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Children reared in low SES households often have low levels of emergent literacy. Preschoolers in this study were enrolled in the Tempe Early Reading First Partnership, a federal grant program to improve early literacy skills. This study compared the gain scores for 83 children from participant classrooms and 31 children from control classrooms on the Phonological Awareness and Literacy Screening- Pre-Kindergarten (Invernizzi, Sullivan, & Meier, 2001), to determine whether differences would emerge after 5 months of participation. Participant’s gain scores were significantly higher than control’s gain scores on upper-case letter naming, print and word awareness, and nursery rhyme awareness. Differences were not significant for name writing, beginning sound awareness, or rhyme awareness. Regression results suggested that initial scores, rather than children’s age or mother’s education, predicted gains. However, initial scores accounted for much more variance in control than participant groups, suggesting that other mediating factors played a role in participant’s progress. The discussion will consider these mediating factors. Funding provided by U.S. Dept. of Education Early Reading First Grant #S359B040078. |
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