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Purpose: This study aimed to elucidate the nature of the relationship between the development of decoding and encoding skills in the first year at school. Method: The foundational literacy skills of one hundred eighty 5-year-old children were examined on three occasions over their first year of literacy instruction. Participants received the same literacy curriculum. The predictive utility of early spelling on later reading accuracy, reading comprehension, and spelling outcomes was explored. Performance on matched nonword spelling and nonword reading tasks was also used to compare the use of particular graphemes across these contexts. Results: Regression and path analyses showed that nonword spelling was a unique predictor of later (end of year) reading and played a facilitative role in the emergence of decoding. Children were generally more accurate on spelling than decoding for the majority of graphemes evaluated in the matched tasks. Factors such as position of the grapheme in the word, complexity of the grapheme (e.g., digraph vs. graph), and the scope and sequence of the literacy curriculum influenced children's accuracy for specific graphemes. Conclusions: The development of phonological spelling appears to play a facilitatory role in early literacy acquisition. Implications for the assessment and teaching of spelling in the first year of schooling are explored.

This study examined the validity of data collected from a novel online story retell task. The task was specifically designed for use by junior school teachers with the support of speech-language therapists or literacy specialists. The assessment task was developed to monitor children's oral language progress in their first year at school as part of the Better Start Literacy Approach for early literacy teaching. Teachers administered the task to 303 5-year-olds in New Zealand at school entry and after 20 weeks and 12 months of schooling. The children listened to a story with pictures via iPad presentation and were then prompted to retell the story. The children's spontaneous language used in their story retell was captured and uploaded digitally via iPad audio recording and analyzed using semi-automated speech recognition and computer software. Their responses to factual and inferential story comprehension questions were also analyzed. The data suggested that the task has good criterion validity. Significant correlations between story retell measures and a standardized measure of children's oral language were found. The Better Start Literacy Approach story retell task, which took approximately 6 min for teachers to administer, accurately identified children with low oral language ability 81% of the time. Growth curve analysis revealed that the task was useful for monitoring oral language development, including for English as second language learners. Boys showed a slower story comprehension growth trajectory than girls. The Better Start Literacy Approach story retell task shows promise in providing valid data to support teacher judgement of children's oral language development.

The Better Start Literacy Approach (BSLA) is a strengths-based approach to supporting children's literacy learning in their first year of school. Previous research has shown the approach is effective at accelerating foundational literacy knowledge in children with lower levels of oral language. This study examined the impact of the BSLA for children with varied language profiles and across schools from diverse socioeconomic communities. Additionally, a controlled analysis of the impact of Tier 2 teaching within a response to teaching framework was undertaken. Participants included 402 five-year-old children from 14 schools in New Zealand. A randomised delayed treatment design was utilised to establish the effect of Tier 1 teaching. Analyses showed a significant Tier 1 intervention effect for phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge, non-word reading and non-word spelling. There was no difference in intervention effects across socioeconomic groupings. Children were identified for Tier 2 teaching after 10 weeks of Tier 1 implementation. The progress of 98 children in response to Tier 2 teaching was compared to 26 children who met Tier 2 criteria but received only Tier 1 teaching within this study. Children in the Tier 2 group scored significantly higher on phonological awareness, non-word reading, and spelling than the control group at the post-Tier 2 assessment point, after controlling for pre-Tier 2 scores. The results suggest that a proactive strengths-based approach to supporting foundational literacy learning in children's first year of school benefits all learners. The findings have important implications for early provision of literacy learning support in order to reduce current inequities in literacy outcomes.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to describe and explain changes in severity of speech sound disorder (SSD) and token-to-token inconsistency in children with high levels of inconsistency. Method: Thirty-nine children (aged 4;6-7;11 [years;months]) with SSDs and high levels of token-to-token inconsistency were assessed every 6 months for 2 years (i.e., five assessment points). Growth modeling was used to assess relations among therapy support, receptive vocabulary, severity, and inconsistency over time. Results: Children with the most severe SSDs and highest levels of token-to-token inconsistency showed the smallest improvements in speech accuracy over time. Therapy support did not predict changes in speech accuracy or token-to-token inconsistency over time. Receptive vocabulary (measured at the outset of the study) was also a significant predictor of speech accuracy and inconsistency. Conclusions: These findings suggest that an immediate start to intervention (rather than a wait-and-see approach) is recommended for children with inconsistent speech error patterns. The results also highlight the value of developing vocabulary knowledge in addition to improving speech accuracy for some children with inconsistent speech production.

