Small Leap Spelling p. 1
Running Head: Small Leap Spelling
This article was named one of five finalists for graduate research study of the year at the
2003 National Reading Conference. It is the shortened version of my dissertation and is currently under submission to an academic journal.
Does Small Leap Spelling Help At-Risk Kindergartners
Develop Phonemic Awareness And Beginning Reading Skills? by Richard M. Oldrieve, Ph.D.
28359 Center Ridge Road
Westlake, Ohio, 44145 phone: 440-892-1409 cell phone: 440-463-4031
FAX: 440-892-1409 e-mail: oldrieve@aol.com
Kent State University

Small Leap Spelling p. 2 by Richard M. Oldrieve, Ph.D.
28359 Center Ridge Road
Westlake, Ohio, 44145 phone: 440-892-1409 cell phone: 440-463-4031
FAX: 440-892-1409 e-mail: oldrieve@aol.com
Does Small Leap Spelling Help At-Risk Kindergartners
Develop Phonemic Awareness And Beginning Reading Skills?
Abstract
Hatcher, Hulme, and Ellis (1994) hypothesized that phonemic awareness programs would be more effective if they were explicitly linked to an early reading curriculum. This research study was designed to determine whether supplementing a commercial phonemic awareness/reading curriculum with Small Leap Spelling would help at-risk kindergarten students to demonstrate differential gains on various assessments of phonemic awareness, word identification, and spelling. Two kindergarten teachers in an inadequately performing urban school implemented the experimental intervention while two colleagues served as contrast teachers. Results indicated that the spelling intervention produced highly significant gains in identifying sight words.
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Does Small Leap Spelling Help At-Risk Kindergartners
Develop Phonemic Awareness And Beginning Reading Skills?
In the 1960s and 1970s, researchers such as Bruce (1964), Calfee, Lindamood, and Lindamood (1973), Elkonin (1963), Fox and Routh (1975, 1976), Liberman, Shankweiler,
Fischer, and Carter (1974), Rosner (1974), as well as Rosner and Simon (1971) began noting that a student’s ability to segment words into constituent phonemes predicted the progress students would make in reading. Similarly, Chall, Roswell, and Blumenthal (1963) found a student’s ability to blend sounds into words predicted his or her ability to identify words.
More recently, as the evidence has grown to demonstrate that a child’s phonemic awareness at the beginning of first grade is the best indicator of a student’s ability to read at the end of the first grade, second grade, and every grade beyond, there has been a push to focus on phonological and phonemic awareness in early reading instruction (Adams, 1990; Adams,
Foorman, Lundberg, & Beeler, 1996; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998; Wagner, 1997). In fact
Goswami (2000) postulated, “Agreement on the importance of phoneme awareness for reading development is universal. It is probably true to say that every study that has measured the

Small Leap Spelling p. 2 relationship between phonemic awareness and progress in reading has found a positive connection” (p. 255).
Nevertheless, by comparing and contrasting Portuguese peasants who either learned to read as adults or remained illiterate, Morais, Cary, Alegria, and Bertelson (1979) demonstrated that instead of a direct cause and effect relationship between first becoming aware of the sounds within words and then learning how to decode those words, there was a reciprocal relationship between phonemic awareness and learning how to read, because not only did becoming phonemically aware help a student learn how to read, but learning how to read helped a beginning reader become more phonemically aware.
Phonemic Awareness Training Must Be Related Back to Letters and Reading Words
Similar to Morais et al. (1979), Bradley and Bryant’s (1983) demonstrated that phonological awareness training in and of itself was not enough. They found that students receiving sound training alone did better than both their contrast group and semantic training group. More importantly, they found that the students who received both sound training and letter/sound training performed significantly better than those who received sound training alone.
Also, A. E. Cunningham (1990) found that compared to contrast students who were taught how to segment and blend phonemes, experimental students who were taught how to segment and blend phonemes, as well as how to connect their phonemic awareness to real reading, did better on assessments of blending and segmenting phonemes as well as reading.
Additionally, Ehri and Wilce (1985) as well as Juel, Griffith,& Gough (1986) proposed that beginning readers used the same phonetic cipher in both reading and spelling.
Thus, Hatcher, Hulme, and Ellis (1994) proposed their phonological linkage hypothesis which stated that phonological awareness training needed to be linked explicitly to reading and/or spelling training.
Purpose of this Study
Since Bradley and Bryant’s (1983) study linked the phonological training with spelling, A. E. Cunningham’s (1990) study linked the phonological training to reading, while
Ehri and Wilce (1985) and Juel et al. (1986) proposed that reading and spelling use the same phonetic cipher, the purpose of this particular study was to determine whether a reading curriculum that was designed to help students make the phonological linkage between phonemic awareness and reading instruction could be enhanced by adding a spelling program that was designed to help students make the phonological linkage between phonemic awareness, reading, and spelling instruction. Consequently, it was predicted that students who received both

Small Leap Spelling p. 3 treatments would show greater progress on assessments of identifying alphabetic letters, identifying the initial phoneme within words, segmenting words into constituent phonemes, identifying school district mandated sight words, identifying decodable CVC words, and spelling decodable CVC words.
Commercial Program: Letter People® Curriculum
It is important to point out that this study began with a defined objective of testing the effectiveness of the Small Leap Spelling intervention. The particular commercial phonemic awareness/reading curriculum that was used in the study was neither an a priori target of study, nor an a priori criterion for teacher participation. Instead, the Letter People Curriculum ( LPC ) happened to be included in this study, because the four teachers who were recruited to participate met three other a priori conditions, (a) they were all teaching in the same at-risk urban school, (b) they were all using the same reading and phonemic awareness curriculum in the same way, and
(c) they agreed to participate knowing they might be randomly assigned to experimental or contrast conditions.
As the core curriculum, the LPC (Capetta, Lehr, Lyons, & Martin, 2000) systematizes the introduction of letters, phonemic awareness, and reading decodable books. The novel gimmick of the LPC is that each week a plastic blow-up Letter People® character is introduced. Students are taught the name of the letter, the shape of the letter, and the sound of the letter. Furthermore, each character has its own personal story, song, and book. The characters help students gain a first link from sound to printed letter and word. As Stahl and Murray (1998) noted about alphabet books, “…in order for children to understand how b could stand for bear they must begin to look at words phonologically” (p. 81).
Supplemental Intervention: Small Leap Spelling
As described in Author (1997), each 20 minute Small Leap Spelling ( SLS ) lesson is comprised of three phases: (a) phonemic awareness, (b) spelling, and (c) reading. The phonemic awareness phase of the lesson begins with the teacher introducing one or two target words. Then the teacher asks students to name words that have the same feature of first one of the target words, and then the other. For example, during the first week or two, students are asked to generate an oral list of words that have the same feature of being members of the at family. The next week, students are asked to generate a set of words from both the at and am rime families. As outlined in the journal article and presentations, in subsequent weeks and months the scope and sequence progresses to generating (a) members of all of the short a rime families, (b) other short vowel rime families, (c) words that fit the magic e pattern, (d) blends and

