Intervention Strategies to Fix the General Knowledge Gap
Develop literacy skills early
Helping an at-risk child stay on-track with early literacy milestones is more effective than supplementing a child that is already behind: It's easier to keep up than to catch up!
Teaching phonemic awareness and decoding skills can help can help improve reading skills
Frequency of children's participation in learning activities
Reading to your child a few times a week, or even daily is best practice.
Telling your child stories a few times a week or daily is essential for creative learning and development.
Singing nursery rhymes, incorporating books and stories into a bedtime routine, and visiting museums all contribute positively to the child's learning environment.
By 3 years of age, children should start learning their numbers, the alphabet, colors, and shapes & sizes.
Provision of age-appropriate learning materials
Expose your child as much as possible to reading material such as books and magazines
If possible, try and provide your child with 10 or more books by age 3. Libraries are a great resource for letting them explore and see what fits into their growing imaginations.
Other appropriate learning materials include toys requiring hand-eye coordination, toys for music, and board games which require attentional focus.
Quality of the parents' engagements with the child
Be sure to always respond to your child's engagements, such as crying, babbling, etc. Any communicative interaction is helpful.
Try to constantly stimulate higher levels of mastery and understanding
Engage in pretend play
Present activities in an organized sequence of steps
Visit this page to learn more about the importance of home environment.
Classroom learning quality
A content-centered classroom includes:
A variety of materials and resources to create a literate environment
High level of teacher interaction. Look here to learn more!
Initial School Intervention Ideas
1) Training parents to match their literacy practices at home with the school’s curriculum. — ❌
However, literacy at home is usually bound to the family’s cultural belief system
Children's specific experience is connected to their lives and individual situations
It is inappropriate to ask family to change the way they teach their children because every family is going through something different
Things to be mindful of: financial situation, cultural differences, family background
2) School system meets the family halfway. — ✅
Learn about the literacy practices of the children
Be cognizant of differences in performance due to different home-school practices
Incorporate home styles → bridge home and school experiences
Ultimately, schools need to recognize that each family has a different situation at home—which is based on social and cultural circumstances. You can read more about this under Considering the Cultural Background.
Technology Interventions
Web-based games at home have been shown to be helpful in increasing outcomes for low SES children. For more information on how they can help and which games are helpful, click here.