Article #2: The Importance of Effective Early Interventoin

Strickland, D.S. (2002). The Importance of Effective Early Intervention. In A.E. Farstrup, & S. Samuels (Eds.), What Research Has to Say About Reading Instruction (pp. 69-86). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

For a variety of reasons, some young children may struggle to learn to read. Research indicates that difficulty with initial literacy acquisition may lead to less practice and motivation and, hence, to continuing academic struggles. It is therefore important that these children be identified early so that they can be provided with appropriate support. In this chapter, the author describes numerous approaches to early intervention and outlines components of successful programs.

Learning is one of the most important accomplishments a young child accomplishes in early elementary. The children who are successful in learning to read have these attributes: (1) they have normal to above average language skills, (2) they come from homes that incorporate books and literacy with an investment to the importance of acquisition of skills pertaining to them. (3) The schools reinforce that reading and print are interconnected, offering several daily opportunities to read and write. The children with challenges to reading acquisition have these common factors: (1) history of preschool language impairment, (2) limited English proficiency, (3) when their parents had difficulty learning to read, (4) children with symptoms of ADHD, (5) students who lack motivation to read, and (6) children with a low SES. All these factors shown in Longitudinal studies tell us that there is "90% chance that a child who is a poor reader by the end of the first grade will be a poor reader by the end of fourth grade"(Juel, 1988). The strengths are they found several strategies that work,like using multilevel activities, specific instruction in self-monitoring , scaffolding instruction that makes use of modeling and demonstrations, and linking reading and writing instruction. A weakness is that most interventions require more than one intervention to help the students and one strategy to help one child may do nothing for another. In order for the them to work teachers need to have professional development in merging instruction with assessment in beginning reading programs. More needed research could be to deal with the issue of keeping the programs successful, how to solve the debate of pull-outs versus in-class instruction, and articulation between the specialist and classroom teachers.