Phonological awareness and silentreading: The benefits of intervention and early intervention in rea

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Phonological awareness and silent-reading The
benefits of intervention and early intervention
in reading for children who have Down
syndrome. Kathy Cologon.Institute of Early
Childhood, Macquarie University, Sydney,
Australia.kcologon_at_tpg.com.au
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Research background

• Expectations, opportunities and outcomes
• Life for a person who has Down syndrome in
  Australia 1950 to today.
• What has changed?
• What has remained the same?
• The question that arises
• Implications for researchers, educators and
  policy makers.
• Implications for this research.

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The importance of literacy

• Communication
• Social practices
• Education
• Implications for inclusive practices.

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The importance of reading

• Reading is a vital aspect of literacy
  development.
• The importance of reading for all
• The potential additional importance of reading
  for communication for children who have Down
  syndrome.
• Implications for this research.

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Phonological awareness

• What is phonological awareness?
• Why is it important for literacy development?

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Phonological awareness and children who have Down
syndrome.

• What is known about phonological awareness in
  children who have Down syndrome?
• Implications of phonological awareness for
  reading development in relation to models of
  reading mastery.
• Implications for educational opportunities.
• Possible limitations that need further
  investigation.
• Implications for this research.

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Reading comprehension

• What is reading comprehension?
• Why is reading comprehension important for
  literacy development?

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Reading comprehension and children who have Down
syndrome.

• What is known about the reading comprehension of
  children who have Down syndrome?
• Implications for communication and reading
  development.
• Implications for educational opportunities.
• Possible limitations that need further
  investigation
• Implications for this research.

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Research Aims

• This research aims to provide further empirical
  research evidence examining reading development
  in children who have Down syndrome with
  implications for inclusive educational practices.
• Specific research focuses
• The benefits of intervention and early
  intervention on the reading development of
  children who have Down syndrome.
• Phonological awareness.
• Reading comprehension.
• The implications of reducing oral language
  demands of reading tasks.

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Research Hypotheses

• Instruction in phonological awareness will
  facilitate phonological awareness development.
• Reducing the oral language demands of reading
  tasks will facilitate improved reading
  comprehension.
• Reading instruction, particularly instruction
  focused on phonological awareness development,
  will facilitate improved phonological output.
• Early intervention will be beneficial for reading
  development.
• School-age intervention will also be effective
  for reading development.

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Methodology

• Experimental case studies
• Sample
• Basic research design
• Initial assessment
• Control period
• Pretest
• Intervention
• Posttest
• Maintenance posttest

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Assessment tasks

• PPVT-III (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Dunn
  Dunn, 1981)
• STAP (South Tyneside Assessment of Phonology,
  Armstrong Ainley, 1992)
• Digit span (Cupples Iacono, 2000)
• Woodcock Reading Mastery Subtests (Woodcock,
  1987)
• Word Identification
• Word Attack
• Passage Comprehension

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Assessment tasks continued

• Word blending (Cupples, Iacono Law, 2003)
• Non-word blending (Cupples Iacono, 2000)
• Word segmentation (Cupples Iacono, 2000)
• Non-word segmentation (Cupples Iacono, 2000)
• Letter-sound production (Cupples, Iacono Law,
  2003)
• Letter-sound recognition (Cupples, Iacono Law,
  2003)

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Assessment tasks continued

• TACL (Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language,
  Carrow-Woolfolk 1985)
• RCPM (Coloured Progressive Matrices, Raven, Court
  Raven, 1995)
• Word span
• Word comprehension
• Training word probe
• Generalisation word probe

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Intervention

• Intervention groups
• Phonological awareness intervention group
• Silent-reading intervention group
• Training and Generalisation word probes.
• Sample distribution
• Age groups

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Phonological awareness intervention

• Intervention steps
• 1. Oral reading of training words.
• 2. Oral word reading and picture match (choice of
  two pictures).
• 3. Oral blending of an onset and rime presented
  orally only and choose the corresponding picture
  (choice of three pictures).
• 4. Individual phoneme blending (plastic letters)
  orally and visually, followed by picture match
  (choice of three pictures).
• 5. Ask the participant to orally blend individual
  phonemes (without plastic letters), make a
  picture match and put the picture in the box
  (Choice of three pictures).
• 6. Sentence completion (oral reading, three words
  to choose from, no picture).
• 7. Oral reading of training words.

