A preschool programme for disadvantaged children with delayed communication : A collaboration between a speech language pathologist and a teacher

[Extract] This chapter presents a case study of a group intervention approach for socially disadvantaged preschoolers. The intervention content was devised by Beth McIntosh, a speech-language pathologist (SLP), and delivered by Sian Thomas to her class, as part of the daily curriculum. A full report of that study (McIntosh et al., 2007a) began by describing the abilities of 72 children from the low socio-economic (SES) preschool targeted in the year before the programme was implemented. Those children did less well on standard measures of phonological awareness (PA) and language than 58 control children, matched for age and gender, attending preschools in average SES suburbs. The whole-language programme described in this chapter was given to half the children who attended the low SES preschool in the following year. The 97 children enrolled had been randomly assigned to two classes at the beginning of the school year. One class received two intervention programmes: Term 2 (ten weeks) focused on PA, followed by Term 3 (ten weeks) focusing on language, based in narrative. Their progress was compared to preschoolers in the other class who did not receive intervention. Both the PA and language interventions successfully enhanced the preschoolers' skills. Their performance at the three-month post-intervention assessment was significantly better on both measures compared to children from the untreated class and was within normal limits for their age.