Attributes of Effective and

Efficient Kindergarten Reading

Intervention:
An Examination of Instructional Time
and Design Specificity

Deborah C. Simmons, Edward J. Kame’enui, Beth Harn, Michael D. Coyne,

Mike Stoolmiller, Lana Edwards Santoro, Sylvia B. Smith, Carrie Thomas Beck,
and Noah K. Kaufman

Abstract
A randomized experimental design with three levels of intervention was used to compare the effects of beginning reading interventions
on early phonemic, decoding, and spelling outcomes of 96 kindergartners identified as at risk for reading difficulty. The three instruc-
tional interventions varied systematically along two dimensions—time and design of instruction specificity—and consisted of (a) 30 min
with high design specificity (30/H), (b) 15 min with high design specificity plus 15 min of non-code-based instruction (15/H+15), and
(c) a commercial comparison condition that reflected 30 min of moderate design specificity instruction (30/M). With the exception of the
second 15 min of the 15/H+15 condition, all instruction focused on phonemic, alphabetic, and orthographic skills and strategies. Stu-
dents were randomly assigned to one of the three interventions and received 108 thirty-minute sessions of small-group instruction as a
supplement to their typical half-day kindergarten experience. Planned comparisons indicated findings of statistical and practical signif-
icance that varied according to measure and students’ entry-level performance. The results are discussed in terms of the pedagogical pre-
cision needed to design and provide effective and efficient instruction for students who are most at risk.

F
indings of a recent longitudinal
study sponsored by the National
Center for Educational Statistics
(NCES) underscored the important
academic foundation laid in kinder-
garten, particularly for children with
identified risks (West, Denton, & Re-
aney, 2001). Researchers found that al-
though the majority of the 22,000
kindergarten children recognized let-
ter names and beginning sounds in
words, only half demonstrated profi-
ciency with letter–sound relationships
at the end of words or the ability to
read words by sight. These founda-
tional skills relate to later reading suc-
cess (Francis, Shaywitz, Stuebing, Shay-
witz, & Fletcher, 1996; Stage, Abbott,
Jenkins, & Berninger, 2003; Wagner &
Torgesen, 1987) and are recognized ex-
pectations of kindergarten children, as
reflected in numerous state standards
and national reports. Although a con-
vergence of research provides substan-
tive guidance on how to prevent
delays in foundational reading skills
(National Reading Panel, 2000; Na-
tional Research Council, 1998; Shay-
witz, 2003), questions remain about the
design attributes of interventions nec-
essary to close the gap for children
who enter kindergarten at risk for later
reading difficulty.
Content of Prevention
A preponderance of evidence suggests
that children who struggle with early
reading lack facility with the phono-
logical structure of the English lan-
guage (Vellutino et al., 1996; Wagner &
Torgesen, 1987; Wagner, Torgesen, &
Rashotte, 1994). Specifically, they lack
sensitivity to the phonemes in words,
and they struggle with the alphabetic
principle or the ability to decode un-
familiar words (Byrne & Fielding-
Barnsley, 1989, 1990; Lundberg, Frost,
& Petersen, 1988; Stanovich, 1988; Vel-
lutino et al., 1996). Students with read-
ing difficulties (RD) cannot easily make
the connection between the sounds of
our language and their printed coun-
terparts that represent speech (Siegel,
1989; Stanovich, 1988). Consequently,
they face considerable obstacles trans-
lating print to speech and fail to
develop ease and facility with word
recognition (Share & Stanovich, 1995),

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VOLUME 40, NUMBER 4, JULY/AUGUST 2007, PAGES 331–347
332
which limits their capacity for higher
level cognitive processes related to com-
prehension and, ultimately, the word
and world knowledge they gain from
reading (Torgesen, 2000).
Intervention research provides
compelling evidence that phonemic
awareness, alphabetic understanding,
and decoding are teachable (e.g., Adams,
1990; O’Connor, Jenkins, & Slocum,
1995; Schneider, Roth, & Ennemoser,
2000; S. B. Smith, Simmons, & Ka-
me’enui, 1998) and that instruction re-
sults in significant gains for most chil-
dren (National Reading Panel, 2000;
Shaywitz, 2003; Vellutino et al., 1996).
Moreover, there is converging evidence
to suggest that an emphasis on alpha-
betic skills and phonological aware-
ness positively influences both pho-
nemic awareness and word reading
outcomes (e.g., Ball & Blachman, 1991;
Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1989, 1991;
Oudeans, 2003; Schneider et al., 2000;
Vandervelden & Siegel, 1997). Further-
more, the National Reading Panel’s
(2000) synthesis of experimental stud-
ies identified a set of nominal attri-
butes of instruction as being positively
related to kindergarten and first-grade
phonemic awareness and phonics out-
comes, including (a) emphasis of a
few priority phonemic awareness skills,
(b) integration of letters with sounds,
(c) small-group instruction, and (d) use
of explicit, systematic instruction.
Although the scientific knowledge
base provides guidance about the con-
tent and process of prevention-oriented
intervention, sufficient evidence is lack-
ing on two instructional attributes that
are likely to influence learning out-
comes for students at risk for RD: in-
structional time and design specificity.
Instructional Time
One of the most consistent educational
findings is that the amount of time that
children are actively engaged in tasks
they can perform successfully con-
tributes significantly to achievement
(Berliner, 1978, 1990; Marzano, 2000).
More than 4 decades ago, Carroll (1963)
proposed a model of school learning to
JOURNAL OF LEARNING DISABILITIES
guide the solution of educational prob-
lems grounded in the economics of in-
struction. Carroll’s model was based
on the idea that only a few critical vari-
ables influence student learning, and
central to this model was the role of
time or opportunity to learn. He es-
poused the belief that economy of learn-
ing can be realized when time spent in
learning equals time needed for learn-
ing. Consistent with Carroll’s model, it
is common practice to add time be-
yond typical allotments for children
who struggle with learning to read.
Over the past decade, supplemental
reading instruction that increases op-
portunity to learn has become a com-
mon focus of educational research and
practice (Linan-Thompson & Hickman-
Davis, 2002; O’Connor, 2000; Torgesen,
2000).
Cavanaugh, Kim, Wanzek, and
Vaughn (2004) reviewed 27 interven-
tion studies to examine the effects of
duration and frequency of phonologi-
cal awareness intervention on the
kindergarten literacy outcomes of chil-
dren identified as at risk for RD. Ca-
vanaugh et al. defined duration as the
length of intervention, typically re-
ported in weeks, and intensity as the
amount of time per session, reported in
minutes. Interventions varied markedly
in duration and intensity. Of the stud-
ies that reported duration, five studies
lasted 4 to 8 weeks, five were 10 weeks
long, six were 11 to 15 weeks, and the
remaining nine studies ranged in du-
ration from 17 to 28 weeks. In terms of
intensity, three of the five interventions
that were implemented for less than 15
min per instructional session resulted
in large effect sizes (1.0 or higher). The
majority of interventions were imple-
mented from 15 to 29 min (n = 17) and
had moderate to large effect sizes. Ca-
vanaugh et al. concluded that inter-
ventions delivered in small-group for-
mats, either two to three times per
week or daily, for 15 to 30 min, for a du-
ration of 8 to 10 weeks, produced the
greatest effects. However, none of the
27 kindergarten studies reviewed spe-
cifically manipulated time as an inde-
pendent variable. Therefore, the fol-
lowing important questions remain to
be investigated experimentally:
How much time is necessary to
develop phonological and
alphabetic proficiency?
Do programs that vary systematically
in the amount of instructional time
(e.g., 15 min vs. 30 min of code-
based instruction) result in
differential outcomes?
Instructional Design Specificity
A second attribute that has received at-
tention in recent studies on the pre-
vention of RD is the importance of
instructional quality—specifically, the
design of instruction. Such prevention
research in the early elementary grades
has examined a range of design issues,
including the explicitness of instruc-
tion (Foorman, Francis, Fletcher, Schat-
schneider, & Mehta, 1998) and the depth
of instruction and practice (Torgesen
et al., 2001). In a synthesis of the criti-
cal elements of reading instruction from
studies involving children at risk for
RD, Foorman and Torgesen (2001) con-
cluded that although the content em-
phases of effective instruction (i.e.,
what is taught) are the same whether
the focus is prevention or intervention,
instructional design features, such as
the level of explicitness, intensity, and
scaffolding, are elements that must
vary.
Instructional design refers to the
way information in a particular do-
main (e.g., social studies, science, read-
ing, mathematics) is selected, prioritized,
sequenced, organized, and scheduled
for instruction within a highly orches-
trated series of lessons and materials
that make up a course of study (Sim-
mons & Kame’enui, 1998). According
to P. L. Smith and Ragan (1993), in-
structional design refers to the “sys-
tematic process of translating princi-
ples of learning and instruction into
plans for instructional materials and
activities” (p. 2). As Smith and Ragan
pointed out, “An instructional designer
is somewhat like an engineer—both
plan their works based on principles

