Which intervention best supports learners from low-literacy backgrounds?

Concept: When printed text is the only route to the content, a learner whose decoding is still developing is blocked by the channel, not by the idea itself. Instruction that reaches such a learner therefore carries meaning through a non-print channel while print skills are still being built. This is the principle of offering more than one means of representation: the concept is made available first, and the written form is attached to it afterwards.

Application: Pictures, charts, models and real objects encode the same concept without asking the learner to decode words first. The learner grasps the idea immediately, and the image then becomes an anchor to which new vocabulary and, later, printed labels can be attached, so literacy grows alongside the content instead of gating it. This makes the use of visual learning aids the intervention that best supports learners from low-literacy backgrounds.

Contrast with the other interventions:

• Peer tutoring only: helpful as one support among several, but as the sole measure it still delivers the content through explanation that may remain print-dependent, and it makes the help contingent on a single classmate's own grasp of the material.

• Extra homework assignments: this increases the amount of independent written work, which presumes exactly the print support at home that a low-literacy background is defined by lacking.

• Reading aloud in class: this asks the learner to perform the very skill that is still developing, and in front of the group, so it measures decoding rather than opening up access to the content.

Cross-check: Each of the other three interventions either raises the print demand placed on the learner or makes the support conditional on a resource the learner may not have. Only the visual route lowers the entry barrier at the moment the content is being taught, which is why the answer is to use visual learning aids.