Supporting Young Children’s Emotional and Behavioral Communication through Evidence-Based Read Alouds: Project GROW

We describe study findings for Project Grow, a class-wide read-aloud program for early intervention to support emotional and behavioral communication. Participants will learn reading techniques to teach children important Social and Emotional Learning themes (e.g., “I Can Name My Feelings,” “I Can Persist”) and relevant vocabulary using engaging multicultural texts. Participants will be able to: 1. Assess and interpret Project Grow’s initial findings related to feasibility, implementation fidelity, student vocabulary and self-regulation growth, and social validity. 2. Identify and implement explicit vocabulary instruction and provide a hierarchy of questioning strategies (and additional models and prompts) to engage students in robust dialogic reading discussions that develop overall vocabulary, and specifically, SEL vocabulary to build emotional and behavioral communication. 3. Implement GROW in their classrooms and train others to read aloud to students to support young children's social and emotional communication and improve behavior.