Small Leap Spelling p. 4 digraphs, and (e) inflectional endings. For this study the scope and sequence was modified to mirror the weekly target words found in the LPC .
For the spelling component of each lesson, the teacher names one word from the orally generated list. The students then attempt to invent spell the word on their own sheet of paper. Next the teacher and students briefly discuss how the word should be spelled, and then, if necessary, students self-correct their answers. The process then repeats itself as the teacher names another word from the oral list, students invent spell it, a teachable moment discussion is held, and students self-correct their papers.
In the third stage of the Small Leap lesson, the whole group chorally reads the list of words several times until fluency is achieved, and then the teacher takes individuals aside to read the list.
As is argued in Author (2005a), because students can use the rime pattern to first help spell the words correctly and then read them correctly, the initial emphasis on word families seems to indicate that SLS contains a strong emphasis on analogy spelling and decoding
(Cunningham, Arthur, & Cunningham, 1977; Gibson, 1970; Goswami, 2002a, 2002b).
Nevertheless, a closer task analysis of a SLS lesson indicates that by holding the rime constant when having students spell at family words, teachers force student to determine the phonemic identity (Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1989, 1993a, 1995; Hulme, Hatcher, Nation, Brown,
Adams, & Stuart, 2002) of the initial consonant which varies. Next, when the program requires students to compare and contrast words in the at family with words in the am family (e.g. comparing and contrasting sat with Sam, hat with ham , and Pat with Pam ) students are forced to focus on the phonemic identity of the varying final consonant. Then when comparing and contrasting the at and it families (e.g. hat with hit, bat with bit, and ham with him) students are forced to focus on the phonemic identity of the varying medial vowel.
Furthermore, a careful task analysis indicates that any given spelling test is a mixture of systematic invented spelling (Au, 1997), emergent design (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998), and developmentally appropriate practice that is attuned to each student’s zone of potential development (Vygotsky, 1963). During each daily lesson/spelling test, the teacher should begin by selecting easier words that combine grapheme patterns and rimes the students have used before on that day and in other lessons. Then the teacher should build towards harder words that force students to stretch, and themselves to teach to the teachable moment. For example, teachers could start a lesson by focusing solely on the vowel difference between the at and it families by comparing and contrasting hat with hit; bat with bit, and fat with fit. Then teachers could end the

Small Leap Spelling p. 5 lesson by comparing and contrasting words that vary in two features such as bat with fit, hit with rat, and mat with pit. Finally, any word the students miss early in the test should be repeated later in the test.
Summary of Introduction
Forty years of research indicates that phonemic blending (Chall et al., 1963) and phonemic segmentation (Bruce, 1964; Calfee et al., 1973; Elkonin, 1963; Fox & Routh, 1975,
1976; Liberman et al., 1974; Rosner, 1974; Rosner & Simon, 1971) predict future reading growth. Furthermore, research indicates that phonemic awareness is reciprocally related to reading (Morais et al, 1979), that spelling is reciprocally related to reading (Chomsky, 1971,
1976a, 1976b, Ehri, 2000; Read, 1971), and that phonemic awareness training must be linked with reading and spelling training (Bradley & Bryant, 1983; A. E. Cunningham, 1990; Hatcher et al, 1994).
Figure 1 illustrates the ways that the LPC links phonemic awareness and reading instruction at the letter, word, and sentence level. Figure 2 indicates how SLS fills a niche that is not addressed by the LPC . This particular research project attempted to determine if supplementing the LPC with SLS would produce differential effects between students whose teachers had been randomly assigned to the experimental and contrast conditions.
Methods
Methodological Framework
A literature review of studies which examined the relationship between phonemic awareness training, reading, and/or spelling found that most experimental and contrast interventions were implemented by especially trained outside teachers and/or tutors in pull-out designs, whereas only Tangel and Blachman (1992) conducted a study where the experimental intervention was implemented by classroom teachers or paraprofessionals with their own students.
For the current study, four kindergarten teachers were recruited who taught in an urban elementary school. Before, during, and after the study all four teachers were implementing the LPC that they had purchased after pursuing and winning a grant the previous year. After agreeing to participate, two of these teachers were assigned randomly to the experimental treatment of supplementing the LPC with SLS lessons. The third teacher was assigned randomly to the contrast treatment of using only the LPC as a stand alone curriculum. Regrettably, the fourth teacher requested and was granted permission to be purposely assigned to the contrast condition because sometime between when she was originally agreed to participate in this study,

