A Comparison of Phonological Awareness Intervention Approaches

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A Comparison of Phonological Awareness
Intervention Approaches

• Lesley Raisor, Ph.D. CCC-SLP
• Nancy Creaghead, Ph.D. CCC-SLP
• Christina Yeager, M.A. CCC-SLP

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Session Objectives

• After this session, you will be able to
• Identify 2 different approaches to phonological
  awareness interventions and site research that
  supports both approaches
• Create lesson plans targeting phonological
  awareness using both approaches
• Share your knowledge of phonological awareness
  intervention approaches with your colleagues

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Where we are headed

• 1. Review literature
• Traditional Phonological Awareness (P.A.)
  Training
• Contextualized P.A. Training
• 2. Discuss present study
• Detailed description of lesson plans and books
  used
• 3. Discuss lesson plan template
• Create your own plans

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For Review.

• Phonological awareness is the conscious attention
  to the sound structure of language.
• It is a broad skill that includes
• The ability to detect and produce rhyme
• The ability to segment speech into words,
  syllables, and phonemes
• The ability to detect and manipulate phonemes
  (Gillon, 2004)

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Phonological Awareness

• The predictive power of phonological awareness
  for later literacy outcomes has prompted
  educators to develop interventions targeting
  phonological awareness skills in children at-risk
  for qualifying for special education services.

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What have we learned from research in
phonological awareness?
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Traditional Phonological Awareness Interventions

• Ball and Blachman (1991)--classroom-based
  phonological awareness intervention successful
  for later reading and spelling
• 15 hours of direct intervention.
• Kindergarteners (placed in groups of four or
  five) were taught to use tiles to represent
  phonemes in words.
• Engaged in segmentation activities and tasks that
  targeted letter-sound correspondence.
• The results of the research revealed large gains
  in not only phoneme segmentation ability, but
  also in reading and spelling.

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Traditional Phonological Awareness Interventions

• Lundberg, Frost, and Peterson (1988)phonological
  awareness can be trained in non-readers
• Provided 235 kindergarten children who were
  non-readers with training in metalinguistic
  awareness (no training in letter-sound)
• Intervention group outperformed a control group
  on word, syllable, and phoneme segmentation and
  synthesis tasks

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Traditional Phonological Awareness Interventions

• Bradley and Bryant (1985)early phonological
  awareness training can affect later reading and
  spelling
• 65 kindergarten children participated 40 minute
  training sessions spread over two years
• Taught to group pictures corresponding to words
  that began with the same phoneme
• Taught to categorize words that shared the same
  rime unit, by sorting picture cards into sets of
  words that rhymed with one another
• When childrens reading and spellings abilities
  were measured when they were 8 years old, the
  experimental phonological awareness group were
  ahead of the control children in reading by 8-10
  months (reading) and 17 months (spelling)

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Problems with Traditional Approaches

• McGee Purcell-Gates (1997) traditional
  approaches are
• removed from childrens daily literacy
  experiences and
• are not responsive to individual differences in
  childrens knowledge.
• Likewise, the National Reading Panel
  (2000)--phonological awareness instruction should
  be integrated into a childs general literacy
  learning.
• Further, although many of the traditional drill
  approaches have been effective in increasing the
  skills of school-aged children (five and
  six-year-olds), this training approach may not be
  developmentally appropriate for younger preschool
  children.

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Alternate Strategy for Phonological Awareness
Training

• Richgels, Poremba, and McGee (1996) studied an
  approach that more closely aligns with
  constructivist aspects of emergent literacy
  philosophy.
• Described ways educators can guide children in a
  meaningful and functional literacy-based context
  for learning phonological awareness.

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Alternate Strategy for Phonological Awareness
Training

• Naturalistic or contextual phonological awareness
  training-- utilizes childrens books to teach
  children about the sounds of language.
• Ukrainetz et al. (2000)--contextualized
  instruction led to gains in phonological
  awareness compared to a non-treatment control
  group.
• Raisor (2002)--contextualized phonological
  awareness intervention led to significant gains
  in phonological awareness skills of children with
  language learning problems.

