Strong Start
Source: Strong Start to Reading
Number of Schools
Children and Volunteer Numbers
Volunteer Hours
Gains Made by 2022-2023 Children
About the Metrics:
Strong Start Charitable Organization’s Letters, Sounds, and Words™ program is active in the Elgin, Middlesex, and Oxford Counties with 95% of children making considerable, excellent or outstanding, gains in their acquisition of early literacy skills. As the charts showcase, COVID-19 had a direct impact on programming for the 2020-2021 year, with zero participation of schools, children, and volunteers. Strong Start was able to train volunteers through online platforms, to help ensure that trained Volunteer Coaches were ready when schools resumed regular programming.
Since school closures in March 2020 due to the pandemic, children’s in-class learning was interrupted frequently. After enduring these prolonged breaks from in-person instruction, struggling readers are needing early literacy support more than ever. Children experiencing reading difficulties by the end of Grade 1 almost never achieve average reading skill scores by the end of primary school. Letters, Sounds and Words is an early intervention program to help ensure these children do not fall behind, get discouraged and disengage from school.
Currently, Strong Start partners with the Thames Valley District School Board. Their schools in Elgin, Middlesex, and Oxford have returned to in-class instruction, with the program activated in nine schools in the 2021-2022 school year.
The number of schools participating in the 2022-2023 program has increased, and registration has surpassed pre-pandemic numbers with 58 schools running a program.
To learn more about Strong Start and the Letters, Sounds and Words program, please visit www.strongstart.ca
Criteria for Evaluating Success
In designing the program, standards need to be set that reflect attainable goals appropriate to the age and stage of development of the children. The following criteria were established for evaluating a child’s achievement and the success of the program.
Percentage Towards Goal
If the child knows more than half of the letters, sounds or selected words before the program, then our goal is that he/she learns all of the letters, sounds and words by the end of the program. Therefore, the assessment results reflect the degree to which the child achieved this goal of knowing the entire set. Example: If a child needed to learn 10 letters to complete the set of all letters and he/she learned 8 new ones in the program, then the child achieved 80% of the goal of knowing all of the letters.
Considerable gain 26% to 75% achievement towards the goal of 100%
Excellent gain 76% to 99% achievement towards the goal of 100%
Outstanding gain 100% - the child has learned all of the letters, sounds or words
Percentage Gain
If a child knows very few letters, sounds and words before the program, our expectation is that he/she will make a valuable gain in the number known by the end of the program. Therefore, if a child knew fewer than half of the letters, sounds or selected words before the program, then assessment results reflect the gain the child made in a percentage. Example: If a child knew 5 letters before the program and 15 after the program, the child made a 200% gain in the number of letters known (even though not all the letters are known yet).
Considerable gain 51% to 150% gain
Excellent gain 151% to 300% gain
Outstanding gain 301% or more gain