Phonological awareness and early reading and writing abilities in early childhood education: preliminary normative data

Abstract

Objective: to provide preliminary normative data for the Reading and Writing Test by type of school, and normative data for the Phonological Awareness Test by Oral Production for private schools and update their normative data available for public schools, all of which are for children in the final year of early childhood education. Methods: 267 children, in the age range of 5 years, and typical development. Identification Questionnaire for Parents, Phonological Awareness Test by Oral Production and Reading and Writing Test were used. The means of performance in the tests of the present sample were compared with the existing normative data to justify normative data provision and updating. Results: Student’s t-test revealed that the private school children outperformed those of the public schools in all measures, reinforcing the need for specific standards, according to the type of school. There were strong to very strong relationships among the variables evaluated, demonstrating a marked association between phonological awareness and initial reading and writing abilities. The Wilcoxon test revealed significant differences between the performance of the children of the present study, from both private and public schools, and the data from the Phonological Awareness Test by Oral Production standardization sample, suggesting the need to update the Phonological Awareness Test by Oral Production standards. Finally, the new normative data were presented. Conclusion: the need to make available and update the test standards used, according to the type of school, was confirmed. Further studies are necessary to expand the data presented to other age groups.

Initial reading and writing skills in childhood education: achievement sample in the Northeast of Brazil for obtaining specific regional performance standards

“…the index to be considered in the Wilcoxon analysis for the comparison of the present data with those of the normative sample. Table 2 includes the mean and SD of the same age sample (five years old), the expected score based on the existing preliminary norms, and the median calculated from the sample in León et al 7 . The median is The comparison between the performance of the children of this study with those of the normative sample inLeón et al 7 , with children from the Southeast Region, revealed significant differences, presented in Table 3.…”

“…Such a goal was achieved, and the availability of these performance standards can contribute, from now on, to the usage of the RWT for screening northeastern children. It should be noted that the RWT offered only preliminary norms published only for children of the Southeast Region 6,7 .…”

“…The RWT has been previously used and has presented adequate psychometric properties 7 . In the study by Pazeto et al 4 , with a sample of 94 kindergarten students, sturdy and significant correlations were observed between the performance on the RWT and scores in phonological awareness (0.76 and 0.80, p<0.01), knowledge of sounds (0.73 and .87, p<0.01), and knowledge of letters (.49 and 0.57, p<0.01).…”

“…The RWT instrument aims to assess initial reading and writing skills, specifically the reading and writing of isolated words and pseudowords with simple syllabic structure (C-V, mono-and disyllable) 6 . The psychometric properties of the RWT have been evaluated in previous studies conducted in the Southeast Region of Brazil 4,6,7 , with promising results.…”

“…Also, this study aimed at investigating the effect of the type of school (public vs. private) and the time of assessment (beginning vs. end of the school year) on the performance of the northeastern sample, so as to justify the availability of specific performance standards. Furthermore, it sought to investigate whether there are differences in the performance of early reading and writing skills of northeastern children in relation to the preliminary norms already provided in the RWT, in sample with data from the Southeast Region, as made available by León et al 7 .…”