An investigation of the effects of an intensive early literacy support program on the phonological processing skills of kindergarten children at-risk of emotional and behavioral disorders

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a cohesive and intensive preventive prereading intervention on the phonological awareness, word reading, and rapid naming skills of children at risk of emotional disturbance and reading problems.Thirty-six children were assigned randomly to an experimental or comparison condition. Children in the experimental condition received Stepping Stones to Literacyeracy. Stepping Stones includes 25 lessons designed to teach children pivotal prereading skills (e.g., phonological awareness, letter identification). Children in the experimental condition showed statistically significant improvements in their phonological awareness, word reading, and rapid naming skills relative to children in the comparison condition. Effect size estimates indicate that the improvements were moderate to large across all of the phonological awareness, word reading, and rapid naming measures. Treatment nonresponder analyses indicated that a relatively small number of children in the experimental group failed to show satisfactory gains in their phonological awareness (n = 3),word reading (n = 1), and rapid naming (n = 3) skills.
Authors citation
Benner, G. J., Gonzalez, J. E., Nelson, R.
Publication
Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders
Year of Study
2004
Subject
Literacy
Program Evaluated
Cohesive and intensive preventive prereading intervention
Tutor Type
Volunteer
Duration
5 weeks
Sample size
36
Grade Level(s)
Pre-Kindergarten
Student-Tutor Ratio
1
Effect Size
0.71
Study Design
Randomized Controlled Trial
Benner, G. J., Gonzalez, J. E., Nelson, R. (2004). An investigation of the effects of an intensive early literacy support program on the phonological processing skills of kindergarten children at-risk of emotional and behavioral disorders. Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders