Word Work Versus Flash Cards
Increasing high frequency words in kindergartners
Study Overview
Participants
Intervention
The basic premise of Noltemeyer et al. (2013) is that early and intensive literacy instruction to kindergartners drastically improves reading achievement in the primary grades. I combined this knowledge with the information gained from Morrow (2004) about children needing to be able to work on words through game like activities to frame the intervention.
In addition to the students' normal literacy instruction, for five weeks my class participated in word work activities (see pictures above) using high frequency words for 15 minutes per day. The comparison group continued their same literacy instruction and began flashcard instruction for 15 minutes per day. The same words were used during the corresponding weeks, with both groups.
- The first of the five activities for the intervention group was “read, build, and write”. During this practice time, the students cut apart the letters for each of the six words and glued them down in order beside the typed word. They then wrote the word and finally read the word.
- The second item was called “roll a sight word”. There was one word on each side of a die. Students rolled the die, said the word and then recorded it on their graph. When the graph was complete the game was over.
- The third word work activity consisted of building the six words on work mats with Play-Doh or pipe cleaners. The words were already printed on each mat.
- The fourth activity involved building the words with magnetic letters or letter cubes. Students had the six words in front of them to use as a guide to build the words.
- The fifth activity was a game of memory using the specific words for the week. The word work activities consisted of six words a week that were set up in centers. Students rotated through all of the centers by the end of each week.
Look What the Results Show!
Pre/post DIBELS and Pre/post K-2 Words
What Do These Graphs Mean?
There was a difference in the scores for word work and flashcards. These results suggest that word work activities really do have an effect on learning high frequency words. Specifically, the results suggest that when kindergartners participate in fifteen minutes of word work a day, their high frequency words greatly increase.
Independent Means t-Test on Word Recognition
What Now?
Contact Me
Crystal Turner
Email: turnercr13@students.ecu.edu
Website: http://rockinkindergarten.weebly.com/
Phone: 910-358-4596