Developing and implementing early intervention strategies for children with literacy difficulties

Abstract

A substantial number of children fail to acquire basic literacy skills and, as a result, may carry their 'literacy failure' throughout their lives. This study was intended to develop, implement and evaluate an early intervention programme in English for children experiencing literacy difficulties. A quasi-experimental design was adopted. Participants consisted of 18 Year 3 primary school children from two different schools, 9 from a state school and 9 from an independent school: 6 children from each school were assigned to an experimental group and 3 children to a comparison group. Each of the experimental groups was given 15 one-hour sessions over 12 weeks on a withdrawal group basis. Sessions included work on alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, phonic knowledge, reading and writing. A range of pre- and post-tests was administered to all 18 children. Though the small number of participants limited the significance of the quantitative results, group results clearly pointed to the effectiveness of the intervention programme. Moreover, these results were supplemented by a qualitative analysis of lesson evaluations and teacher questionnaires. The rate of progress for the two experimental groups was greater than that made by the respective comparison groups. However, the group from the independent school, with English as the main language of instruction, showed more improvement through the programme. The results suggest that it is best to use first language to overcome literacy difficulties. They also show that effective programmes need to be regular and structured, and that the classroom teacher needs to be involved in the programme. This project also highlighted the importance of identifying struggling readers and writers at an early age since early intervention can make an important impact on their learning.