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

2. 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

3. 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

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

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

6. 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

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

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

9. Kindergarten
KINDERGARTEN
L1 English
ELL
GRADE 5

10. Grade 7 KINDERGARTEN L1 English ELL GRADE 5 Dyslexic Dyslexic Normal

11. Screening Effective Brief – 15-20 minutes Done by teachers
Provide useful information

12. Kindergarten Screening
Letter identification
Memory
Phonological processing
Syntax
Spelling

13. Letter Identification
c r m k b w o
s y t a u d q
x l g e z n j
p h v i f

14. Sentence Repetition Examples. Drink milk. I like ice cream.
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.

15. Reading Test

16. the
and
sit
when
book

17. anacampersote
mithridatism
qualtagh
ucalegon
groak

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

19. SYLLABLE IDENTIFICATION

20. RHYME IDENTIFICATION

21. PHONEME IDENTIFICATION

22. ORAL CLOZE

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

24. SIMPLE SPELLING
child’s name
mom
dad
cat I no

25. Firm Foundations Rhyme detection Initial sounds Segmentation Blending
Sound discrimination

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

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

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

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

31. Reading 44
Training reading comprehension strategies
Vocabulary
Syntax

32. 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

33. 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

34. Results at Grade 7

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

36. Word Identification

37. Woodcock Word Attack
dee
pog
ched
gouch
cigbet
bafmotbem
monglustamer

38. Word Attack

39. Word Attack Portuguese L1

40. Word Attack Italian L1

41. Word Attack Arabic L1

42. Word Reading Fluency

43. Psuedoword Reading Fluency

44. Phoneme/Syllable Deletion

45. Spelling

46. Spelling Portuguese L1

47. Spelling Italian L1

48. Spelling Arabic L1

49. Pseudoword Spelling

50. Oral Cloze

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

52. Morphological - Words They need to diversionary diversity diversion
diversify

53. Morphological Task- Words

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

55. Stanford Reading Comprehension

56. Experimental Reading Comprehension

57. 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

58. SES & Reading

59. SES & Spelling

60. 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.

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

62. Internet Resources http://www.nvsd44.bc.ca Click on Firm Foundations
Click on Reading 44