Facilitating language development for inner-city children: Experimental evaluation of a collaborative, classroom-based intervention

Purpose: This study explores the effectiveness of a collaborative, classroo m-based model in enhancing the development of vocabulary and phonological a wareness:skills for kindergarten and first-grade children in an inner-city school district. Method: Four regular education teachers:from the neighborhood school were r andomly selected for participation. Children were randomly assigned to clas srooms following usual school procedures. Two classrooms served as standard practice controls. In the other two classrooms, a collaborative service de livery model was implemented. One certified speech-language pathologist tau ght in each experimental classroom 2 1/2 days per week. The speech-language pathologist and the regular education teachers engaged in joint curriculum planning on a weekly basis. Vocabulary and phonological awareness instruct ion was embedded into ongoing curricular activities. Additionally, explicit instruction in phonological awareness was planned for a 25-minute small-gr oup activity center weekly. Results: Following the 6-month intervention superior gains La were noted in receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary beginning sound awareness, and letter-sound associations for children in the experimental classrooms as c ompared to children in the standard practice control classrooms. The childr en in the experimental classrooms also-showed greater improvement on a dele tion task in comparison to the children in the standard practice classrooms . Importantly this task was never used as an instructional activity, and th us demonstrated generalization to a novel phonological awareness task. Clinical Implications: The results are discussed with regard to the positiv e benefits of collaboration in facilitating the language abilities of inner -city children who are at risk for academic difficulties in the early eleme ntary grades.