Small Leap Spelling p. 6 and when it won Human Subject Review Board approval, she had agreed to a school district request to supplement the LPC with the Waterford (Hecht, 2001) computer-assisted phonemic awareness program. As outlined in the No Child Left Behind guidelines for random assignment
(Myers & Dynarski, n.d.). additional interventions normally don’t confound results, but readers should be informed that the potential exists.
To determine the breadth of potential effects from SLS , a battery of quantitative pretests and posttests were used to measure each student’s phonemic awareness and early reading skills. Additionally, Wiig, Semel, & Nystrom’s (1982) quantitative measure of Rapid
Automatic Naming of Objects was included as a probe to surface effects that might be related to language processing and lexical unitization. For all assessments, the gains from pretest to posttest were analyzed statistically by ANCOVAs to determine if there were any differential effects from the experimental intervention. Furthermore, in order to detect interaction effects, results from each assessment were charted on one graph at the level of individual teacher and on a second graph as to whether an individual student scored below the pretest mean for a given assessment.
In addition to the quantitative measures, qualitative measures that included observations, a questionnaire, and a teacher interview were used in an evaluative fashion (Patton,
2002) to determine all four teacher’s daily routines and attitudes toward the LPC, and each experimental teacher’s fidelity to the SLS protocol and her interest in using SLS in the future.
Furthermore, the qualitative measures were intended to triangulate information collected by the quantitative measures or surface effects not gauged by the quantitative measures.
Teacher Training:
Tangel and Blachman (1992) reported that their 10 experimental teachers were trained during seven 2-hour inservices. In contrast, the 2 teachers in the experimental condition of this study were given: (a) written instructions, (b) a joint one-hour inservice on how to conduct a SLS lesson, and (c) two individualized demonstration lessons using that teacher’s own students. Then during each teacher’s free period, the researcher followed up these private demonstration lessons by informally discussing how the lesson went and answering each teacher’s questions. Finally, the researcher observed each teacher conduct a
SLS lesson with her own students and gave each teacher verbal and written feedback.
At-Risk Population
Only students who brought in signed permission slips and gave verbal assent were given pre- and post-tests. Of the 17 students in the two experimental classrooms, there were 11

Small Leap Spelling p. 7
(64.7%) girls and 6 (35.3%) boys. The racial breakdown of the experimental group was: 9
(53.0%) African-Americans, 1 (4.9%) Asian-American, 5 (29.4%) Caucasians, and 2 (11.8%)
Hispanics. Of the 22 in the two contrast classrooms, there were 10 (45.5%) boys and 12 (54.5%) girls. The racial breakdown of the contrast group was 14 (63.6%) African-Americans, 1 (4.5%)
Asian-American, 4 (18.1%) Caucasians, and 3 (13.6%) Hispanics.
Evidence of the students’ at-risk status is three fold: (a) For the school participating in this study, the number of students who passed all five parts of Ohio’s fourth grade proficiency test for the 2000-2001 academic year was under 10% (Ohio Department of
Education, 2001); (b) according to a research assistant employed by the school district to answer such questions, the school did not make Adequate Yearly Progress as defined by the No Child
Left Behind Act during the study year of 2001-2002 (personal communication, N. Gray, May 6,
2003); (c) no socio-economic data specific to each child’s free or reduced price breakfast and lunch status are available; because so many students in the district would qualify, the district no longer collects this data and instead distributes a free breakfast and lunch to every child who requests one (personal communication, N. Gray, May 6, 2003).
Assessments in the Battery
Assessments were administered in each student’s classroom during center time.
No student was selected to be assessed while he or she was working on a center activity with his or her teacher. The first session of assessments included (a) Wiig, Semel, & Nystrom’s (1982) cumulatively timed Rapid Automatic Naming of 32 line drawings, (b) identification of upper and lower case letters, and (c) the identification of 17 school district mandated sight words from a worksheet. The second session included, (a) identifying the initial sound of 15 words represented by line drawings on a worksheet, and (b) the Yopp-Singer Test of Phonemic Segmentation
(Yopp, 1995). For the third session, 9 sight words and 10 CVC decodable words from the LPC were presenting first in flash format and then extended format as in an Informal Reading
Inventory (Betts, 1946, 1957; Richek, Caldwell, Jennings, & Lerner, 2002). The fourth session was individually administering a spelling test of the same 10 CVC decodable words from the commercial program that students identified using the IRI format.
Calculating Effect Sizes
The practical effect sizes (ES) reported in this paper were calculated in a threestep process recommended by Hedges, Shymansky, and Woodworth (1989, p. 30): (a) Calculate the mean gain from the pre-test to the post-test made by the students in the experimental condition; (b) Calculate the mean gain from the pre-test to the post-test made by students in the

Small Leap Spelling p. 8 contrast condition; (c) Subtract the mean gain made by students in the contrast condition from the mean gain made by the students in experimental condition. The standardized effect size ( d ) was calculated using a procedure recommended by Dunlop, Cortina, Vaslow, and Burke (1996): the practical effect size (ES) was devided by the pooled standard deviation from the pre-test.
Interobserver Reliability
Thirteen contrast students and 13 experimental students brought in permission slips and gave verbal assent to be videotaped using a JVS DV videotape recorder for interobserver reliability purposes. The digital videotapes were spliced so that each student’s videotaped sessions were transferred using a Gateway 600 computer in combination with
Microsoft Movie Maker software to his or her own separate rewriteable CD that could be viewed using Microsoft Media Player. Representing approximately 20% of the total number of all assessment sessions, a random selection of four of the contrast students’ CDs and four of the experimental students’ CDs were graded by an interobserver blind to the experimental and contrast status of the students. All assessments surpassed Kazdin’s (1982) minimum of 80% interobserver reliability. Most were in the high 80s to low 90s. These are also in line with what
Tangel and Blachman (1992) reported.
Quantitative Results
The statistical breakdown for the ANCOVAs for the pretest and posttest assessments can be found in Table 1. Listed below are discussions of the results for each assessment.
Upper and Lower Case Letter Identification (Upper Case ID and Lower Case ID)
For Upper Case ID, students identified upper case letters that were randomly distributed on the first three lines of teacher supplied worksheet, and for Lower Case ID, students identified lower case letters that were randomly distributed on the lower three. Because both assessments derive from the same source of variance, J. L. Myers and Well (1995) advise researchers to make a Bonferroni Inequality adjustment by dividing the pvalues by 2. The adjusted criterion for significant results becomes p < .025, while for highly significant results the criterion becomes p < .005.
Upper Case ID results: As can be seen in Table 1, with the p -value for Upper Case
ID being p
= .14, the greater gains by the experimental students weren’t statistically significant.
Furthermore the practical effect size was only 0.12 upper case letters in 10 weeks, while the standardized effect size of d
= .026 did not attain Cohen’s standard of d = .25 for a small educational effect size (Cohen, 1988; Hinkel et al.,1998).

