Effects of Literacy 3D: A Tier 1 Intervention to Increase Literacy Opportunities for Preschoolers

• In Event: 3-176 - Classrooms as Complex Ecologies: Relations between Teacher Behavior and Children’s Language, Behavior and Literacy

Integrative Statement

One in three children are struggling readers (Save the Children, 2018). This shortfall in reading proficiency is pronounced among children from low-income families in which about 85% are poor readers. Early literacy is predicted by language and pre-literacy experiences (Rowe, Raudenbush, & Goldin-Meadow, 2012). Children enter preschool with a wide range of language and emergent literacy skills (Shanahan & Lonigan, 2008), but many children are not ready for kindergarten because they have not experienced the necessary language and early literacy experiences in the home (Hart & Risley, 1995).
Method
This paper examined the effects of the Literacy 3D Tier 1 intervention on 20 teachers from a large metropolitan school district and 120 preschool children from high poverty families. Children were from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds and were considered at-risk for school failure due to poverty or had diagnosed disabilities. One third of the sample children were dual language learners. Teachers were randomized to intervention or wait-list control. The intervention consisted of five professional development trainings focusing on the Top 10 Strategies for Literacy Instruction; ongoing coaching was provided to teachers in person and via email. Bi-weekly coaching sessions were designed to support teachers to implement the Top 10 strategies. Teachers also were coached on making data-based decisions to inform instruction.
Data were collected in four waves using the Code for Interactive Recording of Children’s Learning Environments (CIRCLE; Atwater et al. 2014) and Preschool Early Literacy Indicator (PELI; Kaminski, Abbott, Bravo-Aguayo, Good, & Latimer, 2012). The Test of Preschool Early Literacy (TOPEL; Lonigan, Wagner, & Torgesen, 2007) was administered pre/post to determine if children made progress on a standardized assessment.
Research questions included:
1. Does Literacy 3D improve instruction, as measured by the teachers’ instructional quality, fidelity of implementation, and teacher literacy focused interactions?
2. Does Literacy 3D improve child outcomes including engagement as measured by CIRCLE, early discrete literacy skills (PELI), and global preliteracy skills (TOPEL)?
Results
Preliminary results indicated that teachers increased their literacy focus and implemented more of the Top 10 Literacy strategies after training and coaching (d=1.23) than teachers in the control condition. Children in intervention classrooms made greater gains in letter identification (p<.05), phonemic awareness (p<.05), and vocabulary (p=.01) than children in the control condition as measured by the PELI and TOPEL and had more literacy engagement (p<.05) as measured in the CIRCLE observations. Additional data analyses will examine the relationship between teacher literacy implementation, child engagement and child problem behavior over the course of the study.

Findings from this study link changes in teacher instructional practices to observed child engagement and to assessment outcomes for discrete and general literacy learning. However, these effects may be bidirectional or dynamic. As children’s literacy opportunities increased, children spent less time unengaged and exhibited fewer problem behaviors that allowed teachers to more easily implement Literacy 3D strategies with higher fidelity. Future research should examine how child engagement and teacher literacy instruction may contribute to a classroom ecological system that improves long-term child literacy outcomes.

Authors

• Alana Griffin Schnitz, University of Kansas
  Presenting Author

• Charles Greenwood, University of Kansas
  Non-Presenting Author