Literacy Investigation Brianna Huff

Question  How does a preschool student with significant speech production impairments acquire pre-literacy or reading skills, if that child cannot produce the sounds, detect the sound in various parts of the word, or recognize whether the words sound alike, rhyme or begin/end the same?

Definitions  Speech Impairment: general term to describe speech that is difficult to be understood  Lisp, stutter  Language impairment: general term that describes a disability with expressive or receptive language  Not talking, incorrect pronoun use-”her went to the store”, poor vocabulary, minimal word use,  Speech production impairment: analytical term, what specifically the child is doing, implies the child has an error pattern, child has been evaluated  Apraxia, phonological processing disorder-initial consonant deletion but can produce key sound  Pre-literacy skills:  Oral language, phonological awareness, knowledge of alphabet and their sounds, rhyming, spelling and comprehension

Definitions  Phonological awareness: awareness of sounds in language, awareness of rhymes, ability to talk about and manipulate sounds, understanding relationship between spoken and written language  Phonological awareness skills: Identifying rhymes, words that start/end the same, blending separated words into words, manipulating sounds in words by adding or deleting  Think phonics, (sounding out words, pre-reading)

Rationale  I became interested in this the minute I met Jeffery. He is so intelligent but has significant speech impairments. I wondered if his impairments could hinder his intelligence and his success in pre- literacy skills. I want to find the correlation, if one, between the two.

Strategy  I will interview Jeffery’s teacher and speech pathologist.  I will observe him in his classroom setting as well as during speech therapy.  I will interact with him, do activities with him and use a speech evaluation report to help with my investigation.  I will also research the issue to find more information.

Products  I plan to achieve an understanding of how speech impairments affect children’s learning and if they even do.  The outcome will enhance my learning because I will investigate an area that I may encounter as a future educator.  It will enhance the support of the child because I can share what I find out with his family and/or teacher, which will benefit them as well.

Hypothesis  I believe that having a speech sound production impairment will impact the child's pre-literacy skills; however not make them reading disabled. I feel the spelling will be a challenge.

The Impact of Developmental Speech and Language Impairments on the Acquisition of Literacy Skills  Children with developmental speech/language impairments are at higher risk for reading disability than typical peers  Studied literacy outcomes in children who have primary language impairments or PD but who are otherwise typically developing  Results:  Clear that children with language impairments fall behind their typical peers and may not master certain skills on target. 80% classified as RD.  Children with phonological disorders were not found to be at greater risk for reading impairments; however, they do tend to have more spelling difficulties than their peers.

Twenty-year Follow-up of Children With and Without Speech-Language Impairments: Family, Educational, Occupational and Quality of Life Outcomes  Not just pre-literacy outcomes  Long term prognosis for children with communication disorders  Described the family, educational, occupational and quality of life outcomes of 25-year-old participants who started at age 5  20 year prospective, longitudinal study of individuals with and without early speech and language impairments  Results:  Individuals with language impairments performed more poorly than those without disorders at Time 1-4 on all language, cognitive and academic measures

Pre-literacy Speech Sound Production Skill and Later Literacy Outcomes: A Study Using the Templin Archive  Children with speech sound disorder (SSD) tend to have poorer literacy outcomes than typically developing children  Studied the relationship between speech sound production skills in kindergarten children and their literacy outcomes (reading & spelling) in grades 1-3 with minimal speech therapy  Results:  Kindergartners with the most severe SSD scored more poorly in 1 st and 2 nd grade reading and 3 rd grade spelling than the children with average speech sound production  Kindergartners with none to minor speech sound production disorders achieved superior literacy skills  SSD tends to be obvious proof that it does in fact influence literacy skills

Relationship Between Speech-sound Disorders and Early Literacy Skills in Preschool-Age Children: Impact of Comorbid Language Impairment  Studied the impact of isolated SSD and SSD with comorbid LI on literacy skills  Only article to mention SES  Preschool children with SSD and LI may benefit from instruction in pre-literacy skills in addition to language therapy  Results:  Early reading and writing scores were significantly lower for children with comorbid LI  Below average language skills in preschool place a child at risk for deficits in pre-literacy skills which may influence reading disabilities

Literacy Outcomes for Students with Speech Impairment: Long-term Follow-up  Many children with expressive phonological impairments experience problems in acquiring literacy skills  Tracked the phonological processing and literacy skills of children with speech impairments from kindergarten to 1st grade and then again at age 13  Divided into 2 groups: Developmental and Non-developmental speech impairments  Results:  Children with non-developmental speech errors performed more poorly with comprehension, accuracy and spelling  Showed ongoing difficulties for non-developmental group

Meet Jeffery  5 year old preschool student  Head Start  Kindergarten next year  Apraxic-motor planning disorder where he hears the sound and goes to imitate it and his motor planning is just all off.  Baby-“dady” asks if he said it right, and he believes he has. Speech production impairment  Bottle- “doe tle”  Very Intelligent  Language has been assessed to be above average  Developmentally up to par for kindergarten  Recognizes and can read sight words- cat, book, girl, boy  Excellent drawer  Can draw all letters in logical way  Very creative  High amount of frustration because of apraxia, thinks he’s saying it right and people don’t understand him and sometimes does not recognize errors  Recognized rhyming words

Observation: Speech Therapy  Goal: Articulation Target and auditory discrimination  Understood rhyming after awhile  Doesn’t always recognize the individuals sounds  Mastered the “D” sound at the beginning of word--age appropriate  Cannot always discriminate the context sound like “ch” and “sh”  Can not discriminate “M” and “N” and interchanges the two which is impacted by his speech impairment which can affect his reading skills  Word cards-SLP modeled words and Jeffrey imitated, run through a few times to get a closer approximation of the sound  Drill in Speech therapy with a list of target speech words with one and two syllables  He talked about what he was doing  Needed prompted and cued to stay on task

Observation: Classroom Setting  Very distracted in classroom, door open and he was the first to get up to see what’s going on  Very active to participate, raises hand and has right answer but teacher does not always understand him  Eager to learn  Helpful  Friends with everyone-very social  Outgoing  Communicated with everyone

Interviews  Ronna Rebo-SLP  Rebecca Cardoni-Preschool teacher  Questions related to Jeffrey  Pre-reading was never assessed by SLP’s until 2009 so now they need to incorporate, what I saw in speech therapy was never done before

Analysis  Guarded concern that his impairment may impact Jeffrey’s pre-literacy skills  Although he is very smart it may counteract  His kindergarten teacher is aware  He will continue speech therapy  Hope is with those in place he will develop on target  After reading the articles, SSD is proven to impact reading skills negatively

Analysis  2/5 articles found that poor speech sound production skills impacted the child’s pre-literacy skills in a negative way  3/5 articles found that language impairments affected the child’s pre-literacy skills in a negative way  1 differentiated between developmental and non- developmental impairments impacts on reading and non-developmental impairments affected pre- literacy skills more