Small Leap Spelling p. 9
Upper Case ID discussion: One reason for the small effect sizes and insignificant p value is that as can be seen in Table 2, 22 of the 39 students participating in this study identified all 26 upper case letters on the pretest of Upper Case ID.
Lower Case ID results: As can be seen in Table 1, with a p -value of p = .234, Lower
Case ID didn’t produce a statistically significant effect. Furthermore, the eta-squared for the experimental effect was only
 2
= .039 which means that only 3.9% of the variance in gains can be ascribed to SLS. Furthermore,
 2
= .039 translates into an rvalue of r = .197 which Hinkle et al (1998) suggests does not attain the standard of r = .30 for meaningful small correlations.
Additionally, the practical effect size was only 0.24 letters for 10 weeks, while the standardized effect size of d
= .104 did not attain Cohen’s standard of
d = .25 (Cohen, 1988; Hinkle et al.,
1998). As in Upper Case ID, the low observed power of

= .218 indicates that a Type II error could have been made.
Lower Case ID Discussion: Although no statistically significant effects were found, as can be seen in Figure 3, the experimental students who scored below the pretest mean, made
50% greater progress than the contrast students who scored below the pretest mean.
School District Mandated Sight Word Identification (SDM Sight ID)
For SDM Sight ID, students were asked to identify school district mandated sight words from a worksheet supplied by participating teachers. Because SDM Sight ID was the only assessment using its source of variance (J. L. Myers and Well, 1985), no Bonferroni adjustment was necessary.
SDM Sight ID results: As can be seen in Table 1, an ANCOVA of SDM Sight ID found several supportive statistical results: (a) the pvalue was p = .009 which attains the standard of p < .01 for being highly significant (Hinkle et al., 1998); (b) the eta squared was
 2
=
.185 which indicates that 18.5 percent of the variance was accounted for by SLS instruction, and translates into r = .430 which exceeds Cohen’s standard of r = .30 for small correlations (Cohen,
1988; Hinkle et al., 1998); (c) the combined Rsquared for the pretesting and posttesting for
SDM Sight ID was R
2
= .746 which suggests that what the students knew before the intervention period plus SLS instruction accounted for 74.6% of the variance; (d) the power was

= .771 which is almost exactly the ideal of

= .800 (J. L. Myers and Well, 1995); (e) the practical effect size was 2.04 words out of 17 which means that the gains by the experimental students exceeded the gains of the contrast students by more than 10% of the total quantity of words; (f) the

Small Leap Spelling p. 10 standardized effect size for the SDM Sight ID was d = .340 which exceeds Cohen’s standard of d
= .25 for small effects (Cohen, 1988; Hinkle et al., 1998).
SDM Sight ID discussion: All of the statistical results suggest that the intervention of
SLS helped experimental students make larger gains of school district mandated sight words than the contrast students. If these large effects and low pvalue were to be replicated in a longer study with more students, then the practical and theoretical implications would be important.
For example, as can be seen in Figure 4, compared to the average score of the contrast students, the average gain for the experimental students more than doubled the average gain of the contrast students. Looked in another way, the differences in gains was approximately 10% of the possible points, and thus the average score for the experimental students was approximately one letter grade higher than that of contrast students. Finally, as can be seen in Figure 5, it was the experimental students who scored below the pretest made far larger gains than the contrast students who scored below the pretest mean.
Initial Letter Sound Identification (Initial Sound ID)
Similar to the assessments and protocol used by Byrne and Fielding-Barnsley (1989,
1990, 1991, 1993a, 1993b, 1995), the Initial Sound ID required students to identify 15 pictures.
If students didn’t give the same name as intended, they were supplied the correct name. Then students were asked to identify the initial sound of the pictures name. Again, no Bonferroni adjustment was needed.
Initial Sound ID results: On the Initial Sound ID, the pvalue of p =.279 was not statistically significant. Furthermore the ratio between the high adjusted Rsquared of R
2
= .588 and the low eta-squared of
 2
= .033 was not very favorable, either. Nor did the standardized effect size of d
= .231 attain Cohen’s (Cohen, 1988; Hinkle et al., 1998) standard of
d = .25 for a small effect size. Nevertheless, two statistical results indicated some differential effects might be occurring: First, there was a low observed power of

= .188, which indicates a Type II error might have been made. Second, there was a high practical effect size of ES = 1.27 sounds out of
15 sounds which indicates that the experimental students outgained the contrast students by a margin that was almost 10% of the total number of initial sounds available to identify. As mentioned in the previous section on SDM Sight ID, this suggests a typical experimental student would receive a letter grade that was one grade higher than his or her contrast group peer.
On the other hand, these greater “gains” by the experimental students are mostly a result of three contrast students regressing badly from the pretest to the posttest. One student in

Small Leap Spelling p. 11 the Waterford contrast class dropped from 14 to 10 initial sounds correct. While a student in the nonWaterford class dropped from 9 initial sounds correct to 1 sound correct, and a second non-
Waterford student dropped from 14 to 7 initial sounds correct. Now, two experimental students identified one sound less on the posttest, but this was offset by a Waterford student who identified two initial sounds less on the posttest than on the pretest.
Initial Sound ID discussion: Most of the statistical results suggest that the intervention of SLS did not help experimental students make more gains than contrast students on identifying initial sounds in words. In fact, if the three students who had major regressions were eliminated, there would essentially be no difference between the gains of the experimental and contrast groups. Nonetheless, if a larger study found that these large regressions occurred in the same percentage of 15 to 20 percent of the population, then there an investigation might be warranted as to why it might be occurring.
Yopp-Singer Test of Phonemic Segmentation (Yopp-Singer)
The Yopp-Singer (Yopp, 1995) requires students to segment 22 words into their constituent phonemes. Since the Yopp-Singer is self-contained, no Bonferroni adjustment was needed.
Yopp-Singer results: as can be seen in Table 4, the ANCOVA for the pretest and the posttest for the Yopp Singer produced a pvalue of p = .715, an observed power of

