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Supporting phonological awareness is an important part of the early reading and writing acquisition especially for children with speech and language disorders. One popular method of teaching focuses on hand gestures although there is no evidence for their application. The aim of the bachelor thesis was to explore the efficacy of hand gestures in the context of phonological awareness. Moreover, the need and practical implementation should have been evaluated. Therefore, an experiment was conducted within a first grade of a school focusing on children with speech and language disorders (n=11). The class was divided into an experimental and a control group. Whereas the experimental group used additional hand gestures, the control group only received support on phonological awareness. A pre- and post-test as well as a competency grid were used to assess proficiency development in phonological awareness and the usage of hand gestures. The results suggests that hand gestures are effective to support the phonological awareness and that children improve their skills by using hand gestures. Nevertheless, it became apparent that the implementation of hand gestures in this form does not seem to be sufficient and, accordingly, it should be revived in the systematic learning of letters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with recent progress regarding the development and evaluation of cognitive training programs, as well as with the issue of implementing these programs in educational contexts. The review of the literature indicates that major progress made during the past few decades relates to methodological accomplishments and not so much to theoretical advancements of basic concepts. Regarding the content of training programs, findings indicate that considerable progress has been made for some domains but not so much for others. For instance, the evidence on the effectiveness of memory trainings is mixed. Although it could be repeatedly shown that training programs focusing on memory strategies and meta-memory were successful, most of these approaches were not published. Recent studies focusing on the training of working memory have not been very successful and thus also did not lead to published programs. In comparison, it can be shown that the situation looks much better for training programs focusing on other cognitive domains such as inductive thinking, phonological awareness, and reading literacy. Long-term effectiveness could be demonstrated for most of these programs, and a large number of them also have been published during the past decades. For instance, the majority of programs focusing on reading literacy have shown that reading strategies can be improved considerably. Nonetheless, implementing successful training programs in educational contexts has proven difficult. Given that effective and positively evaluated programs are not necessarily transferred into educational context without additional effort, meaningful implementation strategies are discussed. Recommendations to overcome transfer problems are provided that emphasize close co-operations among researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in schools and kindergartens, and that should enhance chances for establishing successful programs in preschools and schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International meta-analyses show significant effects of phonological awareness training on the acquisition of written language. In the present meta-analysis of 27 primary studies the effects of phonological awareness on the early reading and writing skills are assessed in German. In general, we found higher effects for preschool training programs. However, preschool training did not have significant effects on decoding, but small effects on spelling skills. This pattern could be attributed to differences in the consistency of phoneme-grapheme vs. grapheme-phoneme correspondences. Moderator analyses indicated that children with weak vs. good initial competencies equally benefit from the training. Furthermore, combining the training with a phonic-letter training yielded no additional effects in comparison to a purely phonological awareness training. Overall, the meta-analytical training effects of the German programs were lower than in the international meta-analyses. For these findings linguistic and methodological explanations are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Since in Germany an inclusive school system is successively implemented, a lot of children who are at risk of developing dyslexia will attend local mainstream primary schools. To meet the special needs of these children, teachers need economic and valid methods for early identification in order to preventively promote children with unfavorable preconditions. Aims: Does the newly developed testing method measuring phonological awareness and naming speed help to identify children who are likely to develop disorders in written language acquisition? Methods: At the beginning of the school year, 253 students of the first grade from five inclusive primary schools were tested on phonological awareness and naming speed. At the end of the first and second grade, their reading speed, reading comprehension, and orthographic skills have been measured. Results: Compared to other internationally published studies, TEPHOBE achieved satisfactory to good results regarding its prognostic validity. Moreover it has become clear that children with a "doubledeficit" have the highest risk of developing disorders when learning to read and/or to write. Conclusions: TEPHOBE is an economic, practicable, and valid method for inclusive primary schools for the early identification of children who are at risk of developing reading and/or spelling disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]