The Ladders to Literacy preschool and kindergarten curricula are the result of a 5-year model demonstration project funded by the U.S. Department of Education. A variety of data were gathered during a 4-year field test showing that children in classrooms using Ladders to Literacy activities made significant gains on measures of early language and literacy development. In addition, an experimental study on the kindergarten version showed that children participating in the Ladders to Literacy activities made significant short- and long-term gains over controls (O'Connor, Notari-Syverson & Vadasy, 1996; 1998).

The activities presented in Ladders to Literacy have been tested under research and practical conditions since 1992. Specifically examined were the following:

• the feasibility of teaching children with high incidence disabilities to rhyme, blend, and segment the sounds in words prior to formal reading instruction (O'Connor, Slocum, & Leicester, 1993)
  
  
• whether ordering instructional tasks differently in Head Start classrooms (e.g., teaching blending prior to segmenting or vice versa) resulted in more efficient learning for the children (Slocum, O'Connor, & Jenkins, 1993)
  
  
• the relative advantage of teaching minimal sets of tasks (e.g., blending and segmenting) vs. teaching a more global array of phonological manipulations to small groups of kindergartners in general education classes (O'Connor, Jenkins, & Slocum, 1995)
  
  
• the conditions for strong implementation of professional development of teachers of inclusive kindergarten classes to use activities designed to improve literacy development of their children during large- and small-group instruction—the activities in Ladders to Literacy (O'Connor, Fulmer, Harty, & Bell, in press; O'Connor, Notari-Syverson, & Vadasy, 1996, 1998; O'Connor, 1999).

More than 100 teachers and 1,500 children participated in field testing and experimental trials to explore the feasibility of activity implementation and the effects of these activities on the phonemic awareness, print awareness, and reading ability of the children.

Currently, a 3-year experimental evaluation study is being conducted on the efficacy of Ladders to Literacy: A Preschool Activity Book with children attending Head Start by the Institute on Disability, University of New Hampshire. The study is one of eight Preschool Curriculum Evaluation Research studies funded by the U.S. Department of Education.

Annotated Research Bibliography

Blachman, B.A., Ball, E. W., Black, R. S., & Tangel, D. M. (1994). Kindergarten teachers develop phoneme awareness in low-income, inner-city classrooms: Does it make a difference? Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 6, 1–18.

Recent evidence suggests that training in phoneme awareness has a positive impact on beginning reading and spelling. Eighty-four treatment children and 75 control children took part in a study designed to investigate the effectiveness of instruction in phonological awareness provided in low-income, inner-city kindergarten classrooms by kindergarten teachers and their teaching assistants. No significant pretreatment differences existed between the groups. After the 11-week intervention, the treatment children significantly outperformed the control children on measures of phoneme segmentation, letter name and letter sound knowledge, two of three reading measures, and a measure of invented spelling. This study was significant in that the activities were provided to groups of children in the regular classroom and introduced effectively by teachers and their assistants using manipulatives and language games, suggesting that kindergarten teachers can successfully incorporate these activities into the regular school day.

Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Willows, D. M., Schuster, B. V., Yaghoub-Zadeh, Z., & Shanahan, T. (2001). Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel's meta-analysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 36(3), 250–287.

The National Reading Panel, formed under a 1997 directive from Congress to assess the status of research-based knowledge regarding the effectiveness of various approaches for teaching children to read, conducted a meta-analysis on phonemic awareness instruction. Its analysis of 52 published studies supported causal inferences about the impact of phonemic awareness on learning to read. The benefits of phonemic awareness instruction were replicated multiple times across experiments and provided solid support for the claim that phonemic awareness instruction is more effective than alternate forms of instruction or no instruction in helping children acquire reading and spelling skills.

Fuchs, D. et al. (2002). Exploring the importance of reading programs for kindergartners with disabilities in mainstream classrooms. Exceptional Children 68(3), 295-311.

The study’s purpose was to explore the effectiveness and feasibility of phonological awareness (PA) training with and without a beginning decoding component for kindergartners with disabilities in mainstream classrooms. Nineteen general educators, who taught at least one student with a disability, were randomly assigned within their schools to three groups: control, PA training, or PA training with beginning decoding instruction. Teachers in the two treatment groups conducted treatments for about 20 weeks. Pre- and posttreatment data were collected on 25 children with disabilities. Statistical analyses indicated that the group of students with special needs participating in PA training with beginning decoding instruction did better than the other two groups. However, many children, including many of those in the most effective treatment, did not improve their reading skills.

Houle, G. (1997). Disability reading research benefits all young children. Early Childhood Update, Summer/Fall, www.ed.gov/offices/OERI/ECI/ newsletters/97fall/early9.html.

