Children who have experienced developmental, social, or economic risks may benefit more from attending high-quality preschool intervention programs than their more advantaged peers; thus, programs that have delivered high-quality experiences may have served as a protective factor for these children to help reduce the achievement gap that has existed at school entry. The overarching purpose of this dissertation was to examine best practice in providing systemic early literacy interventions as a protective factor against school failure for young at-risk children. The three studies comprising this dissertation included analyses of systemic early literacy interventions for young children at risk of reading and school failure due to (a) developmental delays, (b) low socioeconomic status, or (c) English language learner status. Consistent with previous literature, the researcher found that children participating in a responsive early literacy intervention program were better prepared for kindergarten than were non-participating peers. Responsive early literacy interventions were defined as purposeful instruction designed to meet the educational needs of children by implementing an embedded-explicit or balanced approach to teaching. Attendance in high-quality early education programs - especially for children from disadvantaged backgrounds - was linked to lasting effects on indicators related to student achievement.

This thesis studied young, struggling readers, all of whom had participated in the Reading Recovery literacy intervention, and investigated whether differential progress was made by children learning English as an additional language when compared with their native, English-speaking peers. The children were assessed on a pre- and post-test basis on literacy measures associated with reading comprehension in a UK context. Following a Pilot Phase, 52 children who were learning English as an additional language, and 48 native, English-speaking children were recruited from twenty-three primary schools in 8 local authorities across the UK. The children were administered standardised literacy measures, including the British Abilities Scale (BAS) single word reading test, the British Picture Vocabulary Scales (BPVS) vocabulary knowledge test, the Phonological Assessment Battery (PHAB) pseudo-word reading test, and two reading comprehension measures: the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test (WIAT) and the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension (YARC). Statistical analyses were conducted on the data and the results indicated that differential progress was made by the groups, after initial levels of decoding or vocabulary were covaried. The first research question investigated the differential progress made by the two groups, and over the course of the intervention, the EAL children made more progress after controlling for initial skills at entry. After controlling for initial vocabulary levels, the EAL group made more gains than their NS peers, as measured by the BAS single word reading assessment. The second research question examined differential predictors of reading comprehension, and multiple regression analyses showed that vocabulary was a stronger predictor for EAL learners, whereas decoding was found to be a stronger predictor for NS learners. The findings suggest that it is important to develop the vocabulary abilities of EAL learners, as the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension acquisition was found to be stronger for this group than for the NS group. The findings also suggest that NS children’s decoding abilities must be supported, as the relationship between single word reading and the acquisition of reading comprehension was found to be stronger for this group than for the EAL group.

One population with challenges in learning to read is children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of using Systematic and Engaging Early Literacy (SEEL) intervention activities to improve phonological awareness and phonics skills with three children with ASD. Previous studies have looked at the effectiveness of using SEEL with other young children with diverse backgrounds; however, this is the first study to focus on using SEEL intervention with children with ASD. The study used a single-subject, multiple-baseline-across-behaviors design to compare performance on phonic patterns before and after intervention. Three young, male students who had a diagnosis on the autism spectrum and delays in literacy skills participated in the study. A number of different, yet comparable literacy targets were selected for each of the participants and assessment tasks were created to probe the participants’ ability to demonstrate reading and phonological awareness for these target patterns. Baseline assessment data were collected prior to participants receiving individualized intervention, and performance on each task was monitored using the same assessment each subsequent session. SEEL instruction focusing on one target at a time was used to teach participants to read or decode the target words and give appropriate responses to phonological awareness tasks. Intervention sessions were held once a week and lasted approximately 30-45 minutes. Each SEEL lesson was adapted to meet the needs of the individual child; however, all sessions contained SEEL principles of contextualized play, frequent auditory and visual exposures to the targets, explicit teaching using the target words, and engaged and reciprocal participation with opportunities to create original oral and written phrases. An analysis of the results show marked improvement in performance with the selected targets for two of the participants. This study provides further insight into the efficacy of using SEEL with different populations in need of early literacy intervention, especially those with multiple behavioral and skill-based variables to consider. It also discusses some additional factors and challenges to consider for future research in using SEEL with children with ASD.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of the Systematic and Engaging Early Literacy (SEEL) intervention method to improve consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) reading in four students receiving Tier 3 services. The SEEL intervention method was also combined with the use of digital books on an iPad to investigate the effects of using technology in reading intervention sessions. Previous research indicates effectiveness for the foundational principles of SEEL, which include instruction in engaging, meaningful contexts that provide frequent and intense opportunities to practice. This research involved 4 kindergarten students who qualified for Tier 3 services based on their performance on an index of difficulty in early literacy skills. The study contrasted trained with untrained literacy targets of comparable difficulty and was conducted as a single-subject multiple-baseline-across-behaviors design. Intervention was delivered three times a week for 15-20 minutes, depending on the engagement of the participants. An analysis of the results showed improvement in three out of four participants in their reading ability of the target CVC words. It gave mixed results as to the effects of using technology in combination with the reading intervention. The analysis also looked at student engagement during both the hands-on manipulation of the materials and the reading and writing tasks performed on the iPad. It found that the engagement between these two parts of each session was similar; if a student had poor engagement for the SEEL intervention, he or she also had poor engagement for the iPad portion, and vice versa. This study provides further insight into the efficacy of SEEL and the use of technology; it also provides suggestions for future research in the area of reading intervention.