that have been successful in the past—
the engineer on the laws of physics,
and the designer on basic principles of
instruction and learning” (p. 2).
The instructional designer is con-
cerned with developing the architec-
tural pedagogy for the communication
of symbolic information that has a high
probability of preventing learner errors
and misconceptions and misrules (Ten-
nyson & Christensen, 1986). Instruc-
tional design is concerned with the
intricacies of analyzing, selecting, pri-
oritizing, sequencing, and scheduling
the communication of information be-
fore it is packaged for delivery or im-
plemented. It is the behind-the-scenes
activity that appears as the sequence of
objectives, schedule of tasks, compo-
nents of instructional strategies, amount
and kind of review, number of exam-
ples, extent of teacher direction, and
support explicated in teachers’ guides
and lesson plans. Instructional design
is the blueprint for instruction that car-
ries significant potential support for
students who may be at risk for RD.
Some blueprints are skeletal, provid-
ing little instructional specification,
and others have fundamental flaws
that fail to provide an adequate foun-
dation on which to build further skills
and support future learning success.
For the purposes of this study, in-
structional design was conceptualized
according to the level of specificity. The
experimental interventions were de-
signed around an instructional frame-
work (Carnine, 1994; Kame’enui, Car-
nine, Dixon, Simmons, & Coyne, 2002)
derived from studies of high-quality
instruction for students with diverse
learning needs. We considered these
principles fundamental to the design
of early reading instruction that re-
sponds to the acute needs of students
at risk for reading failure (Simmons &
Kame’enui, 1998) and included big
ideas, mediated scaffolding, conspicu-
ous strategies, strategic integration,
and judicious review. Furthermore, in-
structional design specificity was con-
sidered along a continuum ranging
from highly specified, through mod-
erately specified, to minimally speci-
VOLUME 40, NUMBER 4, JULY/AUGUST 2007
fied instruction. Highly specified in-
structional design consistently and ex-
plicitly addressed each of the previ-
ous design principles, as demonstrated
through conspicuous instructional lan-
guage and feedback, systematically in-
tegrated instructional components, ju-
dicious and sufficient review cycles,
and carefully prescribed example se-
lection and scheduling.
The converging scientific knowl-
edge base in reading and RD provides
a solid foundation for prevention-
based practice. Specifically, numerous
studies corroborate the benefits of
early intervention in phonemic aware-
ness and phonetic decoding. Still, we
lack instructional precision in terms of
how much of what content and under
what conditions promotes and acceler-
ates learning (Lyon & Moats, 1997).
Thus, research calls for further investi-
gation of instructional time and the de-
sign specificity of instruction necessary
to effectively and efficiently promote
early reading proficiency. To date, few
kindergarten studies have compared
the effects of instructional design speci-
ficity along selected dimensions (e.g.,
explicitness, level of integration). To
our knowledge, the present study is
the only one that has investigated the
effects of phonemic awareness and al-
phabetic and spelling instruction while
systematically controlling instructional
time and design specificity.
In this study, we examined whether
variations in instructional time and
design specificity differentially influ-
enced rates and levels of learning. To
examine instructional time, we con-
trasted two instructional conditions
that varied systematically in the time
dedicated to phonological, alphabetic,
and orthographic instruction (i.e., 30
min vs. 15 min). The first 15 min of the
two conditions included identical
code-emphasis instruction. The second
15 min varied, with one condition con-
tinuing a code-based emphasis and the
other emphasizing vocabulary and lis-
tening comprehension through a story-
book reading activity. We included the
15 min of storybook reading activities
to control for total instructional time
333
across the two conditions. Our com-
parison of interest, however, was be-
tween the 30 min and the 15 min of
code-based instruction.
To examine design specificity, we
contrasted two instructional condi-
tions that included a similar emphasis
on phonological, alphabetic, and or-
thographic instruction over 30 min, but
varied in design specificity (i.e., a highly
specified, experimental intervention
and a moderately specified commer-
cial program). Both conditions em-
phasized code-based instruction and
incorporated principles of effective in-
structional design, but they varied in
the specificity of task scaffolding, ex-
ample selection, teacher language, re-
view cycles, and corrective feedback
(see intervention descriptions). Our
objective was to evaluate instructional
variables required to accelerate learn-
ing rates for children who enter kin-
dergarten with prereading performance
indicators that place them at risk for
later RD.
Method
Participants
In September of their kindergarten
year, 116 students from seven elemen-
tary schools in the Pacific Northwest
were screened on the Letter Naming
Fluency (LNF) and Onset Recognition
Fluency (OnRF) Dynamic Indicators of
Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) mea-
sures (Kaminski & Good, 1996; see de-
scription of measures to follow) and se-
lected to participate in the study based
on the following criteria:
1. They scored at or below the 25th
percentile in the district on both
measures (i.e., less than 11 on
OnRF and less than 6 on LNF)
2. Their performance was confirmed
by kindergarten teachers as being
at risk for RD.
Children were excluded if they
had (a) severe hearing or visual acuity
problems or (b) were determined by
school personnel to have significantly
334
limited English proficiency. All partici-
pating kindergartners then completed
the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test–
Revised (PPVT-R; Dunn & Dunn, 1981)
to determine their baseline level of re-
ceptive vocabulary knowledge.
Socioeconomic status (SES), race,
and gender were allowed to vary con-
sistent with the district population
from which the sample was selected.
All participating schools received Ti-
tle I funding, and the percentage of stu-
dents qualifying for free- and reduced-
cost lunch services ranged from 32% to
63%. In terms of overall enrollment,
schools ranged from 319 to 683 stu-
dents; time allocated for kindergarten
in all schools was 2.5 hours per day.
Participating children were primarily
European American (n = 94; 83.93%)
and Latino/Hispanic (n = 15; 13.39%).
Two of the children were African
American, and one did not specify race
or ethnicity. Fifty-eight percent of the
sample were boys (n = 65); the mean
age for students in the fall was 5 years
7 months, with a range from 5 years
0 months to 6 years 9 months. Inter-
ventionists included 4 certified teach-
ers and 24 educational assistants be-
tween 35 and 44 years of age. The
typical interventionist had a high school
education with some college course-
work and an average of 5.7 years in-
structional experience in schools.
Experimental Design
A pretest–posttest experimental de-
sign with three levels of intervention
(between-groups factor) was used to
compare the effects of beginning read-
ing interventions on early reading and
vocabulary outcomes. The three in-
structional interventions varied sys-
tematically along two dimensions:
(a) the time apportioned to the content
taught (e.g., phonological, alphabetic,
and orthographic) and (b) the degree
of design specificity provided in the
content taught. The three interventions
consisted of (a) 30 min of phonological,
alphabetic, and orthographic code-
JOURNAL OF LEARNING DISABILITIES
based, highly specified instruction
(30/H); (b) 30 min of instruction parti-
tioned into 15 min code-based, highly
specified instruction and 15 min story-
book activities (i.e., vocabulary and lis-
tening comprehension) instruction (15/
H+15); and (c) a commercial compari-
son condition that reflected 30 min of
code-based, moderately specified in-
struction (30/M). Using a stratified
random sampling procedure, all eligi-
ble participating students within a
school were randomly assigned to one
of the three interventions.
Due to the young age of the chil-
dren and the intensity of the inter-
vention, group size was limited to five
or fewer children. Each school imple-
mented all three instructional treat-
ments; the total number of groups per
intervention was 10 for 30/H, 9 for
15/H+15, and 11 for 30/M. The num-
ber of intervention groups per school
varied depending on the number of
students identified as at risk and the
size of the school, with a maximum of
seven and a minimum of three inter-
vention groups per school.
Instructional Procedures
and Materials
From November through mid-May,
students received one of three 30-min
early reading interventions supple-
mental to their typical 2.5-hour kinder-
garten day. The small-group interven-
tions, which occurred during extended
kindergarten hours (i.e., either before
or after the regular kindergarten in-
structional day), were conducted by
either certified teachers or teaching
assistants at the child’s school. On av-
erage, children received 108 days of
supplemental, small-group interven-
tion for a total of 54 hours over the
course of the year. This instruction was
designed to extend instructional op-
portunities to the typical kindergarten
reading instruction, which included 45
to 60 min of daily instruction. Four of
the schools used Open Court, one used
Reading Mastery, and two schools used
a combination of commercial materials
for kindergarten reading instruction. A
description of the instructional condi-
tions follows.
Thirty-Minute/Highly Specified
Design Intervention. The design in-
tervention 30/H emphasized strategic
and systematic instruction of phone-
mic awareness, alphabetic understand-
ing, letter writing, and spelling and
consisted of two 15-min components
delivered consecutively in daily 30-
min lessons. In the first half of 30/H,
instruction established and reinforced
the phonological skills of (a) first and
last sound isolation, (b) sound blend-
ing, and (c) sound segmentation. Fur-
thermore, the intervention empha-
sized the acquisition and application of
fundamental alphabetic skills and
strategies of (a) letter-name identifica-
tion, (b) letter-sound identification,
(c) letter-sound blending to read con-
sonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words,
(d) selected irregular word reading,
and (e) sentence reading of controlled
text. The second 15 min reinforced pre-
viously taught phonological awareness
and alphabetic skills and extended
these skills through instruction in hand-
writing (e.g., letter dictation and for-
mation), integrated phonological and
alphabetic tasks, and spelling. Hand-
writing instruction did not focus on the
physical production of letters but on
the connection between sounds and or-
thography.
The spelling component began
with tracing and writing previously
taught letters and progressed to writ-
ing initial and final sounds in words,
and then to the systematic sequential
analysis and synthesis of all sounds
and letters in CVC and CVCC (con-
sonant–vowel–consonant–consonant)
words. During the last 3 weeks, in-
struction and practice focused on read-
ing controlled text of three- to five-word
sentences. All lessons were original
and did not use components of com-
mercially available materials.
The highly specified design les-
sons were purposefully constructed

