What types of interventions and policies can make a difference in children’s language/literacy and related outcomes?
Fortunately, research shows that children’s language abilities are malleable and can be remediated through interventions designed to promote oral language proficiency and emergent reading skills. For example, interventions such as Sesame Street (Alexander, 1997), a well-respected educational television program, as well as the US federal programs Head Start and Early Head Start for low-income families (Farran, 2000; Zigler & Styfco, 2004), have been shown to foster children’s vocabulary development (Love et al., 2005; Rice, Huston, Truglio, & Wright, 1990). Early childhood seems to be an optimal period for providing intervention. Several successful interventions for children from at-risk families have begun when the child was an infant (Campbell, Pungello, Miller-Johnson, Burchinal, & Ramey, 2001; Love et al., 2005; The Carolina Abecedarian Project, n.d.) and others when the child was 3 or 4 years old (Reynolds, Temple, Robertson, & Mann, 2001). For example, children in the Abecedarian
Related Questions
- When needed, what types of interventions are found effective for young aggressive children? And to what extent (if any) will teachers need specialized training in order to implement them effectively?
- What are some of the common types of speech and language problems in children?
- What types of speech & language disorders affect school-age children?
