Modeling Alphabet Skills as Instructive Feedback Within a Phonological Awareness Intervention

Area of Science:

• Early Childhood Education
• Developmental Psychology
• Literacy Intervention

Background:

• Phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge are critical precursors to reading success.
• Effective instructional strategies are needed to support early literacy development in preschoolers.
• Instructive feedback is a promising approach for teaching foundational literacy skills.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the efficacy of an instructive feedback strategy for teaching letter names and sounds.
• To assess the impact of this strategy within a small-group phonological awareness intervention.
• To determine if positive feedback enhances the learning of alphabet skills.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments utilized multiple-baseline designs across children and behaviors.
• Primary outcome variables included letter name/sound identification and phonological awareness fluency.
• Experiment 1 used instructive feedback; Experiment 2 added a progressive time delay to the feedback.

Main Results:

• Experiment 1 showed gains in phonological awareness but not alphabet knowledge for 6 children.
• With the addition of progressive time delay in Experiment 2, all 9 children improved in letter name/sound identification.
• All children in Experiment 2 also demonstrated gains in phonological awareness skills.

Conclusions:

• Progressive time delay enhances instructive feedback for teaching alphabet skills in preschoolers.
• This combined strategy is efficient within early literacy curricula.
• Modeling alphabet skills did not hinder, and may have improved, phonological awareness instruction.