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Research Needed to Compare Both Approaches

• Traditional drill approach -- based upon early
  behaviorist theories of learning
• Contextualized approaches -- grounded in
  socio-cultural/constructivist theories of
  cognition and learning.
• While the research into naturalistic
  interventions described above is promising,
  systematic research comparing the effectiveness
  of this approach to the traditional sequenced and
  structured method is lacking.

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Purpose and Research Question

• The purposewas to compare the effectiveness of
  two types of phonological awareness programs (a
  structured drill approach and a contextualized
  approach) in increasing the early literacy skills
  of preschool children at-risk for reading
  failure.
• Research question
• Is there a significant difference in the early
  phonological awareness/early literacy skills
  among intervention group (drill and naturalistic)
  and a control group as result of a four-week
  phonological awareness intervention?

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Methods Participants

• Research Site an inner city Head Start located
  in a large Midwestern city.
• 150 children
• Random assignment to classrooms
• Children 44 children participated (average age
  4 years 9 months)
• Three classrooms in drill (17 children)
• Three classrooms in naturalistic (17 children)
• Two classrooms in control (10 children)collected
  2 years later
• Graduate Students 8 Speech-Language Pathology
  Masters Students served as test administrators
  and interveners
• Reduced researcher biases
• Offered better control than using teachers

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Methods Assessment Tools

• (1).Portions of The Phonological Awareness Test
  (Robertson Salter, 1997) Because there is no
  standardized test of phonological awareness for
  use with children under five (see review in
  Justice, Invernizzi, Meier, 2002), portions of
  The Phonological Awareness Test were administered
  informally.
• Rhyme discrimination/production, word and
  syllable segmentation, and initial sound
  isolation.
• (2).The Test of Early Reading Abilities3
  (TERA-3) This is a standardized test normed on
  children ages 3-10 years (Reid, Hresko, Hammill,
  2001). It has three subtests alphabet
  knowledge, conventions (measuring childrens
  understanding of print concepts), and meaning
  (measuring childrens ability to comprehend the
  meaning of printed material).

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Methods Graduate Student Training

• Following recruitment, graduate students were
  required to attend a two week-long project
  orientation/training.
• This training involved three aspects
• (1) the administration of the testing protocols
• (2) the implementation of the drill-approach to
  phonological awareness training and
• (3) the implementation of the naturalistic
  approach to phonological awareness training.
• Included opportunities for supervised practice
  with test administration and the phonological
  awareness interventions.

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Methods Phonological Awareness Interventions

• 1. Administered assessment tools
• 2. Classrooms were randomly assigned to receive
  the drill-approach or naturalistic treatment.
• -A control group was recruited at a later time.
• -There were three classrooms in each of the
  treatment conditions, and two classrooms in the
  control group.
• -Each group received the same amount of
  intervention (two 20 minute sessions per week for
  4 weeks). The control group did not receive any
  intervention.
• 3. Graduate students re-administered both tests.

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Methods Drill Approach

• Utilized procedures from other well-known
  phonological awareness studies (Lundberg, Frost,
  Peterson, 1988 van Kleeck, 1995).
• Shaping procedures, with structured hierarchies
  controlling task complexity (McFadden, 1998
  Ukrainetz, Cooney, Dyer, Kysar, Harris, 2000
  Gillon, 2004).
• A target skill will be selected for a one-week
  period
• 1st week -rhyme discrimination and production
• 2nd week-word segmentation
• 3rd week-syllable segmentation
• 4th week- initial sound isolation.

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Methods Naturalistic Approach

• Naturalistic phonological awareness intervention
  incorporated scaffolding to support individual
  student responses.
• Allowed other children to scaffold
• Working within the Zone of Proximal Development
  (ZPD)
• More than one type of phonological awareness
  skill was incidentally explored at a time
  (Ukrainetz, 2006).
• Lesson plans for the naturalistic approach were
  those that were used for the pilot-project of
  this research (performed in the summer of 2002).