The Office of Special Education Programs funded several model demonstration projects that addressed the development of reading skills for children with disabilities. At the Washington Research Institute, Notari et al. (1996) have developed and field-tested an emergent literacy curriculum for preschoolers. Ladders to Literacy incorporates metaphonological activities, print-awareness activities, and oral language development. The result is a successful program of phonological and pre-literacy skill development using child-friendly activities. Studies show that teachers are more likely to use methods that enhance learning for most of the children in a classroom, not only children with disabilities. To that end, it was concluded that “curricula such as Ladders to Literacy will have the strongest likelihood of completing the research-to-implementation cycle and enhancing reading skills for all young children.”

Notari-Syverson, A., O'Connor, R., & Vadasy P. (1996). Facilitating language and literacy development in preschool children: To each according to their needs. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association, April (ERIC Document: ED 395692).

A total of 70 children—21 typically developing, 13 at risk, and 26 with disabilities—took part in a study to examine the effects of an early literacy curriculum designed for use in inclusive school settings with children functioning at diverse ability levels. The program consisted of 62 classroom activities intended to facilitate skills in three areas: print awareness, metalinguistic awareness, and oral language. The activities were implemented over a 6-month period in six preschool classrooms. Participation resulted in significant progress in early language and literacy development for children with disabilities and those environmentally at risk. Children who were at risk performed similarly to the typically developing children on two early literacy measures, despite their significant disadvantage before participating in the program. For preschool-age children, the skill measured in these two tests consisted primarily of letter knowledge, an important predictor of later reading. The findings from this study showed that, following a 6-month exposure to early literacy skills at preschool, children from environmentally at-risk backgrounds can make up for initial differences with middle class children in early concepts of literacy.

O’Connor, R. (1999). Teachers Learning Ladders to Literacy. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 14(4), 203-214.

Researchers in reading acquisition over the past several years have routinely recommended that teachers in the primary grades increase the amount of instruction in phonological awareness and the alphabetic principle; most research with this focus, however, has occurred in clinical settings. This study investigated two intensity levels of professional development to equip kindergarten teachers with the training to effectively apply the knowledge gained from research in real classrooms settings. Although children in classes that used phonological awareness activities outperformed children in control classes regardless of the type of in-service training their teachers received, the extent of teacher involvement (every 3 weeks vs. 3 times per year) and investment (collaborating to determine when children were ready for the next type of activity vs. using a dictated implementation schedule) also appeared to affect the outcome their children attained. Children whose teachers learned to implement phonological and print awareness activities performed better on phonological and literacy measures than children in control classes, with those in classes of teachers with more intensive professional development achieving the highest literacy outcomes.

O’Connor, R. E. (1995). Improving the generalization of sound/symbol knowledge: Teaching spelling to kindergarten children with disabilities. Journal of Special Education.

The purpose of this study was to test whether the application and transfer of segmentation and letter knowledge to reading could be encouraged by teaching spelling alongside code-based reading instruction. Researchers formed five matched pairs of children with developmental delays based on their progress on kindergarten reading lessons and randomly assigned one of each pair to an experimental treatment of 20 10-minute spelling lessons and one to a reading control group that practiced reading the same words. Children in the spelling treatment significantly improved their spelling and word reading performance over the control group, but did not perform significantly better on a measure of phoneme segmentation. Results suggest that the children who practiced forming letter representations of spoken words developed more complete generalizations of their current knowledge, which facilitated learning to read words.

O’Connor, R. E., Jenkins, J. R. (1999). Prediction of reading disabilities in kindergarten and first grade. Scientific Studies of Reading 3(2), 159-197. 

The goal of this study was to design a small set of phonological, letter, and memory tasks that would reliably identify children likely to develop reading disabilities (RD). Researchers tested children in kindergarten and followed them through first grade, layering the investigation by testing various cohorts from diverse geographic, community, and economic conditions. Discriminant analysis based on a small set of predictors yielded high hit rates in distinguishing children who exhibited an RD profile at the end of first grade. Measures taken early in first grade were more accurate discriminators than measures early in kindergarten. The ability to segment phonemes and rapid letter name qualified as primary discriminators of RD.

O’Connor, R. E., Jenkins, J. R., Leicester, N., & Slocum, T. A. (1993). Teaching phonological awareness to young children with learning disabilities. Exceptional Children 59(6), 532-546. 

This study examined the feasibility of teaching phonological manipulation skills to preschool children with disabilities. Forty-seven 4- to 6-year-old children enrolled in a special education preschool were randomly assigned to receive training in one of three categories of phonological tasks (rhyming, blending, or segmenting) or a control group. Results indicated that children were able to make significant progress in each experimental category, but that they demonstrated little or no generalization either within a category (e.g., from one type of blending task to another type of blending task) or between categories (e.g., from blending to segmenting). Although the children’s level of cognitive development significantly predicted some learning outcomes, it did not appear to limit the learning of phonological tasks.

O’Connor, R. E., Jenkins, J. R., Slocum, T. A. (1995). Transfer among phonological tasks in kindergarten: essential instructional content. Journal of Educational Psychology 87(2), 202-217. 