around the following principles of in-
structional design: big ideas, scaffold-
ing, conspicuous strategies, strategic
integration, and review (Simmons &
Kame’enui, 1998). The scope and se-
quence of skills and strategies was re-
stricted to those most essential for early
reading success. For example, rather
than teach the full continuum of pho-
nological awareness skills, only sound
isolation, blending, and segmentation
were emphasized.
Simpler tasks within a dimension
of early reading (e.g., phonological
awareness) were introduced prior to
more difficult tasks (e.g., first sound
isolation before final sound). Tasks pre-
requisite to more difficult tasks were
introduced and taught for a sufficient
period of time to develop proficiency.
Example selection and sequence were
carefully controlled. For example, the
sequence of letter sounds was carefully
prescribed to minimize potential con-
fusion, only the short sounds of vow-
els were introduced, and pictures for
phonemic awareness tasks were se-
lected to allow students to work with
familiar information and highly salient
first sounds (e.g., /t/, /s/, /c/).
All highly specified lessons pro-
vided detailed scripting to ensure that
clear and consistent information was
communicated and to reduce variabil-
ity in implementation. When introduc-
ing a new skill, the teacher modeled
the information several times using
consistent wording. Furthermore, skills
were carefully integrated to enhance
learning. Concurrent skills involving
phonemic awareness and phonemic
decoding were integrated when appro-
priate (e.g., substituting the letter tile
for /s/ in the first position of the word
sun), resulting in higher-order applica-
tions.
Highly specified lessons concen-
trated on teaching a prerequisite skill
(e.g., phonemic isolation of first sound)
and then strategically integrating con-
current or corequisite skills. Moreover,
lesson components were related by
tasks that connected phonemic aware-
ness, reading, and spelling. All new in-
VOLUME 40, NUMBER 4, JULY/AUGUST 2007
formation (e.g., letter sounds, irregular
words) was introduced for a minimum
of 3 days and reviewed for a minimum
of 12 sessions. Lessons were intro-
duced in 6-day cycles. In each cycle, ei-
ther two new consonant letter names/
sounds were introduced or one vowel
was taught during the 6-day cycle.
Scheduled instruction, review, and
feedback were likewise highly speci-
fied. Each lesson that introduced new
information included a specified num-
ber of instructional interactions in
which the teacher modeled the infor-
mation and students practiced the new
skill with the teacher and then applied
the skill to new, untaught discrimina-
tion or generalization tasks. Further-
more, the intervention provided teach-
ers with explicit instructional language
and procedures for correcting errors
and extending practice for difficult
items. A lesson excerpt illustrating ac-
tivities and instructional specification
is found in the Appendix. This excerpt
occurs at almost the midpoint of the
curriculum and represents one activity
within the second 15-min period that
focused on the integration of phone-
mic, alphabetic, and orthographic in-
struction.
Fifteen-Minute/Highly Specified
Design + Fifteen-Minute Interven-
tion. To ensure equivalence of time
among intervention groups, the inter-
vention 15/H+15 partitioned emphasis
across two areas of reading—code (i.e.,
phonological, alphabetic, orthographic)
and comprehension (i.e., vocabulary,
narrative text structure, story retell)—
and consisted of two 15-min, consecu-
tive teaching segments per day. The
first 15 min included the same lessons
as the 30/H intervention and focused
on high-priority phonological and al-
phabetic skills. The second 15 min had
two primary foci: (a) receptive and ex-
pressive knowledge of vocabulary that
appeared in storybooks, and (b) ex-
panded knowledge and development
of story structure and story retell. The
comprehension portion that was part
of the second 15 min was built on the
335
research of Dickinson and Smith (1994),
Senechal and Cornell (1993), and
Whitehurst et al. (1994, 1999). Critical
features included (a) repeated reading
of stories, (b) targeted vocabulary se-
lection and instruction, (c) dialog dis-
cussion of vocabulary and stories,
(d) multiple exposures to target vocab-
ulary, and (e) systematic review and in-
tegration of vocabulary words within
and between lessons within a cycle.
(For a more detailed description of the
effects of the storybook instruction on
students’ vocabulary and comprehen-
sion outcomes, see Coyne, Simmons,
Kame’enui, & Stoolmiller, 2004).
Thirty-Minute/Moderately Speci-
fied Design Intervention. The inter-
vention 30/M was designed to partial
out the independent contributions of
time and design specificity. The entire
30 min of instructional time was allo-
cated to phonological, alphabetic, and
orthographic activities. However, the
specificity of instructional design was
considered moderate compared to the
30/H condition. The 30/M interven-
tion was based on the Sounds and
Letters component of the Open Court
Reading 2000 (Adams et al., 2000) com-
prehensive reading program.
A full implementation of Open
Court Reading 2000 requires 90 or more
minutes of daily instruction. Because
this intervention was supplemental
and time restricted, only the Sounds
and Letters module was used. In this
module, instruction focused on the fol-
lowing sections: Sounds, Letters, and
Language; Phonemic Awareness; and
How the Alphabet Works (e.g., inte-
grated alphabetic and phonological
awareness, writing letters, and the
reading and writing workbook). In
contrast to the code-emphasis compo-
nent of the 30/H and 15/H+15 inter-
ventions, the 30/M intervention was
broader in scope and focus. On a typi-
cal day, children listened to and recited
rhymes, poems, and songs; played lan-
guage and word games to apply
knowledge of sounds, letters, and lan-
guage; engaged in phonemic aware-
336
ness activities; learned a new letter
name and sound; used new sounds in
sentences; and wrote new letters in the
writing workbook. In contrast to the
other two interventions, the moder-
ately specified instruction provided a
more integrated approach to reading
and language development. For exam-
ple, when reviewing rhyming words,
the teacher read poetry aloud and then
asked students to identify words that
rhymed.
We characterized the 30/M mod-
ule of Open Court as moderate in de-
sign specificity for several reasons. The
scope and sequence within and be-
tween lessons was highly specific, yet
broader in scope than in the other in-
terventions. For example, the range of
phonological awareness skills covered
a full complement of skills from rhym-
ing to sound substitution. Within the
Sounds and Letters module, lessons in-
cluded seven to eight different, yet in-
tegrated, activities. No time allocations
were specified per task, leaving the
pacing and emphasis to the teacher’s
discretion. The sequence of letter sounds
was carefully prescribed, and as in
the high-specificity interventions, only
short pronunciations of vowels were
introduced. The explicitness of teacher
language varied by activity. On se-
lected activities, such as oral blending
in phonological awareness or new
sound introduction, teacher language
was scripted and highly specific. On
other activities, more general instruc-
tions were typical. Finally, in contrast
to the high-specificity interventions,
the example selection was more flexi-
ble and less specified. Teachers or stu-
dents were often encouraged to brain-
storm to identify words that began
with target sounds or that exemplified
the focus of instruction.
Finally, with respect to review
and feedback, the moderate-specificity
intervention offered directions for
when and how to introduce and prac-
tice a skill, and reminders of what key
skills to review when children had dif-
ficulty. In contrast to the other two ex-
perimental interventions, the number
of teacher models and practice exam-
JOURNAL OF LEARNING DISABILITIES
ples were less prescribed, and the cor-
rective feedback was less specific.
Dependent Measures
Measures were selected to address five
dimensions of early language and lit-
eracy: (a) phonological awareness,
(b) phonemic decoding and word read-
ing, (c) letter-name retrieval and for-
mation, (d) spelling, and (e) general re-
ceptive vocabulary. The large number
of measures reflects the progression of
skill development and the need to in-
clude measures that would not result
in large floor effects in early kinder-
garten due to task difficulty. More so-
phisticated measures of phonemic de-
coding and phonemic awareness were
administered at midyear and at the
end of the year to ensure that we cap-
tured and reflected children’s growth
on more complex tasks that occurred in
the second half of kindergarten. To ad-
dress the efficiency and effectiveness of
interventions, we included fluency-
based (timed) and nonfluency or accu-
racy-based measures. Measurement
periods included (a) screening, (b) pre-
and postintervention, and (c) postin-
tervention-only measurement of word
reading, as it was considered too dif-
ficult for beginning-of-kindergarten
pretest administration. Reliability coef-
ficients for the commercial measures
are those reported in the test manuals
for children in the age ranges of stu-
dents in this study. Interrater reliability
coefficients for the experimental mea-
sures are based on the current study.
Phonological Awareness
Measures
Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Seg-
mentation. This measure (Yopp, 1995)
represented an accuracy-based test of
the ability to segment whole words
that was appropriate for beginning-of-
kindergarten administration. It is a
“standardized, individually adminis-
tered test of a child’s ability to sepa-
rately articulate the sounds of a spoken
word in order” (Yopp, 1995, p. 21). In
this untimed measure, the examiner
says a word, which the child then seg-
ments into its individual phonemes in
the correct order of the presented
word. The final score is the number of
total words and the percentage of
words segmented completely of the
22 words administered. Interrater reli-
ability on the Yopp-Singer is reported
as .95, and the correlation with the
Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills read-
ing cluster in first grade is .43 (Yopp,
1995). The Yopp-Singer test was ad-
ministered in October and May.
DIBELS Onset Recognition Fluency
(OnRF). This standardized, individu-
ally administered beginning measure
of phonological awareness assesses a
child’s ability to recognize and pro-
duce the initial sound in an orally pre-
sented word. In this test, the examiner
presents four pictures to the child,
names each picture, and then asks the
child to identify (i.e., point to or say)
the picture that begins with the sound
the examiner produces. The child is
also asked to produce orally the onset
for an orally presented word that
matches one of the given pictures. The
examiner calculates the amount of time
the child takes to identify and produce
the correct sound and converts the
score into the number of onsets cor-
rectly produced in 1 min. Alternate-
form reliability of the OnRF is .65, and
test–retest reliability ranges from .65 to
.90 (Kaminski & Good, 1996). Predic-
tive validity coefficients range from .28
to .51 (Kaminski & Good, 1996). Alter-
nate forms of the OnRF were adminis-
tered monthly from September to Jan-
uary to assess growth in beginning
phonological awareness.
DIBELS Phonemic Segmentation
Fluency (PSF). This standardized, indi-
vidually administered test of phono-
logical awareness assesses the ability
to produce the individual phonemes in
three- to four-phoneme words pre-
sented orally by the examiner. In this
study, it represented a fluency-based
indicator of phonemic segmentation
that—because of task difficulty—is
most appropriately first administered
in the middle of kindergarten. Credit is
awarded for each phoneme or segment
of the word produced, and the number

