Spanish and English Alphabet Knowledge in Head Start Children

1. Spanish and English Alphabet Knowledge in Head Start Children Addie E. Lafferty, M.A, CCC-SLP M. Jeanne Wilcox, Ph.D. Arizona State University

2. State of Education in the US • A growing number of children in the United States are entering kindergarten with insufficient levels of language skills necessary for school success. (Lonigan & Whitehurst, 1998) • More than one in three children experience significant difficulties in learning to read. (Adams, 1990; Shaywitz, Escobar, Shaywitz, Fletcher, & Makuch, 1992) • Evidence suggests that those children who experience early difficulties are unlikely to catch up with their peers. (Bayder, Brooks-Gunn, & Furstenberg, 1993; Stevenson & Newman, 1986; Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte, Alexander, & Conroy, 1997).

3. Children at Risk for Delays in Emergent Literacy Skill Acquisition • Children from low-income households are more dependent on school experiences to provide literacy development opportunities (Alexander & Entwisle, 1996). • Only 41% of children living below the poverty level were read to daily as opposed to 61% of children above the poverty level. (Federal Interagency Forum on Child & Family Statistics, 1999). • Additionally, only 39% of Latino families read to their children daily compared to 64% of white families. • Latino children often lag behind non-Latino classmates in their acquisition of academic skills from the preschool period on, a trend that continues throughout the entire school-age period. (Grigg, Daane, Jin, & Campbell, 2003). • In 2002, more than 3 million children enrolled in grades pre-kindergarten to six were classified as Limited English Proficient, with 79% of these students identified as having Spanish as their first language. (Kindler, 2002). • As Head Start preschools serve a large number of ELL children, they are a natural context the allows for the exploration of emergent literacy interventions targeting Spanish-speaking children form low-income households. • Research has also shown that Head Start teachers often see development of emergent literacy skills as a lower priority than other skills (Marvin & Mirenda, 1994), and consequently teachers do not engage in activities that facilitate acquisition of these skills.

4. Alphabet Knowledge • Alphabet knowledge refers to a child’s understanding of alphabetic units including details and features of letters as well as the names and sounds of the individual letters • Knowledge of individual letter names has been identified as a strong predictor of later reading achievement (Catts, Fey, Zhang, & Tomblin, 2001). • Alphabet knowledge at school entry is one of the best predictors of later reading achievement and has a reciprocal interaction with the development of phonological awareness.

5. The Study • Track the development of alphabet knowledge skills in both Spanish & English of bilingual Head Start children • Determine the effectiveness of a Spanish-English small group book reading intervention in facilitating development of alphabet knowledge skills in both Spanish & English

6. Participants • 48 Head Start children from the Phoenix metro area participated in an intervention study from January-June 2005 • 100% Latino • 54% male, 46% female • 100% bilingual Spanish-English speakers

7. English measures Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening-Pre-kindergarten (PALS-Pre-K; Invernizzi, Juel, Swank, & Meier, 2004), supplementary expressive alphabet knowledge subtests Skills assessed Letter name recognition (upper and lower case letters) subtest Letter name production (upper and lower case) Letter sound recognition Letter sound production Spanish measures Spanish alphabet knowledge assessment modeled after the PALS-Pre-K and the supplementary expressive alphabet knowledge subtests Skills assessed Letter name recognition (upper and lower case letters) subtest Letter name production (upper and lower case) Letter sound recognition Letter sound production Measures • Bilingual Research Assistants conducted all tests. • Order of tests was counterbalanced and children were tested in Spanish and English on separate days.

8. Performance on Receptive Alphabet Tasks in Spanish at Pre-test (February 2005)

9. Performance on Expressive Alphabet Tasks in Spanish at Pre-test (February 2005)

10. Performance on Receptive Alphabet Tasks in English at Pre-test (February 2005)

11. Performance on Expressive Alphabet Tasks in English at Pre-test (February 2005)

12. PALS-Pre-K Spring Developmental Ranges for English Expressive Alphabet Knowledge Skills • Upper Case Alphabet Identification= 12-21 letters • Mean= 12.64 letters in intervention group • Mean= 3.96 letters in control group • Lower Case Alphabet Identification= 9-17 letters • Mean= 9.88 letters in intervention group • Mean= 3.00 letters in control group • Letter Sounds Identification= 4-8 sounds • Mean= 3.68 sounds in intervention group • Mean= .86 sounds in control group

13. Post-Intervention Expressive English Alphabet Knowledge Skills (June 2005)

14. Post-Intervention Receptive English Alphabet Knowledge Skills (June 2005)

15. Post-Intervention Receptive Spanish Alphabet Knowledge Skills (June 2005)

16. Post-Intervention Expressive Spanish Alphabet Knowledge Skills (June 2005)

17. Conclusions • With a book reading intervention targeting alphabet knowledge skills, the children’s performance was within the Spring developmental ranges on the PALS-Pre-K for letter names. It was slightly below for letter sounds. • Children who received the normal Head Start curriculum did not make adequate progress and were well below the PALS-Pre-K range. • Alphabet knowledge skills need to be addressed explicitly in Head Start classrooms to ensure that children start Kindergarten ready to learn.