hand to track the print as it is read aloud. The enlarged format ensures that all children in the group can see the print features being highlighted. Research by Holdaway and subsequently by Strickland and Morrow demonstrated that repeated shared reading experiences with the same text produce significant gains in children's understanding of directionality, one-to-one word matching, and print-meaning correspondence. The mechanism is fundamentally observational learning through guided attention: the teacher's pointing behavior explicitly directs children's visual attention to the features of print that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Interactive Writing / Shared Writing

In interactive writing (also called "sharing the pen"), the teacher and children collaboratively compose a text, with the teacher serving as scribe but regularly inviting children to contribute letters, words, or punctuation. Developed by McCarrier, Pinnell, and Fountas, this approach is particularly powerful for concepts of print because it makes the encoding process visible. Children observe and participate in decisions about where to start writing, which direction to move, when to leave spaces between words, and what punctuation to place at the end of a sentence. The research base for interactive writing shows that it strengthens children's understanding of the alphabetic principle while simultaneously reinforcing print conventions, making it a dual-purpose instructional tool.

Environmental Print Activities

Research by Goodman and Altwerger (1981) established that children's earliest encounters with print often occur through environmental print—logos, signs, labels, and packaging that carry meaning in the child's daily environment. Instructional activities that leverage environmental print, such as creating classroom labels, conducting "print walks" through the school or neighborhood, and collecting environmental print for sorting activities, help children understand the communicative function of print before they can decode individual words. While environmental print activities alone are insufficient for developing all concepts of print, they serve as a valuable bridge between children's out-of-school print experiences and formal classroom literacy instruction.

Reading Recovery and One-on-One Interventions

Marie Clay's Reading Recovery program represents the most intensively researched Tier 3 intervention for early literacy difficulties, including concepts of print deficits. In Reading Recovery, a specially trained teacher works with a first-grade student one-on-one for 30 minutes daily over 12 to 20 weeks. Each lesson follows a structured format that includes rereading familiar books (to reinforce print conventions through practice), taking a running record (to assess print behaviors), composing and writing a sentence (to reinforce directionality and spacing), and introducing a new book with guided attention to print features. The What Works Clearinghouse has rated Reading Recovery as having strong evidence of effectiveness for improving general reading achievement in first grade, including concepts of print outcomes.

Detailed Breakdown of Print Concepts and Targeted Strategies

To prepare effectively for the Praxis 5302, candidates must understand not only the broad categories of concepts of print but also the specific sub-skills within each category and the targeted strategies that reading specialists use to address each one. The following table provides a comprehensive mapping of individual print concepts to the instructional strategies and assessment indicators that the exam is likely to reference.

The cyclical nature of this lesson structure is important to emphasize: effective concepts of print instruction is not a one-time event but an iterative process in which teachers revisit familiar texts, deepen children's attention to specific features on each rereading, and use ongoing assessment to identify which concepts require additional focus. Research by Justice and Ezell (2002) on print referencing—the practice of verbally and nonverbally directing children's attention to print during shared reading—demonstrated that even brief, targeted references to print features during read-alouds produce statistically significant improvements in children's print knowledge compared to read-alouds without such references.

Worked Example: Designing a Concepts of Print Intervention

The following worked example walks through the process a reading specialist would use to design a targeted concepts of print intervention based on assessment data. This type of scenario-based reasoning is commonly tested on the Praxis 5302.

Comparing Instructional Approaches: Strengths and Limitations

Not all instructional approaches to concepts of print are equally effective for all learners or all print concepts. The following comparison highlights the relative strengths, limitations, and best applications of the major research-supported approaches. Understanding these distinctions is essential for Praxis 5302 questions that ask candidates to select the most appropriate intervention for a given student profile.

Connection to Advanced Literacy Theory and Assessment

Concepts of print instruction does not exist in isolation—it is deeply connected to broader theoretical frameworks that inform how reading specialists understand literacy development. Understanding these connections will strengthen your ability to answer integrative Praxis 5302 questions that span multiple competency areas.

A particularly important connection for Praxis candidates to understand is the relationship between concepts of print and Ehri's phases of word reading development. In Ehri's model, children begin in the pre-alphabetic phase, where they use visual cues (such as the golden arches of McDonald's) rather than letter-sound relationships to identify words. The transition from the pre-alphabetic to the partial-alphabetic phase requires that children have already developed foundational concepts of print—particularly the understanding that individual letters within words correspond to sounds. This theoretical connection underscores why concepts of print instruction is not merely a set of mechanical skills but a cognitive gateway to the alphabetic principle and all subsequent word reading development.

Practice Problems

Summary: Research-Supported Concepts of Print Instruction