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You
are here: Improving the Early Literacy Skills of Young Children
At Risk for Reading Difficulties
Young children who have limited early literacy skills at school entry (e.g., print awareness, alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness) represent one of the greatest challenges facing educators today. These children typically fail to benefit fully from the core literacy instruction provided by educators to all children, falling farther behind as they progress through their educational career (Vellutino, Scanlon, & Reid, 2003). The early identification and application of supplementary preventative early literacy interventions with young children who are at risk for developing reading difficulties is necessary to ensure their acquisition of proficient reading skills (Burns, Griffin, & Snow, 1999). Further, intervening early in a child's school career offers the least intrusive opportunity for getting children on the right track for subsequent acquisition of proficient reading skills.
Children not only begin to benefit earlier from the core literacy instruction provided to all children, but they are less likely to need subsequent interventions and supports in the future. We describe a pragmatic and cohesive (i.e., defined scope and sequence, intensive explicit instructional formats) early literacy intervention (Stones to Literacy: Nelson, Cooper, & Gonzalez, 2004) that educators can use to promote the early literacy skills of young children at risk for reading difficulties.
What Early Literacy Skills are Taught?
Stepping Stones consists of one Lesson Book and a separate section on serial rapid automatic naming (activities that provide children practice making quick visual-verbal associations of known sets of colors, numbers, and/or letter names in a left-to-right format). Instructional prompts are provided in both English and Spanish. During short daily lessons of 15-20 minutes (i.e., total of 9 to 15 total hours of instruction depending upon the individual learning rates of children, ) individual or small groups (n = 2 to 3) of children are guided by an educator through a set of instructional activities designed to promote children's print awareness, alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, and serial rapid automatic naming skills. These skills have been found to be the best school-entry predictors of how well children will learn to read during the first two years of instruction (e.g., NRP, 2000).Additional instructional activities are used in the initial 14 instructional sessions to promote children's listening comprehension skills and understanding of the meanings of sentences/short stories (i.e., listen for who is doing something and for what they are doing). The lessons include cohesive and intensive instructional formats to ensure children's acquisition and consolidation of these foundational pre-reading skills. The scope and sequence for the print awareness, alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, and serial rapid automatic naming areas is presented in Table 1. Note that instruction in print awareness and alphabet knowledge proceeds instruction in phonological awareness when it is used with preschool children. Instruction in serial rapid automatic naming occurs over the entire instructional sequence. Additionally, the instructional formats are held constant across the lessons and guide the educator through each of the instructional activities (i.e., soft scripted) and all of the necessary instructional stimuli are included.
Table 1. Scope and Sequence by Early Literacy Area:
What are the Keys to the Successful Implementation?
Stepping Stones scope and sequence introduces the pivotal early literacy skills gradually. Children are provided immediate and continuous practice and review opportunities to ensure acquisition of the skills. Based on our work training professionals and nonprofessionals, we have found Stepping Stones is effective when the following conditions are met:
1. Instructors follow the lesson formats and instruct children every day. Instructors do not improvise, leave out part of the lessons, or skip days. A self-evaluation treatment fidelity form is used on regular basis by instructors to ensure that they following the lesson formats as prescribed.
2. Instructors are highly engaging and positive.
3. Instructors are well-organized, use a brisk pace, and provide children encouragement and feedback throughout the lessons.
4. Instructors get to know the children's instructional needs and adjust the level of scaffolding or support they provide them (i.e., vary the level of task demands in response to the child's competence) and opportunities to respond or practice the pivotal early literacy skills covered within each lesson. Furthermore, instructors adjust their pacing within as well as across lessons to ensure children acquire the pivotal early literacy skills.
5. Instructors monitor children's strength and weakness by carefully observing them and tracking their performance over time.
Who Should Receive the Supplementary Instruction?
Stepping Stones was designed to serve kindergarten and older preschool children who have limited early literacy skills (e.g., print awareness, alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness). These are children who do not know their letter names, lack phonological awareness skills (e.g., cannot rhyme), and are unable to blend and segment phonemes. We recommend that, at a minimum, children in the bottom 30% of the children in the classroom should be tested on these skills. Depending upon a school's resources, we recommend that a combination of the following methods be used:1. Classroom teacher prediction. Teachers can make relatively accurate predictions after three the third week of school about which children have early literacy deficits. Teachers simply rank order children in terms of their early literacy skills at school entry.
2. Teacher assessments. Teachers can use existing early literacy assessments to identify children with early literacy deficits. These assessments might also include the Title 1 and special education teacher assessments.
3. Systematic screening process. A systematic screening process (recommended) can be used to identify children at risk for reading difficulties. For example, at the kindergarten level, the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) probes can be used (Good & Kaminski, 2002). The The Get it Got it Go! Individual Growth and Development Indicators (IGDIs) system can be used to screen preschool children (McConnell, Priest, Davis, & McEvoy, 2002).
Final Thoughts
Stepping Stones helps many children at risk of reading difficulties learn foundational early literacy skills necessary to benefit earlier from the core literacy instruction provided to all children and, in turn, reduce the need for subsequent alphabetic principle interventions. We believe this program is effective and useful because:
· It is designed for young children (e.g., kindergarten). (i.e., total of 9 to 15 total hours of instruction depending upon the individual learning rates of children) and intense.
· It is flexible—it can be delivered in a one-to-one or small group format by professionals and nonprofessionals alike.
References
Burns, M.S, Griffin, P., & Snow, C.E. (Eds.). (1999). Starting out right: A guide to promoting children's reading success. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Good, R. H., & Kaminski, R. A., (Eds.) (2002). Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (6th ed.) Eugene, OR: Institute for the Development of Educational Achievement. Available: http://dibels.uoregon.edu.
McConnell, S. R., Priest, J. S., Davis, S. D., & McEvoy, M. (2002). Best practices in measuring growth and development for preschool children. In A. Thomas & J. Grimes (Eds.), Best practices in school psychology IV (pp. 1231-1246). Bethesda, MD: NASP.
Nelson, J. R., Cooper, P., & Gonzalez, G. E. (2004). Stepping Stones to Literacy. Longmont, CO: Sopris West.
National Reading Panel (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction: Reports of the Subgroups (NIH Publication No. 00-4754). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Vellutino, F., Scanlon, D. M., & Lyon, R. G. (2003). Differentiating between difficult-to-remediate poor readers. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 33, 223-239.
Dr. Nelson is an Associate Professor and College of Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, specializing in behavioral and learning disorders of children. His major areas of interest are school-wide and individualized positive behavioral intervention and support systems. He teaches courses on characteristics of children with emotional and behavioral disorders, classroom management, and research and evaluation methods. Dr. Nelson's research career includes the publication of over 90 books, book chapters, and articles which have focused on serving students with disabilities and those at risk of school failure. Additionally, Dr. Nelson has a long history of disseminating his efforts and best practices to the field. rnelson8@unl.edu
©September 2005 New Horizons for Learning
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