Interpreting Data for Effective Instructional Grouping: Early Childhood through First Grade

Interpreting Data for Effective Instructional Grouping: Early Childhood through First Grade Kimberly Hosford, MS Ed. RTI Specialist/School Psychologist Southern Oregon ESD NWPBIS Conference, Corvallis, OR March 8, 2010

EBISSEffective Behavioral and Instructional Support Systems Academic Systems Behavioral Systems • Intensive, Individual Interventions • Small Group/Individual students • Assessment-based • High Intensity • Intensive, Individual Interventions • Individual students • Assessment-based • Intense, durable procedures 1-5% 1-5% 5-10% 5-10% • Targeted Group Interventions • Some students (at-risk) • High efficiency • Rapid response • Targeted Group Interventions • Some students (some risk) • High efficiency • Rapid response • Universal Interventions • All settings, all students • Preventive, proactive • Universal Interventions • All students • Preventive, proactive 80-90% 80-90%

Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) Definition and Evidence-Base • CBM is a brief, standardized assessment that documents student achievement through a systematic sampling of skills that represent the annual curriculum (Fuchs, 2004; Shinn, 2002, 1998, 1989; Deno, 1986) • Alternate passages are of equivalent difficulty, whereby each measure is represented by the same level of complexity, gaining an accurate measure of student growth • Growth is measured by Universal Screening and Progress Monitoring

Types of CBM • General Outcome Measures (GOM) • Application of skill to independent task • Leveled passages that can be used for progress monitoring • Skills-Based Measures (SBM) • Leveled measures that assess proficiency on a specific set of skills that students are expected to perform per grade-level standards • Most commonly seen in mathematics/mixed math computation • Mastery Measures (MM) • Focuses on student attainment of finite skills • Not appropriate for progress monitoring

Utility of CBMs • Screening Decisions • Identify which students may need instructional support • Progress Monitoring Decisions • Decide when to modify instruction, teach new skills, and/or revise goals • Diagnostic Decisions • To target specific skill(s) for support • Outcome Decisions • To modify instruction, change intervention, or reintegrate back into general education support

CBM as Convergent Data • Technically reliable and valid GOMs and SBMs will be used for Universal Screening and Progress Monitoring of student performance • MM will be used to determine if a student is able to present skills taught in a lesson or unit • Student performance measures from these, and other relevant sources of information, will be used to determine student growth as aligned with standards

Initial Sound Fluency • Phonological Awareness • Alphabetic Principal • Fluency (& accuracy) with connected text • Vocabulary • Comprehension Big idea *DIBELS measure Phoneme Segmentation Nonsense Word Fluency DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency (DORF) DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency (DORF) • DIBELS: Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills • DIBELS is an example of a measurement system • AIMSweb: Letter Sound Fluency (LSF; Alphabetic Principle ) • ________: Word Identification Fluency (WIF; Alphabetic Principle) McKenna & Hosford (2008)

Before Reading there was Oral Language… • Phonological and phonetic development were preceded by prelinguistic development from birth to 10 months and older • cooing/laughter, vocal play, babbling • Babbling leads to speech starting with protowords - sounds that resemble adult words • Early pronunciation and development of common words, 19-32 months (mama, dadi, dog, cookie) • Skills of articulation, morpheme identification and the ability to orally and auditorily manipulate phonemes, ages 3-5

National Institute for Literacy • Link for the Executive Summary of the National Early Literacy Panel’s report; Developing Early Literacy “A scientific synthesis of early literacy development and implications for intervention” • http://www.nifl.gov/publications/pdf/NELPSummary.pdf • Other resources can be found at http://www.nifl.gov/publications/publications.html including publications for parents and teachers, early childhood through adolescence

National Institute for Literacy: Birth to Early Childhood – Predictor Skills Most Important Skills for the Later Development of Literacy • Knowing the names of printed letters • Knowing the sounds associated with printed letters • Manipulating the sounds of spoken language • Rapidly naming a sequence of letters, numbers, objects or colors • Writing one’s own name and isolated letters • Remembering the content of spoken language for a short time

Instructional Practices that Enhance Early Literacy Skills • Code-focused interventions • Teach skills to ‘crack the code’, include PA instruction • Shared-reading interventions • Reading books to children, simple or interactive • Parent and home programs • Parents taught instructional techniques to use at home • Preschool and kindergarten programs • Various aspects including programs, curricula, policies, etc. • Language-enhanced interventions • Focus on improving language development

