Ladders to Literacy

Ladders to Literacy was found to have potentially negative effects on oral language and no discernible effects on print knowledge, phonological processing, and math for preschool children.

Ladders to Literacy is a supplemental early literacy curriculum composed of more than 70 activities designed to develop children’s print/book awareness, metalinguistic awareness, and oral language skills. The curriculum, published in the book Ladders to Literacy: A Preschool Activity Book, Second Edition, can be used in a variety of early childhood settings and provides guidance on how teachers can adapt the activities for children with special needs. The activities are intended as models or suggestions that teachers can adopt within an existing curriculum. Although a Ladders to Literacy curriculum is also available for kindergarten students (Ladders to Literacy: A Kindergarten Activity Book), this intervention report focuses on the preschool curriculum.

One study of Ladders to Literacy that falls within the scope of the Early Childhood Education review protocol meets What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards, and one study meets WWC evidence standards with reservations. The two studies included 139 preschool children from 26 preschool classrooms in southern New Hampshire.

Based on these two studies, the WWC considers the extent of evidence for Ladders to Literacy on preschool children to be medium to large for oral language and small for print knowledge, phonological processing, and math. No studies that meet WWC evidence standards with or without reservations examined the effectiveness of Ladders to Literacy on preschool children in the early reading/writing or cognition domains.