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Session III: Dr. Chris Lonigan
"Parent and Child Literacy Instruction in Even Start Programs"
Dr. Chris Lonigan is Associate Psychology Professor at Florida State
University. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from SUNY
Stony Brook in 1991 and completed a two-year National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development Postdoctoral Fellowship in
developmental disabilities at the John F. Kennedy Center of Vanderbilt
University. Dr. Lonigan has been the recipient of a number of teaching
awards and recognition at FSU where he is co-director of FSU's
Leadership Personnel Preparation Program in the area of developmental
disabilities. Dr. Lonigan is a member of the Executive Committee of the
American Psychological Associations Section on Clinical child
Psychology. He serves on the editorial board as a reviewer for numerous
journals in the field of developmental, education and clinical psychology.
The majority of Dr. Lonigan's work focuses on the development of literacy
skills and the design and evaluation of preventative and remedial
interventions for children with or at-risk for reading disabilities. He and
his colleagues at FSU have recently been awarded several federal grants to
measure early literacy skills, track the development of these skills, identify
children at-risk for reading failure, and evaluate the benefits of
preventative remedial literacy interventions. |
Understanding the Processes Important to Reading
Dr. Lonigan presented an outline of the following processes involved in reading: |
- Accurate Decoding = Letter Knowledge + Phonological Processing Abilities
- Letter knowledge = Letter Shapes, Letter Names, Letter Sounds
- Phonological Processing Abilities = Awareness, Access, Memory
- Comprehension = Context, Vocabulary, Grammar
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Each of the components was then expanded upon with discussion and examples. He integrated the Inside-Out Skills model presented in an earlier presentation by Dr. Grove Whitehurst as another way to look at the component processes. Inside-Out Skills were defined as “The knowledge and skills required to translate text into meaningful sounds (or sounds into text).
These processes were divided into the following four areas:
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- Phonological Processing - Phonological sensitivity, Lexical access and
Phonological memory.
- Letter Knowledge - Letter identification and discrimination, letter-sound knowledge
- Oral Language – Vocabulary, Syntactic, Narrative Understanding
- Print – Interest in Print
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Reading Instruction for Adults
One of the most important themes in this part of the presentation was an emphasis on the fact that adults do not have to be in class. They can walk away at any time, unlike the child in a classroom. It is critical to discover the adult's goals for reading at the earliest possible time.
The presentation was directed toward the following four areas:
- What to teach?
The discussion centered on the purpose of reading and what happens when a person reads. It is important as stated earlier to identify the goal of the reader and then establish and identify the skills already mastered.
- Outcomes and Evidence
- Decoding
There is limited data on adult literacy; however, both Project Follow Through and the Foorman et al (1998) Study indicate direct instruction is better.
- Comprehension
The components of comprehension include concept and vocabulary development, command of linguistic structure of text and reflective control of comprehension.
- Instructional Models
Metacognitive, Cognitive Apprentice, and Reciprocal Teaching were highlighted.
- Implications
- Decoding > Practice > Fluency > Comprehension
- Teach decoding but in a meaningful context
- Individuals with significant problems need the most exact instruction
- Instruction does not change but rather the same instruction is needed in a more exact and more intense form.
- What constitutes effective instruction?
Dr. Lonigan provided the National Adult Literacy & Learning Disabilities Center, 1998 set of "14 Principles for Effective Literacy Instruction for Adults with Learning Disabilities" which include:
- Teach important skills
- Teach less but better
- Teach explicitly
- Teach contextually
- Explain what is to be learned and why it is important
- Check the old before teaching the new
- Model what is to be learned
- Use prompted practice
- Use controlled materials
- Provide practice, practice, practice (and more practice)
- Require frequent responses
- Provide corrective feedback
- Promote generalization
- Be prepared
- Dr. Lonigan went on to outline strategies for decoding and
comprehension, which included:
- The meaning of phonological awareness
- The importance of the phonological awareness
- Why speech easy and reading is hard
- The importance of teaching print knowledge
- Increased fluency in decoding
- Teach comprehension strategies
- Develop and present procedural prompts
In summary Dr. Lonigan highlighted:
- The need for increased shared reading, directed talk and increased literacy materials in the home to facilitate children's early reading skills.
- The importance of Outside-In and Inside-Out Components.
- The notion that the teaching of adult and child reading skills can be integrated in family literacy programs.
- The significance of providing a sequenced approach to emergent and conventional literacy instruction.
- Examples of specific procedures for parental instruction or parent training modules.
He provided the following resources for the participants:
- Detailed presentation outline.
- Examples of effective programs.
- Examples of Phonological Awareness Exercises
- Modified Reading Recovery for integrating adult and child instruction
- Bibliography of research and publications
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