PASS : A Phonological Awareness Intervention Program for At-Risk Preschool Children

1. PASS: A Phonological Awareness Intervention Program for At-Risk Preschool Children Froma P. Roth, Ph.D. Colleen K. Worthington, M.S. University of Maryland Gary A. Troia, Ph.D. Michigan State University Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009

2. Key Concepts • Phonological awareness (PA) refers to a group of oral language skills that reflect explicit awareness of the sound structure of spoken language and the ability to manipulate that structure. • Includes rhyming, alliteration, blending, counting, isolation, segmenting, deletion, substitution, and reversal of speech sounds, though the 3 major areas are rhyming, blending, and segmenting. • Typically developing (TD) children between the ages of 3 and 4 are capable of rhyming and alliteration • TD children between 4 and 6 years of age can count, isolate, blend, and segment speech sounds; older children can delete, and manipulate them. Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009

3. Children who perform well on such PA tasks usually are (or become) good readers, whereas children who perform poorly on them struggle (or will struggle) with word recognition and spelling. • PA performance in K is the best predictor of reading and spelling achievement in first and second grade. • Phonemic awareness (pa), the knowledge that words are comprised of individual sounds and the ability to manipulate these sounds, is most directly related to literacy. • Children who are phonemically aware can grasp the alphabetic principle, the concept that letters more or less correspond to sounds in spoken words • Children’s early reading and spelling experiences further develop their phonemic awareness skills. Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009

4. ■About 20% of children do not acquire PA without explicit instruction, especially those: • With disabilities • From low income households • From homes in which English is not a native language, ■Explicit instruction in PA and pa is often beneficial for children with and without disabilities to promote their meta-phonological competence, grapho-phonemic knowledge, decoding ability, and spelling proficiency. Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009

5. Examples: Early Childhood Experiences That Foster Phonological Awareness • Reciting fingerplays and nursery rhymes • Singing songs and chants with rhyming or alliterative schemes • Joint book reading with older children and adults • Viewing educational television programming such as Shining Time Station and Between the Lions • Exposure to environmental print (e.g., street signs, restaurant logos) • Interaction with various forms of print (e.g., menus, recipes, shopping lists, phone books, viewing guides) Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009

6. Key Principles of Instruction Task Dimensions to Control • Explicitness of awareness • Size of phonological unit (i.e., word, syllable, intrasyllabic, phoneme) • Number of units • Position of unit • Phoneme characteristics • Word frequency/familiarity Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009

7. Types of Instructional Tasks • Matching • Elimination/Oddity • Judgment • Isolation • Simple production (task requires a response with a shared segment or task requires a complete segmentation or blending of units) • Counting • Compound production (two-step tasks involving deletion, substitution, or reversal) Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009

8. Instructional Tips • Make sounds more perceptually salient through exaggerated pronunciation of continuants and iteration (i.e., bouncing) of noncontinuants • Use manipulatives whenever possible • Use visual cues such as pictures or indicators of number of units whenever possible • Model extensively • Provide immediate corrective feedback Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009

9. Promoting Awareness of SoundS (PASS) Program 3 Independent Training Modules • Rhyming • Blending • Segmentation All Lessons = 30 Minutes and Have Same Structure • Opening Activity (5 minutes) • Explicit instruction (20 minutes) • Closing Activity (5 minutes) • All lessons are metascripted (loose scripts) Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009

10. 4 Types of PASS Lessons • Preskill • Regular • Alternate • Branching Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009

11. Characteristics of PASS Instruction • Sequentially ordered discrete learning objectives • Guided practice opportunities • Ongoing progress monitoring (probes) • Criterion-based (suggested 80% accuracy 2 lessons) Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009

12. PASS Stimulus Characteristics • High frequency words (20 per lesson) are used for the explicit instruction portion of each lesson • Balanced for phonetic diversity (a stimulus set is used for only one objective in any given module) Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009

13. PASS Scaffolding Procedures • Picture stimuli named by or for child(ren) • Extensive modeling of task demands • Exaggerated articulation of key sound properties and iteration • Visual cues and manipulatives • Immediate feedback and error correction Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009

14. Research on PASS • In clinical setting • In school setting • With children with SLI • With at-risk preschool children • With ELL children (in progress) • 1 - on -1 instruction • Small group instruction in RTI model (Tier 2 support) Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009

15. Research on PASS Study 1: Rhyming Module (Roth, Troia, Worthington, & Dow, 2002) • 8 preschoolers with S and/or L impairment • Single-case experimental design to evaluate effects • Establish stable (in level and trend) pre-treatment baseline performance using multiple probes of rhyming, blending, and segmentation • Implement treatment phase and monitor progress • Determine post-treatment performance gains using multiple probes of rhyming, blending, and segmentation • Average pre-treatment baseline score range = 0-53% • Average post-treatment score range = 77-100% (no overlap with pre-treatment scores) • No notable gains in blending and segmentation (which means rhyming gains were due to treatment and not general maturation or other factors) Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009

16. STUDY 2: BLENDING • 11 preschoolers with S and/or L impairment • All had previously participated in PASSrhyming module • Single-case experimental design to evaluate effects • Average pre-treatment baseline score = 3% correct • Average post-treatment score = 52% correct (ES = 2.87) • # phonemes preserved: (1 or more phonemes) • Proportion of pretest probe = 32% • Proportion of posttest probe = 89% • Post hoc analyses: word frequency and lexical neighborhood density affected performance • Children correctly blended more HF words than LF words; but • They correctly blended more words from LD neighborhoods than HD neighborhoods Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009

17. Study 3: RTI (Roth, et al., 2009) Rhyming Module • 3- & 4-year-old at risk children • Tier 2 (PASS) = 15-22 children • Pull-out services by SLP 2x/week Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009

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22. Closing Remarks • Spontaneous transfer between skills cannot be assumed • Phonemic awareness training must be coupled with instruction in the alphabetic principle to have the most impact on literacy (either sequentially or concurrently) • Phoneme preservation scoring appears to be more sensitive to growth • In some cases, up to 30% of children in treatment samples who receive intensive instruction in phonological awareness do not make substantial gains Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009

23. Contact Information Froma Roth froth@hesp.umd.edu Colleen Worthington cworth@hesp.umd.edu Gary Troia gtroia@msu.edu Roth, Worthington & Troia ASHA Convention 2009