The implementation of lockdowns that include the closure of educational facilities for face to face teaching has been one of the strategies used internationally to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Research suggests lockdowns are associated with negative impacts on children's psycho-social functioning, Most research, however, has been conducted in countries where extended lockdown periods have been in place and has primarily used parent/child survey to gain insight into lockdown effects. The current study was conducted in the context of New Zealand's initial 7-week national lockdown which allowed examination of the impact of a relatively short lockdown period. Participants (n = 139) aged 10 to 13 years from one school were interviewed face to face about their experiences during lockdown immediately following the re-opening of schools. Participants' self-concept was also evaluated to gain an understanding of their psycho-social skills after lockdown. Qualitative analysis identified positive and negative features of lockdown from children's perspectives. Analysis also focused on changes to children's relationships with close family members during lockdown. The findings have implications for identifying how to optimise lockdown experiences for children.

A controlled intervention study supported the effectiveness of teachers implementing an integrated intervention ("Better Start Literacy Approach"; "BSLA") to accelerate foundational literacy skills for children in Year 1 with low levels of oral language ability in a community with significant challenges to effective teaching and learning (Gillon et al., 2019). As part of an implementation approach, the current study aimed to investigate whether teachers from less challenging contexts can successfully implement the "Better Start Literacy Approach" with reduced support from researchers. Two schools with a total of 93 Year 0/1 children participated in the teacher-led classroom literacy intervention, with 20% of sample classified as linguistically diverse. A series of research questions explored the impact of the intervention on children's foundational literacy skills. Repeated measures general linear models demonstrated a positive impact of the intervention for the research group compared to the control group. Further analysis demonstrated the intervention was equally effective for linguistically diverse learners. The findings have important implications for better understanding the effectiveness of the BSLA in differing contexts and for linguistically diverse learners, further adding to the research for this literacy intervention.

Few studies have examined the effectiveness of methods to develop preservice teachers' phonemic, morphological and orthographic awareness for spelling instruction. Preservice teachers (n = 86) participated in 10 hours of metalinguistic coursework. The coursework focused on: phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, morphological awareness and utilising such information in spelling assessment. Measures from previous research were utilised to compare participants' performance with other preservice and inservice teachers of varying experience and expertise. The research cohort outperformed the preservice comparison group and their scores approximated that achieved by inservice teachers who had participated in 30 hours of professional development focused on building metalinguistic knowledge for spelling instruction. The results suggest that the coursework was effective at building students' phonemic, morphological and orthographic awareness and this information could be applied to support analysis of spelling errors. Implications for the effective preparation of literacy teachers within preservice programmes are discussed.

This study investigated the impact of an emergent literacy intervention on the language quality and quantity used during shared reading interactions of 14 teenage mothers (M = 19;9, SD = 1;3) and their young children (M = 2;1, SD = 0;8). Mothers participated in a seven-week emergent literacy intervention focused on a range of behaviours they could use to enhance shared reading interactions with their children. A pre-post single group (no control/comparison group) research design was used to evaluate intervention effects on language use. Results demonstrated a significant intervention effect on most aspects of language quality and quantity measured. Number of total words, total utterances and number of different words demonstrated a statistically significant increase for both mothers and children; mothers used more rare-sophisticated words; and children used more different types of word classes. Context of talk for mothers also showed significant growth in areas of description and prediction/explanation. Results provide considerations for designing parent-focused interventions to effectively target both literacy and language development in children from at-risk populations.

Literacy success lays the foundation for children's later educational, health, and well-being outcomes. Thus, early identification of literacy need is vital. Using data from New Zealand's national preschool health screening program for fiscal years 2010/2011-2014/2015, demographic and health variables from 255,090 children aged 4 years were related to whether they received a literacy intervention in early primary school. Overall, 20,652 (8.1%) children received an intervention. Time-to-event analysis revealed that all considered variables were significantly related to literacy intervention (all p < 0.01), but the full model lacked reasonable predictive power for population screening purposes (Harrell's c-statistic = 0.624; 95% CI [0.618, 0.629]). Including more direct literacy measures in the national screening program is likely needed for improvement.

This study investigated the response to class-wide phonological awareness and oral language teaching for 40 children who entered school with speech and language difficulties. A stepped wedge research design was adopted to compare the immediate impact of the 10-week teacher-led instruction. The progress of the children with speech and language difficulties was monitored over the first school year and compared with 110 children with language difficulties alone and 95 children with typical development. Children with speech and language needs showed a strong intervention response in phoneme awareness and vocabulary learning but needed more support to transfer skills to word decoding and spelling. Implementing the approach earlier in the school year resulted in stronger literacy performance at the year-end for all three groups. The importance of positive speech-language pathologist and teacher collaborations to support a systematic approach to evidence-based foundational literacy teaching is discussed.

