Education and Training in Developmental Disabilities - Division on ...

Jacob, Carl, <strong>and</strong> Rachel Develop Phonemic
Awareness
Jacob, Carl, <strong>and</strong> Rachel each responded well
to PA <strong>in</strong>struction, though their progress was
very slow. Jacob began the study with some PA
skills, scor<strong>in</strong>g approximately 25 segments per
m<strong>in</strong>ute on the phoneme segmentation fluency
(PSF) measure of Dynamic Indicators of
Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS; Good &
Kam<strong>in</strong>ski, 2002), while Carl <strong>and</strong> Rachel began
the study scor<strong>in</strong>g 0 on this measure. Even
though Jacob began the study with some PA,
he struggled to <strong>in</strong>crease his skills <strong>in</strong> this area
because of severe deficits <strong>in</strong> short-term memory.
However, with<strong>in</strong> about 5 months he
reached the benchmark <strong>and</strong> with<strong>in</strong> approximately
10 months, his scores never dipped
below benchmark aga<strong>in</strong>, <strong>in</strong>dicat<strong>in</strong>g he had
clearly mastered the skill. Carl <strong>and</strong> Rachel
responded more slowly to <strong>in</strong>struction <strong>in</strong> PA,
requir<strong>in</strong>g extensive practice <strong>and</strong> scaffold<strong>in</strong>g at
the earliest levels of PA. With Carl <strong>and</strong> Rachel,
we used picture support <strong>and</strong> extensive practice
<strong>and</strong> scaffold<strong>in</strong>g at the onset-rime level of
PA. Carl began to show progress after approximately
5 months of <strong>in</strong>struction <strong>and</strong> now performs
very near the benchmark of 35. Rachel
began to show progress on PSF after approximately
one year of the <strong>in</strong>tervention <strong>and</strong>
reached mastery a few months later.
Techniques for Teach<strong>in</strong>g Phonics <strong>and</strong> Word
Recognition
Focus<strong>in</strong>g on Key Skills
Like PA <strong>in</strong>struction, phonics <strong>and</strong> word recognition
activities focused on several key skills
that were <strong>in</strong>tegrated over time <strong>and</strong> gradually
<strong>in</strong>creased <strong>in</strong> difficulty. The first skill was basic
letter-sound correspondence which began
with students identify<strong>in</strong>g the most common
sound of <strong>in</strong>dividual letters <strong>and</strong> gradually students
learned the sounds for various letter
patterns. Second, students were taught to read
words sound by sound. These words were
made up of the letters <strong>and</strong> patterns that had
been taught, with students <strong>in</strong>itially read<strong>in</strong>g
words <strong>in</strong> which each letter represented its
most common sound (ex. ran, last, milk, sun,
etc.) <strong>and</strong> gradually <strong>in</strong>creas<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> difficulty as
students learned long vowel patterns (ex. like,
ra<strong>in</strong>, light) <strong>and</strong> variant vowel patterns (ex.
sound, claw, clown). F<strong>in</strong>ally, students learned
high frequency words by sight if the words
were irregularly spelled (ex. was, have) or if
the sounds <strong>in</strong> the word had not been taught
yet (ex. the word on is taught before the sound
for short o is taught).
Teach<strong>in</strong>g Letter-Sound Correspondence
Although teach<strong>in</strong>g letter-sound correspondence
is fairly straightforward, we do wish to
highlight a few teach<strong>in</strong>g techniques that are
important. As with most early read<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>terventions,
we used mean<strong>in</strong>gful mnemonic
clues when <strong>in</strong>troduc<strong>in</strong>g new letter sounds to
l<strong>in</strong>k the abstract sound to someth<strong>in</strong>g concrete
(ex. nose associated with n). We also provided
extensive, cumulative review through a quick
activity dur<strong>in</strong>g which students simply pronounced
the sound for the letter on the chart
when the teacher touched under the letter.
To facilitate memory <strong>and</strong> the transfer of lettersound
correspondence to the sound<strong>in</strong>g out
strategy, teachers held a f<strong>in</strong>ger under the letter
for two seconds when the letter was a cont<strong>in</strong>uous
sound (ex. /mmm/) <strong>and</strong> tapped under
the letter if it was a stop sound (ex. /t/).
In this way, students became accustomed to
stretch<strong>in</strong>g sounds when they saw letters that
represented cont<strong>in</strong>uous sounds <strong>and</strong> more easily
stretched those sounds dur<strong>in</strong>g sound<strong>in</strong>g
out activities. Our curriculum also sequenced
letter-sound <strong>in</strong>troduction carefully, <strong>in</strong>troduc<strong>in</strong>g
the most common sounds early, <strong>in</strong>troduc<strong>in</strong>g
easier sounds prior to more difficult
sounds, <strong>and</strong> separat<strong>in</strong>g confus<strong>in</strong>g letters <strong>and</strong>
sounds.
Jacob, Carl, <strong>and</strong> Rachel Develop Letter-Sound
Correspondence
At the beg<strong>in</strong>n<strong>in</strong>g of the study, Jacob, Carl, <strong>and</strong>
Rachel knew very few, if any, letter sounds. We
measured their progress on this skill us<strong>in</strong>g
DIBELS Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) <strong>and</strong>
all three consistently scored 0 on this measure
early <strong>in</strong> our study. Jacob’s scores began to
improve somewhat after only one month of
<strong>in</strong>struction, but he did not reach the benchmark
of 50 letter sounds per m<strong>in</strong>ute until he
had participated <strong>in</strong> the <strong>in</strong>tervention for approximately
two <strong>and</strong> a half years. Carl strug-
Read<strong>in</strong>g Techniques / 361