of correct phonemes produced within
1 min determines the final score. This
fluency-based measure has an alter-
nate-form reliability of .88 and predic-
tive validity coefficients ranging from
.73 to .91 (Kaminski & Good, 1996). Al-
ternate forms of the PSF were adminis-
tered monthly from January to May to
assess growth in phonological aware-
ness.
Phonemic Decoding and Word
Reading
DIBELS Nonsense Word Fluency
(NWF). This is a standardized, indi-
vidually administered test of letter–
sound correspondence and of the abil-
ity to blend letters into pseudowords
in which letters represent their most
common sounds (Kaminski & Good,
1996). This is a fluency-based measure
most appropriately first administered
in midkindergarten. The student has
1 min to produce as many letter sounds
as possible in CVC pseudowords, and
the final score is the number of correct
letter sounds produced. Alternate-
form reliability for the NWF ranges
from .66 to .87, and concurrent validity
with the readiness subtests of the
Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Test
Battery ranges from .35 to .59. Alternate
forms of NWF were administered
monthly from January to May to assess
growth in alphabetic understanding.
WRMT-R Word Attack subtest.
The Woodcock Reading Mastery Test–
Revised (WRMT-R; Woodcock, 1987) is
a standardized, individually adminis-
tered test that assesses a child’s ability
to read a list of nonwords (e.g., tet) pre-
sented in isolation. The subtest con-
tains 45 words of increasing difficulty;
students earn 1 point for each word
read correctly, which is converted into
a standard score.
WRMT-R Word Identification sub-
test. Consisting of 100 words of in-
creasing difficulty, this test measures a
child’s skill in reading real words pre-
sented in isolation. The raw score is the
number of words correctly read. Inter-
nal consistency reliability for both sub-
tests of the WRMT-R ranges from .92 to
.98 (Woodcock, 1987); no specific relia-
VOLUME 40, NUMBER 4, JULY/AUGUST 2007
bilities are reported for kindergarten.
Because of the potential floor effect of
these subtests for kindergarten chil-
dren in the fall, both subtests were ad-
ministered in May at posttest only.
Letter Dictation Fluency and
Spelling Measures
Letter dictation fluency. A measure
modified from Berninger et al.’s (1997)
writing dictation measure was used to
assess students’ ability to retrieve and
produce letters automatically. Admin-
istered pre- and postintervention, this
measure assessed growth in writing
letters from memory in response to a
dictation of the 26 alphabet letters pre-
sented in random order. In this study,
Berninger et al.’s original measure was
modified to a 1-min timed administra-
tion to address both letter writing
accuracy and rate of production. Stu-
dent responses to letter dictation were
scored according to the number of cap-
ital or lowercase letters written cor-
rectly in 1 min. Interrater scoring relia-
bility calculated on 20% of the total
pre- and postintervention letter dicta-
tion tests was 1.00. In the present study,
the concurrent validity correlations of
the letter dictation fluency measure
with the WRMT-R Word Attack and
Word Identification measures were .60
and .51, respectively.
Spelling. The ability to translate
spoken language to print was assessed
pre- and postintervention through a
spelling measure originally developed
by Tangel and Blachman (1992, 1995).
Examiners verbally dictated a target
spelling word, used the target word in
a sentence, and asked the student to
spell the word the best that he or she
could. The original Tangel-Blachman
spelling measure included 6 and 10
words, respectively, for kindergarten
and Grade 1. To increase variability in
scores and to minimize kindergarten
children’s frustration, the original 10-
word Grade 1 measure was reduced to
8 words by eliminating the two most
difficult words. Word difficulty in this
application ranged from lap to elephant.
Responses were evaluated using a
partial-credit scoring system (Tangel &
337
Blachman, 1995) according to a devel-
opmental continuum. Respective con-
current validity correlations of the
spelling measure with WRMT-R Word
Attack and Word Identification were
.65 and .62. The interscorer reliability
calculated on 20% of the total pre–
postintervention spelling tests was .98.
Vocabulary Measure
Receptive knowledge of general vo-
cabulary. The PPVT-R was admin-
istered pre- and postintervention to
assess any differential effects of in-
structional condition on generalized
vocabulary knowledge. On this test,
the child is presented with four pic-
tures and asked to point to the one that
corresponds to a word spoken by the
examiner. One point is awarded for
each correct response and then con-
verted into standard scores. Test–retest
reliability for the PPVT-R is reported as
.77.
Treatment Integrity Measure.
Treatment integrity was evaluated by
direct assessment methods (Gresham,
MacMillan, Beebe-Frankenberger, &
Bocian, 2000) by research team mem-
bers at eight points during the year:
twice per month during the first 2
months of intervention, and once every
3 weeks for the remaining duration.
The integrity checks focused on (a) im-
plementation accuracy of components
and (b) time spent in instruction. Crit-
ical components of each intervention
were identified and operationalized,
and a quantitative rating list was cre-
ated for the respective interventions.
After each observation, the checklist
was reviewed with the interventionist,
and specific suggestions were pro-
vided to improve lesson implementa-
tion.
Treatment integrity was evalu-
ated by observing complete instruc-
tional sessions and documenting the
presence or absence of each critical
component. Two points were assigned
if the critical component was always
demonstrated during the observation,
1 point was given for a component that
was observed most of the time, and no
338
points were assigned if a component
was not observed. The final compo-
nent integrity score was calculated by
tallying the observed components and
dividing by the total possible compo-
nent score. Total time for each inter-
vention component and total instruc-
tional time were also documented for
each observation. Prior to conducting
integrity checks, observers established
an interobserver reliability of .85 or
higher.
Results
Data Analysis Strategy
Planned contrasts were first conducted
to evaluate the statistical significance
of the effects of instructional time and
design specificity. The first contrast
evaluated the effect of instructional time
when design specificity was controlled
by comparing the performance of the
30/H code-based intervention with
the 15/H+15 intervention. The second
contrast evaluated the effect of design
specificity when time was held con-
stant through the 30/H vs. 30/M com-
parison. The third comparison exam-
ined the combination of instructional
time and design specificity, contrasting
the performance of children in the 15/
H+15 condition with that of the 30/M
intervention. In this comparison, we
examined the effect and efficiency of a
15-min code component with high
specificity versus a 30-min interven-
tion with moderate specificity.
For measures collected both pre-
and postintervention, ANCOVA was
used to assess posttest group differ-
ences, using preintervention scores as
the covariate to minimize the poten-
tial influence of differences in base-
line scores. For NWF, WRMT-R Word
Attack, and Word Identification—
measures not given in the fall—fall let-
ter naming fluency was used as the
pretest covariate. For PSF—also a mea-
sure not given in the fall—OnRF was
used as the pretest covariate.
First, homogeneity of regression
across groups was tested. If no differ-
ences were detected, the group-by-
JOURNAL OF LEARNING DISABILITIES
pretest interaction terms were dropped
from the model and the pooled post-
on-pre regression for all groups was
used to adjust mean posttest differ-
ences among the groups. When post-
on-pre regressions were significantly
different, mean comparisons were con-
ducted among groups at selected
points in the prescore distribution. For
all models, residual diagnostics were
carefully scrutinized to assess the ade-
quacy of background statistical as-
sumptions (linearity of regression,
normality, and heteroscedasticity of
residuals) and to guard against undue
distortions due to outliers or points of
high influence. Given the planned con-
trasts, we adjusted alpha levels to min-
imize Type I errors (Keppel, 1991) us-
ing a per comparison alpha of .016 for
all research questions. To assess practi-
cal significance and facilitate interpre-
tation of findings, effect size indices are
provided for all salient analyses in the
form of Cohen’s d.
Demographic and Screening
Comparability Analyses
We first examined whether interven-
tion groups differed on demographic
characteristics or on the screening and
pretest measures administered in the
fall. Due to the length of the interven-
tion, attrition rates were assessed to
evaluate the potential effect of students
who began but did not complete the
intervention. Contingency table analy-
ses showed that attrition rates were
comparable across the three interven-
tion groups, χ2(2, N = 112) = 2.91.
Analysis of student demographic vari-
ables involving intervention com-
pleters indicated that ethnicity, gender,
age, and attendance did not differ sig-
nificantly across groups. Finally, analy-
sis of teacher and educational assistant
demographics and instructional fac-
tors indicated no statistically signifi-
cant relation among teacher experi-
ence, age, highest educational degree,
and intervention group.
A multivariate analysis of vari-
ance (MANOVA) conducted on the
combined onset recognition, letter
naming, letter dictation, Yopp-Singer,
and PPVT-R measures indicated that
intervention groups were not signifi-
cantly different at pretest, F(12, 166) =
1.47, p > .05. However, the univariate
F tests for Yopp-Singer and letter dic-
tation fluency measures were statisti-
cally significant, F(2, 87) = 4.01, p < .05,
and F(2, 87) = 3.56, p < .05, respectively.
Table 1 reports pretest and posttest
descriptive statistics for all dependent
variables by intervention group. Scores
for the PPVT-R, WRMT-R Word Attack
and Word Identification are reported in
standard scores; all other scores are
raw scores.
Statistical and Practical
Effects Analyses
Phonological Awareness. For the
Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmenta-
tion, the regression model indicated no
substantial differences in post-on-pre
regressions across groups and a signif-
icant effect of the pooled pretest on
posttest, t(90) = 4.57, p < .001. Planned
t tests assessing respective main effects
indicated no statistically significant
differences for any of the comparisons
at the p = .016 level. Tests of practical
significance indicated small to moder-
ate effect sizes (see Table 2 for effect
sizes by contrast and measure). For the
DIBELS OnRF measure, administered
in September and January, the results
of an ANCOVA indicated no differ-
ences in post-on-pre regression across
groups, a nonsignificant pooled post-
on-pre regression, and no statistically
significant differences for any of the
comparisons. Effect sizes of the respec-
tive contrasts were small to moderate,
with the strongest effect favoring the
30/H over the 15/H+15 condition,
ES = .47. Because the DIBELS PSF mea-
sure assessed advanced phonemic
awareness skills, the fall OnRF score
was used as the covariate. ANCOVA
results indicated no differences in post-
on-pre regression across groups, a non-
significant pooled post-on-pre regres-
sion, and no statistically significant
differences among the groups, although
the design specificity contrast favoring
 VOLUME 40, NUMBER 4, JULY/AUGUST 2007 339