This study investigated the feasibility of a teacher implemented intervention to accelerate phonological awareness, letter, and vocabulary knowledge in 141 children (mean age 5 years, 4 months) who entered school with lower levels of oral language ability. The children attended schools in low socioeconomic communities where additional stress was still evident 6 years after the devastating earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2011. The teachers implemented the intervention at the class or large group level for 20 h (four 30-min sessions per week for 10 weeks). A stepped wedge research design was used to evaluate intervention effects. Children with lower oral language ability made significantly more progress in both their phonological awareness and targeted vocabulary knowledge when the teachers implemented the intervention compared to progress made when teachers implemented their usual literacy curriculum. Importantly, the intervention accelerated children's ability to use improved phonological awareness skills when decoding novel words (treatment effect size d = 0.88). Boys responded to the intervention as well as girls and the skills of children who identified as Maori or Pacific Islands (45.5% of the cohort) improved in similar ways to children who identified as New Zealand European. The findings have important implications for designing successful teacher-implemented interventions, within a multi-tier approach, to support children who enter school with known challenges for their literacy learning.

This study examined whether children's speech and literacy skills were impacted by co-working among student speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and student teachers during an inter-professional education (IPE) initiative. Seven five-year-old children who demonstrated difficulties with speech and/or phonological awareness participated in three weeks of classroom-based instruction delivered by student SLP--teacher pairs during professional practice placements. A multiple single-participant design with repeated measures was utilized to examine the impact of the co-instruction on children's speech and phonological awareness. Four out of seven children, each of whom were instructed by a different student professional pair, improved on at least one of two goal areas. More specifically, two out of six children improved their production of trained and untrained speech targets. Three out of seven children also improved on phoneme segmentation of trained and untrained words. Children's improvement in phoneme awareness was accompanied by improved letter--sound knowledge and spelling. Moreover, analysis of instructional logs confirmed that children who improved on their target goals received classroom-based co-instruction from their student SLP--teacher pairs. The findings support the potential of the placement-based IPE in that most of the student pairs learned to establish co-instruction which positively influenced children's speech and early literacy outcomes.

Background: Preliminary studies of inter-professional education (IPE) among student speech-language therapists (SLTs) and student teachers suggest that workshop-based applications are beneficial in preparing participants for elements of collaborative practice. Situating IPE within the students' professional practice placements may provide another useful avenue to develop attitudes, knowledge and skills for inter-professional collaboration. Research examining the impact of different approaches to IPE is required to advance our understanding of effective design and evaluation of such initiatives. Aims: To understand how student SLTs and student teachers develop competency for collaborative practice when co-working during professional practice placements to support children's speech and literacy development. Methods & Procedures: A case study design was used to monitor the impact of the IPE. Student SLTs (n = 4) were paired with student teachers (n = 4) to participate in shared professional practice placements in junior school classrooms. An inductive thematic analysis of interviews conducted with participants after the IPE was employed to explore the development of competencies in collaborative practice. Change in inter-disciplinary knowledge and perceptions over the IPE was evaluated via survey to further explore the development of collaborative competencies. Outcomes & Results: Integration of qualitative and quantitative findings suggested that participants began to develop four broad areas of collaborative competency--understanding of professional roles and expertise, communication skills to support shared decision-making, inter-dependency in supporting children's learning, and flexibility to implement alternative instructional practices. Interview analysis also revealed factors related to the facilitators and learning contexts that supported and/or limited the collaboration between participants. Conclusions & Implications: Shared placement experiences between student SLTs and student teachers may be an effective method for building participants' competencies in multiple aspects of collaborative practice. Active facilitation by both SLT and classroom teacher supervisors alongside careful consideration of learning contexts (e.g., classroom structure) will help to ensure that learning is maximized for prospective professionals.

Ensuring teacher and speech and language pathology graduates are prepared to work collaboratively together to meet the diverse language literacy learning needs of children is an important goal. This study investigated the efficacy of a 3-h inter-professional education program focused on explicit instruction in the language skills that underpin early reading and spelling acquisition. The combined program incorporated student teachers and student speech and language pathologists (SLPs) working together on case-based instructional planning supplemented with structured opportunities for the groups to share their respective expertise in curriculum and linguistic knowledge. Student teachers (n = 18) and student SLPs (n = 27) were randomly assigned to this combined intervention or a comparison intervention that replaced the structured opportunities to share curriculum and linguistic knowledge with spending time together focused on non-language/literacy based activities. Before-and-after comparisons indicated that only the students in the combined condition increased their linguistic/curricular knowledge (p < 0.05). However, neither of the interventions improved students' case-based instructional planning for children's literacy learning over and above what they could achieve working individually. Implications for the pre-service preparation of teachers and SLPs are discussed.

