STEVEN MALM, B.S. Reading Intervention: Incremental Rehearsal

The Case Subject: Alan – 5 year old Caucasian male Grade: Kindergarten Reason for Referral: Alan cannot identify or name letters of the alphabet.  Baseline assessment suggests that Alan has mastery of…  5 upper-case letters (A, B, C, D, E)  3 lower-case letters (A, C, E)  Mastery defined as ability to correctly name letter with 80% accuracy (4 out of 5).

Goal of Intervention At the end of the intervention, Alan will be able to name all 26 upper-case and all 26 lower-case letters Intervention duration: 3 weeks Intervention frequency: 5 days/week, 15 minutes Ambitious goal: 10 upper- and lower-case letters mastered/week (20 per week) Realistic goal: 8 upper- and lower-case letters mastered/week (16 per week)

Intervention Plan Intervention Name: Incremental Rehearsal (Burns, 2005) Overview: Student is presented with flashcards containing some unknown letters with a group of mastered letters. Presenting mastered letters alongside unknown letters can increase retention. Materials needed:  Letter flashcards (all 52 upper- and lower-case letters)  Sheet of paper  Pencil

The Process Start point: 8 mastered vs. 1 unknown  A, B, C, D, E  a, b, c, e First 10 minutes: Direct Instruction  Show Alan the first unknown card and have him attempt to identify the letter, providing feedback as necessary  Show Alan the first mastered care and have him identify the letter  Show Alan original unknown card and have him attempt to identify the letter

The Process (Cont.)  Follow this sequence:  Unknown, mastered  Unknown, mastered, mastered  Unknown, mastered, mastered, mastered  Unknown, mastered, mastered, mastered, mastered  Etc. until child names the Unknown correctly twice in a row.  Add that letter to the mastered pile and select a new letter from the unknown pile  Start sequence with new unknown letter

The Process (Cont.) Last 5 minutes: Mastery Assessment  Shuffle all cards used during direct instruction  Have Alan name each letter as they are presented  Record letters read correctly/incorrectly on sheet of paper  Repeat for a total of 5x  Unknowns presented during direct instruction that are identified correctly 4 out of the 5 trials are considered mastered. Letters considered incorrect if it takes >2 seconds to name Letters not named at 80% accuracy are returned to the unknown pile for the next day Record number of letters read correctly  Make sure you also keep track of which letters are read

Baseline Procedures Baseline was established using same mastery assessment outlined in previous slide.  Assessed upper- and lower-case separately.  Upper case letters presented 5 times per day for 3 days  Lower case letters presented 5 times per day for 3 days  The number of letters named with 80% accuracy were recorded  Upper- and lower-case letters charted separately.  Also recorded letters that were named correctly to establish mastered letter list  Baseline level determined by the mean of the three points

Progress Monitoring Procedures Progress monitoring will be continuous  Each day, Alan will complete the Mastery Assessment at the latter half of the intervention.  The interventionist is to record all letters named with 80% accuracy  Record this number on the progress-monitoring chart.  There will be a maximum of 15 data points for progress monitoring (5 days/per week for 3 weeks). Progress monitoring data will be evaluated at the end of the first week (5 points) to determine if the intervention is effective.

Support for Intervention Burns (2005)  Incremental Rehearsal is useful for many different skills (letter recognition, simple math facts, vocabulary words, etc.) Bunn, Burns, Hoffman, Newman (2005)  Case study using Incremental Rehearsal to teach letter recognition to 4-year old student.  Intervention went for 15 minutes every day for 3 weeks.  Child successfully could name every letter of the alphabet within 2 seconds of visual presentation  Results suggests that Incremental Rehearsal is a fast and easy-to-use intervention for letter naming Burns & Sterling-Turner (2010)  Incremental Rehearsal is highly effective when it comes to information retention

References Bunn, R., Burns, M.K., Hoffman, H.H., & Newman, C.L. (2005). Using incremental rehearsal to teach letter identification to a preschool-age child. Journal of Evidence-Based Practices for Schools, 6(2), Burns, M.K. (2005). Using incremental rehearsal to increase fluency of single-digit multiplication facts with children identified as learning disabled in mathematics computation. Education and Treatment of Children, 28, Burns, M.K. & Sterling-Turner, H.E. (2010). Comparison of efficiency measures for academic interventions based on acquisition and maintenance. Psychology in the Schools, 47(2), DOI: /pits.20458