Early Reading Intervention Inventory Final Project

PSY 634: Methods of Evidence Based Practice

By Kelsey Bjornstad

Part 1:
I am in the K-6 elementary education field, and currently in the early stages of finding a job.

After thinking it over, I have had a lot of interest in finding more information on the early

reading intervention programs and how to help students that are struggling with reading. I want

to find more information and educate myself on ways that can help improve the intervention

process. There are some interventions our there to help students with reading difficulty, but I am

not familiar with the process. The school I was currently at I know has an early reading

intervention curriculum that they follow but I am not sure what it is called. I have decided I want

to do an intervention inventory of possible intervention strategies for phonemic awareness,

phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and reading comprehension. I want to gain knowledge and

information on the early reading intervention for myself as personal use and hopefully in the

future be able to share with my school and principal one day.

Phonological awareness intervention- Elkonin Boxes/Word boxes

Early reading skills are important for students to develop as reading achievement has been linked
to academic, vocational, and health outcomes. Two skills are critical to students’ reading
success: phonemic awareness, or the ability to identify and manipulate sounds of spoken words,
and knowledge of the alphabetic code, which involves understanding the relationships between
letters and sounds” (Ross & Joseph, 2018).
 Skills/focus: “An effective way to teach students phonemic awareness and letter sound
correspondences is through explicit and systematic instruction. A technique that is used
to supplement general education phonics instruction is word boxes. Word boxes are used
to help students link phonological with orthographic features” (Ross & Joseph, 2018).
 Grades: K-1
 Tier: 1-2
 Time:
  Size: smaller groups or individual
 Administrator: Teachers, reading specialists, speech-language pathologists, or other
educators
 Training: minimal teacher training, materials needed to implement the intervention are
relatively inexpensive and easily accessible and portable.
 Implementation Integrity: high quality, short term explicit instruction
 Effectiveness: effective across all three tiers of instruction. Can be effectively
implemented in large and small groups as well as one on one.
 Research Base:
o “The literature on the effects of the word boxes intervention demonstrate that
there is evidence to support the use of this intervention for helping preschool
through primary grade students improve their basic literacy skills. Specifically,
this intervention helps students acquire phonemic awareness, letter sound
correspondences, and spelling skills. This technique was particularly effect when
modeling followed by guided practice and independent practice with corrective
feedback were incorporated while teaching students to use the technique” (Ross &
Joseph, 2018).
o Reference: Ross, K. M., & Joseph, L. M. (2018). Effects of word boxes on
improving students’ basic literacy skills: A literature review. Preventing School
Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth, 63(1), 43–51.
https://doi.org/10.1080/1045988x.2018.1480006 

Phonological awareness intervention- Rhyming

 Developing a child’s phonological awareness is an important part of developing a reader.
Young children’s ability to identify rhyme units is an important component of
phonological awareness. Research shows that students benefit from direct instruction on
rhyme recognition paired with fun activities that target this skill. Rhyme is found in
poetry, songs, and children’s books.
 Can be found at: https://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/rhyming_games
 Skills/focus: Rhyme recognition
 Grades: Kindergarten-first
 Tier: 1-2
 Time: during class or small group activities
 Size: individual, small group, whole class
 Administrator: classroom teachers or para
 Training: none really, can watch online tutorials and check online for resources/games
 Implementation Integrity: no indication of integrity checklist but can easily make charts
 Effectiveness: moderately positive
 Research Base:
o Some studies showed Creative Curriculum being used or Teaching Strategies
Gold.
 o Reference:
 https://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/rhyming_games
 Yeh, S. S., & Connell, D. B. (2008). Effects of rhyming, vocabulary and
phonemic awareness instruction on phoneme awareness. Journal of
Research in Reading, 31(2), 243–256. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-
9817.2007.00353.x 

