Fall 2007

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Twenty Minutes

Leads to a Smart Solution The New Student

by Sarah Vanderwolf

Statistics indicate that if you’re a child born to a low-income family, odds are you’ll have a harder time meeting even the basic levels of literacy. As a result, you’ll have fewer employment opportunities, your health and self-esteem will suffer, and statistics show, you’ll be more likely to serve a prison sentence. It’s a pretty dire scenario, but Dr. Lily Dyson in Victoria has been working to improve those odds—and she is succeeding.

In 2000, Statistics Canada revealed that 26.7 percent of Canadian children under 18 years of age lived in low-income families. Studies show that these children—more than one quarter of our children—are at increased risk of failure.

Dr. Lily Dyson, a professor of Special Education and Educational Psychology at the University of Victoria, has been working to change these odds. Her research is helping children from lower-income households become better readers through a literacy intervention program at elementary schools in Victoria, British Columbia.

With funding from The Language and Literacy Research Network (The Network) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Dyson has been investigating the impact of low-income environments on children’s development and reading skills.

One of her projects specifically includes direct involvement with the literacy learning of lower-income primary school students by providing intervention to these children.

“It’s been an absolutely positive experience,” says Maryanne Trofimuk, who is vice principal of one of the participating schools in Victoria. “Many of the students in this inner-city school are from lower-income or single-parent households and have little or no exposure to reading or learning at home.”

In fact, Dyson’s research has shown that children from lower-income homes have less sophisticated vocabulary, reading comprehension, and sentence structure when compared to their counterparts who are growing up in families with higher income levels. Moreover, the gaps between literacy levels of lower-income and higher-income students widens with each passing school year.

But a simple strategy, involving 20-minute tutoring sessions held with small groups of students three times a week, combined with regular home-reading sessions, has begun to yield some impressive results. In Dyson’s analysis of the group who were initially reading at below average levels, there was a gain in three skill areas: word recognition, reading comprehension, and total reading. In each of these areas, the tutored group gained an average of 4 – 5 points. Results for the non-tutored group were significantly less: some students gained 1 or 2 points, while others saw their skills deteriorate.

Trofimuk points to one student who was positively influenced by the extra instruction given to him. This Grade 5 student was very apathetic about school, says Trofimuk. He was also categorized as having “intensive behaviour,” meaning that he persistently displayed disruptive and antisocial behaviours. His home situation also provided no exposure to literacy. “He had all things against him,” she says.

But the boy’s reading skills jumped two grade levels after receiving instruction from the research assistants. “He’s a success story that makes me really believe in (the literacy program),” says Trofimuk.

The research project divides participating students into two groups: the experimental group, who receive extra instruction or tutoring from university students to improve their literacy skills, and the control group, who only receive regular classroom instruction.

Research assistants involved in the project go directly into the elementary school and take children out of the classroom for the tutoring session. With direction from the teachers, the assistants incorporate the teachers’ methods into the project’s regular model of teaching literacy. One result of this teacher-researcher collaboration is an instructional strategy to improve students’ reading skills.

The strategy, known as “Smart” for its intention to make children smarter as a result of increased reading ability, is a framework that helps students take greater control over their own learning and encourages more active participation by clearly identifying the goals they are striving towards. Within this framework, the tutoring emphasizes the enhancement of vocabulary, comprehension and fluency, which constitute the main elements of the project protocol for tutoring.

As part of the Smart framework, the research assistants focus on learning strategies before, during, and after reading, so that students remain aware of their goals at all times.
After a reading session, students are encouraged to reflect upon what they learned, whether it be fluency, vocabulary or comprehension. “Reflection about learning is what solidifies learning,” says Trofimuk.

Trofimuk is also pleased with the calibre of the research assistants, who are “eager to learn. They really enjoy learning. They willingly co-operate with teachers in maximizing the students’ learning experiences using the Smart framework.”

The response to the program’s implementation has been invariably positive, says Trofimuk, with support from both teachers and parents.

While funding for the literacy intervention project will be concluding in one year, Dyson’s research into children’s literacy will continue as she studies the lasting effects of early intervention to enhance the literacy skills of these children.

“I have been recently funded for another project to chart the developmental pattern of literacy in low-income children. This project began this year and will be in part a follow-up of children who have received the intervention and who have not. After the preschool and kindergarten years, it is difficult to reverse literacy skills and to improve children’s literacy which is not at the level of more privileged children. But I think we have made some progress. The results thus far show many children have gained in certain literacy skills. We can say then that the program has benefited a substantial number of children, especially those who are struggling readers at the beginning and who attend schools in low-income neighbourhoods.”

Reprinted with permission from the Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network. For more information on this and other research and programs, visit www.cllrnet.ca