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Methods Naturalistic Approach

• A storybook was included in every session. Every
  session began with readiness interactions,
  modeled from Cochran-Smiths (1984) research.
• Each lesson plan targeted a specific skill,
  however, other phonological awareness skills were
  also addressed in each session.
• After the graduate student had finished reading
  the book, she asked children to participate in a
  follow-up activity that was meaning-based.

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Methods Drill Approach

• Week 2
• Sentence Segmentation.
• We are going to clap for each word we hear today.
  I am going to say a sentence, and I want you to
  clap for each word you hear.
• I love my mom.
• Turn on the television.
• My cat is big.
• Lets read a book.
• I want to play.
• The dog has a large nose.
• My computer is not working.
• The clown likes balloons.
• The candle is hot.
• The boy has a spoon.
• The refrigerator is cold.
• My pillow is big and soft.
• The spring flowers are so pretty.
• Daddy said no.
• The remote control is under the couch.

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Methods Naturalistic Approach

• 2nd Week Frog Theme
• Materials Needed. Jump, Frog, Jump
• Laminated characters of the story (frog, fly,
  snake, etc.) glued to craft sticks (make three
  for each character).
• 12-15 multi-colored lily pads
• Upbeat music
• CD player
• Joint Book Reading Suggestions.
• Have the children look at the cover of the book
  and guess who will be the characters in the
  story.
• Assign each child a character in the story and
  give them the respective character on a craft
  stick (Some characters will need to be repeated
  among the children). Instruct the children to
  hold up their character each time it is
  mentioned.
• This book contains a great deal of rhythm. Read
  the story with a lot of inflection. You may have
  children clap as you read (only if you are not
  asking them to hold up the characters).
• Extension Sentence Segmentation Activity.
• Have children jump (from lily pad to lily pad)
  for each word they hear in a simple sentence from
  the book) (NOTE You will have to simplify the
  sentences.some of the sentences from the book
  are very complex).
• You may play a game with music (having the
  children freeze on a lily pad when the music
  stops), and then ask them to jump in place on
  their lily pad for each word in a simple
  sentence.

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Schedule of Treatment
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Results

• SPSS software was used to analyze the data
  collected.
• One-way ANOVAs were computed for each
  intervention group at pre-test to ensure that
  intervention groups were not significantly
  different at pre-test.
• Syllable segmentation (plt .05) (naturalistic
  intervention group mean significantly higher than
  the drill or control groups).
• Repeated measures ANOVAs
• group assignment (naturalistic, drill, or
  control-group) as a between-subjects factor
• time as a within-subjects factor for each measure
  (rhyme discrimination, rhyme production, sentence
  segmentation, syllable segmentation, initial
  sound isolation, total phonological awareness,
  alphabet knowledge, print concepts, and meaning).

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Rhyme Discrimination
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Sentence Segmentation
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Total Phonological Awareness
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Alphabet Knowledge
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Print Concepts
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Discussion Summary of Results

• Both interventions were successful compared to
  control group for
• Rhyme Discrimination, Sentence Segmentation,
  Total Phonological Awareness
• Naturalistic intervention successful for Print
  Concepts
• Naturalistic Intervention group demonstrating
  larger gains
• Alphabet Knowledge
• Unexplained growth for drill group

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Discussion TPA, Rhyme Discrimination, Sentence
Segmentation,

• These results are consistent with results of
  other studies regarding the efficacy of
• Traditional drill-based phonological awareness
  training (Ball Blackman 1991 Bradley Bryant,
  1983 Herrera, 1993 Lundberg, Frost, Peterson,
  1988 Schneider et al., 1997) and
• Contextualized intervention programs (Richgels,
  Poremba, McGee, 1996 Ukrainetz et al., 2000).
• Gillon (2004) suggested that both approaches to
  phonological awareness training (skill mastery
  approach, i.e. drill, and integrated multiple
  skill approach, i.e. naturalistic) may be useful
  as she set forth guiding principles to
  phonological awareness intervention programs.