= .065, an adjusted R -squared of R
2
= .171, and an eta-squared of
 2
= .004. Consequently, all of the statistical tests seem to indicate that there was no differential effect between the experimental and contrast conditions. Nevertheless, both the practical effect size (ES = -.77) and standardized effect size ( d = -.300) were in favor of the contrast condition. In fact, the standardized effect size is greater than Cohen’s standard of
d = .25 for a small effect size.
Yopp-Singer discussion: Like the Initial Sounds ID , there aren’t any statistically significant effects that favor the contrast or experimental condition. Yet, in a larger study, there might be interaction effects that account for why the statistical and practical effect sizes for the
Yopp-Singer favor the contrast condition.
Spelling Phonetically Regular Words from the LPC (CVC Spelling).
One VC word and nine CVC words were culled from the trade books supplied with the LPC. They were chosen as to be word families featured in the phonemic awareness lessons of the LPC as well, and therefore they mesh with the Hatcher et al.’s (1994) phonological linkage hypothesis. As is explained in more detail in Author (2005b), each letter in a word was

Small Leap Spelling p. 12 evaluated on a 0 to 4 point scale that gave partial credit for letter reversals (i.e. b for d ), near sounds (i.e. v for f ), and position in the word (i.e. mxi instead of mix ). Unfortunately, neither the contrast nor experimental teachers distributed the trade books or targeted the word families as suggested by the teachers’ manual for the
LPC. No Bonferroni adjustment was needed.
CVC Spelling results: As can be seen in Table 1, an ANCOVA of CVC Spelling found no phonetically statistically significant effect ( p = .052), but the standardized effect size ( d
= .500) and Practical Effect size of (ES = 12.11 out of 116) favored the experimental condition.
Furthermore, the eta-squared
η 2
= .104 indicates the intervention accounted for a sizable 10.4% of the overall variance in differential gains; also,
η 2
= .104 equates to r = .322 which exceeds the r = .30 standard (Hinkle et al., 1998) suggests for a small educationally significant correlation.
CVC Spelling discussion: Even though the ANCOVA for CVC Spelling was insignificant ( p = .052), it is important to note that the students in the experimental condition gained a total of 28.38 points out of 116 points. This represents improving seven-tenths of a letter correct per word. Similarly, the practical effect size gain was 12.11 more points than the contrast students. This represents just over 10% of the 116 possible points.
More importantly, breaking the scores of individual students down into columns of initial letters, medial vowels, and final consonants makes it clear that these results supported the findings of other researchers such as Bruce (1964), Ehri (1998), and Treiman and Zukowski
(1996), because students overwhelmingly tended to score their points first in the initial consonant column, then in the final consonant column, and finally in the medial vowel column. For example, examining both individual and average scores made it evident that students in the experimental condition who did not spell any of the letters correctly on the pretest tended to spell the initial consonants correctly on the posttest. Similarly, students who correctly spelled the initial consonants on the pretest progressed towards correctly spelling both the initial and final letter on the posttest. And finally, those students who correctly spelled the initial and final consonants on the pretest progressed towards correctly spelling all three letters on the posttest.
Most intriguingly, Figure 6 indicates that comparing the experimental and contrast students who scored below the mean on the pretest, it was the low experimental students who more than doubled the gains of the low contrast students. Furthermore, the average score for low experimentals was 39.88 phoneme points. Since there were ten words, each correctly spelled letter was worth 4 points, and students tended to spell initial consonants before spelling final consonants, the experimental low students were on average spelling the first letter of CVC

Small Leap Spelling p. 13 words. Conversely, the average score for the low contrast students was 25.69, and thus on average, these students were only correctly identifying the first letter of six of the CVC words.
Identifying Phonetically Regular Words from LPC (CVC Decoding)
Several days before the CVC Spelling was administered, students were asked to identify the same CVC words as are found on CVC Spelling. The student’s best answer for each word, be it from the flash or extended presentation, was scored using the CVC Spelling protocol of 0 to 4 points per letter. In turn, the scoring by phoneme translates into 0 to 8 points for the VC word and 0 to 12 points for each of the nine CVC words. Again, no Bonferroni adjustment was needed.
CVC Decoding results: Table 1 shows that CVC Decoding produced no statistically significant effect ( p = .064). Nonetheless, the standardized effect size ( d = .641) and
Practical Effect size of (ES = 15.59 out of 116) favored the experimental condition. Furthermore, the eta-squared of
η 2
= .092 indicates the intervention accounted for a sizable 9.2% of the overall variance. Furthermore, the eta-squared of
η 2
= .092 equates to r = .303 which exceeds the r = .30 standard for small educational correlations (Hinkle et al., 1998).
CVC Decoding discussion: Similar to CVC Spelling, the CVC Decoding results did not achieve statistical significance ( p = .064). Nevertheless, students tended to progress in the same manner as was reported in CVC Spelling. They went from identifying each CVC word based on its initial consonant, to identifying each word based on its initial and final consonant, to identifying each word based on all three letters. Furthermore, the practical effect size was again more than 10% of the possible points. Also, as can be seen in Figure 7, the experimental students who scored below the prestest mean on CVC Decoding nearly doubled the gains of the contrast students who scored below the pretest mean.
Finally, as in CVC Spelling, and as would be predicted according to the spelling and decoding cipher (Ehri & Wilce, 1985; Juel et al., 1986), the low experimentals averaged
39.08 points, while the low contrast students scored 23.5 points. Thus, both experimental and contrast students scored nearly the same number of points on CVC Decoding as they did on CVC
Spelling.
Identifying Sight Words from the LPC’s Decodable Book Series (LPC Sight ID)
The nine words used in both the Flash LPC Sight ID and the Extended LPC Sight ID were culled from the first decodable book in the LPC . Because most of these sight words were not phonetically decodable, right or wrong grading was used. Furthermore, because both the flash and extended versions of the LPC Sight ID were using the same set of flashcards, a

Small Leap Spelling p. 14
Bonferroni adjustment was necessary to evaluate whether the results were significant ( p < .025) or highly significant ( p < .005).
Flash LPC Sight ID results: As can be seen in Table 1, an ANCOVA run on the Flash
LPC Sight ID produced a pvalue of p = .957, an observed power of

