Design and procedure

The full sample was tested at two times points during the course of one school year, once during October-November (Time 1) and again six months later during

April/May (Time 2). Children were tested in a quiet corner of the school over a period of 3-4 weeks. At T1, the year 1 children were tested for two sessions lasting 15-20 minutes each and the Reception children during 3 sessions (due to the addition of the vocabulary task), lasting about 15 minutes each. At T2, the Year 1 children were tested for one session lasting 15-20 minutes and the Reception group for two sessions lasting about 15 minutes. Sessions were shorter for the Reception children to encourage concentration. Tasks were presented in fixed order with the literacy and phonological tests interspersed to maintain interest. Tasks undertaken at each time point are listed below.

Time 1. Word reading, letter-sound knowledge, letter-name knowledge, phoneme deletion (beginning and end sounds), dynamic phoneme segmentation, vocabulary.

Time 2. Word reading, spelling, letter-sound knowledge, letter-name knowledge, static phoneme segmentation 1 and 2.

6.2.3 Materials Literacy tasks

Letter-sound knowledge. Each of the 26 lower case letters were presented

individually on cards in random order. Children were asked to pronounce the sound of the letter. If they replied with the letter name, they were asked if they knew what the letter sound was.

Letter-name knowledge. Same as above except that children were asked to pronounce the name of the letter, not the sound. If they replied with the letter sound, they were asked if they knew what the letter name was. The sample-specific reliability for this task was high, Cronbach’s α = .94.

Word reading. Test was from the British Ability Scales 2 (BAS) (Elliot, et al., 1996). Children were asked to read as many words as possible from a list. The test was discontinued after 8+ incorrect answers in a block of ten. The published split-half reliability of this test was high at .88 (five year olds).

Spelling. Spelling was measured using the British Ability Scales 2 spelling test. Children were asked to spell individual words in pencil on a numbered answer sheet. The words were presented orally by the experimenter within a sentence and repeated if necessary. Encouragement was given to guess the spelling of unfamiliar words. All children began with item 1 but moved to the next block if they spelt the first two words

correctly. The test was discontinued if they got 8+ wrong in a block of 10. The published split-half reliability of this test was high at .84 (five year olds).

Phoneme awareness tasks

Development of the dynamic PA task. It was our original intention to use the task designed by Spector, (1992), but pilot work showed that it was inappropriate for use on children with basic literacy skills, who often used orthographic information to solve the tasks. Therefore, we decided to adapt the task. Each word from Spector’s original task was substituted with a more complex non-word, which children in Year 1 would be unlikely to be able to spell with complete accuracy. Non-words were selected to provide a range of vowel and consonant sounds, including consonant clusters and to vary in length from 2 to 6 phonemes. Also, an instruction was added that children were to tell us the sounds they hear in the word, not how to spell it, and an example given of where these differed. Piloting of this task on eight children within the target age range revealed that the problem of children trying to spell-out words was virtually eliminated resulting in a more accurate test of phoneme awareness.

Dynamic phoneme segmentation. Children were asked to segment 12 non-words into their constituent phonemes. Children were asked, for example, ‘what are the sounds in shreb?’ and were given increasingly explicit prompts to help them solve the task e.g., ‘what’s the first sound you hear in shreb?’ to modelling segmentation of the word with

counters ‘sh-r-e-b’. There were 7 prompts in total and scores ranged from 6 (no prompts required) to 0 (failed to segment after 7 prompts) per item. Prompts 5, 6 and 7 (which required imitation only) were all given a score of 1 due to the fact that, according to Spector, 1992, measurement on a 8 point scale produced equivalent scores to

measurement on a 6 point scale (see Appendix 3 for a description of the prompts and list of items). The sample-specific reliability for this task was high, Cronbach’s α = .94

Static phoneme segmentation. A static phoneme segmentation score was derived from the dynamic assessment by giving a score of 1 if no prompts were required and a score of 0 if any prompts were required (as would be the case had it been administered as a static task). At T2, the same items from the dynamic task were administered again as a static task; no prompts were given. The sample-specific reliability for this task was good, Cronbach’s α = .81.

In addition, a second task in which children were asked to segment non-words with the same length and vowel/ consonant combinations as in the first task was

administered at T2. This was to avoid the possibility that children may have remembered answers to the first set of items when they had been administered dynamically (see Appendix 3 for a list of items). The sample-specific reliability for this task was medium, Cronbach’s α = .68.

Phoneme deletion. The Phoneme Deletion (beginning and end sounds) sub-test from the Phonological Abilities Test (PAT) (Muter, Hulme, & Snowling, 1997) was administered as a static measure of phoneme awareness. In the first part, children were asked to remove the initial phoneme of single syllable words and in the second part they were asked to remove the final phoneme of single syllable words e.g., ‘In each one you have to take off the first sound of the word and say what’s left over’. There were 4 demonstration items, followed by 8 test items in each part, all accompanied by pictures. Correct responses were real words for part one and mostly non words for part two. This task was not administered again at T2 due to the presence of ceiling effects at T1.

Receptive Vocabulary.

Vocabulary was measured using the British Picture Vocabulary Scale, 2nd edition (Dunn, et al., 1997). Children were asked to point to one of four pictures to identify a word spoken by the experimenter. The test continued until the child made eight or more errors in a block of ten. This test was standardised in the UK for children between the ages of 3 and 15. The published reliability for this task is high, Cronbach’s α = .94 (5-6 year olds).

Home literacy environment.

Described fully in Chapter 2, p. 60 (see Appendix 1). Questions were used to provide scores for maternal and paternal education level, shared book reading at home, family literacy and age began reading to child. An additional question was added asking how many months the child had attended pre-school/ nursery. The questionnaire was returned by 44/45 parents after being sent home twice. Some parents left certain questions blank. Results of the questionnaire and reduced sample sizes are reported in Table 6.3.

6.3 Results