St. Albert Catholic students have made huge strides in their skills as readers thanks to an experimental program run by the University of Alberta.
U of A educational psychology professor George Georgiou released preliminary results from his team’s new literacy training program last week.
In March 2021, Alberta Education Minister Adriana LaGrange announced a $100,000 project to have Georgiou and his team give teachers special training to address reading deficits among early learners.
The project was meant to counteract learning deficits caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Georgio and his team found that some 40 per cent of Edmonton-area Grade 1 to 9 students were struggling readers who performed below their grade level in September 2020 — far above the five to 10 per cent one would typically expect.
Georgiou said he and St. Albert doctoral student Kristy Dunn developed a new testing and training program to help struggling students learn to read as part of this project. They deployed in about 34 Alberta schools in four school districts, including Greater St. Albert Catholic.
The program saw some 362 Grade 2 and 3 students (116 from GSACRD) who were struggling readers receive 30 minutes of intensive literacy training four times a week in small groups from October to February. Student reading levels were measured with standardized tests to see if the system had any effect.
Brittney Thompson is the literacy lead for GSACRD and helped roll out the program in St. Albert. Her daughter Bennett was one of the program’s participants.
Thompson said traditional literacy instruction has youths use pictures or guesses to determine what words mean and phonics (learning which letter combinations create which sounds) to teach pronunciation.
But phonics only work for about half of all English words, Georgiou said — the rest are oddballs such as “xylophone” or “yacht” which don’t follow phonic rules. This program gave student specific techniques with which to manage these irregular words in addition to phonics lessons and shared-reading sessions.
Big results
Some 82 per cent of students showed statistically significant improvement in reading skills after completing the program which could not be explained by physical maturation, Georgiou said. Students' reading levels advanced an average of 1.5 years in just five months.
Georgiou said these youths had showed no improvement in reading levels with conventional help the previous year and were considered at risk of future learning disabilities. The team found that some 72 per cent of students in the program were out of this risk zone by the end of it and needed no further support, having effectively caught up from their COVID delays.
Thompson said Bennett used to hate reading and would avoid it at all costs.
“Now even while we’re driving, she’s trying to read signs, she’s reading books at bedtime, she’s reading to her brother and sister now,” Thompson said.
“As a mom I’m so thrilled to see she has a love of reading.”
Georgiou said he was surprised to see improvements in every school district, as this implies the program may work regardless of location and socio-economic differences. His team now wants to figure out why 18 per cent of students did not improve after completing the program — they suspect it may be because the students missed many of its training sessions.
Thompson said literacy is the foundation of learning, and research suggests youths who struggle with reading in Grade 3 continue to do so for the rest of their lives. She called on the province to train teachers in science-backed literacy programs such as this one as it rolls out its new literacy-focused curriculum.
Georgiou said he hopes to have these results published in the Scientific Studies of Reading Journal at some point.