TABLE 1
Pretest and Adjusted Posttest Scores on All Measures by Intervention Group
30/Ha 15/H+15b 30/Mc

Measures Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post

LNF
M 2.78 38.44 2.53 28.59 2.13 33.53
SD 2.83 16.93 2.39 15.29 1.74 17.42
OnRF
M 7.16 26.71 6.68 21.47 5.63 20.19
SD 4.02 11.13 3.49 11.02 3.36 11.37
Yopp-Singer
M 9.45 16.22 5.30 16.27 6.07 13.87
SD 7.14 5.28 5.87 5.21 6.68 7.18
PSF
M NA 47.46 NA 40.86 NA 36.26
SD 14.37 17.69 17.27
NWF
M NA 38.79 NA 29.11 NA 25.00
SD 17.53 17.62 13.38
WRMT-R Word Attack
M NA 111.34 NA 106.88 NA 103.03
SD 10.17 9.95 12.78
WRMT-R Word Identification
M NA 106.91 NA 101.47 NA 98.43
SD 9.98 9.68 14.40
LDF
M 4.19 11.03 3.18 7.85 2.71 7.69
SD 2.51 4.65 2.29 2.75 1.96 3.35
TB Spelling
M 12.28 44.03 12.27 35.77 12.40 34.38
SD 6.18 9.83 5.08 13.15 6.67 13.96
PPVT-R
M 89.94 96.23 92.64 93.38 91.770 94.13
SD 13.91 10.52 13.63 15.30 12.14 11.06

Note. 30/H = 30-min/high-specificity design intervention; 15/H+15 = 15-min/high-specificity design and 15-min storybook intervention; 30/M = 30-min/moderate-
specificity design intervention; LNF = Letter Naming Fluency, from the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS; Kaminski & Good, 1996); OnRF =
Onset Recognition Fluency, from the DIBELS; Yopp-Singer = Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation (Yopp, 1995); PSF = Phonemic Segmentation Fluency,
from the DIBELS; NWF = Nonsense Word Fluency, from the DIBELS; WRMT-R = Woodcock Reading Mastery Test–Revised (Woodcock, 1987); LDF = Letter Dic-
tation Fluency (based on Berninger et al., 1997); TB Spelling = Spelling test (Tangel & Blachman, 1992, 1995); PPVT-R = Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test–Re-
vised (Dunn & Dunn, 1981). LNF was used as a screening measure but not as an outcome measure. The posttest for OnRF was administered in January. For
Yopp-Singer, the 30/H versus 15/H+15 contrast was significant at p = .013; For LDF, the 30/H versus 30/M contrast was significant at p = .0142. No other contrasts
for any of the fall measures were significant at p < .016.
an = 32. bn = 34. cn = 30.

the 30/H over the 30/M condition ap-
proached significance, t(90) = 2.35, p =
.021, ES = .59.
Phonemic Decoding and Word
Reading. Fall letter naming fluency
was used as the pretest covariate for
phonemic decoding, as measured by
the DIBELS NWF and WRMT-R Word
Attack tests, and word reading, as
measured by the WRMT-R Word Iden-
tification task. ANCOVA results for
NWF indicated no differences in post-
on-pre regression across groups and a
statistically significant pooled post-on-
pre regression, t(92) = 2.76, p = .007.
The 30/H group did better than the
15/H+15 group, although the differ-
ence was marginally statistically sig-
nificant, t(92) = 2.39, p < .018, ES = .60.
The 30/H group did substantially bet-
ter than the 30/M group, t(92) = 3.21,
p < .002, ES = .82. The 15/H+15 vs.
30/M contrast was nonsignificant.
Nonetheless, end-of-year scores indi-
cated that the mean performance of all
groups was above 25, which represents
the 40th percentile on the systemwide
database. The mean performance of
students in the high-specificity design
340 JOURNAL OF LEARNING DISABILITIES

TABLE 2
Magnitude of Intervention Effects on Pre/Post and
Post-Only Measures by Contrast
Pre/Post and post-only
measures 30/H vs. 15+15/Ha 30/H vs. 15+15/Mb 15+15/H vs. 30/Mc

