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

The Team Penny Chiappe Suet Ling Chong Jill Etmanski Kim Kozuki Nonie Lesaux Pauline Low Orly Lipka Rose Vukovic Lesly Wade-Woolley

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

Critical Issues Recognize and treat dyslexia early Understand ESL reading difficulties – dyslexia or not

How can we prevent reading difficulties?

Prevention Early identification Early intervention Evidence based reading programs

Screening We have the techniques to screen children who are at risk for learning disabilities at age 5 Screening should be universal –Easy to administer –Brief

3 Tier Model 1. Classroom instruction –Early screening 2. Resource withdrawal 3. Intensive help

Characteristic of the 3 Tier Model Excellent, evidence based classroom instruction Frequent monitoring of performance Help as soon as it is needed Intensive assessment only as a last resort

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 6 – age 12

Longitudinal Sample All the children in the North Vancouver School District 30 schools Varying SES levels 20% English Language Learners (ELL) 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 6 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.

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 several weeks ago. 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 –Differences between Chinese and English Verb tenses Plurals Articles

Reading 44 Training reading comprehension strategies Vocabulary Syntax

Word Identification

Word Attack

Word Reading Fluency

Psuedoword Reading Fluency

Phoneme/Syllable Deletion

Spelling

Pseudoword Spelling

Oral Cloze

Morphological - Words They need to diversionary diversity diversion diversify

Morphological - Pseudowords The car is too rendalize rendal rendment rendify

Morphological Task- Words

Morphological Task- Pseudowords

Stanford Reading Comprehension

Experimental Reading Comprehension

SES & Reading

SES & Spelling

Kindergarten SYNTACTIC AWARENESS

Grade 6 Syntactic Awareness

Conclusions It is possible to identify children at risk for reading disabilities in kindergarten. It is possible to provide a classroom based intervention to bring most of these children to at least average levels of reading. Children learning English as a second language can perform at L1 levels and bilingualism may be an advantage.

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.

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

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

Controls Prince George study – outcome related to the amount of time spent in phonological awareness, teacher knowledge, and principal support Provincial examinations

Word Reading Portuguese L1

Word Reading Italian L1

Word Reading Arabic L1

Word Attack Portuguese L1

Word Attack Italian L1

Word Attack Arabic L1

Spelling Portuguese L1

Spelling Italian L1

Spelling Arabic L1

Final Conclusion Bilingualism facilitates a child’s literacy development.