Low metalinguistic knowledge of pre-service and in-service teachers is likely to restrict the provision of evidence-based literacy instruction in the classroom. Despite such concerns, relatively few studies have examined the effects of teacher preparation coursework in building pre-service teachers' language structure knowledge. This study examined the effects of 7 h of language structure coursework, delivered over 7 weeks, on 121 New Zealand pre-service teachers in their initial year of study. Changes in participants' phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and orthographic knowledge were tracked across the teaching period. The impact of the coursework for participants who presented with strong spelling (n = 24) and poor spelling (n = 24) ability was also compared. The cohort demonstrated significant gains across all measures. Strong spellers responded more favourably to the teaching than poor spellers, even when accounting for initial levels of meta-linguistic knowledge. Implications for the development of teacher preparation programmes that enhance the provision of effective literacy instruction are discussed.

This study determined the effectiveness of an experimental emergent literacy intervention, targeting teenage mothers attending an educational facility. Using a pretest/posttest research design, 27 participants completed a 7­-week intervention based in the classroom, targeting a range of emergent literacy skills that they could utilize when reading with their children. Assessment tracked changes in the type and frequency of participants' reading behaviors demonstrated during videoed shared reading interactions with their young children, as well as changes to aspects of the home literacy environment. Data analysis was completed by an independent coder who was blinded to the group (research or comparison) and time point (pre or post) allocation. Results indicated significantly greater frequency of vocabulary, questioning, and book/print features-­focused reading behaviors from pretest to posttest. No changes were observed in reading behaviors relating to letter/sound features. The data provide evidence to support the efficacy of an emergent literacy intervention in changing the shared reading behaviors of teenage mothers.

Successful collaboration among speech and language therapists (SLTs) and teachers fosters the creation of communication friendly classrooms that maximize children's spoken and written language learning. However, these groups of professionals may have insufficient opportunity in their professional study to develop the shared knowledge, perceptions and attitudes required for effective collaboration. This study examined the knowledge and perceptions of student teachers and student SLTs in the areas of language concepts, junior school literacy curriculum, service delivery and professional collaboration. An online survey was completed by 58 student primary school teachers and 37 student SLTs in their final year of professional study. The results indicated that these groups possessed limited understanding of each other's expertise in literacy curriculum and spoken language concepts. Both groups demonstrated minimal knowledge of spoken-written language relationships and how SLTs can assist to develop children's orthographic knowledge. Participants demonstrated acceptance of indirect methods of classroom-based service delivery (e.g. SLT acting as a consultant) but were less accepting of direct methods of classroom-based service delivery (e.g. shared teaching). Both groups also reported minimal experience with SLT-teacher collaboration during their pre-service education. The data suggest pre-service inter-professional education (IPE) with a focus on children's early literacy learning is warranted to prepare prospective SLTs and teachers for collaborative instruction that enhances children's communication.

The majority of children and young people in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) experience good health and wellbeing, but there are key areas where they compare unfavourably to those in other rich countries. However, current measures of wellbeing are critically limited in their suitability to reflect the dynamic, culture-bound, and subjective nature of the concept of 'wellbeing'. In particular, there is a lack of measurement in primary school-aged children and in ways that incorporate Māori perspectives on wellbeing. A Better Start National Science Challenge work in the areas of Big Data, Healthy Weight, Resilient Teens, and Successful learning demonstrates how research is increasing our understanding of, and our ability to enhance, wellbeing for NZ children. As we look ahead to the future, opportunities to support the wellbeing of NZ young people will be shaped by how we embrace and mitigate against potential harms of new technologies, and our ability to respond to new challenges that arise due to climate change. In order to avoid increasing inequity in who experiences wellbeing in NZ, wellbeing must be monitored in ways that are culturally acceptable, universal, and recognise what makes children flourish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study aimed to examine teachers' reported spelling assessment and instruction practices. Analysis of the match between teachers' theoretical beliefs about spelling and their reported pedagogy was conducted to elucidate factors that may support or impede the use of evidence-based teaching strategies in the classroom. An electronic survey was completed by 405 randomly selected (stratified by region and socioeconomic status) elementary school teachers in New Zealand. The survey examined the following areas: spelling assessment, spelling instruction, beliefs about spelling, preparing teachers to teach spelling, and teachers' perceived strengths and weaknesses of their spelling program. There was large variability in spelling assessment and instructional practices across teachers. Most respondents reported implementing some aspects of a developmental approach to spelling instruction through analysis of children's spelling errors (64%) and/or individualization of the spelling program (60%). There was a large dissociation between teachers' beliefs about spelling and their frequency of use of specific instructional practices associated with those beliefs (e.g., phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge). The mismatch between beliefs and reported practice appeared to be due to lack of professional knowledge regarding implementing explicit spelling instruction and finding time to teach spelling within the curriculum. Increasing teachers' knowledge about language structure, practical implementation of key assessment and instruction activities, and the links between spelling and other areas of the curriculum are important factors in improving spelling pedagogical practices.

