Dialect-shifting instruction (Byrd & Brown, 2021)

<div><b>Purpose:</b> Dialect-shifting has shown promise as an effective way to improve academic outcomes of students who speak nonmainstream dialects such as African American English (AAE); however, limited studies have examined the impacts of an interprofessional approach with multiple instructional methods. In this study, we developed a dialect-shifting curriculum for early elementary school students who speak AAE and evaluated the curriculum for feasibility and preliminary impacts.</div><div><b>Method:</b> Forty-one kindergarten, first-, second-, and third-grade students and their teachers in one elementary school participated in a 7-week dialect-shifting instruction cotaught by the classroom teachers and a speech-language pathology graduate clinician. Students’ use of dialect-shifting and dialect density was measured by calculating dialect density measures in retells presented in AAE and mainstream American English and responses to situational dialect-shifting and applied dialect-shifting tasks. Teacher surveys and interviews about the feasibility and perceived impacts were conducted.</div><div><b>Results:</b> Initial impacts of the curriculum demonstrated increased dialect awareness for all students, with grade-level differences when students were asked to explicitly dialect-shift. In particular, second- and third-grade students were more proficient at dialect-shifting AAE features included in the curriculum. Additionally, high rates of administrator, teacher, and student satisfaction, teacher generalization, and maintenance of incorporating contrastive analysis instruction into class activities were reported.</div><div><b>Conclusions:</b> Literacy and play-based instruction are feasible methods to create a dialect-shifting curriculum tailored to younger students. Furthermore, the feasibility and effectiveness of the curriculum were supported by an interprofessional approach.</div><div><br></div><div><b>Supplemental Material S1.</b> Sample lesson plans. Week 2: Reinforcement of Dialect-Switching Concept.</div><div><br></div><div><b>Supplemental Material S2. </b>Overview of lesson plan content focus by week with relevant English Language Arts (ELA) Common Core State Standard (CCSS) for Grades K, 1, 2, and 3.</div><div><br></div><div><b>Supplemental Material S3.</b> Situational Shifting measure. </div><div><br></div><div>Byrd, A. S., & Brown, J. A. (2021). An interprofessional approach to dialect-shifting instruction for early elementary school students. <i>Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 52</i>(1), 139-148. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_LSHSS-20-00060</div><div><br></div><div><b>Publisher Note: </b>This research note is part of the Forum: Serving African American English Speakers in Schools Through Interprofessional Education & Practice.</div><div><br></div>