Training reading and phoneme awareness skills in children with Down syndrome

Kristina Goetz, Charles Hulme, Sophie Brigstocke, Julia M. Carroll, Louise Nasir, M. Snowling

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

56 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The authors report a short-term reading intervention study involving 15 children with Down syndrome (DS) who attended mainstream schools. The intervention programme taught children phoneme segmentation and blending skills in the context of learning letter-sounds and working with words in books. The children were taught by their learning support assistants, who received special training for this purpose. Compared to a waiting group, a group of eight children with DS improved significantly on measures of early literacy skills (letter-sound knowledge, Early Word Recognition) following eight weeks of intervention. The waiting group started to make progress once they received the intervention. Both groups maintained progress on the literacy measures five months after the intervention had finished. The results suggest that children with DS can benefit from structured, phonics-based reading intervention.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)395-412
Number of pages18
JournalReading and Writing
Volume21
Issue number4
Early online date12 Sept 2007
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2008
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Down syndrome
  • Learning support assistants
  • Phonics
  • Reading intervention

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology
  • Education
  • Linguistics and Language
  • Speech and Hearing

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