SCREENING FOR EMERGING LITERACY IN PRESCHOOL AND ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (RaLEPEEB – SURDEZ): PRELIMINARY DATA

João Paulo Santos, Anabela Cruz-Santos

Abstract


A significant body of evidence underscores the importance of preschool education, indicating that skills in oral language, phonological awareness, and letter knowledge predict how well children will learn to read when exposed to formal instruction in elementary school. However, acquiring and developing these skills is challenging for children with hearing loss due to technological advances in early identification and intervention processes. These processes, in conjunction with other factors, account for the heterogeneity of this population. An assessment of literacy skills that considers all languages and communication systems used by a child with a hearing impairment across various contexts is necessary to identify potential risk areas and enable educators to adapt their methods, strategies, content, and materials to each student's learning needs. The objective of this study is to present the tool Emerging Literacy Screening for Preschool and Elementary Education (RaLEPEEB-Surdez), which was developed to address the lack of a reliable instrument for identifying areas associated with emerging literacy that are potentially at risk in Portuguese children with hearing loss. The screening evaluates five areas related to the development of emergent literacy. Based on an instrument validated for identifying these areas in hearing children (RaLEPE; Sapage & Cruz-Santos, 2023), the RaLEPEEB-Surdez tool recognizes the bilingualism and biculturalism of students with hearing loss as integral to their acquisition and development of communication skills. This instrument assesses language comprehension (20 items), language production (32 items), metalinguistic awareness (27 items), literacy (23 items), and interaction with books (11 items) in the two languages that guide these students' access to the school curriculum and shape their relationship with the predominantly hearing society in which they live: spoken language and sign language. Some preliminary data from the pilot study will be presented regarding the heterogeneity of the population with hearing loss and the internal consistency of responses to the items in the five areas of emergent literacy.

Keywords


deafness, bilingualism, emerging literacy, screening

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejse.v12i6.6898

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