Redefining Individual Growth and Development Indicators: Phonological Awareness.

Learning to read is one of the most important indicators of academic achievement. The development of early literacy skills during the preschool years is associated with improved reading outcomes in later grades. One of these skill areas, phonological awareness, shows particular importance because of its strong link to later reading success. Presented here are two studies that describe the development and revision of four measures of phonological awareness skills: Individual Growth and Development Indicators Sound Blending, Syllable Sameness, Rhyming, and Alliteration 2.0. The authors discuss the measure development process, revision, and utility within an early childhood Response to Intervention framework.

Brief experimental analysis of early reading interventions.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how brief experimental analyses (BEAs) could be used to identify effective interventions for Kindergartners (2 girls and 2 boys, 5 years and 7-10 months old) with low performance and/or growth slope in letter sound fluency (LSF). Interventions were tested within a multielement design with brief mini-reversals until an intervention yielding at least 20% improvement ona specific subskill measure or a curriculum-based measure of LSF was identified. BEA-identified interventions were implemented one-on-one for 5 to 9 weeks. A multiple-baseline design across participants showed large intervention effects (average adjusted d=2.4) on general outcome measures, supporting treatment validity of BEAs. Findings extend the BEA literature to younger participants, early reading interventions, and early reading measures.