Effects of the Interventions • Code-Focused Instruction • Statistically significant and moderate to large effects in improving the precursor skills most related to later literacy growth • Book Sharing • Moderate effects on print knowledge and oral lang. • Home/Parent Programs • Moderate to large effects on oral lang. and general cognitive abilities

Intervention Effects (continued) • Language-Enhancement Interventions • Large effects on oral language skills • Preschool and Kindergarten Programs • Moderate to large effects on spelling and reading readiness

Additional Key Findings • Age appropriate interventions • Only language interventions showed greater effectiveness early on • Overall, large and significant effects noted across interventions were found in both younger and older children • More research is needed to assess outcomes of instruction at various ages

Key Findings (continued) • In general, child characteristics including: • SES • Age • Race/ethnicity Did not alter the effectiveness of the interventions • More research is needed to determine if specific interventions would be effective with specific populations

Key Findings (continued) • Code-related interventions producing large, positive effects were typically conducted in one-on-one and small group activities • Activities were teacher directed with students learning through using the skills • Nearly all included some form of PA, which generally asked children to delete or blend sounds, few used rhyming as the primary approach • Teaching letter names and sounds, and beginning phonics tasks (blending sounds) enhanced effects of PA training

Individual Growth and Development Indicators (IGDIs) • 1996 Early Childhood Research Institute on Measuring Growth and Development was launched by the Universities of MN, KS, and OR • The Institute developed a comprehensive, individualized measurement system for tracking the growth and development of children with and without disabilities from birth to age eight. Part of this system are assessments that allow families and teachers to monitor young children’s development and identify, as soon as possible, the need for more intensive intervention.

IGDIs… • Design a simple set of tests to graph a child’s progress and produce information that’s meaningful to parents and teachers. “This is the first application of general outcome measures to preschool children,” said educational psychologist Scott McConnell, one of the Institutes lead researchers. • Early Childhood Research Institute on Measuring Growth and Development (1998). Research and development of individual growth and development indicators for children between birth and age eight (Tech. Rep. No. 4), Minneapolis, MN: Center for Early Education and Development, University of Minnesota.

IGDI Measures for Ages 3-5 Easiest to most difficult: • (1) Picture Naming –expressive language • (2) Rhyming – early literacy • (3) Alliteration – early literacy Load heavily onto phonemic awareness and rapid naming from the National Early Literacy Panel’s report Go to the web address below to access the “Get it, Got it, Go!” for free registration, downloads, and data management system http://ggg.umn.edu

IGDIs… • Guidance provided for data interpretation • Tracking of individual student progress and groups of students available on-line; aim line set based on a group of English-speaking preschoolers without identified disabilities • Guidance on creating a local standard • Data used as part of the research project • Links to intervention resources provided – however general and somewhat limited in utility

IGDIs and Intervention • Picture Naming • Intervene with activities to develop vocabulary, consult with SLP • Rhyming • onset recognition (e.g. goat, boat, coat) • build accuracy with pictures (e.g. matching items with same sounds) • Alliteration • initial sound matching listening activities: book that has many words with the same initial sounds • Resources from National Early Literacy Panel

Early Literacy Skills of Phonemic Awareness assessed in fall, winter and spring of kindergarten and 1st grade • Ability to manipulate sounds auditorily at the phoneme level • Foundation skill set required to become a proficient reader • Phoneme segmentation as capstone skill representing knowledge in rhyme, on-set rime, and blending • General outcome measures include Initial Sound Fluency (ISF) and Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF)

Early Literacy • Letter Naming • Adds confidence that a student is on track to be a successful reader • Does not link to one of the five essential components of beginning reading • Phonics / Alphabetic Principle • The ability to link letters to their representative sounds in text • General outcome measures (GOMs) include letter-sound fluency (LSF) and nonsense word fluency (NWF)

Guidelines for the Interpretation of Multiple Measures • Identify the GOMs that represent pre-requisite skills in order to build a foundation for the attainment of other skills as aligned with the big ideas of beginning reading • Review performance across all measures within the benchmark period • Identify how discrepant a student is from the benchmark or normative data (expected performance ÷ actual performance); validate concern • Identify widely discrepant students, those who ‘jump off the page’ • Extent of discrepancy and skill deficits indicates level of intensity of intervention required

Guidelines (continued) What level of support is required for students to be successful? • Grade-Level Intervention / Walk to Read • Differentiate within core program • Consider replacement core if enough students in grade level require support to be successful • Widely Discrepant (Shinn, 1989) • Provide intensive support with explicit and systemic intervention program • Consider replacement core • Specific Skill Instruction • Re-teaching, practice and repetition of skills not mastered • Phonics inventory to target skill instruction

