Alphabet Knowledge Capstone

History

I am a resource teacher in a suburban elementary school outside of the Omaha-metro area. In our rapidly growing community, our school serves 513 students in grades Kindergarten through 5th. For the demographics, 88.9% students are caucasian, 77 students receive special education services, 96 students are identified as high ability learners, and 3.5% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch. I serve five students in kindergarten, eight students in 2nd grade, five students in 3rd grade, and four students in 4th grade. My caseload consists of students with other health impairments (OHI) for epilepsy, anxiety and ADHD, developmental delay, autism, emotional disturbance (ED), and specific learning disabilities (SLD).

 

This study focused on two kindergarten students. The first kindergarten student, diagnosed with developmental delay, comes from a family with five children on IEPs for developmental delays, specific learning disabilities and language needs. This student’s family has a history of not attending IEP meetings and lack of homework being turned in, yet the children all have very close and strong relationships. The second student is diagnosed with OHI for epilepsy, she has been called a ‘miracle in medicine’ and was not predicted to survive more than a few months. This student has a family of four children, including an older sister who receives HAL services, that is very proactive in getting support for their child. I decided to use these two kindergarten students for my capstone because it was the highest need of my caseload. All students need to be able to read in order to be successful in all areas.

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Need

My data suggested that the two kindergarten students needed targeted intervention focusing on letter recognition and letter sound association. On district assessments the first student was able to identify 43/52 letters, 11/26 letter sounds, and 3/53 kindergarten sight words. The second student was able to identify 5/52 letters, 1/26 letter sounds and 0/53 kindergarten sight words. These two students’ guided reading levels were assessed using Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System, where their benchmarks and running records are used to assess students’ abilities. Both students scored at level Pre-A, which means they were able to describe the pictures in the book but are not yet reading any of the words. According to my classroom observations both students struggled to stay engaged during lessons. Daily anecdotal notes were used to track trends in student engagement and referenced to modify instruction. IEP goals were used to track progress on their overall reading abilities.

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Importance

The two students in my capstone project showed deficiencies in alphabetic knowledge. In order to become readers, these students need to have knowledge of how to identify letters, letter sounds and sight words. The kindergarteners’ ability levels are below any district curriculum. As a resource teacher, I had to modify and create lesson plans from scratch on how to help these students. This project helped me to meet each student at their individual ability level and with instructional strategies that work best for them. I believe that applying research based strategies will help me be prepared for future students who face challenges in alphabetic knowledge and phonemic awareness.

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Literature Review 

What is Alphabet Knowledge?

Alphabet knowledge is the combination of sounds, names, and symbols of the letters of the alphabet (Jones, Clark, & Ruetzel, 2012). Students use matching of letter sounds and letters to sound out and spell words (Stahl, 2014). Alphabet knowledge is broken into two important factors, alphabetic understanding and phonological recoding. Alphabetic understanding is the understanding that words are created by letters that represent sounds. Phonological recoding is the relation between letters and sounds to produce, read, and spell words (DiLorenzo, Rody, Bucholz, & Brady, 2011). Once students learn letters and letter sounds, they have to recognize that letter sounds combine to create words in order read the written word (Roberts, 2003). The knowledge of letter names and corresponding sounds is an important element of children’s early literacy (Piastra, Purpura, & Wagner, 2009). The students in this study were at the beginning stages of alphabet knowledge, where they were starting to recognize letters, yet they were not forming words with the letters. 

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