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Intervention programs can prove useful for children with delayed vocabulary and linguistic development. In order for these programs to be successful they must be comprehensive, intensive, and sustained. Instead of focusing on specific linguistic skills, intervention programs should aim to help the development of a child as a whole. We will outline different facets of successful intervention and how it could help close the literacy gap.
Intervention programs can prove useful for children with delayed vocabulary and linguistic development. In order for these programs to be successful they must be comprehensive, intensive, and sustained. Instead of focusing on specific linguistic skills, intervention programs should aim to help the development of a child as a whole. We will outline different facets of successful intervention and how it could help close the literacy gap.
DIFFERENT not DEFICIENT
DIFFERENT not DEFICIENT
Addressing the Literacy Gap
Addressing the Literacy Gap
Successful Interventions Need To:
Successful Interventions Need To:
- Occur on a consistent basis until literacy is met.
- Recognize children’s cultural and linguistic identity.
- Develop shared understandings about teaching, learning, and development.
- Address both constrained and unconstrained skills.
Early Head Start
Early Head Start
- Early Head Start (EHS), a comprehensive intervention program, is a national program to provide child development and family support resources to children under the age of three and pregnant women who come from low-income families.
- What it does to help children: promotes cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development of toddlers and helps families reach their goals of self-sufficiency through supporting the children's caregivers.
- EHS offers weekly home visits, classroom services, and family childcare.
- To find the nearest Early Head Start center to you, see the Head Start Center Locator.
- To learn more about health and language & literacy, see the ECLKC website.
- Especially their page on Language and Literacy .
Tutoring
Tutoring
- Children differ from one another in emotional fortitude and cognitive abilities.
- Unsupervised programs can result in wasted instructional time and money for the child.
- Tutoring from certified teachers yields higher improvement in literacy than tutoring from volunteers; however, volunteers can be successful with adequate training.
- The key to successful volunteer efforts is the training and mentoring given to tutors in an apprenticeship model.
Three Attributes Important for Effective One-on-One Tutoring:
Three Attributes Important for Effective One-on-One Tutoring:
- All beginning reading instruction should contain a balance of oral reading for fluency, alphabetics, and comprehension.
- Oral reading fluency: accuracy, speed, and expression
- Alphabetics: phonemic awareness, spelling, alphabet
- Comprehension: thoughtful interaction between reader and text
- Higher frequency and longer duration of tutoring yields stronger improvements in long-term literacy.
- Connected Systems
- The home, the school, and the community are equally responsible for literacy.
- Meaningful home-school partnerships and partnerships between research community and school districts are important.
- Schools must work to build connections between teachers, tutors, and supporting school staff to provide an optimal learning environment.
Constrained v. Unconstrained Skills
Constrained v. Unconstrained Skills
- Constrained skills include the alphabet, phonemes, basic spelling rules, and basic sight words
- Unconstrained skills include vocabulary, grammar, background knowledge, and telling narratives
- Important to use programs that address both constrained and unconstrained skills in the classroom
Other Programs
Other Programs
- Reading First
- focused on word reading and fluency through practices in phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension
- financially incentivized schools to implement new practices, offered professional development to teachers
- Success for All
- integrated new practices with traditional approaches to create a mosaic of practices
- success of the program depended on how strictly instructors followed the guidelines, limited flexibility
- Worlds of Words
- for preK children to improve generalization by embedding vocabulary education in other unrelated domains
- successful in
- supports productive classroom talk which may contribute to its success
- Opening the World of Learning
- program that coaches teachers on how to use a language and literacy curriculum
- led to improvement in children’s vocabulary, emergent literacy, numeracy, and self- regulation skills
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