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IN KINDERGARTEN CLASSROOM
Viterbo University
Marisa Bauer
Research Proposal
The Effects Of Visual Phonics Instruction On Letter-Sound Relations In Kindergarten Classroom
Introduction
As I have found while teaching kindergarten for the past six years, our youngest
elementary students are coming into kindergarten with a wide variety of backgrounds and skills.
Some students may have attended pre-school, others may have not. Some students may have
practiced writing their name prior to school, others may have not. As one can tell, not all
students entering kindergarten have the same academic experiences. Often times, what other
students may find easy, such as learning and remembering letter sounds, can be difficult for
young children, especially for those who are just beginning kindergarten with little or no pre -
school experience. Skibbe, Hindman, Connor, Housey, and Morrison (2013) found that students
who attended prekindergarten before starting kindergarten in the fall had higher early reading
and phonological awareness scores than students who had not attended prekindergarten.
This past school year held true to that, as I had many students who struggled with
identifying letters and producing letter sounds throughout the year. After reviewing numerous
letter sound assessments, I became very anxious and concerned because in order for me to teach
reading and writing, I needed the foundational piece of the alphabetic principle in place well
before the end of kindergarten. I knew I needed to have a plan to help my students become
proficient and with mastery meet the Common Core State Standard to produce the primary sound
for each consonant, including the long and short sounds for the five major vowels.
I have found that many of my students learn and retain much more if they are able to see
it, hear it, and move to it in a multisensory type way. I thought if I am able to provide students
with a visual and kinesthetic hand cue, also known as visual phonics, for learning the alphabet
sounds, this may help students to recall and master letter sounds fluently. I continued to keep
thinking then of the next skill that would build upon this letter sound knowledge, such as
beginning to write strings of letters to form words, and to understand that those words carry
meaning. With the wide variety of student needs, I am always looking for additional teaching
strategies that I could use to help my students learn and master their letter sounds accurately and
fluently.
I have observed that many of my kindergarten students throughout the school year have
had a difficult time learning and retaining letter identification and letter sounds, which c ould put
them behind in their learning. It is essential for students to be able to accurately identify and
produce letter sounds. Students rely on letter-sound relations to help them read unfamiliar words
in texts and begin the emergent writing process. Capbell, Tortorelli, and Gerde (2013) stated
Each childs writing provides teachers with a window into what that child knows about print
and sound (p. 652). When I think about my struggling learners and the difficulties they
encounter with writing, it truly sheds even more light on the problem. It becomes a rewarding
accomplishment for students when they are able to bridge that gap between knowing letter
sounds in isolation to writing words with accurate sounds. I found that I need to investigate a
better way of teaching students their letter sounds so they are able to be successful in their
learning.
The purpose of this action research study will be to examine the effectiveness of
implementing visual phonics on student knowledge of letter- sound relation for my kindergarten
students. Because I was concerned that my students were not able to fluently produce the
primary sound for each consonant, including the major vowels, I wanted to study the
Based on the problem that I have identified, I designed an overarching question that will
guide my action research study: What are the effects of visual phonics instruction on the
question for the study, I also identified sub-questions that included: (a) how does using visual
phonics instruction transfer to students writing? and (b) what are the parent perspectives of
The independent variable was the implementation of using visual phonics symbols in the
classroom. The dependent variable was the letter-sound fluency of my kindergarten students.
Review of Literature
Introduction
Learning to read is easily developed by many children during their early years. This
complex process occurs when optimal learning conditions are present. These conditions include
strong language skills. However, it can become an overwhelming process for some young
children, especially those who are identified with special needs such as deaf or hard-of-hearing
(DHH) students (Narr & Cawthon, 2011). Students enter school with various levels of pre-
reading skills; therefore, it is often challenging for teachers as they struggle to meet the needs of
their diverse learners (Cihon, Gardner, Morrison, & Paul, 2008). For beginning readers, students
must understand the alphabetic principle in which sounds are represented of letters from the
alphabet and that letters are used to represent these sounds. Letter sound knowledge is the ability
to produce the sound(s) associated with a particular letter. It is the nearest relationship used in
order to decode, or sound out words (Huang, Tortorelli, & Invernizzi, 2014).
Letter-Sound Knowledge
Narr and Cawthon (2011) found through a national survey of 200 teacher participants that
using visual phonics as a reading instructional tool increased phonemic awareness, decoding
skills, vocabulary, and reading comprehension for students with or without special needs.
Visual phonics instruction has been used with a wide variety of diverse students. In
2008, Cihon, Gardner, Morrison, and Paul found that the use of See the Sound/Visual Phonics
(STS/VP) intervention in the general education kindergarten classroom could be successful for
hearing students who are at-risk for reading difficulties and are falling behind. The results from
this study indicate that visual phonics is an appropriate intervention to use with children who are
falling behind with the general education curriculum. At the time of this study it was sugges ted
that STS/VP should be further investigated and that it should not replace existing reading
curriculums.
The research reviewed support the importance of developing strong phonemic awareness
skills at an early age through the use of STS/VP to acquire reading skills. Valbuena (2014)
studied the visual phonics program called Tucker Signing strategies to develop phonemic
awareness skills for twenty-five Spanish speaking first grade students to learn English in Bogota,
Colombia. Tucker Signing strategies is very similar to STS/VP in which students are taught
hand signs for all letter sounds. After viewing the pre-diagnostic and post-diagnostic test results,
the findings indicated that the use of Tucker Signing strategies helped students to develop
phonemic awareness skills through the relationship between letters and sounds.