Questions to Answer • How effective is our Core program? 80/20? • For which students is the core program effective and not effective? • Benchmark • Strategic • Intensive • What skills need to be targeted for support? • Enhancement of Core program for all students • Small group skill instruction in core program • Supplemental program and Intervention • Intensive intervention

Questions (continued) • Identify specific populations of students • English Language Learners • Special Education • Review Instructional Program for alignment of support to student needs • Convergence of Evidence • Validate need for support • Do other measures of student performance also indicate skill deficit? • Reassess student to confirm need for support and to more closely review patterns in student performance

Kindergarten – Fall • DIBELS: Initial Sound Fluency (ISF) and Letter Naming Fluency (LNF) • AIMSweb: Letter Naming Fluency (LNF )and Letter Sounds Correct (LSC) • Focus on phonemic awareness (instruction in rhyme, onset-rime, blending, and segmenting) • Low performance on both ISF and LNF indicates comprehensive intervention in area of phonemic awareness • Low performance on LNF only suggests skill instruction in letter names through differentiation in the core program • Class or group performance may indicate benefit from instruction in oral language development

Kindergarten - Winter • DIBELS: ISF, PSF, NWF, LNF • AIMSweb: PSF, LSC, NWF, LNF • Focus on skills of phonemic awareness • PSF a capstone skill representing a set of prerequisite skills needed to perform task • Low performance on ISF and PSF • review instructional program • intensify support • Benchmark on ISF and not PSF • Small group instruction • Preteach Lesson

Kindergarten - Winter • Benchmark met for skills of phonemic awareness (ISF and PSF), not for phonics as indicated by NWF • Analyze performance on NWF probe • Are individual sounds read accurately? • Are words being recoded? • Are individual sounds being presented and words being recoded? • Identify patterns in performance. • Small group instruction on specific skills as indicated by error patterns • Preteach Lesson that targets phonics instruction in core program

First Grade • HUGE year for growth in the development of early literacy skills and beginning reading • NWF benchmark doubles between fall and winter (24 to 50 cls); Oral Reading Fluency assessed in winter and doubles by spring (20 to 40 wcpm) • Review NWF for skill deficit patterns • vowel errors • specific sound errors across nonsense words • decoding accurately, not blending • decoding accurately, blending incorrectly • onset rime

First Grade - Fall • DIBELS measures: LNF, PSF, NWF • Phoneme segmentation remains a building block and foundation in the development of skills for early literacy • Ability to identify and blend letter-sounds is critical • When students are solid in their ability to identify and blend letter-sounds, as demonstrated in their performance on NWF, they may not perform to the benchmark in PSF • If students are not able to effectively segment sounds in words that are presented, they will struggle to accurately identify letter-sounds

First Grade - Fall • If students are below benchmark yet not widely discrepant, differentiate within the core program and provide additional support • This may be in more than one area, such as phonemic awareness and letter-sound correspondence • If students are widely discrepant in all measures, consider a replacement core program

First Grade - Winter • DIBELS: PSF, NWF, ORF • AIMSweb: LSF, PSF, NWF, ORF • Phonemic Awareness • If students have not met criterion on PSF, have they met benchmark on NWF and ORF? • If so, maintain instructional program • If not, determine if support through small group instruction in core program will be sufficient, or if comprehensive intervention will be required to meet student need • With intervention, progress monitor with PSF, NWF and ORF (ORF may not be sensitive to growth yet)

First Grade - Winter Phonics • If students have not met benchmark on ORF, have they met the criterion on PSF (35) and NWF (50)? Take a look at the passages • Low performance on ORF and NWF, review NWF for skill deficit patterns (collect more data if needed for accurate analysis) • vowel errors • specific sound errors across nonsense words • decoding accurately, not blending • decoding accurately, blending incorrectly • onset rime

First Grade - Winter • Low performance on ORF, criterion met on NWF and PSF • Look at NWF for guidance on potential needs, particularly vowels and recoding • If errors identified in NWF, validate concern, and teach to remediate error pattern(s) • If student is not recoding at least 15 nonsense words, student may need instruction in blending • If adequately producing sounds and blending on NWF, look at errors in ORF passages and consider sound-spellings and sight words taught to date in core

First Grade – Winter (continued) • If phonics errors on ORF passages - • Highlight on a phonics screener the sound-spellings taught and assess student on those skills • If sight word errors on ORF passages – • Use list of sight words taught and ask student to read the words • Provide remediation specific to skill deficit(s) through differentiation in the core if student is not widely discrepant; pre-teach skill(s) • Consider replacement core if student is 2x + discrepant

