Quantitative and Qualitative Documentation of Early Literacy Instruction

Quantitative and qualitative procedures were used in this pilot study to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a language and literacy instruction model for meeting the needs of children with impairments, delays, and differences in regular Head Start classrooms. Although the project addresses a variety of literacy domains, this article focuses on rhyming and letter naming. In the instruction model, children were exposed to motivating examples of rhyme and letter targets in different activity structures embedded across the curriculum. A crossover design compared two classrooms of children trained on letter and rhyme targets in a different order. Results of an analysis of variance revealed a significant Condition (rhyme first vs. letter first) x Task (rhyme generation vs. letter generation) x Time (Posttest 1 vs. Posttest 2) interaction. At the first posttest, children in the rhyme-first condition performed better than those in the letter-first condition on rhyme generation, whereas children in the lett...