Today's preschool teachers are educating a diverse population of children, with many from homes where English is not the first language. In light of this growing number of English Language Learners (ELLs) in preschool, researchers have investigated ways to support ELLs' emergent literacy development. One of the ways to support ELLs' emergent literacy is to read books aloud to children (Xu, 2003). Reading books aloud to children has been highlighted as a way to support ELLs' emergent literacy because books can expose children to new words and teach concepts of the printed word. This body of research on literacy development provides many insights but does not address how to support teachers in successfully incorporating recommended practices into their daily curricula. Typical professional development approaches are of limited utility when it comes to supporting teachers in incorporating emergent literacy practices into their teaching repertoire due to their lack of follow-up.

For this study, four state preschool teachers participated in a teacher mentor professional development and were each observed and videotaped four separate times during their shared reading events (twice during the mentoring and twice after the mentoring ended). The videotaped shared reading data was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively and showed that these four teachers did change their emergent literacy practices by incorporating more dialogic reading prompts and more opportunities for children to talk while they were being coached. Once the coaching sessions were over the teachers used less dialogic reading prompts and provided less time for children to talk during shared reading events. These results indicate that teachers' emergent literacy practices can benefit from coaching sessions.