Phonics intervention- Letter cube blending

 Letter Cube Blending Intervention targets alphabetic skills. The student is given three
cubes with assorted consonants and vowels appearing on their sides. The student rolls the
cubes and records the resulting letter combinations on a recording sheet. The student then
judges whether each resulting “word” composed from the letters randomly appearing on
the blocks is a real word or a nonsense word. The intervention can be used with one
student or a group.
 The blending intervention group participated in blending training that took place in two
phases. Phase one of the training lasted three weeks, and phase two lasted four weeks.
During phase one, the children focused on learning one specific blending task. During
phase two, the children reviewed the task learned in phase one and learned about other
blending tasks.
 Can be found at: https://www.interventioncentral.org/academic-interventions/reading-
phonics/letter-cube-blending
 Skills/focus: Relationships between letters or written language and sounds of the spoken
language.
 Grades: Kindergarten- 1st Grade
 Tier: 1 and 2
 Time: 50 minutes a day four days a week
 Size: small groups or individual
 Administrator: any teacher or paraprofessional
 Training: provided, instruction was done till 100% accuracy
 Implementation Integrity: None included, but can be developed
 Effectiveness: Moderately positive
 Research Base:
o Reference: https://www.interventioncentral.org/academic-
interventions/reading-phonics/letter-cube-blending
o https://www.readingrockets.org/literacyapps/phonics
o Florida Center for Reading Research. (2009). Letter cube blending. Retrieved
from http://www.fcrr.org/curriculum/pdf/GK-1/P_Final_Part4.pdf (pp. 13-17).
o Taylor, R. P., Ding, Y., Felt, D., & Zhang, D. (2011). Effects of Tier 1
intervention on letter–sound correspondence in a Response-to-Intervention model
in first graders. School Psychology Forum, 5(2), 54-73.
o O'Connor, R. E., Jenkins, J. R., Leicester, N., & Slocum, T. A. (1993a).
Exceptional Children, 59 (6), 532–546.
Phonics intervention- Sound partners
 Sound Partners is a phonics-based tutoring program that provides supplemental reading
instructions to elementary school students with below average reading skills. The
program is designed for use by tutors with minimal training and experience. Instruction
emphasizes letter sound correspondences, phoneme blending, decoding, and encoding
phonetically regular words, and reading irregular high-frequency words. It includes oral
reading to practice applying phonics skills in text. The program consists of a set of
scripted lessons in alphabetic and phonics skills and uses Bob books beginning reading
series as one of the primary texts or oral reading practices.
 Can be found at: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Intervention/440
 Skills/focus: Letter sound correspondences, phoneme blending, decoding, and encoding
phonetically
 Grades: Kindergarten- 1st Grade
 Tier: 2
 Time: 30 minutes 4 days a week for 18-25 weeks
 Size: individuals
 Administrator: classroom teacher, paraprofessional
 Training: 14 hours
 Implementation Integrity: no standard implementation support is available. But
 Effectiveness: Moderately positive
 Research Base:
o A lot of single subject research (5 studies), around 25 participant’s total
o Meets WWC standards
o Reference: Mooney, P. J. (2003). Dissertation Abstracts International, 64(05A),
85–1599.
o Vadasy, P. F., & Sanders, E. A. (2008). Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary
Journal, 21(9), 929–963
o Vadasy, P. F., Jenkins, J. R., & Pool, K. (2000). Journal of Learning Disabilities,
33(6), 579–590
o Vadasy, P. F., Jenkins, J. R., Antil, L. R., Wayne, S. K., & O’Connor, R. E.
(1997). Learning Disability Quarterly, 20(2), 126–139. doi: 10.2307/1511219
o Vadasy, P. F., Sanders, E. A., & Peyton, J. A. (2005). Journal of Learning
Disabilities, 38(4), 364–380
o Vadasy, P. F., Sanders, E. A., & Peyton, J. A. (2006). Journal of Educational
Psychology, 98(3), 508–528
Early Reading Intervention- Early Steps
 Early Steps concentrates on trying to ensure that all first-grade students acquire the
concepts and skills that will help them become fluent readers. The program aims to catch
and correct reading problems before students enter post primary grades. Early Steps
approach to the teaching of the reading, incorporating explicit instruction in phonemic
awareness and phonics, as well as the reading experiences.
 Can be found at: https://www.readingrockets.org/article/building-best-learning-what-
works-early-steps
 Skills/focus: Improving reading and language arts skills for struggling readers.
 Grades: Kindergarten- 1st Grade
 Tier: 2
 Time: 30 minutes once a day
 Size: individual
 Administrator: classroom teacher, SLP teacher, or another licensed staff
 Training: in person, online videos
 Implementation Integrity: Startup costs for the program that serves 30 students including
students’ materials and teacher training are estimated between $15,000 to $25,000.
Professional development represents the bulk of the cost with a trainer conducting partial
day site visits approximately 10 times throughout the year.
 Effectiveness: At the end of first grade students using Early steps were +.47 word
recognition; +.80 spelling; + .77 passage reading. Program has proven to be effective in
raising the academic achievement levels of at-risk students.
 Research Base:
o 1 study done at a school in Montana. All students were in the lowest 20% of their
class. After one-year students who had been taught using Early Steps significantly
out preformed their peers, 52% of the Early Step students were found to be
reading at or above grade level.
o A lot more research has been done
o Reference: https://www.readingrockets.org/article/building-best-learning-what-
works-early-steps
Part 2: Recommendations
With this intervention I plan on using this for personal use. I would love to be able to share and
learn more ideas with my collogues in the future. With this evidence-based options there is a lot
of information presented for early reading intervention. The interventions for early reading I
would recommend would be the Early Steps program. It is a program that is cost effective and
has high standards for the students. Early Reading concentrates on trying to ensure that all of its
students acquire the concepts and skills that will help them become fluent readers. This program
strives to catch and correct reading problems before students enter post primary grades and begin
to experience real reading struggles. Early reading works with students to read new books at their
instructional level, re-reading familiar texts, writing and learning problem-solving strategies that
can be used to tackle difficult words. With the Early Steps it is divided into four main sections:
Reading, word study, writing and new reading. I really like this program and have learned a lot
about early reading intervention. There are so many programs out there, but I really liked this
one. There is also a lot of additional lessons available for teachers to use. I really liked that there
are worksheets to use, and teachers can use this in a whole class setting, small groups or even
individual assessments.
I am so thankful for the research that is out there, and all the studies that were done. There was a
lot of new information that I learned. I have a lot of the resources that I found now saved for my
personal use. I am going to continue to build on my resources and use this in my classroom one
day with my students.