Early Identification and Intervention to Prevent Reading Difficulties Linda Siegel University of British Columbia Vancouver, CANADA

Why Early Identification + Intervention 82 % of the street youth in Toronto had undetected and unremediated learning disabilities All the adolescent suicides in a 3 year period in Ontario had undetected and unremediated learning disabilities

Why Early Identification + Intervention 75%-95% of individuals in prison have significant reading difficulties In Vancouver, 45 % of ESL students fail to complete high school. Undiagnosed and unremediated reading problems result in emotional and social difficulties

Critical Issues Recognize reading problems early Understand the language development of ESL students Understand the literacy developement of ESL students

Aims of the Study Identify children at risk for literacy difficulties Provide an appropriate intervention Assess the effectiveness of the intervention

Longitudinal Study Screening at age 5 when children enter school Tested every year on reading, spelling, arithmetic, language and memory skills Results at grade 7 – age 13

Longitudinal Sample All the children in the North Vancouver School District 30 schools Varying SES levels 20% English Language Learners (ESL) Inclusion

Arabic Armenian Bulgarian Cantonese Croatian Czech Dutch Farsi Japanese Korean Kurdish Mandarin Norwegian Polish Punjabi Romanian LANGUAGES IN THE STUDY German Greek Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Italian Finnish Russian Serbian Slovak Spanish Swedish Tagalog Tamil Turkish

KINDERGARTEN GRADE 5 L1 EnglishELL Kindergarten

KINDERGARTEN GRADE 5 Dyslexic Normal Dyslexic Normal Grade 7 L1 EnglishELL

Screening Effective Brief – minutes Done by teachers Provide useful information

Kindergarten Screening Letter identification Memory Phonological processing Syntax Spelling

Letter Identification c r m k bwo s y t a ud q x l g e zn j p h v i f

Sentence Repetition Sentences are spoken orally to the child and the child is required to repeat them exactly. Examples. Drink milk. I like ice cream. The boy and girl are walking to school. The girl who is very tall is playing basketball.

Reading Test

the and sit when book

anacampersote mithridatism qualtagh ucalegon groak

Phonological Awareness Ability to break speech down into smaller units  words  syllables  phonemes

SYLLABLE IDENTIFICATION

RHYME IDENTIFICATION

PHONEME IDENTIFICATION

ORAL CLOZE

Jane ____her sister went up the hill. Dad ____ Bobby a letter yesterday. Oral cloze

child’s name mom dad cat I no SIMPLE SPELLING

Firm Foundations Rhyme detection Initial sounds Segmentation Blending Sound discrimination

Firm Foundations Activities and games designed to develop –Phonological awareness –Letter sound relationships –Vocabulary –Syntactic skills

Circle Skills -Teaching the whole class Centre Skills – Practicing in small groups Assessment - Working with individual students

Literacy Activities Listening to stories Acting out stories Singing songs Letter of the week Letter cookies

Other Important Abilities Vocabulary – understanding and producing the meanings of words Syntax – understanding the basic grammar of the language

Reading 44 Training reading comprehension strategies Vocabulary Syntax

1.ACCESS BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE BRAINSTORMING a)introduce concept and ask the children to generate ideas b)teacher records all ideas-mind map c)word list on board

4. Self-monitor And Self Correct 5 Finger Rule keep track of the words that they do not know on their fingers if there are 5 words in the first 100, get a new book

Results at Grade 7

Word Identification cat see book should finger glutton emphasis intrigue usurp idiosyncrasy

Word Identification

Woodcock Word Attack dee pog ched gouch cigbet bafmotbem monglustamer

Word Attack

Word Attack Portuguese L1

Word Attack Italian L1

Word Attack Arabic L1

Word Reading Fluency

Psuedoword Reading Fluency

Phoneme/Syllable Deletion

Spelling

Spelling Portuguese L1

Spelling Italian L1

Spelling Arabic L1

Pseudoword Spelling

Oral Cloze

Morphology 51 Hungarian for “at risk of dyslexia”. Diszlexiaveszélyeztetettség

Morphological - Words They need to diversionary diversity diversion diversify

Morphological Task- Words

Morphology Related to reading comprehension Related to spelling A better predictor of reading comprehension and spelling than phonological awareness or syntactic awareness

Stanford Reading Comprehension

Experimental Reading Comprehension

Percent OK on Experimental and Low on Stanford The ELL group was significantly more likely to score in the average range on the Experimental task than on the SDRT

SES & Reading

SES & Spelling

Conclusions Most ELL dyslexic children have better reading, spelling and phonological skills than their monolingual peers. Many ELL normal readers have better English reading, phonological, and spelling skills in their second language than children who have English as a first language.

Caveats The development of language and literacy skills in ESL students requires good teaching First language maintenance is important wherever possible

Internet Resources –Click on Firm Foundations –Click on Reading 44