Curry Professor Champions Child Literacy

Children in Virginia are reading easier and earlier, thanks to a special diagnostic and screening tool developed at the University of Virginia.  The Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS) was created by Marcia Invernizzi, Henderson Professor of Education, and her colleagues at the McGuffey Reading Center nearly a decade ago.  The tool enables teachers to specifically gauge individual student understanding of fundamental reading skills such as phonemic awareness and word recognition and to use this information to target instruction.

PALS started as a part of Virginia’s Early Intervention Reading Initiative (EIRI), legislation aimed at preventing students’ reading problems in kindergarten.  PALS is supported jointly by U.Va.’s Curry School of Education and the Virginia Department of Education.  Due to the program’s wide success, the tool has evolved to include children in kindergarten (PALS-K), grades 1-3 (PALS 1-3) and now even preschoolers (PALS-PreK).  Though it’s a voluntary program, this year PALS boasts a 100% participation rate among Virginia's public schools.  Schools that use PALS receive incentive funding from the state in order to provide additional instruction to children who are identified to be in need of support. 

According to Invernizzi, PALS is designed to be “simple” and “instructionally transparent.”  She stresses the importance of making the tool practical.  One question the researchers have asked themselves in the development of the instruments is “What does it take to make it [PALS] immediately useful to teachers?”  Invernizzi asserts, “We are in touch with teachers and we respond to them too.”  Indeed, PALS received 4,000 phone calls and 2,000 emails last year from teachers who had questions and input about the program.  To accommodate this demand, PALS employs a full-time staff person who is an experienced teacher.  Inquiries come from teachers throughout Virginia and increasingly the rest of the country and world as PALS expands to schools outside of the Commonwealth.  The tool is being used by 42 other states and 6 countries.  In addition, the PALS website is filled with teaching resources, including streaming videos, instructional activities, and even downloadable lesson plans.

Data associated with PALS assessments is harvested to provide the state with valuable information on literacy gains.  This gives Invernizzi and her colleagues the ability to chart literacy trends by student, class, school, district and region.  Through PALS, teachers, principals and administrators are also able to create immediate interpretive reports for their classrooms, schools and districts. These reports help teachers and administrators make instructional decisions and allocate resources such as professional development to areas of demonstrated need.

This data tracking has resulted in a major improvement in dealing with the reading needs of transient students in Virginia.  As students and families move from one school to the next or one district to another, teachers have typically struggled to assess student capabilities and provide relevant curriculum.  PALS makes it possible for teachers to access a child’s assessment history so that they can be proactive about meeting any special instructional needs. Last year, the PALS office transferred nearly 80,000 student records electronically within 24 hours of the initial request, enabling teachers to begin appropriate instruction immediately.

Invernizzi is constantly researching and seeking ways to improve PALS so that it is as effective as it can be.  Currently she is looking for funding to tackle the issue of the increasing number of Latino students in Virginia schools by developing a Spanish language PALS.  Additionally, one of her recent studies involved surveying preschool teachers and observing their classes to determine if differences in classroom reading and writing activities influence children’s literacy development.  The findings of the study are significant “We are able to assert that a good proportion of the variance in gain scores on our emergent literacy assessment, PALS-PreK, are attributable to the classroom they are placed in,” informs Invernizzi.  This ability to describe the types of classroom activities that are associated with improved literacy will facilitate increasingly better assessment and instruction and eventually a higher level of success for young readers everywhere.