Growth on sublexical fluency progress monitoring measures in early kindergarten and relations to word reading acquisition.

Fluency with skills that operate below the word level (i.e., sublexical), such as phonemic awareness and alphabetic knowledge, may ease the acquisition of decoding skills (Ritchey & Speece, 2006). Measures of sublexical fluency such as phoneme segmentation fluency (PSF), letter naming fluency (LNF), and letter sound fluency (LSF) are widely available for monitoring kindergarten reading progress, but less is known about the relative importance of growth in each skill across the early months of formal reading instruction and their relation to subsequent decoding acquisition. With a sample of kindergarten students at risk for reading difficulties, this study investigated the extent to which initial status and growth in PSF, LNF, and LSF, administered on a progress-monitoring basis during the fall of kindergarten, were differentially predictive of word reading fluency skills at mid-year and growth across the second half the school year. We used two different fluency-based progress monitoring measures of word reading across the spring, one consisting entirely of phonetically regular consonant-vowel-consonant words, and the other that included phonetically regular and irregular words that varied in length. Results indicated that although initial status and fall growth in all sublexical fluency measures were positively associated with subsequent word reading, LSF across the fall of kindergarten was the strongest overall predictor of mid-year level and growth on both word reading measures, and unique in its prediction over the effects of LNF and PSF. Results underscore the importance of letter-sound knowledge for word reading development, and provide additional evidence for LSF as a key index of progress for at-risk learners across the early months of formal reading instruction.

Predictive Validity of Curriculum-Embedded Measures on Outcomes of Kindergarteners Identified as At Risk for Reading Difficulty.

This study examined the predictive validity of formative assessments embedded in a Tier 2 intervention curriculum for kindergarten students identified as at risk for reading difficulty. We examined when (i.e., months during the school year) measures could predict reading outcomes gathered at the end of kindergarten and whether the predictive validity of measures changed across the kindergarten year. Participants consisted of 137 kindergarten students whose reading development was assessed four times from October to February. Measures aligned with content taught in the curriculum and assessed a range of phonologic, alphabetic, and word-reading skills. Results from structural equation modeling indicate that 36.3% to 65.2% of the variance was explained on the latent decoding outcome and 62.0% to 86.8% on the latent phonological outcome across the four time points. Furthermore, the predictive validity of specific skills increased over the kindergarten year, with more complicated tasks (e.g., word segmentation) becoming more predictive at subsequent measurement occasions. Results suggest that curriculum-embedded measures may be viable tools for assessing and predicting reading performance.

Examining the effects of linking student performance and progression in a tier 2 kindergarten reading intervention.

Despite the emerging evidence base on response to intervention, there is limited research regarding how to effectively use progress-monitoring data to adjust instruction for students in Tier 2 intervention. In this study, we analyzed extant data from a series of randomized experimental studies of a kindergarten supplemental reading intervention to determine whether linking performance on formative assessments to curriculum progression improved kindergarten reading outcomes over standard implementation. We were interested in whether specific progression adjustments would enhance the effects of supplemental reading intervention. Growth-mixture modeling using data from kindergarteners (n = 136) whose intervention progression (e.g. repeat lessons, skip lessons) was adjusted every 4 weeks based on mastery data identified four latent classes characterized by unique profiles of curriculum progression adjustments. Multilevel analyses comparing the performance of students in the four classes with that of propensity matched groups whose intervention was not adjusted (n = 101) indicated positive effects of curriculum progression for (a) students whose formative assessment performance exceeded 90% and received early and sustained lesson acceleration and (b) students who initially performed below 70% on assessments and who repeated early lessons and progressed to conventional implementation. Effects of curriculum adjustments for the two smallest groups were less clear.

Assessing spelling in kindergarten: further comparison of scoring metrics and their relation to reading skills.

Early reading and spelling development share foundational skills, yet spelling assessment is underutilized in evaluating early reading. This study extended research comparing the degree to which methods for scoring spelling skills at the end of kindergarten were associated with reading skills measured at the same time as well as at the end of first grade. Five strategies for scoring spelling responses were compared: totaling the number of words spelled correctly, totaling the number of correct letter sounds, totaling the number of correct letter sequences, using a rubric for scoring invented spellings, and calculating the Spelling Sensitivity Score (Masterson & Apel, 2010b). Students (N=287) who were identified at kindergarten entry as at risk for reading difficulty and who had received supplemental reading intervention were administered a standardized spelling assessment in the spring of kindergarten, and measures of phonological awareness, decoding, word recognition, and reading fluency were administered concurrently and at the end of first grade. The five spelling scoring metrics were similar in their strong relations with factors summarizing reading subskills (phonological awareness, decoding, and word reading) on a concurrent basis. Furthermore, when predicting first-grade reading skills based on spring-of-kindergarten performance, spelling scores from all five metrics explained unique variance over the autoregressive effects of kindergarten word identification. The practical advantages of using a brief spelling assessment for early reading evaluation and the relative tradeoffs of each scoring metric are discussed.

The effects and interactions of student, teacher, and setting variables on reading outcomes for kindergartners receiving supplemental reading intervention.

This exploratory study examined the influences of student, teacher, and setting characteristics on kindergarteners' early reading outcomes and investigated whether those relations were moderated by type of intervention. Participants included 206 kindergarteners identified as at risk for reading difficulties and randomly assigned to one of two supplemental interventions: (a) an experimental explicit, systematic, code-based program or (b) their schools' typical kindergarten reading intervention. Results from separate multilevel structural equation models indicated that among student variables, entry-level alphabet knowledge was positively associated with phonemic and decoding outcomes in both conditions. Entry-level rapid automatized naming also positively influenced decoding outcomes in both conditions. However, its effect on phonemic outcomes was statistically significant only among children in the typical practice comparison condition. Regarding teacher variables, the quality of instruction was associated with significantly higher decoding outcomes in the typical reading intervention condition but had no statistically significant influence on phonemic outcomes in either condition. Among setting variables, instruction in smaller group sizes was associated with better phonemic outcomes in the comparison condition but had no statistically significant influence on outcomes of children in the intervention group. Mode of delivery (i.e., pullout vs. in class) had no statistically significant influence on either outcome variable.