Supporting School Readiness through Intensive Summer Programs: Evidence from an Emergent Literacy Intervention

This study examines the effectiveness of an intensive summer program designed to support school readiness through the development of emergent literacy in preschool children. Using a preexperimental pre-test/post-test design, 16 preschoolers participated in a two-week intervention including structured daily activities such as guided reading, phonological awareness tasks, and graphomotor exercises. Emergent literacy was assessed through a multidimensional instrument covering vocabulary, print knowledge, letter recognition, phonemic awareness, early writing, and story comprehension, alongside measures of visual attention and instruction comprehension. Results indicate significant improvements in emergent literacy and visual attention following the intervention. However, substantial individual variability was observed. Gains in literacy were not consistently associated with improvements in visual attention, suggesting that executive functions – operationalized through instruction comprehension – may play a more important role in mediating learning outcomes. These findings support a multidimensional perspective on emergent literacy and highlight the importance of integrating cognitive factors into intensive summer programs aimed at enhancing school readiness. The study provides preliminary empirical evidence for the effectiveness of short, structured interventions in early childhood education.