JCPSLP Vol 21 No 2 2019 DIGITAL Edition

bring their PrepSTART book back”. As a result of book borrowing, many of the students, including Dylan and Faith commented that they read with their parents, “sit down and read to Mum” and “I read it to my mum”. The second theme focuses on ‘A preference for experiential learning’. This theme was identified from students talking about the behaviours that were expected of them while engaging in learning activities in the classroom (see table 3). Although the students indicated that they were aware of the way they should be behaving, they said they found it difficult to do so, given the period of time they were asked to sit for. Therefore, this theme highlights the tension that may be experienced by students. For example, Bella, Chloe and Dylan all expressed this as being a mundane part of the program, as demonstrated by their comments “I sit there lots of times, hour”, “we had to sit down quite a lot”, “we do boring stuff not what we want to do”. However, participants also readily discussed instances that were interpreted as high engagement, as demonstrated in their responses when asked the question, “Did you read a book about a wombat?” For students in group 2, all three students replied, simultaneously in chant, “Wombat stew, wombat stew, crunchy, munchy for my lunchy wombat stew”. The final theme – ‘The development of socialisation of culture’ – outlined the way students modified their speech and behaviour to work out socially acceptable rules and boundaries. These are the skills that students learn and develop in the school context, specifically what it looks like when you are actively engaged in learning. However, they are also pertinent to the successful delivery of oral language and literacy interventions. For example, students were able to understand that learning encompasses different forms, including small group work in the classroom, and place value on social interaction within these settings, as demonstrated by the quotations by Chloe: “We don’t call out”, Ella: “I’m sitting down in my chair” and Bella: “We put our hand up”. Discussion The findings of this study demonstrate that listening to the perceptions of children through qualitative research creates an opportunity to enhance classroom-based interventions by further understanding the factors that optimise student outcomes. The first theme related to the students’ ability to identify key targets, method of delivery and logistical aspects of the program. The way in which the intervention is designed and implemented by educators and SLPs is likely to play an important role in the students’ perceptions and learning outcomes. In the present study, students spoke positively about borrowing books and taking them home. Although these activities seem relatively simple to incorporate, it appears to have positively influenced their self-esteem and attitudes towards the program. The current findings indicate that having students take an active role (e.g., borrowing books), connecting home and school activities (e.g., encouraging book reading in the home), and making this process explicit to students, staff, and parents increases the understanding of the value of the program which are simple, yet critical factors to the success of this program. This reinforces the findings of Hughes and Kwok (2007) who reported that teachers connecting with students and their parents is a key method of helping at-risk children achieve a strong start to school. The second theme highlights the preference for active, hands-on learning. Children reported that they found

Table 2. Prompting questions used to facilitate discussion What we would like you to do, is draw a picture of yourself learning at school.

What do you like doing at school?

What don’t you like about school?

Do you know a program you’ve been doing called PrepSTART?

What did you do in PrepSTART?

What did you do with the books?

What did you like about PrepSTART?

What did you not like about PrepSTART?

Tell us about your picture.

Do you like your classroom?

What do you like about school?

Do you like working in groups?

meaning of spoken words to interpret implied meanings (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Transcripts were reviewed by the first author to ensure familiarity with the content. Initially, responses from the three groups were collated using the overarching guiding questions asked by the researchers. A line-by-line analysis allowed further grouping of ideas, themes and categories which formed the basis of the allocation of themes. Each theme was reviewed by the first author and co-authors to ensure consistency with the participants’ views and experiences and the original transcriptions. The first author’s interpretation of coding of the transcripts was reviewed by the second and third co-authors and, where required, reviewed through discussion. Given the age and literacy skills of the students involved in this study, member checking was not completed. Findings Three main themes were identified from participant responses. The first theme – ‘Ability to verbalise logistical and academic components of the program’ – focused on the degree to which participants could recall key targets of the program. The results indicate that to a varying degree, students were able to identify the focus and activities of the program. For example, when asked directly about the PrepSTART intervention, some participants were relatively passive in their responses and could only identify main aspects of the program without specific detail. This was evidenced in Annie and Harper’s responses, “I think it’s fun and we get to do fun stuff; I like the books” and “we just read books”. Other participants recalled details of the activities completed and main targets of the program. For example, Harper recalled playing bingo, Grace recalled engaging in a book-related activity, and Dylan recalled reading the books. Students appeared to understand the logistics of borrowing books and the implications of returning the book late on their peers, demonstrated through: Faith’s comment “we get to keep them for a little while and then we’ve got to bring them back”, as well as Grace’s comment “…and there wasn’t enough books for everyone” and finally, Isaac’s comment “somebody didn’t

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JCPSLP Volume 21, Number 2 2019

Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology