Reading Intervention:
Incremental Rehearsal
STEVEN MALM, B.S.
The Case
 Subject: Alan – 5 year old Caucasian male
 Grade: Kindergarten
 Reason for Referral: Alan cannot identify or name
letters of the alphabet.
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Baseline assessment suggests that Alan has mastery of…


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5 upper-case letters (A, B, C, D, E)
3 lower-case letters (A, C, E)
Mastery defined as ability to correctly name letter with 80%
accuracy (4 out of 5).
Goal of Intervention
 At the end of the intervention, Alan will be able to
name all 26 upper-case and all 26 lower-case letters
 Intervention duration: 3 weeks
 Intervention frequency: 5 days/week, 15 minutes
 Ambitious goal: 10 upper- and lower-case letters
mastered/week (20 per week)
 Realistic goal: 8 upper- and lower-case letters
mastered/week (16 per week)
Intervention Plan
 Intervention Name: Incremental Rehearsal
(Burns, 2005)
 Overview: Student is presented with flashcards
containing some unknown letters with a group of
mastered letters. Presenting mastered letters
alongside unknown letters can increase retention.
 Materials needed:
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Letter flashcards (all 52 upper- and lower-case letters)
Sheet of paper
Pencil
The Process
 Start point: 8 mastered vs. 1 unknown
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A, B, C, D, E
a, b, c, e
 First 10 minutes: Direct Instruction
 Show Alan the first unknown card and have him attempt to
identify the letter, providing feedback as necessary
 Show Alan the first mastered care and have him identify the
letter
 Show Alan original unknown card and have him attempt to
identify the letter
The Process (Cont.)

Follow this sequence:
Unknown, mastered
 Unknown, mastered, mastered
 Unknown, mastered, mastered, mastered
 Unknown, mastered, mastered, mastered, mastered
 Etc. until child names the Unknown correctly twice in a row.

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Add that letter to the mastered pile and select a new letter
from the unknown pile
Start sequence with new unknown letter
The Process (Cont.)
 Last 5 minutes: Mastery Assessment
 Shuffle all cards used during direct instruction
 Have Alan name each letter as they are presented
 Record letters read correctly/incorrectly on sheet of paper
 Repeat for a total of 5x

Unknowns presented during direct instruction that are identified
correctly 4 out of the 5 trials are considered mastered.
 Letters considered incorrect if it takes >2 seconds to name
 Letters not named at 80% accuracy are returned to the
unknown pile for the next day
 Record number of letters read correctly
 Make sure you also keep track of which letters are read
Baseline Procedures
 Baseline was established using same mastery
assessment outlined in previous slide.

Assessed upper- and lower-case separately.
Upper case letters presented 5 times per day for 3 days
 Lower case letters presented 5 times per day for 3 days

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The number of letters named with 80% accuracy were
recorded

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Upper- and lower-case letters charted separately.
Also recorded letters that were named correctly to establish
mastered letter list
Baseline level determined by the mean of the three points
Progress Monitoring Procedures
 Progress monitoring will be continuous
 Each day, Alan will complete the Mastery Assessment at the
latter half of the intervention.
 The interventionist is to record all letters named with 80%
accuracy
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Record this number on the progress-monitoring chart.
There will be a maximum of 15 data points for progress
monitoring (5 days/per week for 3 weeks).
 Progress monitoring data will be evaluated at the end
of the first week (5 points) to determine if the
intervention is effective.
Support for Intervention
 Burns (2005)

Incremental Rehearsal is useful for many different skills (letter
recognition, simple math facts, vocabulary words, etc.)
 Bunn, Burns, Hoffman, Newman (2005)
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Case study using Incremental Rehearsal to teach letter recognition to
4-year old student.
Intervention went for 15 minutes every day for 3 weeks.
Child successfully could name every letter of the alphabet within 2
seconds of visual presentation
Results suggests that Incremental Rehearsal is a fast and easy-to-use
intervention for letter naming
 Burns & Sterling-Turner (2010)

Incremental Rehearsal is highly effective when it comes to
information retention
References
 Bunn, R., Burns, M.K., Hoffman, H.H., & Newman, C.L.
(2005). Using incremental rehearsal to teach letter
identification to a preschool-age child. Journal of
Evidence-Based Practices for Schools, 6(2), 124-133.
 Burns, M.K. (2005). Using incremental rehearsal to
increase fluency of single-digit multiplication facts with
children identified as learning disabled in mathematics
computation. Education and Treatment of Children, 28,
237-249.
 Burns, M.K. & Sterling-Turner, H.E. (2010). Comparison
of efficiency measures for academic interventions based
on acquisition and maintenance. Psychology in the
Schools, 47(2), 126-134. DOI: 10.1002/pits.20458