Researchers who study phonological awareness and its role in reading acquisition consistently recommend teaching phonological skills to children at risk of failing to acquire them independently. The ability to blend, segment, rhyme, and in other ways manipulate the sounds in spoken words influences a child’s grasp of the alphabetic principle—that sounds in words can be represented by letters—which in turn makes learning to read a reasonable and motivating activity. The important instructional question is the breadth of phonological instruction necessary to produce the level of phonological awareness demonstrated in kindergarten by the children who go on to become good readers. Researchers selected children with very low phonological manipulation skills and other risk factors to investigate the effects of two variations of phonological instruction—blending and segmenting or a global array of phonological tasks, both including limited sound-–symbol correspondence instruction. Sessions were conducted for the two experimental treatments in groups of 3–5 children for 15 minutes, twice weekly, for 10 weeks. Although improved phonological skills gave the treated children an advantage over control children who remained low in phonological awareness, improvement in phonological skills without commensurate improvement in letter knowledge might still leave them less prepared than the high-skilled children to learn to decode.

O'Connor, R. E., Notari-Syverson, A., & Vadasy, P. F. (1996). Ladders to literacy: The effects of teacher-led phonological awareness activities for kindergarten children with and without disabilities. Exceptional children 63(1), 117-130.

This study was designed to test the effects of activity-based phonological instruction on phonological skill development, and reading and writing outcomes, of 31 kindergarten children with and 57 without disabilities; also included were 19 children repeating kindergarten. The teachers in the treatment received 10 in-service training sessions spaced over the school year and implemented between 100 and 281 activities during the 6-month intervention. Outcomes for treated children were compared with children matched for type (general or repeating kindergartners, or children with mild disabilities) in classrooms using the same background prereading curriculum. Results suggest that intervention delivered by nonresearch personnel can be an effective way to improve the literacy outcomes of children with a broad range of ability.

O'Connor, R. E., Notari-Syverson, A., & Vadasy, P. (1998). First-grade effects of teacher-led phonological activities in kindergarten for children with mild disabilities: A follow-up study. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice 13(1), 43-52.

In an earlier study, researchers taught five kindergarten teachers in general and special education classes to conduct activities with their children designed to stimulate phonological manipulation skills such as blending and segmenting. Compared to controls, children with and without disabilities showed greater phonological gains and improved reading and writing. The purpose of this study was to test the long-term (end of first grade) effects of phonological skills treatment in kindergarten. For children without disabilities, the early effects of treatment were no longer evident. For children with learning disabilities and mild mental retardation, the treatment continued to show significant effects on standardized measures of reading and writing and on oral reading fluency and spelling. The effects were equivalent regardless of the setting (general or special education) in which the children received kindergarten instruction.

Qi, S., O'Connor, R. (2001). Comparison of phonological training procedures in kindergarten classrooms. The Journal of Educational Research 93(4), March/April, 226-233.

The authors compared the effect of two phonological training procedures—segmenting and blending, or first–sound identification and rhyming—on the acquisition of reading and spelling skills among kindergarten children. Sixty-one low-skilled kindergartners were assigned randomly to 1 or 2 strategy groups. Children received 2-–30 minutes of instruction in small groups that met twice a week for 10 weeks. Both groups improved significantly in the target skills and in reading and spelling. No significant differences were found between groups on skill acquisition, transfer to untaught skills, or generalization to reading and spelling.

Tangel, D. M., Blachman, B. A. (1992). Effect of phoneme awareness instruction on kindergarten children’s invented spelling. Journal of Reading Behavior, 24(2), 233-261.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether children trained in phoneme awareness in kindergarten would differ in invented spelling from children who did not have this training. A reliable scoring system was created to evaluate the invented spelling of the kindergarten children. The children were selected from 18 all-day kindergartens in four demographically comparable low-income, inner-city schools. Prior to the intervention, no significant pretreatment differences existed between the 77 treatment children and the 72 control children. During March, April, and May of the kindergarten year, treatment children participated in an 11-week intervention that included instruction in letter names and sounds. After the intervention, the treatment children significantly outperformed the control children in phoneme segmentation, letter name and letter sound knowledge, and reading phonetically regular words and nonwords. Of primary interest was the fact that the treatment children produced invented spellings that were rated developmentally superior to those of the control children.

Tangel, D. M., Blachman, B. A. (1995). Effect of phoneme awareness instruction on the invented spelling of first-grade children: A one-year follow-up. Journal of Reading Behavior 27(2), 153-185.

In a follow-up to the previous study, low-income, inner-city children who received 11 weeks of instruction in phoneme awareness produced invented spellings at the end of kindergarten that were rated developmentally superior to those of control children. The purpose of the follow-up study was to investigate the invented and standard spelling of the same children in first grade. During first grade, the treatment children participated in a reading program that continued to emphasize phoneme awareness and the alphabetic code. In measures taken in February and May of first grade (the end of the second year of the study), treatment children significantly outperformed the control children on measures of invented and standard spelling.