Project Description

Supporting Acquisition of Language and Literacy through School-Home Activities (SALSA): A Bilingual Approach.

Abstract:

The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the effectiveness of a home-school partnership for stimulating language and literacy skills in Spanish-speaking children of migrant farmers. Subjects of the study were 22 preschool children between the ages of 3 and 5, enrolled in a Migrant Head Start Center. The study utilized a quasi-experimental, pretest-treatment-posttest design, and focused on expanding children’s ability to produce oral narratives based on content provided by parents in a take-home journal. This parent-provided journal content served as the basis not only for literacy enrichment in the classroom, but also for oral language enrichment therapy provided by speech-language pathology & audiology students.

Project Background:

The improvement of literacy outcomes among language minority students has become a significant area of concern among both educators and lawmakers. Some evidence shows that Spanish-speaking English Language Learners (ELLs) are twice as likely as their monolingual English-speaking peers to demonstrate literacy skills below average (Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998). Findings from the National Literacy Panel on Language Minority Children and Youth (August & Shanahan, 2006) also show that English oral proficiency is an important prerequisite for bilingual children’s literacy development. One aspect of oral proficiency that especially warrants attention is that of narrative abilities. Results of two recent studies (Miller et al., 2006; Uccelli & Paez, 2007) have indicated that improved oral narrative skills in either language (Spanish or English) can contribute to improved reading comprehension in English.

The need for early assessment and intervention of oral narrative abilities is especially urgent among bilingual children from low socioeconomic backgrounds. For this population, English narrative abilities have been consistently identified as a specific area of weakness (Pearson, 2002; Uccelli & Paez, 2007). Children of migrant farmers are especially vulnerable to the combination of risk factors that may be predictive of delayed literacy development–given that migrant populations in the United States are most frequently monolingual Spanish-speaking, among the lowest paid, and minimally educated (Hovey, Magaña, & Booker, 2005).

Research Protocol:

The primary objective of the pilot research project was to examine the efficacy of a parent-school collaborative language and emergent literacy intervention, Supporting the Acquisition of Language and Literacy through School-Home Activities (SALSA), for Spanish-speaking Head Start children. The intervention was designed to promote parents’ abilities to support language and emergent literacy development in their preschool children through a parent-child journaling activity. It is based on a preschool school-home journaling activity that Nelson (2010) describes in her recent textbook and has application for broad groups of typical and special needs learners as well as ELLs.

The research was supported by an ASHA multi-cultural grant and involved the collaboration of two university programs. Undergraduate students from Andrews University were supervised by Dr. Lena Caesar, while graduate students from Western Michigan University were supervised by Dr. Nickola Nelson. The project students with the opportunity to participate in research and clinical activities. Preparations for the study took place during the 2009 Spring semester (January to May) but the data were not gathered until June-July 2009.

Research Questions and Objectives:

The project’s specific objectives were to: (a) pilot a literacy and language intervention method in the domain of narrative development using a parent-initiated journaling approach; and (b) determine the efficacy of the intervention on children’s early literacy and narrative abilities.

The primary research questions addressed were as follows:

1. What are the early literacy and oral language skills in Spanish and English of bilingual preschool children attending a Migrant Head Start program?


2. Is there a difference over time in the early literacy and oral language skills of bilingual preschool children who receive SALSA intervention versus those who receive typical classroom language stimulation?

Subjects:

Participants in the study were 22 Spanish-speaking English Language Learners (ELLs) between the ages of 3; 0 and 5; 11, enrolled in two pre-school classrooms at a Migrant Head Start Center in southwest Michigan. Parents of the child participants were first invited to a bilingual learning session that provided modeling and practice in how to interact with their children at home to produce stick-figure drawings and brief written comments (in Spanish or English) to describe the depicted activity in the words of their child. These descriptions of parent-child interactions during the home setting were sent weekly to school using an interactive journal (spiral notebook) to provide a springboard for bilingual, story-telling activities in the classroom.

The Intervention:

The intervention took place within the Migrant Head Start classroom setting during “circle time” and “free play” and utilized conversational content provided by the parent in the journaling kit distributed to each child. Clinical trainees (graduate and undergraduate speech-language pathology majors) utilized a protocol for increasing conversational skills in both English and Spanish based on parent-child experiences documented in children’s journals. One week prior to intervention, the children were pre-tested as a means of obtaining baseline data on Spanish and English expressive language and emergent literacy skills. Pretests consisted of (a) the validated Early Literacy Skills Assessment (ELSA) (Cheadle, 2007) in English and Spanish, and (b) a narrative language sample in English and Spanish. These tests were used again as post-tests to measure outcomes of the intervention. The ELSA uses a storybook assessment task to measure early literacy skills (comprehension, phonological awareness, alphabetic principle, and concepts about print). Language samples were analyzed using Bilingual Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (Bilingual S/E SALT) (Miller & Iglesias, 2006). In addition to test results, data were collected from families regarding education experiences and language/literacy exposure of the children and their families.

Study Design:

This study utilized a quasi-experimental research design. Two groups of children participated in the study. Children were randomly assigned either to an experimental or control group (classroom 1 or classroom 2) upon their admission to the seasonal Head Start program. Each child in the experimental group was provided with a SALSA kit composed of a “journaling” notebook, writing and coloring implements, and simple incentives. Children took SALSA kits home on weekends (Fridays) to obtain parental input in their journals. This input consisted of a simple drawing and key words requiring minimal literacy skills on the part of parents. Parents were requested to have their children return their journals to the classroom on Mondays. Children received oral language stimulation based on journal content.

The study began in June, 2009 and lasted for 8 weeks. The treatment phase lasted for six weeks. Sessions were held twice weekly, for approximately 30 minutes each.

Contributions of the Study:

Information received from this pilot project (a) contributes to current knowledge regarding the efficacy of utilizing parent-initiated content for stimulating oral language and literacy skill development in bilingual children; (b) provides student clinicians with important working knowledge and clinical training related to bilingual assessment and intervention; and (c) provides parents with the skills and opportunities for encouraging language-focused parent-child interactions.