= .050, an eta squared of
 2
= .000, and an adjusted Rsquared for the combined experimental/contrast factor and pretest/posttest factor R
2
= .694. The practical effect size of ES = -.02 barely favored the contrast group, while the standardized effect size of d = -.008 failed to attain the criterion of d = .25 that
Cohen established for standardized effect sizes (Cohen, 1988; Hinkel et al , 1998).
Flash LPC Sight ID discussion: All of the statistical numbers, but in particular the high pvalue, the small effect sizes and the eta-square of zero, suggest receiving supplemental
SLS was irrelevant to identifying LPC sight words.
Extended LPC Sight ID results: As can be seen in Table 1, an ANCOVA run on the
Extended LPC Sight ID produced a pvalue of p = .537, an observed power of

= .093, an eta squared of
 2
= .011, and an adjusted Rsquared for the combined experimental/contrast factor and pretest/posttest factor R 2 = .574. The practical effect size of ES = 0.033 barely favored the experimental condition, while the standardized effect size of d = .138 failed to attain Cohen’s standard for small effect sizes (Cohen, 1988; Hinkel et al , 1998).
Extended LPC Sight ID discussion: Based on the results from the Extended LPC
Sight ID, there were no statistically significant effects for supplementing the LPC with SLS.
Rapid Automatic Naming of Pictures (RAN for Pictures)
As a warm-up to Wiig et al.’s (1982) RAN for Pictures, students are asked to identify line drawings of eight objects. Next, if necessary, students are told the intended response. Then students are timed as they name the 8 objects randomly distributed on an 8 by 4 grid. No Bonferroni adjustment was needed to evaluate significance.
RAN for Pictures results: Based on time of completion, an ANCOVA for the
RAN for Pictures assessment (see Table 1) found no significant difference between the students who received SLS instruction and those students who did not ( p = .949). Furthermore, the etasquared was
 2
= .000. Consequently, none of the overall variance was accounted for by the intervention of SLS. Additionally, the practical effect size of 1.98 seconds in favor of the experimental condition was small compared to the 17.50 second standard deviation.
Consequently, the standardized effect size of d = .113 did not attain Cohen’s standard of d = .25

Small Leap Spelling p. 15 for a small effect size (Cohen, 1988; Hinkle, et al , 1998). Finally, the power of only

= .050for
RAN for Picture was the lowest of any of the assessments.
RAN for Pictures discussion: The RAN for Pictures assessment produced no statistically significant main effects that are attributable to the supplemental SLS instruction.
Nonetheless, as can be seen in Figure 8, a potential interaction effect was found, because the average completion time for contrast students who did not receive Waterford instruction actually regressed from 48.63 seconds to 51.88 seconds, while the average time for the other three classes improved. As can be seen in Figure 9, this interaction effect matched up exactly with the interaction effect found in the Initial Sound ID. A larger study would be needed to see if this pattern were repeated and to tease out reasons for it.
One possible link might be that the contrast class whose average regressed on both assessments was not receiving either the Waterford computer-based phonemic awareness program or SLS; furthermore, five of the eight line drawings in Wiig et al.’s RAN for Pictures represent words have either c or k in the initial or final position, while a sixth begins with s .
Consequently, the failure to make phonological linkages as per Hatcher et al. (1994) might lead to slowed phonological processing.
Qualitative Aspects
Throughout this study, one of the experimental teachers seemed excited about participating in the project, while the other seemed markedly indifferent. These different attitudes surfaced in one form or other throughout the study.
Critical Incidents
Patton (2002) suggests that critical incidents help make observed events easier to interpret because they capture the heart and soul of a project in a brief moment in time. The most relevant critical incident in this study came when this researcher was passing the indifferent teacher in the hall and she pulled me aside. She then excitedly showed some work samples from her students. She explained that she was surprised to discover her students had written longer and more complex responses to picture prompts than they had previously.
When looking at the work samples, this researcher quickly noticed that many of the words were at family words, and he deduced that the indifferent teacher must be undergoing a change of heart and was about to explain how she was surprised to find evidence that SLS was improving her student’s paragraph writing. Instead, the indifferent teacher proceeded to explain why she thought the improved writing performance of her students was due to a new technique

Small Leap Spelling p. 16 she was using to teach writing. Undoubtedly there was some truth to the indifferent teacher’s interpretation that her changed writing protocol had an important effect on the length of her students’ paragraphs.
Nevertheless, Chomsky (1971, 1976a, 1976b), Ehri (2000), and Read (1971) have suggested a reciprocal relationship between students’ reading, writing, and spelling. Thus, this researcher would suggest that the fact that students had learned how to spell some words correctly also had an effect. This interpretation is supported by the fact that when this researcher returned one year later for a follow-up interview, the indifferent teacher was still expressing reservations about SLS , yet newsprint word lists of rhyming words could be seen hanging throughout her room. Then when queried, she said the lists were from a form of word family spelling.
Survey Results:
After the intervention and post-testing were completed, the two experimental teachers anonymously evaluated the SLS intervention program using a survey prepared before the study began. There was a mix of open ended questions and 0 to 10 ratings.
Experimental Teacher A: Nine was the most common response given by
Experimental Teacher A when a question asked her to rate the SLS methodology. On the open ended questions, she responded with many positive comments such as: (a) “It was a major change for students because it helped them become more accountable for writing sentences when using illustrations.” (b) “Even the low to average child made huge success.” (c) “Parents saw that it was another alternative way to help them learn.” And in a comment that was relevant to the above critical incident, (d) “It was a major change for students because it helped them become more accountable for writing sentences when using illustrations.”
On the other hand, this very same teacher gave slightly higher scores of 10s and
9s to the LPC and her comments about the LPC were even more glowing than her comments about SLS
: (a) “Very well structured/Teacher friendly/still able to pick & choose.” (b)
“Excellent!” (c) “Excellent!” (d) “Excellent/Very Integrated.”
Synthesizing these and several other comments together, it seems clear that
Experimental Teacher A was not quite sure how to feel about the balance between the time needed to complete the Small Leap Lessons, the academic nature of the lessons, and the need for at-risk kindergartners to master the skills developed by the lessons. She answered one question with, “I recommend that teachers use this, but some may feel it is too much!”

