Explicit Small Group Instruction
and phonological awareness development
Action Research Study Fast Facts
- Investigated the question: How will explicit small group instruction impact the phonological awareness development of at-risk pre-kindergarten students?
- Used a quasi-experimental pretest/posttest comparison group design
- Contained 27 pre-kindergarten participants: 14 were in the intervention group and 13 were in the comparison group.
- Was conducted in a PreK-6 public school in a large urban city in North Carolina
- The planned intervention ran for a 6 week period in January and February of 2015
- Pre-and-Posttest measures administered were the Early Literacy IGDI, Words Their Way Emergent Assessments, and a researcher log.
The Intervention
Intervention Details
- Students placed in small groups of 3 or 4
- Each group met 3 times a week for 20 minutes
- Each session included initial sound picture sorts linked to relevant text, as well as blending/segmenting activities.
- Explicit Instruction practices utilized throughout the intervention modeling, specific feedback, guided and independent practice
Roxy and Boxy
Roxy and Boxy were instrumental companions for my intervention. Roxy is the puppet I used to model segmenting and to segment words for students to blend. Students also used Roxy to practice segmenting words for their peers. Once students blended the word together, they selected the corresponding picture card or object and fed it to Boxy, my decorated tissue box robot. I added Boxy midway through the intervention when I saw students becoming bored with simply selecting a picture after Roxy spoke. Boxy saved the day, and students often asked me, "Can we feed Boxy now?" during the day!
Picture Sorts with Initial Sounds
Picture sorting by initial sound was included in each intervention session. Each week, I selected a poem connected to the larger classroom theme and chose 2 prominent and contrasting sounds from the text to sort. On day 1, l introduced a group sort. On day 2, we repeated the group sort and added a partner sort using the same pictures. On day 3, we repeated the group sort a third time, and paired it with a partner or individual sort. Explicit modeling and feedback was used throughout all sorts. It was exciting to see students develop the ability to verbalize their rationale for how they were sorting the pictures! We began the intervention by contrasting 2 sounds, but in the final weeks, most groups were successfully contrasting 3 sounds .
Beginning Sound Games
On day 3 of each week's intervention, I added different games to practice matching pictures by beginning sound. These included unpracticed pictures featuring initial sounds sorted that week, as well as a review of initial sounds from previous weeks. In the pictured concentration game, students flipped over 2 cards to determine if the beginning sounds were the same to make a matching pair. Purple sticky notes cover the printed words on the back of each card. I wanted this to be an auditory, not visual, exercise!
Explicit Instruction...
- Focuses on critical content knowledge
- Breaks down skills, strategies and concepts into smaller, logically-sequenced instructional units
- Organizes each lesson into routines that contain a planned opening, middle, and closing. Lessons allow for planned redundancy and a gradual release of responsibility. Nothing is left to chance.
- Includes clear and specific verbal modeling throughout the lesson and immediate affirmative or corrective feedback to students.
- Provides ample opportunities for students to practice. At-risk students may need many more opportunities to practice skills than their non-at-risk peers.
- Actively engages students in lesson content and contains a high level of teacher-student interactions.
- Can be applied as a framework into any area of instruction.
Sample Explicit Instuction Lesson Framework
From: Colorado Reading First
Image retrieved from: http://www.cde.state.co.us/coloradoliteracy/clf/eightelements_04-purposefulinstruction
Watch and listen as Explicit Instruction is explained:
Teaching Matters Explicit Instruction
Watch as Anita Archer models an explicit vocabulary lesson with kindergarten students:
ArcherKVocab
Phonological Awareness...
For more information about phonological awareness, visit my Weebly page at:
http://mrspressonspre-kindergarten.weebly.com/phonological-awareness.html
http://mrspressonspre-kindergarten.weebly.com/phonological-awareness.html
Study Findings
Early Literacy IGDI Results
Results from the Early Literacy IGDI showed a greater pretest to posttest gain for intervention group students than for comparison group students. The mean change in score for the Intervention group was an average of 13.7 points while the Comparison group change score mean was 6 points. In addition, a t-test conducted to compare the mean change scores between groups yielded a 2-tailed p value of 0.006. Because the p value is smaller than 0.05, these results can can be statistically attributed to the intervention!
Words Their Way Emergent Assessments
Posttest data revealed that a higher percentage of intervention group students, shown in blue on the graph, scored as proficient on 3 of the 4 sub-tests. The fourth sub-test, Segment Sounds with Counters, had 0 students in either group obtain a proficiency score of 8. The intervention class did have some points awarded to students for performance on this sub-test while the control group did not have any points awarded. Classroom posttest proficiency rates for the remaining 3 sub-tests are as follows:
- Segment Initial Sound - Intervention Group: 93% Control Group: 31%
- Syllable Segmentation- Intervention Group: 79% Control Group: 7%
- Rhyme Production- Intervention Group: 36% Control Group: 15%
Researcher Log
Qualitative data from the researcher log revealed 3 important trends among intervention group students.
- Students began to demonstrate their understanding of intervention concepts by verbalizing their rationale.
- Students assisted and "coached" one another in completing initial sound awareness and blending/segmenting activities.
- Students transferred skills and language learned in explicit small group instruction to other classroom activities.
Why is this research important to educators?
My action research study findings suggest that explicit small group instruction raises phonological awareness understanding in at-risk pre-k students more than traditional whole group implicit instruction does. Consequently, educators may wish to consider using explicit small group instruction as the primary way they deliver phonological awareness instruction and moving traditional, whole group implicit instruction to a supporting role.
Characteristics of explicit instruction used in the intervention included consistent and specific verbal modeling, frequent affirmative and corrective feedback, high levels of student engagement, and a gradual release of responsibility.
Characteristics of explicit instruction used in the intervention included consistent and specific verbal modeling, frequent affirmative and corrective feedback, high levels of student engagement, and a gradual release of responsibility.