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Silent-reading intervention

• Intervention steps
• 1. Silent reading of training words.
• 2. Silent word reading and picture match (choice
  of two pictures).
• 3. Silent reading of a short sentence then
  picture matching (choice of three pictures).
• 4. Action task 1 Silent reading of a target
  word, then place picture match in a box (choice
  of three pictures).
• 5. Action task 2 Silent reading of an action
  sentence and completion of the action (put the
  picture in the box/bag/hat) with the correct
  choice of picture (three possible pictures to
  choose from).
• 6. Sentence completion (silent reading, three
  words to choose from, no picture).
• 7. Oral reading of training words.

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Results

• All participants in the study showed improvements
  in reading ability at the conclusion of the
  intervention.

The comparison between pre and posttest scores
for each participant on training and
generalisation word probes.
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Results for the intervention groups
Bars paired by colour. Pretest mean score
followed by posttest mean score Generalisation
word probe Letter-sound production Letter-sound
recognition Non-word blending Non-word
segmentation Passage comprehension Training
word probe Word attack Word blending Word
comprehension Word identification Word
segmentation
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At the conclusion of the study all participants
in both the phonological awareness and the
silent-reading intervention groups showed
improvement on all assessment tasks.As
indicated in the table on the following slide, a
comparison of posttest mean scores for measures
of phonological awareness are higher for the
phonological awareness intervention group, while
mean scores for measures of reading comprehension
as well as measures of single real-word reading
are higher for the silent-reading intervention
group.These results are consistent with the
research hypotheses.
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Intervention group mean score comparison.
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Results for the age groups
Bars paired by colour. Pretest mean score
followed by posttest mean score Generalisation
word probe Letter-sound production Letter-sound
recognition Non-word blending Non-word
segmentation Passage comprehension Training
word probe Word attack Word blending Word
comprehension Word identification Word
segmentation
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As can be seen in the table below, overall mean
scores for posttests for both interventions are
consistently higher in the 7-12 age group than in
the 3-6 age group.
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Implications of results for phonological
awareness intervention group

• Hypothesis testing
• Implications for educational practices
• Implications for further research

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Implications of results for silent-reading
intervention group

• Hypothesis testing
• Implications for educational practices
• Implications for further research

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Implications of results for the 3-6 age group

• Given the successful progress made by
  participants in the 3-6 age group the possible
  benefits of early intervention in reading for
  children who have Down syndrome needs to be
  explored further in the areas of
• Phonological awareness
• Implications of study and potential benefit for
  later reading development.
• Reading comprehension
• Implications of study and potential benefit for
  later reading development.
• Oral language development
• Implications of study and potential benefit for
  later language development.

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Implications of results for the 7-12 age group

• Plateau's and glass ceilings
• Possible benefits of school-age intervention in
  reading for children who have Down syndrome.
• Phonological awareness
• Reading comprehension
• Oral language development

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Implications of phonological output scores

• Change in phonological output scores
• The relationship between phonological output
  scores and reading improvement
• Implications for the relationship between reading
  and oral language development for children who
  have Down syndrome
• The relationship between phonological output and
  phonological awareness scores
• Implications for reading instruction

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Further discussion

• Intervention comparisons
• Age group comparisons
• Towards inclusion implications for educational
  opportunities and policy
• The importance of phonological awareness and
  reading comprehension for all.
• Implications for further research

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Conclusions

• Early intervention and school-age interventions
  were found to be successful in facilitating
  reading development in this study.
• The results of this study suggest that children
  who have Down syndrome can demonstrate
  phonological awareness and greater decoding
  skills after participating in phonological
  awareness instruction.

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• The results of this study suggest that reducing
  the oral language demands of reading tasks may
  facilitate reading comprehension for some
  children who have Down syndrome.
• The results of the silent-reading intervention
  group also demonstrate that children who have
  Down syndrome demonstrate improved reading
  comprehension after engaging in reading
  comprehension tasks.
• The results of this study provide support to the
  suggestion that reading development aids oral
  language development for children who have Down
  syndrome.