Pör að læra saman í leikskóla - Reynsla starfsfólks af K-PALS

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 years of experience using K-PALS. The second author conducted semi-standardized interviews separately for each participant in their workplace. The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim, analyzed and categorized into themes. Interview responses revealed that participants had a generally positive perception of using K-PALS. A few participants described initial difficulties implementing K-PALS, such as fitting it into the schedule, learning to follow the manual and engaging students in the activities. Two participants reported that their view on K-PALS had been negative in the beginning because the program seemed complicated and too structured for use in preschools where they felt that the main emphasis should be on play. However, these teachers also described how their attitude towards KPALS became gradually more positive upon seeing that the children liked it and made progress in beginning reading skills. All participants were unanimous on the positive effects of K-PALS and described significant improvements, not only on the preschoolers´ beginning reading skills, but also their self-esteem, social skills and interactions with others. This was even reported to be the case with children identified at-risk for reading difficulties based on screening, although a few children seemed to need a more individualized teaching approach. Despite some participants´ predictions to the contrary, nearly all preschool children reportedly enjoyed K-PALS. All participants stated that they conducted K-PALS activities exactly as described in the manual, albeit changing wording slightly to maintain children´s attention. All planned to continue using K-PALS in some way, the majority in its original form. Some wanted to make adjustments to K-PALS, such as using more pictures or games, and a few wanted to use it less often per week. A few mentioned that they would like to use other activities along with K-PALS, seemingly unaware of the fact that K-PALS is not meant to be a stand-alone program but designed as a supplement to conventional teaching methods (McMaster, Fuchs, & Fuchs, 2007). Based on these findings it is concluded that K-PALS can be a beneficial addition to current preschool practices in Iceland and despite initial negative attitudes toward such structured teaching methods, preschool teachers might become more positive upon trying them.