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Discussion Rhyme Discrimination and Sentence
Segmentation

• Both intervention groups made gains, but the
  control groups scores actually declined slightly
  (creating an interaction effect)
• Bradley Bryant (1983) targeted phonological
  awareness in a traditional waychildren made
  significant gains
• Richgels, Poremba, and McGee (1996) targeted
  phonological awareness in naturalistic
  waychildren made significant gains

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Discussion Rhyme Production

• Rhyme Production results similar to van Kleeck
  et al. (1998) children made gains in other
  phonological awareness skills, yet did not make
  progress in rhyme production following
  intervention.
• Current studychildren errors were because of a
  semantic retrieval bias
• Children not metalinguistically ready to view
  words outside of their semantic purpose.
• Another explanation--Production may require
  higher cognitive processes than other measures of
  rhyming skills (discrimination, categorization,
  and oddity tasks)
• Also, perhaps the tax on phonological working
  memory (memory that involves temporarily holding
  the speech sound features of a word, so it can be
  analyzed or manipulated) was too much for the
  preschool children (Troia, 2004).

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Discussion Initial Sound Isolation

• Initial Sound Isolation There was not a
  significant difference between groups, nor was
  there an interaction effect.
• Liberman (1974)children less than 5 years old
  often have difficulty with this task
• Gillon (2004) argues that phonemic level
  awareness has generally been considered to
  develop in kindergarten and beyond
• Ukrainetz (2006)Kindergarten is when major
  changes can be observed in phoneme-level skills
• Although other researchers disagree. Bradley
  Bryant (1985), Lundberg, Frost, Peterson,
  1988) Lundberg et al. (1990).

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Discussion Early Literacy Skills

• Alphabet Knowledge There was an interaction
  effect between intervention and time.
• A look at the means shows a large change in
  alphabet knowledge for the drill group
• Letter-knowledge was not explicitly addressed in
  the drill intervention
• Classroom teachers attention to letter knowledge
  was not controlled for.

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Discussion Early Literacy Skills

• Print Concepts There was a significant
  difference between the naturalistic group and the
  control group and drill group. Children
  experienced exposure to print and the storybooks
  in the naturalistic intervention, whereas the
  drill and control groups did not.
• Ezell, Justice, and Parsons (2000) investigated
  the efficacy of a shared-book reading
  intervention designed to foster parents
  strategies for stimulating preschoolers learning
  of print concepts.
• The intervention was effective in stimulating
  childrens concepts of print, as children made
  gains in a print knowledge protocol adapted from
  Clays Concepts about Print assessment (1979)
  after only a five-week period.
• Meaning No significant differences among groups
• This subtest might not accurately measure a
  childs ability to make meaning from print
  sources. Many of the test items were related to
  alphabet knowledge

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Discussion Drill Intervention

• Our drill-based activities provided each child
  explicit opportunities to practice a given skill
  
• In the present study, the drill-based approach
  ensured that each child had an opportunity to
  respond to two target phonological awareness
  stimuli.
• The National Reading Panel, 2000 argued that
  phonological awareness instruction should be
  explicit
• However, Ukrainetz (2006) argues that this type
  of explicit instruction teaches children how to
  do well on tests of phonological awareness.
• Children were asked to respond to the targets in
  ways similar to the testing situation.
  Therefore, children in the drill group
  practiced taking phonological awareness tests
  at each training session.

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Discussion Summary

• Naturalistic intervention successful compared to
  a control group for increasing childrens print
  concepts.
• Naturalistic and drill groups were both
  successful for increasing childrens rhyme
  discrimination, sentence segmentation ability,
  and total phonological awareness compared to a
  control group.
• It may be more beneficial to select a
  naturalistic intervention strategy for early
  preschool interventions due to added benefit of
  increasing print concepts in children in the
  naturalistic group.

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Discussion Limitations/Future Research

• Following children longitudinally to determine if
  the effects of the two strategies carry on for
  later reading and spelling
• Longer intervention cycles
• Alternative methods of assessment
• Authentic assessments using childrens literature
• Alternative ways of assessing rhyme

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Your suggestions for further research??
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Contact Information

• Lesley Raisor, raisorlj_at_email.uc.edu
• 513-221-4243
• Christina Yeager, yeagercj_at_email.uc.edu
• Nancy Creaghead, nancy.creaghead_at_uc.edu

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