Funded Projects

Scholastic Readiness for English Language Learners

Project Year

2025

City & State

Hoover, New York

Program Name

CATCH Implementation

Topic

School Readiness/Head Start

Program Description

Problem:  English Language Learners (ELLs) make up a large number of students within  the New York City(NYC) & Long Island School Systems, but many of these struggling ELL students fail to get effective help early enough.  Despite reading being an essential skill for scholastic success, an estimated 67% of all US 4th-graders are reading below grade level —when accounting for low socioeconomic status or language barriers, the figure grows to 80%.(NAEP 2022)   These rates can be improved through timely and effective interventions as past research shows that when phonological weaknesses were remediated early, around age 5 or younger, reading failure was prevented in more than 90% of cases(Torgesen 1999).   Unfortunately, many students face significant language and/or economic  barriers or simply even lack the opportunity to receive the extra help they need. This problem is compounded by an educational “wait to fail” model of  not identifying  those "at risk" for reading failure until a child has repeatedly failed to “ learn to read” in elementary school, despite those warning signs being present by age four.  The pandemic only made the problem worse. For example, data released by the NYC Department of Education showed that 37% (9,800) of all preschoolers(ages 3-5) with disabilities in the NYC school system did not receive a single disability service during 2021-2022 school.  The problem we are addressing cannot be understated. If a child is not reading at grade level by 3rd grade, 75% of those children will never reach reading proficiency in future grades. Weaknesses in language skills like phonological awareness hinders the ability to gain skills in reading/decoding words. Children who start off as struggling learners rarely catch up to grade level in future grades. Scholastic difficulty leads to low confidence, feelings of inadequacy, and mental health disparities, including risk for self-harm/suicide. Many won’t complete high school which negatively impacts their future economic and vocational potential.    Primary Setting: The Primary Setting will be within the Turkish Community within the New York City (NYC) & Long Island area.  Number Of Children Affected: The project intends to help 30+  families that could have any number of preschool/school age children within them from the ages of 4-8 years old.  Project Goal: The Project’s Goal is to increase  scholastic readiness ability and potential of the children with respect to English receptive language, phonological awareness, and fine motor skills over an eight week period. A secondary goal is  to inform/support parents on how to continue developing their children’s ongoing English skills.  Proposed Intervention: The First step is to create the experience-based  learning program with physician, Occupational Therapist(OT),  Speech  and Language Therapist(SLP),  and educational input.  Selected bilingual college students from the local Turkish community will be trained on how to assess for critical pre-literacy and fine motor milestones. The program will offer fun experiential-based learning opportunities for the children which will be supported by the families at home thus strengthening  the participants' literacy and fine motor  skills which are critical to their overall future scholastic success.  For ninety minutes/week spanning 8 weeks, the target children will receive English language/fine-motor enrichment in the form of the group activities, while the parents will meet with the bilingual project leader on how to continue developing these scholastic readiness skills at home.   Anticipated Outcomes: The short term summer intervention outcome expected is improved phonological awareness and fine-motor skill acquisition by the children along with parent satisfaction. Pre/post project competency in skills will be assessed with an observational fine-motor milestone assessment and also a standardized measure for phonological processing.  The long term measurement of improved scholastic performance will be determined by  follow up school progress data. 

Project Goal

To improve school readiness skills among NYC English Language Learners  by offering a summer neuro-developmental enrichment  program.

Project Objective 1

During a 10 week period, develop and deliver an 8 week summer enrichment series of interactive & instructional sessions to 30 or more Turkish immigrant children and/or their caregivers.    

Project Objective 2

After completion of the summer enrichment series of activities, have the participating students demonstrate a correct tripod pencil grip, a 10% increase or more in the standardized subtest score of phoneme elision on the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing 2nd Edition (CTOPP-2), and/or a 20% increase in letter/sound awareness by informal assessments. 

Project Objective 3

After completion of the summer training program for the Turkish caregivers,  have 75% of the caregiver participants or more complete an initial course satisfaction survey followed by a follow up check in 3-4 months later for information about the child’s school progress after intervention. 

AAP District

District II

Institutional Name

Alabama Game Changers

Contact 1

Susan Gunduz, MD

Contact 2

Stephanie Denton, MD