The ToTAL intervention in Haiti had a positive impact on the foundational skills of initial sound identification and letter sound identification, though not on all combinations of language and grade.¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q3
Currency · newest study 2015 · checked against its sources 2026-11-01 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? ToTAL improved initial sound identification and letter sound identification relative to control, but not on every language and grade combination. → Piper 2015

Evidence¶

Piper 2015¶

Piper, B., Bulat, J., & Johnston, A. (2015). Reading Skill Transfer Across Languages: Outcomes from Longitudinal Bilingual Randomized Control Trials in Kenya and Haiti. SREE Spring 2015 Conference Abstract. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED562423

q3 · i? · causal · r2

Findings from the two-year ToTAL randomized control trial in Haiti, in which over 4,000 Grade 1 and 2 students in treatment and control schools were tested at four points with EGRA-based tasks in Haitian Creole and French. The article reports a positive impact on the two named foundational skills.

"Analysis similarly shows that ToTAL has a positive impact o n key foundational skills of initial sound identification and letter sound identification, although not on all combinations of language and grade."

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Alphabet Knowledge and Print Awareness — outcome: instruction changes it
• Decoding — outcome: instruction changes it
• Phonological Awareness — outcome: instruction changes it

Related Claims¶

• In the ToTAL trial, instruction in the mother tongue of Haitian Creole was associated with gains in French on skills that were not explicitly taught. — related
• The PRIMR literacy intervention had a positive impact on Kenyan pupils' literacy outcomes, including letter sound identification fluency, oral reading fluency, reading comprehension, and the percentage of pupils reading at the Ministry of Education benchmark, though not on all combinations of language, grade, and school type. — related
• An 11-week teacher-delivered phonological awareness intervention significantly improves kindergarten children's phoneme segmentation, letter knowledge, reading, and invented spelling — related
• Combined letter name and sound instruction produced greater letter sound gains than number instruction, with a trend over letter sound only instruction — related
• In the 2010 RCT, LLI showed no discernible effects on alphabetics (domain average effect size 0.13, not statistically significant) — related
• Only a small minority of Haitians are truly French/Creole bilingual, making French effectively a foreign language for most students — related