Small Leap Spelling p. 17
Finally, her tensions are best encapsulated by her final comment that was written in the margin and marked by an asterisk: “Too many students enter a first grade setting unable to read.”
Experimental Teacher B: On the 0 to 10 scale, Experimental Teacher B’s numerical scores for the effectiveness of SLS lessons ranged from a high of 6 for the behavior of students to a low of 1 for being hard to implement. Her most frequent numerical response was 2.
Conversely, this teacher rated every single question that focused solely on the LPC with a 10.
Her numerous 10s included a 10 for the LPC being effective and a 10 for recommending the program to other teachers. Experimental Teacher B’s responses are epitomized by her one and only comment: “It was nothing new!”
Qualitative Discussion
The contrast in overall attitude of the two experimental teachers, the critical incidents, and the responses on the surveys from Experimental Teacher A compared to those of
Experimental Teacher B seem to indicate that the positive quantitative effects from SLS were not a result of an overwhelming Hawthorne Effect. Instead, SLS seemed to be effective with two teachers who had vastly different attitudes towards the intervention.
Overall Discussion
Ultimately, the strength and the weakness of the research design used in this study was that two classroom teachers were entrusted to implement the intervention of SLS. As noted earlier, a literature review turned up only one other published phonemic awareness/early reading study that entrusted classroom teachers to implement the experimental intervention. In it, Tangel and Blachman (1992) incorporated 10 experimental and 8 contrast classrooms instead of the 2 and 2 for this SLS project.
Furthermore, Shavelson (1983) reports that once teachers have established a daily routine with a particular group of students during a given academic year, they become reluctant to change the routine. Consequently, it’s understandable that by early March, one of the two teachers was decidedly indifferent about implementing an experimental intervention. This contrasts with a research design in which an outside agent pulls students from the classroom, because a pull-out design doesn’t force the classroom teacher to change his or her entire routine.
Nevertheless, one year later, this indifferent teacher had word family posters on her walls and described classroom routines that incorporated other important SLS concepts.
Consequently, despite less than an hour of training and two demonstration lessons and an unenthusiastic attitude by one of the two teachers who enacted the experimental intervention,

Small Leap Spelling p. 18 qualitative results suggest that supplementing the commercial curriculum with SLS effected positive long-term changes in teacher routines.
The quantitative trend was mixed. Because only one of the 10 ANCOVAS produced a highly significant effect, the overall pattern of results must be examined to rule out random error. The first pattern that suggests the results weren’t random is the fact that 8 of the 10 statistical effect sizes favored the experimental condition. Next, Cohen (1988, p. 12) suggested that the conventional standard of p < .05 not be so slavishly followed that a researcher treat a finding of p = .06 no differently than one of p = .50. Thus, it is important to note that on CVC
Spelling ID, CVC Decoding ID, and SDM Sight ID, the experimental students were favored on standardized effect sizes, on practical effect sizes, and achieved Cohen’s standard for exploratory research of p < .10. Even more importantly, Figures 3, 5, 6, and 7 demonstrate that on these three academic measures, as well as Lower Case ID, the experimental students who scored below the mean, made gains that on average were between 50% to 100% greater than contrast students who scored below the pretest mean.
Finally, as suggested by Ehri and Wilce (1985) and Juel et al. (1986), the same cipher seemed to be employed in both reading and spelling. Consequently, on CVC Spelling the low experimentals were spelling the first letter of CVC words, and on CVC Decoding they were using the first letter to decode words. In contrast, the low contrast students hadn’t yet mastered their first letter spelling and decoding. Thus, it would make sense that on a worksheet that students had practiced numerous times with their teacher and parent, and which would thus cue students to use a word’s position on the page to aid recall (Stahl &Murray, 1998), the low experimentals with their better grasp of initial letters, would make greater gains identifying sight words than contrast students. Conversely, it also makes sense that being able to utilize the first letter of words would give no benefit to the experimentals on LPC Sight ID, because an IRI flash and extended presentation format is far less amenable to students utilizing prior knowledge and position on the page to supplement a partial knowledge of the alphabetic principle.
In conclusion, in this era of the No Child Left Behind Act (Paige, 2002), the quantitative and qualitative indicators suggest that SLS has the potential to have important, measurable, and positive long-term impacts on the reading, writing, and spelling of at-risk students as well as the daily lesson routines of their teachers. Therefore, a study that incorporates a longer intervention period that extends into first grade, follows students to determine how they perform on the state’s fourth grade proficiency test, and recruits a larger sample of teachers seems warranted.

Small Leap Spelling p. 19
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Small Leap Spelling p. 23
Table 1
Pretest and Posttest ANCOVA Results for all Assessments — Ranked in Approximate Order of Developmental Sequence df F p η 2 ES d R 2 Adj. R 2
RAN for Pictures 38 0.004 .949 .000 1.98 a
.113 .301 .262
power
.050
Upper Case ID
Lower Case ID
Initial Sounds ID
SDM Sight ID
CVC Spelling
CVC Decoding
LPC
LPC
Sight Extend
Sight ID Flash
38
38
37
c
36 e
37
38
38
38 g
2.238
1.467
1.208
7.730
4.053
3.649
0.389
0.003
.143
.234
.279
.009
.052
.064
.537
.957
.059 0.12 b
.026
.039 0.24
b
.047
.033 1.27
.185 2.04
d f
.231
.340
.104 12.11
h
.500
.092 15.59
h
.641
.011 0.33
j
.138
.000 - 0.02
j
- .008
.323
.467
.610
.746
.657
.442
.596
.710
.286
.437
.588
.731
.637
.411
.574
.694
.307
.218
.188
.771
.499
.460
.093
.050
Yopp-Singer 37
c
0.135 .715 .004 - 0.77
I
- .300 .216 .171 .065
Note. Positive Cohen’s d and effect sizes indicate advantage towards experimental while negative numbers indicate advantage towards contrast.
Note. Unless specified otherwise in key below, sample sizes are based on 22 contrast students and 17 experimental students. a seconds, b out of 26 letters, c contrast group had 21 students, d
out of 15 sounds, e experimental group had 15 students, f
, out of 17 words, g experimental group had 16 students,
h
out of 116 points, i
out of 22 answers, j out of 9 words.