The longer-term effectiveness of phonological awareness intervention for children with reading difficulty is likely to be influenced by the quality of general classroom instruction. This descriptive project used a case study design to follow the literacy progress of three children aged six and seven years with speech and language impairment after responding strongly to an intensive phonological awareness intervention. The study analysed the opportunities provided in the children's general classroom programme within the New Zealand English curriculum for ongoing facilitation of phonological awareness skills. Findings indicated that the classroom environment provided multiple opportunities for implicit teaching of phonological awareness skills which may have contributed to the children's ability to maintain skills taught within the intervention. Children with significant reading difficulties underpinned by poor phonological awareness are likely to require ongoing access to intensive intervention in addition to quality classroom instruction.

Background: Phonological representations are important for speech and literacy development. Mispronunciation detection tasks have been proposed as an appropriate measure of phonological representations for children with speech disorder. There has been limited analysis, however, of the developmental complexity of task stimuli. Further, the tasks have not been used widely with typical populations. Aims: The study aimed to examine the developmental progression of children's performance on a mispronunciation detection task, to evaluate the complexity of the task's stimuli, and to analyse the association between task performance and other skills important for literacy success. Methods & Procedures: A cross-sectional design was used to compare the mispronunciation detection performance of monolingual children within mainstream classrooms aged 4;0-4;5 (n = 26), 4;6-5;0 (n = 49), and 5;1-5;6 (n = 64). Comparison of the complexity of vowel mismatches, single consonant mismatches, consonant deletion mismatches, and consonant transposition mismatches was conducted. Outcomes & Results: Children in the youngest age group were outperformed by the older age groups in the phonological representation task. Fine-grained mismatches were more difficult to detect than coarse-grained mismatches. There was a trend for vowel substitutions to be the most difficult mismatch to detect. Performance in the mispronunciation detection task was moderately correlated with the children's receptive vocabulary, speech, phonological awareness, and letter knowledge skills. Conclusions & Implications: Mismatch type must be taken into account when designing mispronunciation detection tasks. Access to segmental phonological representations is related to speech, language, and letter knowledge in children from mainstream classrooms. (Contains 2 tables.)

This study investigated the effectiveness of an integrated phonological awareness approach for children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Change in speech, phonological awareness, letter knowledge, word decoding, and spelling skills were examined. A controlled multiple single-subject design was employed. Twelve children aged 4-7 years with CAS participated in two 6-week intervention blocks (2 sessions per week), separated by a 6-week withdrawal block. Nine children with CAS made significant gains in their production of target speech sounds and these demonstrated transfer of skills to connected speech for at least one speech target. Eight children showed significant gains in at least one target phoneme awareness skill, and these children demonstrated transfer of skills to novel phoneme awareness tasks. As a group the children with CAS demonstrated improvement in phonological awareness, letter knowledge, word decoding, and spelling ability. An integrated phonological awareness programme was an effective method of simultaneously improving speech, phoneme awareness, word decoding, and spelling ability for some children with CAS. (Contains 3 tables and 5 figures.)

Increasing evidence suggests that prenatal exposure to opioids may affect brain development, but limited data exist on the effects of opioid-exposure on preschool language development. Our study aimed to characterize the nature and prevalence of language problems in children prenatally exposed to opioids, and the factors that support or hinder language acquisition. A sample of 100 children born to pregnant women in methadone maintenance treatment and 110 randomly identified non-exposed children were studied from birth to age 4.5 years. At 4.5 years, 89 opioid-exposed and 103 non-exposed children completed the preschool version of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF-P) as part of a comprehensive neurodevelopmental assessment. Children prenatally exposed to opioids had poorer receptive and expressive language outcomes at age 4.5 years compared to non-opioid exposed children. After adjustment for child sex, maternal education, other pregnancy substance use, maternal pregnancy nutrition and prenatal depression, opioid exposure remained a significant independent predictor of children’s total CELF-P language score. Examination of a range of potential intervening factors showed that a composite measure of the quality of parenting and home environment at age 18 months and early childhood education participation at 4.5 years were important positive mediators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]