Research project makes strides for literacy
Reading program set to expand
A research project that offered extra help to struggling young readers in Edmonton schools has prompted teachers and principals to try the approach more widely.
“We didn’t expect it to be as successful as it was,” said George Georgiou, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Alberta and lead researcher of the Edmonton part of the study.
Done in partnership with a colleague at McGill University, Georgiou’s study started in September 2015 and screened the reading skills of first-graders in Edmonton, Ontario and Quebec.
Children who were still wrestling with reading midway through their Grade 1 year, even with some extra help from their teachers, met in small groups three times a week where a member of Georgiou’s research team would use strategies tailored for the type of trouble they were experiencing with reading, based on best practices from current research.
The 290 Edmonton children from 11 public schools are now in Grade 3, and all but seven have caught up to their classmates, Georgiou said.
Brynn Van Meter was one of those first graders who took little joy from reading, her father David Van Meter said. She wasn’t progressing as quickly as her older sisters had, and she would become frustrated and back away when her father tried to have her read at home, he said.
On Friday, the nine-year-old sat smiling in the hallway of Coronation School while reading a book about bears and bees to principal Letitia Carter.
She learned to cover up sentences with her hand so she could focus on one word at a time and trace her fingers under words as she reads. “I feel much better,” she said. “The self-confidence that she gained was, I think, the biggest thing,” David Van Meter said.
Georgiou and his colleagues have submitted their research to a journal for publication.
The training and staff time may cost schools more up front, but the downstream cost saving to society by graduating literate people is far greater, he said.
The benefits of the approach aren’t limited to the children in Georgiou’s study.
Carter had all teachers at her school complete professional development, and they performed the same screening on all Coronation students in Grades 2 through 6, as well. The tools tell teachers how well children sound out real and nonsense words, and gauge their reading effectiveness.
“My teachers are really thirsty, and they want to be fed,” Carter said Friday.
Carter then introduced a “flex block” of 30 minutes each day to focus on core reading skills three days a week, and numeracy skills twice a week. She juggled the budget to hire a teacher halftime who works solely on reading interventions.
The students break into small groups, based on their needs, and work with a staff member who is not usually their classroom teacher.
“My results? Absolutely fantastic,” she said.
At the start, three or four principals asked Georgiou to teach their teachers the techniques he used in his study so they could use them on other classes.
That demand has now grown to about 15 schools, he said.
The high demand stems from teachers who are equipped to teach the majority of students, who have a fairly smooth entry to reading, but not the students who run into trouble, he said.
There is no mandatory university course for education students to learn problem-specific techniques in literacy, he said, and just five undergraduates are enrolled in his university class.
He also said schools should be using standard screening tools to ensure children with reading troubles are identified early and get help to prevent them from falling so far behind, they can’t catch up.
Edmonton Public Schools doesn’t require specific literacy screening tools be used on all students — the district respects the judgment of teachers, said Patti Christensen, supervisor in curricular and resource support.
The district does offer a list of screening tools teachers can use depending on what they suspect is causing reading problems, she said.
Teachers across Edmonton do already personalize reading help for students based on their struggles, she said. The research is also evolving constantly.
“Literacy is a very fascinating field, and the more we can learn, the better,” Christensen said.
Carter would like to see her approach at Coronation School expand to other schools.
“If I had a magic wand, when my Grade 6s leave my school, they’d have the skills to go, ‘I can read on my own. I know strategies that will help me. And if I can’t read on my own, I know where I can go to get help’.”