JCPSLP
Volume 16, Number 2 2014
63
data were obtained, nor was teacher and teacher aide
engagement in the program measured. Previous research
has shown the importance of implementation fidelity and
teacher engagement on students’ emergent academic skills
following intervention (de Haan et al., 2013).
Conclusions and future directions
The results from this preliminary study underline the
importance of emergent literacy intervention programs that
are effective in enhancing disadvantaged prep students’
emergent literacy skills in order to prepare these students
for successful literacy acquisition and development. Based
on the findings from this pilot project, a district-wide
emergent literacy intervention project will commence in
2013. Building on the strengths of this project, and
controlling for some of the limitations of this preliminary
project, the following factors will be taken into
consideration:
•
Home literacy environment
. As part of the school
admission interview all parents will be asked to complete
a home literacy questionnaire to better understand the
students’ literacy experiences prior to starting school
(Boudreau, 2005).
•
English-language proficiency.
Careful appraisal of the
students’ English language abilities will be conducted
upon school entry, to allow for more careful evaluation
of the influence of English-language skills on progress in
emergent literacy.
•
Story retelling and comprehension ability
. To more
effectively evaluate progress in oral narrative ability and
to obtain a measure of English language proficiency,
story retelling and comprehension will be used as pre-
and post-measures.
•
Duration of the intervention
. The intervention will
be held over 24 weeks, using 12 different books
(selection based on story grammar, vocabulary, general
attractiveness, and affordability). This will support
the integration of the intervention into the classroom
curriculum, and provide the students with exposure to
quality language instruction over a longer period of time
(Justice et al., 2008).
•
Implementation fidelity
. Teachers and teacher aides will
be provided with more frequent feedback regarding the
implementation of the intervention programs. Sessions
will be randomly recorded to evaluate whether teachers
and teacher aides adhere to the intervention programs
(de Haan et al., 2013).
•
A more formal evaluation of the teachers’ and teacher
aides’ perceptions around the value of the intervention
program will be conducted.
PC3 at the end of the school year on measures of story
retelling or comprehension. These results therefore show no
advantage for more intensive small-group intervention over
regular whole-class instruction for letter knowledge or oral
language. These results are in line with those from McIntosh
et al. (2007) who found no intervention effects on preschool
age students’ oral language skills immediately following a
10-week block of classroom-based intervention.
Although the students from PC2 and PC3 made
significant progress in emergent literacy related skills during
their first year at school, this progress was not sufficient
to catch up to the level of their more advanced peers in
PC1. Not only did the majority of the students in those
classes continue to score below average on measures
of vocabulary and phonological awareness, at the end
of their first year at school students in PC2 and PC3
also performed significantly lower on measures of story
comprehension, story retelling, vocabulary, and grammar.
There may be several explanations for the students’
failure to catch up. First, a high proportion of the students
were from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
These children may struggle to access the English-medium
Australian curriculum, which does not specifically cater for
children from non-English backgrounds and states that
“participation in many aspects of Australian life depends
on effective communication in Standard Australian English”
and that “proficiency in English is invaluable globally”
(ACARA, 2012, p. 3). Second, the school’s policy to place
the higher ability students in a separate classroom (PC1)
may not benefit the most disadvantaged students. In
fact, recent research suggests a mixed abilities classroom
may be more effective in promoting emergent literacy
development in disadvantaged students (de Haan et al.,
2013). Third, longer-term follow-up is needed to evaluate
the effectiveness of the program. McIntosh et al. (2007)
found significant intervention effects on preschool age
students’ oral language skills three months after a 10-week
block of classroom-based intervention; there was no effect
immediately following intervention, indicating the students
needed time to consolidate their newly learned skills.
There are several limitations to this project. The SPAT-R
was not administered to the students in PC1 due to time
constraints, making it difficult to determine the amount of
progress these children made in terms 3 and 4. In addition,
we do not have detailed information about the students’
English language proficiency upon school entry, nor did we
collect information regarding the students’ home literacy
environment. Finally, although the group session plans were
scripted, and the speech-language pathologist observed
several groups in action, no formal treatment fidelity
Table 4. Performance on the Sutherland Phonological Awareness Test – Revised (SPAT-R) by prep class
Measures
Prep Class 1
Regular curriculum
Prep Class 2
Regular curriculum
Prep Class 3
Additional intervention
Classification#
Initial*
Final
Initial
Final
Initial
Final
Concern
0
20 (91%)
10 (45%)
20 (95%)
8 (38%)
Average
17 (85%)
2 (9%)
11 (50%)
1 (5%)
13 (62%)
No score
3 (15%)
1 (5%)
0
Note:
# Classification is based on the mid-year (initial) and end-of-year (final) norms as per the manual: Concern = < 25th percentile; * No initial
data are available