Yopp-Singer
M −0.20 0.29 0.49

OnRF
M 0.47 0.36 −0.10

PSF
M 0.36 0.59 0.23

NWF
M 0.60 0.82* 0.23

WRMT-R Word Attack

M 1.30*, 1.07*, 0.85*, 0.62* 1.40*, 1.17*, 0.95*, 0.72* 0.10

WRMT-R Word Identification

M 1.28*, 1.02*, 0.76* 1.28*, 1.02*, 0.76* .00

LDF
M 0.74* 0.73* −0.01

Spelling
M 2.28*, 1.46*, 0.80* 0.86* −1.42*, −0.59, 0.06

PPVT-R
M 0.33 0.32 0.01

Note. Effect sizes are reported as Cohen’s d based on adjusted prescore/postmean differences. 30/H = 30-min/high-specificity design intervention; 15/H+15 = 15-
min/high-specificity design and 15-min storybook intervention; 30/M = 30-min/moderate-specificity design intervention; OnRF = Onset Recognition Fluency, from the
DIBELS; Yopp-Singer = Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation (Yopp, 1995); PSF = Phonemic Segmentation Fluency, from the DIBELS; NWF = Nonsense
Word Fluency, from the DIBELS; WRMT-R = Woodcock Reading Mastery Test–Revised (Woodcock, 1987) Word Attack at LNF = 0, 1, 2, and 3 and Word Identifica-
tion at LNF = 0, 1, and 2; LDF = Letter Dictation Fluency (based on Berninger et al., 1997); TB Spelling = Spelling test at pre-Spelling Scores 3, 8 and 12 (Tangel
& Blachman, 1992, 1995); PPVT-R = Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test–Revised (Dunn & Dunn, 1981).
aTime. bSpecificity. cTime and Specificity.

*p < .016 level.

group was 38, corresponding to the
67th percentile in a database of 39,000
kindergarten children (Good, Wallin,
Simmons, Kame’enui, & Kaminski,
2002).
For the WRMT-R Word Attack
measure, the slope for the 30/H group
was significantly flatter than that for
the 30/M group, t(90) = −2.82, p = .006,
and marginally significantly flatter than
that for the 15/H+15 group, t(90) =
−1.74, p = .08, but the 30/M and
15/H+15 slope difference was not sta-
tistically significant. To “unpack” the
interaction of differential slopes by
group, we re-estimated the model, in-
cluding only the significant interaction
term, and conducted adjusted mean
comparisons for WRMT-R Word At-
tack scores among groups at selected
points in the fall LNF distribution. For
students who began the year with an
LNF score of 3 or below, students in
the 30/H group scored significantly
higher than students in the other
groups (t values ranged from 2.5 to
4.75). For students who began the year
with an LNF score between 4 and 6, the
groups were not significantly different.
As a matter of practical significance,
the 30-min/high–design specificity in-
tervention produced very strong ef-
fects for students who entered the in-
tervention with the lowest LNF scores,
with effect sizes ranging from 0.62 to
1.40, compared to the 15/H+15 and
30/M interventions. For the 15/H+15
and 30/M groups, there was no signif-
icant interaction of entry-level LNF
score and intervention condition.
For the WRMT-R Word Identifica-
tion measure, the slope for the 30/H
group was significantly flatter than
that for the 30/M group, t(90) = −2.29,
p = .024, and significantly flatter than
that for the 15/H+15 group, t(90) =
−2.49, p = .014, but the 30/M and 15/
H+15 slope difference was not signifi-
cant. We re-estimated the model in-
cluding only the significant interaction
term and conducted adjusted mean
comparisons for WRMT-R Word Iden-
tification scores among groups at se-
lected points in the fall LNF distribu-
tion. For students with fall LNF scores
of 2 and below, the 30/H group scored
significantly higher than the other two
groups (t values ranged from 2.95 to
3.81), and for students with fall LNF
scores of 3 to 6, the groups were not