Small Leap Spelling p. 24
Table 2
Number of Students at a Given Assessment’s Floor or Ceiling for the Pretest and Posttest
RAN for Pictures
Upper Case ID
Lower Case ID
Initial Sounds ID
a
SDM Sight ID b
CVC Spelling
CVC Decoding
LPC c
Sight ID Extend
LPC Sight ID Flash
@ floor on pretest
NA
0
0
5
1
3
18
10
11
@ floor on posttest
NA
0
0
2
0
0
3
2
3
@ ceiling on pretest
NA
22
11
5
8
0
0
0
0
@ ceiling on posttest
NA
26
19
15
9
0
0
2
2
Yopp-Singer
a
24 15 0 0
Note. Unless specified as the below key indicates, sample sizes are based on 22 contrast students and 17 experimental students. a contrast group had 21 students, b experimental group had 15 students, c experimental group had 16 students

Small Leap Spelling p. 25
Figure Captions
Figure 1.
This figure portrays the phonological linkages (Hatcher, Hulme, &Ellis, 1994) within the Letter People Curriculum (LPC) between phonemes and graphemes at the level of letter, word, and sentence. In the LPC , spelling is a crucial missing piece.
Figure 2 .This figure portrays that a web of phonological linkages (Hatcher, et al., 1994) is woven between phonemes and graphemes at the level of letters, words, and sentence by supplementing the Letter People Curriculum with Small Leap Spelling.
Figure 3: On the Lower Case ID assessment, both the high experimental and high contrast students scored near ceiling on pretest and posttest. The low scoring experimental students demonstrated more growth than low contrast students. Unfortunately, the n was small for low experimental students.
Figure 4. On the SDM Sight ID assessment, the average score for all experimental students went from just below the mean to farther above it, while the average score for contrast students went from just about the grand mean to farther below.
Figure 5. On the SDM Sight ID assessment, the high scoring experimental and contrast students scored near the ceiling of 17 words correct, while the average gain of the low scoring experimental students nearly doubled the average gain of the contrast students.
Figure 6. On the CVC Spelling assessment, the low scoring experimental students made 50% greater gains than low scoring contrast students, while the high scoring experimental students started out with an average score that was higher than their contrast counter-parts and the gap remained the same on the posttest.
Figure 7. On the CVC Decoding assessment, the high and low scoring experimental students made 50% greater gains than their high and low scoring contrast counterparts.
Figure 8. On the RAN for Pictures assessment, students from both of the experimental classrooms and from one of the contrast classroom improved by approximately the same amount

Small Leap Spelling p. 26 as each other, but there was a regression in the average time for the students in the contrast classroom which did not receive computer assisted phonemic awareness training.
Figure 9. On the Initial Sound ID assessment, there is an interaction effect, because the average score for the students in one of the classrooms regressed.

LETTER
WORD
SENTENCE
Learning phoneme of a letter.
E.g “What is the sound of the letter a
?”
Learning how to name words that rhyme with a target word.
E.g “What are some words that rhyme with cat
?”
Learning how to use words with target rime in context.
E.g. “Let’s use words that rhyme with cat in a sentence.”
Small Leap Spelling p. 27
Figure 1.
Learning grapheme of a letter.
E.g. “What is the letter that has the sound of a
?”
MISSING PIECE
Learning how to first spell a target word and then spell words that rhyme with the target word.
E.g. “Spell:
cat, fat, mat, sat.
”
Writing and then reading words with the target rime in context and recognizing their orthography.
E.g. “Write the following sentence: ‘Look at the fat cat
!’”
E.g. “Now read our sentence.”

Small Leap Spelling p. 28
Figure 2.
LETTER
WORD
SENTENCE
Learning
E.g “What is the sound of the letter a ?”
Learning how to name words that rhyme with a target word.
E.g “What are some words that rhyme with cat
?”
Learning how to use words with target rime in context. with cat
phoneme of a letter.
in a sentence.” cat .
Small Leap Spelling
Name words that rhyme with
Spell words that rhyme with
Read words that rhyme with
E.g. “Let’s use words that rhyme
Learning grapheme of a letter.
E.g. “What is the letter that has the sound of a ?” cat.
cat.
INSERTED PIECE
Learning how to first spell a target word and then spell words that rhyme with the target word.
E.g. “Spell:
Writing and then reading words with the target rime in context and recognizing their orthography.
cat, fat, mat, sat.
”
E.g. “Write the following sentence: ‘Look at the fat cat
!’”
E.g. “Now read our sentence.”

0
Con High N = 14
Con Low N = 8
Grand Mean
Exp High N = 13
Exp Low N = 4
10
5
25
20
15
Pre-test
25.29
17.13
22.59
24.77
17
Figure 3.
Post-test
25.71
21.38
24.51
25.38
23.75
Small Leap Spelling p. 29

2
0
Contrast N = 22
Mean
Small Leap N = 16
10
8
6
4
16
14
12
Pre-test
10.5
10.32
10.14
Figure 4.
.
Post-test
12.32
12.97
13.93
Small Leap Spelling p. 30

0
Con High N = 12
Con Low N = 10
Mean
Exp High N = 8
Exp Low N = 8
4
2
10
8
6
16
14
12
Pre-test
15.67
4.3
10.32
15
5.25
Figure 5.
Post-test
16.08
7.8
12.97
15.88
12
Small Leap Spelling p. 31

0
Con High N = 9
Con Low N = 13
Grand Mean
Exp High N =8
Exp Low N = 8
80
40
Pre-test
48.78
14
30.26
63.25
11.63
Figure 6.
Post-test
71.67
25.69
51.63
83
39.88
Small Leap Spelling p. 32

0
Con High N = 9
Con Low N = 13
Grand Mean
Exp High N =4
Exp Low N = 13
80
40
Pre-test
48.5
3
16.9
46.5
3.31
Figure 7.
Post-test
64.88
23.5
42.6
77.25
39.08
Small Leap Spelling p. 33

0
Con One N = 14
Con Two N = 8
Exp Three N = 7
Exp Four N = 10
20
10
70
60
50
40
30
Pre-test
54.93
48.63
49.14
59.9
Figure 8.
Post-test
45.93
51.88
42.43
53.5
Small Leap Spelling p. 34

Small Leap Spelling p. 35
0
Con One N = 14
Con Two N = 7
Exp Three N = 7
Exp Four N = 10
6
3
15
12
9
Pre-test
9.64
8.43
11.71
7.3
Figure 9.
Post-test
11.57
7.29
14.29
9.2