Kindergarten Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies: Staff´s perception of using K-PALS in preschool

• Main Authors: Pétursdóttir, Anna Lind, Guðjónsdóttir, Kristín Helga
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Icelandic
• Published: Menntavísindasvið Háskóla Íslands 2016
• Subjects: preschool;peer-assisted learning strategies;beginning reading;teachers´ perception; leikskóli;samvinnunám;lestrarkennsla;sýn kennara; Fuchs; Scarborough; Iceland
• Online Access: https://ojs.hi.is/netla/article/view/2416

Reading is a fundamental skill of great importance for success in modern society. Difficulties in reading tend to become apparent early and more difficult to remediate over time (Juel, 1988; Scarborough, 1998; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Thus, it is essential to start building a strong foundation for reading during the early years of schooling. Kindergarten Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies or K-PALS (Fuchs, Fuchs, Thompson et al, 2001) is a peer tutoring program designed to teach phonological awareness, beginning decoding, and word recognition to students aged 5–6 years. These skills have been demonstrated to be important for effective beginning reading programs (National Reading Panel, 2000). In K-PALS, phonological awareness is taught through teacherdirected activities called Sound Play where the focus is on rhyme, isolating first and ending sounds in words, blending and segmenting. Decoding and word recognition is taught through activities called Sounds and Words, where the focus is on letter sounds, sight words, segmenting and blending. Guided by a detailed K-PALS manual, teachers introduce the activities to the whole class, modeling the tasks of the „coach“ with the students being „readers“. Later, students work together in pairs, guided by K-PALS worksheets, alternating as coach and reader (Fuchs et al., 2013). Research has shown K-PALS to have beneficial effects on children´s beginning reading skills (e.g. Fuchs, Fuchs, Thompson et al., 2001; Fuchs et al., 2002), but teachers´ perception of the activities remains to be explored. In Icelandic preschools, play is considered the main learning method for children and little emphasis has been on explicit instruction in beginning reading skills. The aim of this study was to research how preschool staff in Iceland perceive the use of KPALS. Participants were twelve teachers and one paraprofessional at five preschools in the capital region of Iceland. The majority of participants had been teaching in preschool for 12 or more years and had two or more ...