Early reading and reading related skills in Steiner and standard beginning readers'

1
Early reading and reading related skills in
Steiner and standard beginning readers.

• A longitudinal study of the first year of reading
  development.
• Anna Cunningham

2
Overview

• Rationale
• Background
• Longitudinal study
• Results
• Conclusions

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Rationale

• Debate- when is it best to start formal
  education?
• England the year in which the child becomes
  five
• Steiner schools, Scandinavia and Canada Age
  seven
• US, Australia most European countries Age six
• Standards of Literacy as good and frequently
  higher in countries that start later.

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Is age seven important for reading?

• Marshs Cognitive-developmental theory
• Third stage sequential decoding
• Develops in line with Piagets concrete
  operational stage
• Duncan and Seymours theory of foundation
  Literacy (2000)

Letter-sound knowledge
Logographic process
Alphabetic process
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Age effects on reading

• Oldest and youngest children in a year group
• Differences in early reading disappeared after
  the first year of school (Chrone and Whitehurst,
  1999).
• Sharp, 1994 .English, Maths and Science KS1 test
  results from 4,000 6-7 year olds found that young
  summer-borns performed significantly less well
  than their older autumn born counter parts.
• Effect of schooling is more pronounced in poorer
  children.

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Phonological awareness

• Phoneme awareness is strongest predictor of
  reading
• Gombert, 1992 Conscious awareness of sounds
  (metalinguistic awareness) develops at age 6-7
• Can be stimulated from age 5 through explicit
  activities
• Reciprocal relationship between phoneme awareness
  and reading
• Wimmer et al. 1991, study of Austrian non readers
  age 6-7
• Little or no phoneme awareness at beginning, but
  developed rapidly within first few months of
  reading.
• Perfetti et al. 1987, reading led to phoneme
  deletion which led to reading.
• Word blending has a simpler, enabling effect on
  reading development

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Age effects on reading related skills

• Studies that look at children of greater than one
  years age difference have found that significant
  developmental change occurs in reading related
  skills between the ages of 4 and 8.
• Wagner, Torgesen and Rashotte (1994) found
  significant differences between 5½ year olds and
  7½ year olds on measures of phoneme deletion, and
  blending, digit span, memory for sentences and
  vocabulary
• No studies have compared these skills in older
  and younger non readers.

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Longitudinal study Participants

• Older children group
• Steiner educated
• Reading instruction begins age 7
• 2 schools
• Private
• Younger children group
• National curriculum educated
• Reading instruction begins age 4
• 1 school
• Middle-class area

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Methods of teaching reading

• National Curriculum
• Explicit teaching of phonics 42 sounds
• Begin first term Reception at age 4.
• Letter sounds are introduced before letter names
• Steiner method
• Whole word approach within context
• Writing before reading
• Letter names taught before letter sounds

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Non reader lt5 on BAS word reading, Some reading
6-19, Reader gt20 Older Steiner children, n
55 Younger Standard children, n 60
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• Groups matched on
• Vocabulary
• Word reading (5 or less words on the BAS)

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Design and Procedure

• Comparing older non-readers with younger non
  readers
• 1 year longitudinal study of the first year of
  reading development
• Testing at 3 time points
• Beginning, middle and end of first year of
  schooling
• Measures
• Reading Phonological awareness
• Word reading Phoneme deletion
• Non word reading Phoneme blending
• Reading comprehension
• Letter-sound knowledge Visual verbal learning
• Recall of sentences Non word repetition

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All significant plt0.001. Composite phonological
awareness d1.2 (younger and older non readers),
d1.9 (younger and older zero readers). Older non
readers n31, Younger non readers n 34, Older
zero readers n 16, Younger zero readers n 23.
Older readers n 21
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Conclusions

• Reading improves phoneme deletion and blending
  skills in older children
• Phoneme deletion and blending skills can develop
  in children who cannot read
• This is more likely to occur in older than
  younger children
• Older children develop phonological awareness
  naturally, younger children as the result of
  explicit instruction in phonics?

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All significant p lt0.01, Letter sound knowledge,
plt0.05 Non word repetition d2, Recall of
sentences d1.9, Visual-verbal learning d.7,
letter knowledge d.65. Older non readers n31,
Younger non readers n 34.
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Older non readers Partial correlations
(controlling for age)
Younger non readers Partial correlations
(controlling for age)
All Pearsonss r, p lt0.05, p lt 0.01
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Conclusions

• Older non readers have better reading related
  skills than younger non readers.
• Reading related skills are significant concurrent
  predictors of phonological awareness in younger
  but not older non readers.
• Letter-sound knowledge is a strong predictor for
  both groups. However, the younger children still
  had poorer phonological skills despite the
  advantage of better letter knowledge.
• Age is a stronger predictor of phonology than
  letter sound knowledge.

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Summary

• Longitudinal study of 31 Steiner educated older
  non readers and 34 National curriculum educated
  younger non readers.
• Time 1 results taken at the beginning of the
  first year of reading instruction presented.
• Phoneme deletion and blending skills shown to
  develop in some non readers, mostly older rather
  than younger.
• Reading related skills were better in older non
  readers apart from letter sound knowledge which
  was better in the younger group.
• The seven year olds are more ready to learn how
  to read than the four year olds.