| Abstract: |
This study investigated the effects of a supplemental early reading intervention program on the phonemic awareness and alphabetic principle skills of students identified as at risk for reading failure. Seven kindergarten students and one first-grade student received 20 min of supplemental reading instruction 3 days a week for 16, 12, and 8 weeks. The researcher and a paraprofessional implemented the intervention in a coteaching format. A multiple-baseline-across-subjects design was used to analyze the effects of the instruction on Phoneme-Segmentation Fluency (PSF; Good and Kaminski, 2002) and Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF; Good and Kaminski, 2002) skills of target students. The results indicated that students made moderate to substantial increases in PSF and NWF as a result of the intervention. Supplemental reading intervention with systematic and explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and the alphabetic principle may be used to improve important literacy skills in kindergarten students identified as at risk for reading failure. The results also indicate that paraprofessionals can be taught to provide effective early reading intervention. |