Writing Development
accomplishment as well. Writing requires knowledge of the alphabetic principle. Writing and
spelling of words involves students to use this phonological knowledge to match each sound to
its corresponding letter or letters (Ritchey, 2008). Ritchey (2008) examined the development of
beginning writing skills in sixty kindergarten students. The relationship between writing and
reading was also studied. The results from this study found that early reading skills such as
Methods
Participants
The participants of this study will be kindergarten students from my class for the 2016-
2017 academic school year. Students will be part of a convenience sample, which will include
eighteen students, eight females and ten males between the ages of five and six years old.
Thirty-six parents/guardians will also participate in the study by completing pre- and post -
intervention surveys regarding their perspectives of the use of visual phonics on their childs
letter-sound knowledge.
Procedure
September through December, 2016. Prior to the intervention, I will complete a letter -sound
assessment one-on-one with each student. I will show the student an uppercase letter card and
ask them to identify the letter name. If a student hesitates for three seconds, I will provide the
letter and continue with the next. I will record the data on the data collection sheet as +
answered correctly answered incorrectly. I will then show the student a lowercase letter card
and ask them to identify the letter name. If a student hesitates for three seconds, I will provide
the letter and continue with the next. I will record the data. The final piece of the pre -
assessment is letter sounds. I will show the student a lowercase letter card and ask them to
identify the letter sound. If a student hesitates for three seconds, I will provide the letter sound
and continue with the next. I will record the data. This pre-assessment will provide a baseline
through email and Google Forms. The results from this survey will help me to identify the
parents perspectives of their childs letter-sound knowledge. I will also complete a phonetic
writing assessment oneon-one with each student. Students will listen as I read five consonant-
vowel-consonant (CVC) words individually. After dictating the word, students will write the
word on paper. I will record each letter sound correctly written within each word. This pre -
During the study, I will use a portion of the visual phonics program Jolly Phonics.
Students will be introduced to the capital and lowercase letter, sound, and visual hand sign for
each days alphabet letter. During our whole-group reading instruction, I will hold a letter card
with a letter on it and say this is letter name and it makes this sound. I will have students watch
my mouth as I exaggerate the letter sound. Students will repeat the sound with me. For each
letter, there is also a short story and song that goes along with the sound and hand sign. As I
retell the story, I will then teach students the hand sign for the letter while saying the sound.
Students will repeat the hand sign and sound with me. As students are producing the sound and
hand sign, I will be observing for student participation. I will complete a letter-sound assessment
I will design this mixed-methods study to determine the effects of visual phonics
using multiple research tools to determine the effect of visual phonics on student letter - sound
identification. The quantitative and qualitative tools that will be used to collect data are: (a)
letter- sound assessment (b) phonetic writing assessment (c) parent survey responses (d)
classroom observations, (e) student writing samples and (f) FAST letter sound fluency
assessment during the course of this study. Students will be shown a letter card and asked to
correctly identify the name of the letter and the letter sound. Kindergarten students will be
expected to name twenty- one out of twenty- six capital letters, twenty- one out of twenty- six
lowercase letters, and twenty- one out of twenty- six letter sounds by the end of the academic
school year to meet the district expectation of 80%. I will also use the district FAST letter s ound
fluency assessment which will be given at the beginning and middle of the academic school year
during the course of this study. The phonetic writing assessment will be given as a pre -and post-
assessment with 15 points possible. Students will listen as five CVC words are read individually
for students to write. Kindergarten students will be expected to write 12 out of 15 correct letter
sounds in words by the end of the academic school year to meet the district expectation of 80%.
Student writing samples will be collected monthly during the study. As students are learning the
letter sound with hand sign, I will be observing for student participation. I will also observe
workshop. Some of these observations may come from a video recording using an iPad.
I will administer to parents pre- and post- intervention Likert-type surveys through e-
mail and Google Forms. The results from this survey will help me to identify the parents
perspectives of their childs letter-sound knowledge. These research tools will help me to
Data Analysis
Instruction and data collection will take place from September through December, 2016.
All quantitative data collected, such as assessments and parent surveys, will be analyzed through
descriptive statistics that will include the mean, the median, and the mode. All qualitative data,
such as observations and writing samples, will be analyzed to determine patterns, trends,
categories, and commonalities. All data results will be presented by graphics or narrative form
to analyze and compare growth from the beginning of the year baseline to midyear post
intervention of students letter sound recognition and writing. By collecting qualitative and
quantitative data I will be able to triangulate data to look for commonalities and themes.
References
Cabell, S. Q., Tortorelli, L. S., & Gerde, H. K. (2013). How do I write...? Scaffolding
Cihon, T. M., Gardner III, R., Morrison, D., & Paul, P. V. (2008). Using visual phonics as a
for reading failure. Journal of Early & Intensive Behavior Intervention, 5(3), 138-155.
Huang, F. L., Tortorelli, L. S., & Invernizzi, M. A. (2014). An investigation of factors associated
Narr, R. F., & Cawthon, S. W. (2011). The wh questions of visual phonics: What, who, where,
when, and why. Journal of Deaf Studies & Deaf Education, 16(1), 66-78.
doi:10.1093/deafed/enq038
Ritchey, K. D. (2008). The building blocks of writing: Learning to write letters and spell words.
Skibbe, L. E., Hindman, A. H., Connor, C. M., Housey, M., & Morrison, F. J. (2013). Relative
doi:10.1080/10409289.2012.712888
awareness in children. GIST Education and Learning Research Journal, (8), 66-82.