JCPSLP
Volume 16, Number 2 2014
59
Ethics Committee, Griffith University and from the principal
of the school.
Participants
The data from 63 prep students (94% of the original cohort)
were available for analysis at the end of the school year (33
boys, 30 girls). These students were aged between 4;7 and
5;6 at the start of the school year (2012). At the enrolment
interview, 51 of these prep students were assessed using
the
BRIGANCE
®
Screens – Revised Australian Edition
(Glascoe, 2005). Not all prep students were available for
testing at the time of the interview. The BRIGANCE screen
helps identify potential learning delays in language, motor,
self-help, social-emotional, and cognitive skills and takes
approximately 10–15 minutes per child. As per the school’s
policy at the time, students with the highest total scores
were placed in Prep Class 1 (PC1); the remaining students
were allocated to Prep Class 2 (PC2) or Prep Class 3 (PC3).
As shown in Table 1, there was a significant main group
effect for the BRIGANCE, F(2,48 = 38.824,
p
< .001), with
students in PC1 outperforming the students in other prep
classes (p < .001). There were no differences in
performance on the BRIGANCE between PC2 and PC3 (p
= .508). As illustrated in Table 1, approximately 30% of
students in PC1 were from culturally or linguistically diverse
backgrounds (CALD); this percentage was much higher for
PC2 and PC3. Finally, there was a higher proportion of girls
in PC1 compared to PC2 and PC3. With principal approval,
parents were provided with an overview of the project and
given the opportunity to opt out if they did not wish for their
child’s assessment results to be included in the data
analysis. None of the parents opted out of the study.
One of the few Australian-based emergent literacy
interventions that specifically targeted the PA and oral
language abilities of socially disadvantaged preschoolers
was reported by Dodd and colleagues (McIntosh et al.,
2007; O’Connor, Arnott, McIntosh, & Dodd, 2009). The
intervention program lasted for 10 weeks, and included
oral language and PA activities based on the vocabulary
frequently found in children’s books. The program content
was integrated into the daily teaching plan and was
implemented by the classroom teacher. Results showed
improved PA and oral language abilities in the short term,
compared to a no-intervention control class. These results
were promising and seemed to support the implementation
of whole-class intervention (over no intervention). However,
the gains in initial PA and language skills as observed by
McIntosh et al. (2007) did not lead to improved reading
ability two years later (O’Connor et al., 2009), suggesting
further research into the effectiveness of classroom-
based emergent literacy intervention is needed. No
effect sizes were reported, so it is not clear if small-group
instruction would have yielded better gains (Hattie, 2009).
As summarised in a meta-analysis, previous research
evidence supports small-group instruction over whole class
instruction when teaching PA in children considered at-risk
of reading difficulties (see National Reading Panel, 2000).
The school
The school that participated in the current project is
comprised of students from many culturally and linguistically
diverse (CALD) backgrounds, with 54% of students
identifying as Pacific Islander. A total of 17% of students are
reported to have a language background other than
English; 10% of students identify as Indigenous. AEDI
(2012) results show that 17.8% of students in the region are
considered developmentally vulnerable across
two
or more
areas. This figure is higher than the national average of
10.8%. Furthermore, when the school’s students are
divided into quarters reflecting the distribution of
socioeducational advantage across the school’s population,
44% of the students fall within the ‘bottom quarter’, and
only 2% of the students are classified as ‘top quarter’
(Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority,
2012; ACARA). The school’s year 3 NAPLAN (National
Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) results of
the last five years show consistently poor overall
performance compared to the national average on
measures of reading, writing, and spelling (ACARA, 2012).
The school received both National Partnership funding and
regional government funding during 2012 and 2013 and
appointed a full-time speech-language pathologist (SLP) to
initiate language-literacy related projects and to provide
professional development to teachers, teacher aides,
parents, and students regarding early language and literacy
development. The current study aimed to investigate the
effectiveness of a classroom-based small-group intervention
program aimed at raising the emergent literacy skills of
students during their first year of schooling. This pilot project
aimed to answer the following research question: Does
additional intensive classroom-based small-group emergent
literacy intervention improve the emergent literacy skills of
students during their first year at school, compared to their
peers who receive the regular classroom literacy curriculum?
Methods
This project used a quasi-experimental design, that is a
non-equivalent pretest-posttest control group design.
Permission for the project was obtained from the Human
Table 1. Participant details and peformance at the
start of the school year
Measures
Prep Class 1 Prep Class 2 Prep Class 3
N
20
22
21
Age in
months (SD)
59 (3.8)
59 (3.5)
59 (3.7)
Boys /Girls
7/13
13/9
13/8
%CALD
30%
50%
52%
BRIGANCE*# 57.1 (25.2)
15.6 (11.3)
6.6 (13.3)
range
1–89
1–39
1–55
Note: CALD = culturally and linguistically diverse background;
* BRIGANCE: percentile scores are reported. # There were significant
group differences between PC1 and PC2 and PC3. No significant
differences between PC2 and PC3. Not all students were available
for testing: PC1: 19; PC2: 16; PC3: 16.
Measures
Table 2 outlines the assessment and intervention schedule.
As shown in Table 2, at the start of the school year (term 1,
week 2), as part of routine school procedures, all
participating students were assessed on the following tasks
by the first author, a certified practising speech-language
pathologist:
•
The Renfrew Language Scales – Action Picture Test
(Renfrew, 2010). This test uses 10 picture prompts to
elicit expressive language (sentences) and yields an
information score and a grammar score.