Winter Data - Overall • Summary of Effectiveness report per grade level • Student movement from fall to winter • Summary of Effectiveness report for same skill • Class list reports • Data Team meets with grade-level teams to review student progress • Progress Monitoring data for students receiving differentiated and targeted instruction and intervention

Questions to Answer when Progress Monitoring • Is the student/instructional group demonstrating gains in skill with progress monitoring? • What is the current instructional program? • Is the student responding? • Some growth? No growth? Stable growth on aim line? • Is the program being implemented as intended? • Identify alterable variables of time, grouping and instruction to either intensify support, maintain support, or fade support/reintegrate • Review data sources for Convergence of Evidence

Evidence-Based Supplemental and Intervention Programs http://oregonreadingfirst.uoregon.edu/ http://www.fcrr.org/FCRRReports/index.aspx

Outcomes Driven Model Good, Gruba, & Kaminski (2002)

Supplemental and Intervention Programs versus Replacement Core Supplemental To enhance core program for all students Prevent/remediate skills for students in core who are somewhat below grade level Intervention Prevent/remediate skills for students in core who are somewhat/significantly below grade level Intervention to replace core for students who are substantially below grade level Replacement core Addresses all 5 big ideas of reading More explicit instruction of finite skills, moves at slower pace with some exceptions

Phonemic Awareness Explicit instruction of essential skills for PA Blending, segmenting, rhyming SRA Phonemic Awareness (PreK-1) 110 lessons; 15 minutes each; continuum of PA Kindergarten Peer Assisted Literacy Strategies (K-PALS) 3 days/week, 20 minutes, for 20 weeks Direct instruction + ‘peer tutoring’ Scott Foresman Early Reading Intervention (ERI) At-risk kindergarten and 1st grade students 30 minutes daily; 126 lessons; small group Not enough growth following 6-8 weeks, switch to Reading Mastery

Phonics Peer Assisted Literacy Strategies (1st grade) Strong research; 30 minutes, 3 days/wk, 16-20 wks Supports PA, Phonics and Fluency Phonics for Reading (grades 1-6 to ELL adults) Consistent with findings of National Reading Panel Phonics supplement Daily 40-50 minutes or split lessons in 1/2 Explode the Code Independent work; no research See Florida Center on Reading Research and Oregon Reading First websites for reviews of other programs for phonics support

Fluency Peer Assisted Literacy Strategies (grade 1) Strong research, easy to implement in core Great Leaps (grades k-adult) Fluency-only, easy to implement, 10-15 minutes daily Six Minute Solution (grades k-9) Derived from a strong research base; 3 levels Only 6 minutes of instructional time daily Read Naturally (50 words to adult) Primarily fluency-building; strong research 3, 30 minute lessons/week minimum

Vocabulary Embed instruction for specific words and teach word learning strategies in the core program, differentiate Language for Learning (PreK-1; 4-6 yr olds) Language for Thinking (grades 1-2) Training required for fidelity Particularly useful for students with any language needs Intended for small groups of 4-12 students in 25-30 minute instructional sessions; 150 lessons

Replacement Core Programs Reading Mastery Classic l, ll, lll (SRA) / Fast Cycle • Modified orthography used in first level to emphasize the specific sounds of letters • Particularly powerful for children with significant language as well as literacy deficits Horizons (SRA), can include Funnix(computer-based) • A, B; A/B covers 2 years in 1 to catch kids up to peers • Uses traditional orthography vs. Reading Mastery Read Well • Used fairly often as a replacement core in classrooms • Consider pace of instruction issues

Replacement Core: Critical Points • Continue to teach skills of vocabulary and comprehension from evidence-based core program • Not meant to be a long-term solution for large groups of students • e.g. use Reading Mastery Fast Cycle to MOVE students forward and to ACCELERATE their growth toward criterion and benchmark standards • Use progress monitoring DATA to determine if students are gaining skills and generalizing them • Define a plan for REINTEGRATION back into the core program (e.g. semester break in January)

Instructional Grouping Take Home Points • Use instructional recommendations as a guide, not as the sole means of decision making • Look more closely at the data and specific skill areas of deficit and proficiency; be discerning • Leave meetings with a plan for each grade level • Think creatively, outside of the box • Identify the smallest change that can be made to make the biggest impact in student performance

Thank you for supporting student literacy!

Interpreting Data for Effective Instructional Grouping: Early Childhood through First Grade