Aus: New study - 'Researchers urge phonics lessons for all pre-schoolers'

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Aus: New study - 'Researchers urge phonics lessons for all pre-schoolers'

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Researchers urge phonics lessons for all preschoolers

Rebecca Urban, The Australian, August 21, 2018

Education researchers are calling for explicit phonics instruction to be rolled out during preschool, following a study that revealed four-year-olds showed improved reading readiness after just 13½ hours of lessons.

The research, conducted by Flinders University, found children who took part in phoneme-focused phonological aware­ness classes performed 2½ times better at converting sounds into letters — a key early-reading skill — than those who continued with the typical preschool program.

Participating children with spoken-language difficulties also benefited, showing improved phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge when tested ­afterwards.

Lead researcher Karyn Carson said the project aimed to investigate the effect of preschool-wide, teacher-delivered phonics instruction on raising code-based reading readiness among four-year-olds in the months leading up to school entry.

Dr Carson said two of the best predictors of how well children would learn to read and write in their first two years of schooling were phonemic awareness — the ability to identify and manipulate phonemes, the smallest mental units of sound — and letter-sound knowledge.

She said preschool teachers were “ideally situated to plant the seeds of knowledge, identify children not keeping pace with their peers, and provide important transition information to school teachers”.

“This approach can help ensure that all children are on the trajectory towards reading success, instead of a trajectory of ‘wait and see’,” she said.

According to Dr Carson, the findings, published this month in the Communication Disorders Quarterly, are important because, while there was a large body of research evaluating the effects of language and literacy curriculums in early childhood, few studies had focused exclusively on teacher-delivered preschool-wide phonics instruction and the impact for early decoding ability.

The findings also challenged the prevailing theory that phoneme-level skills were considered developmentally challenging for most four-year-olds, she said.

While the current guidelines for preschool educators, the federal government’s Early Years Learning Framework, emphasises the importance of children understanding key literacy concepts and processes, such as the sounds of language and letter-sound relationships, it does not stipulate phonics instruction.

The 10-week-long study pitched the typical preschool program — of exposing children to rhyming and some first sounds of words — against explicit phonological awareness classes that used books, songs and activities to teach sound discrimination, identifying phonemes and sound-blending and word-segmenting techniques.

South Australia recently became the first state to introduce a mandatory phonics check for Year 1 students at government schools, following a successful trial last year. The federal government is encouraging other states and territories to follow suit.

Dr Carson, who helped to develop teacher training for the trial, supports the role of the checks and is herself ensuring that her son Jacob, 4, has basic phonics skills by the time he starts school.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/n ... 8c00f542b6
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Aus: 'Researchers urge phonics lessons for all pre-schoolers'

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https://au.educationhq.com/news/50816/p ... ced-study/
Pre-schoolers with phonics training better placed: study

By EducationHQ News Team
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Aus: New study - 'Researchers urge phonics lessons for all pre-schoolers'

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Here is the study:

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10. ... 0118789061
Effectiveness of Preschool-Wide Teacher-Implemented Phoneme Awareness and Letter-Sound Knowledge Instruction on Code-Based School-Entry Reading Readiness

Karyn L. Carson, PhD, BSLT, Anne E. Bayetto, MEd, Anna F. B. Roberts, BEd,

First Published August 1, 2018
Abstract

This study investigated the effect of preschool-wide, teacher-implemented, phoneme-focused phonological awareness (PA) and letter-sound knowledge (LSK) instruction, on raising code-based school-entry reading readiness for children with Spoken Language Difficulties (SLD) and Typical Development (TD), when supported by weekly coaching by trainee speech-language pathologists. A total of 90 4-year-old children participated, whereby 50 children, inclusive of 13 children with SLD, received 10 weeks of preschool-wide, teacher-delivered, phoneme-focused PA and LSK instruction. In all, 40 children, inclusive of 10 children with SLD, continued with the usual preschool program. Post-instruction, children in the experimental condition performed significantly higher in phoneme awareness, LSK, and early decoding compared with control children. Children with SLD in the experimental condition performed significantly higher in phoneme awareness and LSK, but not in early decoding, compared with control children with SLD. Overall, preschool-wide, teacher-implemented, phoneme-focused PA and LSK instruction can support code-based reading readiness skills for children with SLD and TD.
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