A phonological awareness training associated with a grapheme-phoneme correspondence training was applied to low socioeconomic status (SES) first graders of a public school. Effects on metaphonological skills, reading, spelling, letter knowledge, working memory, and lexical access to long-term memory were assessed. The experimental group, with a below average initial phonological awareness score, was compared to two control groups, one above and one below average. After 27 30-minute training sessions, the experimental group presented improvements in phonological awareness, reading and spelling of words and pseudowords, and letter knowledge. The study demonstrated that it is possible to treat phonological, reading and spelling delays in children with low SES, using the same training procedure that has proved successful with average SES children.
Reading; spelling; phonological awareness; education