significantly different. Effect sizes
ranged from 0.76 to 1.28 compared to
the 15/H+15 and 30/M interventions,
respectively. The difference between
15/H+15 and 30/M groups did not
depend on fall LNF and was not sig-
nificant.
Letter Dictation Fluency and
Spelling. For the letter dictation flu-
ency measure, analyses using the
pretest as covariate indicated no differ-
ences in post-on-pre regression across
groups and a significant pooled post-
on-pre regression, t(89) = 4.17, p < .001.
The 30/H group did better than the
15/H+15 group, t(89) = 2.95, p = .004,
ES = .74, and better than the 30/M
group, t(89) = 2.70, p = .008, ES = .73.
The 15/H+15 vs. 30/M contrast was
not significant.
For the modified Tangel and Blach-
man (1992, 1995) spelling measure,
ANCOVA results indicated that the
15/H+15 group had a significantly
steeper post-on-pre regression than the
other two groups, which did not sig-
nificantly differ on post-on-pre regres-
sions. The respecified model indicated
that the 30/H group performed signif-
icantly higher than the 30/M group,
t(90) = 3.36, p = .001, ES = .86. Students
who received the 15/H+15 interven-
tion compared to the 30/H interven-
tion and who scored below the 50th
percentile (i.e., < 12 correctly spelled
letters in words in 1 min) on the
spelling pretest performed significantly
lower at posttest. The same group dif-
ferences for scores of 12 or more on the
pretest were not significant. Students
who received the 15/H+15 inter-
vention compared to the 30/M inter-
vention and who scored in the 75th
percentile or higher performed signifi-
cantly higher at the posttest. In con-
trast, for students who scored at the
eighth percentile or lower, the 30/M
group had higher posttest scores than
the 15/H+15 group. Group differences
involving the 15/H+15 group are thus
complicated and should be interpreted
with caution. Residual diagnostics in-
dicate that three students with very
low pre- and posttest scores in the
VOLUME 40, NUMBER 4, JULY/AUGUST 2007
15/H+15 group may have unduly in-
fluenced the post-on-pre regression,
making it unusually steep and less
replicable than the test statistics and
p values would indicate.
Receptive Vocabulary. Post-on-
pre regressions were similar across
groups, and the pooled post-on-pre re-
gression was highly significant, t(90) =
7.41, p < .001. ANCOVAs conducted on
the three contrasts indicated no statis-
tically significant adjusted mean dif-
ferences among groups.
Treatment Integrity Analysis
Integrity data consisted of the average
percentage of each interventionist’s
compliance with the directions for de-
livering the components of their re-
spective interventions, as determined
by the research staff’s direct observa-
tion. Results of total score analyses in-
dicated a relatively high level of treat-
ment integrity for each instructional
intervention (30/H = 87.66%; 15/H+15 =
92.45%; 30/M = 90.00%), with no sta-
tistically significant differences across
groups, χ2(2, N = 178) = 0.78, p = .68. An
issue in intervention research is the in-
fluence of the interventionist on out-
comes. We examined the proportion of
total variance due to interventionist
and found this factor to be nonsignifi-
cant for all outcomes.
Discussion and
Instructional Implications
Two experimental interventions and
one commercial program module were
varied systematically to examine their
relative effects on the early phonemic
awareness, phonemic decoding, word
reading, spelling, and letter dictation
performance of kindergarten children
who performed in the bottom quartile
of their cohort. The following discus-
sion of findings is organized by the in-
structional contrasts of time, design
specificity, and the combination of time
and design specificity to examine in-
tervention efficacy and efficiency.
341
Instructional Time
The critical window of opportunity in
kindergarten to address early reading
risks, coupled with the fixed amount of
instructional time in a kindergarten
school day, calls for interventions that
efficiently accelerate learning rates for
students to attain reading proficiency
on time. “On time” in this study refers
to the end of kindergarten, when the
foundational skills of advanced pho-
nological awareness (i.e., segmentation)
and beginning word reading have
been found to be predictive of later
academic success (National Research
Council, 1998). Prior kindergarten in-
tervention studies have highlighted
the importance of instructional time,
and the results of these studies seem to
suggest that bands of time ranging
from 15 to 30 min may produce the
most robust effects (Cavanaugh et al.,
2004). Nonetheless, no previous kin-
dergarten study has experimentally
manipulated instructional time and
unpacked the relative benefits of time
for specific reading outcomes (e.g.,
phonemic awareness, word identifica-
tion) for specific students.
To examine instructional time, we
compared 15 min of highly specified
instruction with 30 min of highly spec-
ified instruction. Our results support
the following conditional implications:
15 min of highly specified supplemen-
tal, small-group instruction that em-
phasized phonemic awareness and
phonemic decoding was
• Comparable to 30 min of highly
specified instruction in increasing
at-risk kindergarten students’
phonemic awareness proficiency
in initial sound isolation and
phonemic segmentation.
• Significantly less effective than 30
min of highly specified instruction
in increasing levels of (a) automatic
letter retrieval and production for
all students in the intervention
group; and (b) phonemic decoding,
word reading, and spelling profi-
ciency for students who entered
kindergarten most at risk based on
342
early alphabetic measures (i.e.,
letter naming fluency, develop-
mental spelling).
On initial sound isolation fluency
and untimed and timed phonemic seg-
mentation measures, the 15/H+15 and
30-min/highly specified conditions
were not statistically different. In other
words, students demonstrated similar
growth on phonemic awareness skills
with 15 min of phonemic and code-
emphasis instruction as with 30 min of
instruction with comparable emphases.
This finding should be considered in
the context of our growing under-
standing of the importance of develop-
ing fluency across early reading skills
for later reading proficiency (Torgesen,
2000). However, the results of untimed
phonemic decoding, word reading, let-
ter dictation fluency, and spelling flu-
ency analyses revealed statistically and
practically meaningful differences be-
tween the 30/H and 15/H+15 condi-
tions. On the WRMT-R Word Attack,
Word Identification, and spelling mea-
sures, analyses revealed that the effects
of intervention covaried significantly
with the child’s entry-level alphabetic
skills. For students who entered kin-
dergarten with the lowest skills (i.e.,
naming 3 or fewer letter names per
minute or spelling fewer than 13 letters
correctly in a list of words), 30 min of
highly specified intervention pro-
duced significantly greater effects than
15 min of highly specified interven-
tion. For students who entered kinder-
garten with higher alphabetic skills, 30
min of highly specified intervention
produced no more reliable differences
on word attack or word identification
measures than 15 min of highly speci-
fied instruction. In other words, for al-
phabetic skills, the 30-min intervention
was differentially more effective for
the lowest performing students. The
explanation for this pattern of findings
is intuitively transparent. The second
15 min of instruction served to re-
inforce and extend students’ knowl-
edge of and fluency with phoneme–
grapheme correspondences both in
reading and spelling, and this addi-
JOURNAL OF LEARNING DISABILITIES
tional instruction and practice trans-
lated into significant and meaningful
differences in student performance, es-
pecially for the students most at risk.
Relative to this sample, children most
at risk, or with entry-level LNF scores
of 3 or less, represented 71% of the
sample. Therefore, this finding per-
tains to the majority of students.
Instructional Design Specificity
The second focus of this study exam-
ined the effect of design specificity, a
variable that encompasses the explicit-
ness of instruction, prioritization of
tasks, and selection and schedule of in-
formation and examples. Prior panel
reports and research syntheses (Foor-
man & Torgesen, 2001; National Read-
ing Panel, 2000) have called for instruc-
tion that is explicit, systematic, and
scaffolded. Yet few kindergarten stud-
ies have compared the benefits of in-
terventions that vary systematically in
their level of instructional design
specificity. To examine the effect of
instructional design specificity, we
compared 30 min of highly specified
instruction with 30 min of moder-
ately specified instruction. Conditional
instructional implications are summar-
ized as follows: 30 min of highly spec-
ified design of supplemental, small-
group instruction that emphasized
phonemic awareness and phonemic
decoding was
• Comparable to 30 min of moder-
ately specified instruction in
increasing at-risk kindergarten
students’ phonemic awareness pro-
ficiency in initial sound isolation
and phonemic segmentation.
• Significantly more effective than 30
min of moderately specified design
of instruction in increasing levels of
fluent phonemic decoding, spelling
fluency, and automatic retrieval and
production of handwritten letters
for all at-risk students.
• Significantly more effective than 30
min of a moderately specified de-
sign of instruction in increasing lev-
els of word attack and word identi-
fication for students who entered
kindergarten most at risk based on
early alphabetic measures (i.e.,
letter naming fluency).
With the exception of measures of
phonemic awareness, these findings
support the benefits of a highly speci-
fied versus a moderately specified de-
sign of instruction for children who
have been identified as most at risk in
the fall of kindergarten. Specifically, on
the NWF DIBELS measure and the let-
ter dictation measure, reliable differ-
ences were found favoring a highly
specified design of instruction over a
moderately specified design of instruc-
tion for all students. Similar to the
time contrast, a significant interaction
emerged between children’s fall alpha-
betic skills and end-of-kindergarten
performance on WRMT-R Word Attack
and Word Identification, with a highly
specified design of instruction being
differentially more effective for stu-
dents entering kindergarten with the
lowest alphabetic skills (i.e., naming 3
or fewer letter names per minute or
spelling fewer than 13 letters correctly
in a list of words). Again, this finding
applies to approximately 70% of stu-
dents in the study.
The results of the design spe-
cificity contrast (30/H vs. 30/M) un-
derscore the potential importance of
carefully designed instruction for kin-
dergarten children with the lowest
entry-level skills. Moreover, the find-
ings indicated that not all explicit
instruction is equally effective. As
Foorman et al. (1998) hypothesized, in-
struction that varies in degree of ex-
plicitness differentially affects student
learning. Specifically, the current find-
ings suggest that highly specified and
strategically designed instruction can
produce meaningful differences in the
alphabetic and orthographic skills of
children who perform in the bottom
25% of their kindergarten cohort. We
argue that design specificity should be
construed along a continuum, and—
for children at the greatest risk—the
findings suggest that the higher the de-
sign specificity, the greater the effect.

