Excerpted from Ladders to Literacy: A Preschool Activity Book, Second Edition, by Angela Notari-Syverson, Ph.D., Rollanda E. O'Connor, Ph.D., & Patricia F. Vadasy, M.P.H.

Copyright © 2007 by Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

The activities in this volume have been extensively field-tested since 1992 in a variety of preschool settings, including child development programs, Head Start programs, and early childhood special education classrooms (Notari-Syverson, 1999). Ladders to Literacy: Preschool was originally developed over a 4-year period (Notari-Syverson, 1999).

Sites included an inclusive child development center serving primarily Caucasian children from middle-income families; a multicultural program in an Islamic school; two Head Start programs, one attended primarily by African American children and the other primarily by Native American children; and self-contained special education preschools in public schools attended by children from a variety of cultural backgrounds who had a broad range of abilities and disabiltiies.

A total of 26 teachers and teaching assistants as well as two speech-language pathologists and an occupational therapist participated in the field-testing. The professional affiliations of the teachers ranged from a child development associate's degree to a master's degree in early childhood special education.

Most teachers implemented each activity at least once. Generally, activities such as Shared Storybook Reading, Snack/Lunch Menu, My First Journal, and Morning/Afternoon Message and News took place daily. Activities such as Show and Tell and Musical Instruments took place weekly, whereas activities that required more intensive planning and preparing of materials (e.g., Long Jump, Following Recipes, Landscapes and Maps) were implemented only once during the school year. Teachers reported that they liked the activities and found them developmentally appropriate, culturally sensitive, and easy to include within their daily classroom routines.

Research results showed that preschool children with a broad range of ability levels made gains on various standardized and nonstandardized measures of early literacy, language, and phonological awareness following their participation in the early literacy program (Notari-Syverson, 1999). Children with delays and children at risk made the strongest gains (Notari-Syverson et al., 1996). Children in billingual and bi-literacy programs learning two languages and two writing systems (English and Arabic) showed similar or stronger gains on English language and literacy measures compared with children speaking only English.

Variations in activity implementation and teaching strategies were observed among teachers. Teachers working primarily with children with mild to moderate delays tended to use a broader range of curriculum activities and teaching strategies. Teachers working with children with more significant disabilities tended to implement functional activities that fit into daily routines and to use more direct teaching strategies.

Since the first publication of Ladders to Literacy: A Preschool Activity Book, we have been able to provide training to more than 500 early childhood and early childhood special education personnel and to conduct additional field-testing (Notari-Syverson, 2005). Teachers learned to implement the activities in workshops ranging from a single 3-hour session to all-day or several-day support sessions.

Participants provided documentation of children's gains using diverse early language and literacy assessments, including the Ladders to Literacy Checklist; the Work Sampling System (Meisels, Jablon, Marsden, Dichtelmiller, & Dorfman, 1994); the Galileo Preschool Assessment (Bergan, Rattee, Feld, Smith, Cunningham & Linne, 2003); the Individual Growth and Development Indicators (IGDIs): Alliteration, Blending, Rhyming, and Picture Naming tasks (Early Childhood Research Institute on Measuring Growth and Development, 1998); Clay's (1993) Letter Identification Task; anecdotal observations; children's work samples, and parent report.