Naturally, further research is needed
to examine the replicability of these
findings.
Instructional Time and
Design Specificity
The final contrast investigated the
combined effect of time and design
specificity. Our objective in this con-
trast was to examine whether a highly
specified design of instruction imple-
mented for half the instructional time
could equal or exceed the effects of 30
min of a moderately specified design
of instruction. Of particular interest
was whether the instructional efficien-
cies gained through highly specified
instruction could, in effect, “buy time”
for other reading skills and strategies,
such as vocabulary and comprehen-
sion. Trends across phonological, al-
phabetic, and orthographic findings
indicated only two significant end-of-
year differences between the 15/H+15
and 30/M conditions, and both were
for the same outcome—spelling.
First, students with high entry-
level scores on spelling had better end-
of-year scores when they received the
15/H+15 intervention rather than the
30/M intervention. Second, students
with the lowest entry-level scores on
spelling had better end-of-year scores
when they received the 30/M inter-
vention rather than the 15/H+15 inter-
vention. However, even these findings
may be ambiguous due to the effects of
outliers. Given that posttest perfor-
mance was adjusted using pretest mea-
sures, we have confidence that the
absence of group differences on the
majority of measures was not attribut-
able to differential entry-level perfor-
mance. This pattern of findings points
to the potential of instructional design
specificity in maximizing instructional
time.
Contributions and Limitations
In this study, our primary interest was
to unpack the dimensions and archi-
VOLUME 40, NUMBER 4, JULY/AUGUST 2007
tecture of two instructional variables—
instructional time and instructional
design specificity. We experimentally
manipulated these variables systemat-
ically across three interventions and
examined the relative effects of each on
the early phonemic, reading, and spell-
ing performance of kindergarten stu-
dents at risk for RD. In summary,
our findings are consistent with prior
kindergarten intervention research
documenting the substantial benefits
of kindergarten intervention that tar-
gets alphabetic skills for children who
are identified as at risk for later RD
(O’Connor, 2000; Oudeans, 2003; Schnei-
der et al., 2000). Moreover, our findings
serve to extend current knowledge
about the importance of instructional
time and design of instruction speci-
ficity, especially for students who
begin kindergarten most at risk. That
said, further research is needed to max-
imally control for curriculum variables
that may influence outcomes. Design
specificity encompasses many dimen-
sions (e.g., scope and sequence, scaf-
folding, example selection), and in this
study, we used the code component of
a commercial curriculum to represent
the moderately specified condition.
For external validity purposes, the
choice of an existing program makes
sense. To maximize internal validity, a
tighter comparison would hold all di-
mensions of the curriculum constant
except design features.
A plausible limitation of the study
was the absence of a no-treatment con-
trol group. Our decision to treat all stu-
dents was purposeful, as the trends of
prior research provide strong evidence
of the benefits of early intervention
over typical practice (e.g., Cavanaugh
et al., 2004; Torgesen et al., 1999). To
some degree, the 30/M intervention
served as a comparison group that em-
ployed a moderately specified design
for phonemic and alphabetic instruc-
tion derived from the core reading pro-
gram delivered in small groups. Yet fu-
ture researchers may want to compare
the efficacy of time and design speci-
ficity under practice-as-usual condi-
tions. Future researchers may also
343
want to investigate the relationship
between general classroom reading
practices and students’ response to
supplemental kindergarten reading in-
terventions. The majority of kinder-
garten classrooms in this study imple-
mented either Open Court or Reading
Mastery as the core reading program.
The instructional approach of both
these programs was well aligned with
the supplemental interventions. Treat-
ment effects may be different in
schools where classroom reading prac-
tices are less aligned with supplemen-
tal intervention provided to students at
risk for RD.
The findings of this study suggest
that the effects of instructional time ap-
pear to matter most for alphabetic and
orthographic skills and for students
who are most at risk. Fifteen minutes
of a highly specified phonological/
alphabetic design of instruction pro-
duced comparable results to 30 min of
a highly specified design of instruction
on timed and untimed isolation and
segmentation tasks. In comparison,
most outcomes of early reading and
spelling measures that required stu-
dents to translate letters into sounds,
read high-frequency words, or trans-
late speech into print indicated a dif-
ferential response to instructional time
based on initial skill status. Even
though all participants were identified
as at risk, students who began kinder-
garten with the lowest levels of alpha-
betic skills benefited more from 30 min
of intervention than students who en-
tered with higher-level skills. A similar
pattern of findings emerged through
the comparison of a design of instruc-
tion that was moderately versus highly
specified. Overall main effects were
found favoring a highly specified de-
sign instruction on the majority of
alphabetic and orthographic measures
and statistically significant interac-
tions, signifying the importance of
carefully designed instruction for stu-
dents who enter with the lowest letter
naming fluency scores. For those out-
comes where we did not find signifi-
cant interactions, the lack of signifi-
cance may have been due to lower
344
reliability of the outcome measures.
Our work that is in preparation sug-
gests that when corrections are made
using latent variable models for differ-
ential reliability across outcomes, the
interaction with initial skill generalizes
to all alphabetic outcome measures.
In sum, we conclude that both in-
structional time and the instructional
design specificity contribute to signifi-
cant and meaningful differences in
kindergarten performance and matter
most on tasks involving alphabetic
and orthographic knowledge. For the
lowest performing students, deliber-
ate use of both time and design speci-
ficity was determined to be even more
critical for accelerating learning. For
phonemic awareness measures (less
advanced or non–fluency based), 15
min of highly specified instruction was
sufficient. However, to develop the
skills most predictive of later reading
proficiency, students who were the fur-
thest behind responded best to 30 min
of highly specified design instruction.
We must note a possible limita-
tion when interpreting study findings.
Early identification of children inher-
ently builds in the risk of false posi-
tives (Vaughn & Fuchs, 2003); that is,
identifying children as at risk who do
not actually require preventive instruc-
tion. In this study, we identified chil-
dren in early fall using measures of
letter naming and phonological aware-
ness fluency (National Research Coun-
cil, 1998; Torgesen et al., 1999). Our de-
cision to identify and intervene early is
accompanied by the risk that we may
have provided intervention to children
for whom it was not necessary. None-
theless, early identification and inter-
vention deserve further investigation
to determine more precise profiles of
children who require prevention-based
instruction.
In addition to providing prelimi-
nary guidance on the parameters of in-
struction, important questions remain.
For example, in a 30-min intervention,
what portion of time should be dedi-
cated to phonemic, alphabetic, and
orthographic emphasis, respectively?
JOURNAL OF LEARNING DISABILITIES
Can we compress 30-min interventions
into high-intensity 15-min lessons by
conducting further research on the
components that are the most active in-
gredients in the lesson and that require
a highly specified design of instruc-
tion?
In conclusion, this study provides
important findings on how to acceler-
ate learning effects and rates in young
children. Given a finite amount of time
and resources, emerging evidence sug-
gests how specificity in the design of
instruction and the differential use of
instructional time affect early reading
outcomes. In an era of heightened
reading expectations and societal de-
mands of all children being able to read
by Grade 3 (No Child Left Behind; U.S.
Department of Education, 2002), the
positive effects of instructional preci-
sion provide preliminary evidence on
how to enhance the effectiveness and
efficiency of prevention efforts (Na-
tional Reading Panel, 2000). Primary
prevention, by design, focuses on the
implementation of interventions that
reduce risk and obviate the need for
further intervention. Findings suggest
that optimal early reading growth and
prevention of RD requires more than
starting early; it requires a diligent
commitment to designing instruction
and using instructional time strategi-
cally to accelerate learning during a de-
fined period of time to close the pho-
nemic, alphabetic, and orthographic
differences that children bring to the
kindergarten door.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Deborah C. Simmons, PhD, is a professor of
special education in the Department of Educa-
tional Psychology at Texas A&M University.
Her research interests include early interven-
tion, instructional design, and reading disabili-
ties. Edward J. Kame’enui, PhD, is professor
of special education at the College of Education
at the University of Oregon. His research fo-
cuses on early literacy, schoolwide reading im-
provement, the design of high-quality educa-
tional tools, and design of instruction. Beth
Harn, PhD, is a visiting professor and research
associate in the Department of Special Educa-
tion at the University of Oregon. Her research
interests include early reading instructional de-
sign and intervention, linking assessment to in-
tervention, and system-level approaches to aca-
demic difficulties. Michael D. Coyne, PhD, is
an assistant professor of special education in the
Department of Educational Psychology at the
Neag School of Education, University of Con-
necticut. His current research focuses on early
reading and vocabulary interventions for young
students at risk for reading disabilities. Mike
Stoolmiller, PhD, is a research associate at the
University of Oregon, College of Education. His
research interests include statistics and method-
ology, the development of reading proficiency,
and problem behavior. Lana Edwards San-
toro, PhD, is a research associate with the Pa-
cific Institutes for Research. Her research inter-
ests include learning disabilities and reading
instruction in the areas of spelling, writing,
comprehension, and vocabulary. Sylvia B.
Smith, PhD, of Pacific Institutes for Research
focuses her research on early literacy materials
development and review, early literacy and lan-
guage development, measures development, and
schoolwide reading model implementation.
Carrie Thomas Beck, PhD, codirects the Ore-
gon Reading First Center at the University of
Oregon. Her work focuses on improving the
reading outcomes for K–3 students in 50 ele-
mentary schools throughout the state of Oregon.
Noah K. Kaufman, PhD, is an independently
practicing licensed psychologist in Las Cruces,
NM, who specializes in neuropsychological and
forensic assessment, including the assessment of
learning disabilities. Address: Deborah C. Sim-
mons, Texas A&M University, MS 4225, Col-
lege Station, TX 77843-4225. e-mail: dsimmons@
tamu.edu.
AUTHORS’ NOTE
1. Research funding was provided in part by
the United States Department of Education,
Office of Special Education Programs,
Grant H324C980156. The opinions ex-
pressed in this article do not necessarily re-
flect the position of the U.S. Department of
Education.
2. We express sincere thanks to the adminin-
strators, teachers, and students of the Bethel
and Springfield school districts for their par-
ticipation in this research.
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APPENDIX

Activity 2 - Integrated Phonologic/Alphabetic

Practice Session

1. Take out teacher 3 square strip and b, r, s, p, l letter squares.

2. Introduce the activity: “Today we are going to practice for Tic-Tac-Toe. We are going to say the sounds in some
words slowly and then we are going to choose the letters that go with the first and last sound.”

3. Segment the word: “The first word is rib. Listen, I will say the sounds in rib slowly. /rrriiib/. Say the sounds in rib
slowly with me. /rrriiib/. Now you say the sounds in rib slowly.” (First have group say the sounds together. Then have
individual students say the sounds.)

4. Isolate the first sound: “I will say the sounds in rib slowly and point to a square as I say each sound. /rrriiib/. (Point to
the first square). What is the first sound in rib? That’s right /rrrrr/ is the first sound in rib.

5. Identify the letter that goes with the first sound: (Lay out 2 letter squares—r and another letter) “You’re going to choose
the letter that says /rrrrr/ like the /rrrrr/ in rib. (Point to the first square). Everyone think they know? (Call on an individ-
ual student to choose the letter square and place it in the first square.) Reinforce the group on the letter name and sound.
“Everyone, what’s the name of the letter? And what sound does it make?”

6. Isolate the last sound: “Watch again as I say the sounds in rib slowly and point to a square as I say each sound.
/rrriiib/. /b/ is the last sound in rib. (Point to the last square). What is the last sound in rib?”

7. Identify the letter that goes with the last sound: (Lay out 2 letter squares—b and another letter) “You’re going to choose
the letter that says /b/ like the /b/ in rib. (Point to the last square). Everyone think they know? (Call on an individual
student to choose the letter square and place it in the last square.) Reinforce the group on the letter name and sound.
“Everyone, what’s the name of the letter? And what sound does it make?”

8. Practice on 2 to 4 more words as time allows. [Word Bank: beep, seal, bear, pail ]

⊗ If children make an error, model the answer, have children repeat

the answer, and return to the sound/letter a second time.