Sound Foundations

Guide to Effective Programs
for Children and Youth

SOUND FOUNDATIONS

OVERVIEW

Sound Foundations is a literacy curriculum for pre-school children. The program focuses on teaching children to identify key phonemes, or word sounds. In a random assignment study, children assigned to receive this curriculum were found to be significantly better at recognizing phonemes than were children assigned to a control group. These children also scored significantly better on a test on which they were asked to identify the proper verbalization of written words.

In another study, classes were randomly assigned to receive either no intervention or the Sound Foundations curriculum in conjunction with the dialogic reading program. Compared with students who received no intervention, students who received the combined intervention scored significantly higher on several measures of emergent literacy both at the end of the intervention and one year later, at the end of kindergarten. Intervention students did not score significantly higher on measures of literacy skills at the end of 1^st and 2^nd grades, however.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM

Target population: pre-literate children

The Sound Foundations curriculum is designed to promote phonological awareness in pre-literate children. The ability to identify phonemes (e.g. the ability to recognize that sun and sail start with the same sound and that broom and drum end with the same sound) is related to the acquisition of reading skills.

The curriculum focuses on nine key phonemes, introducing students to one sound at a time. Students are exposed to posters that display items that begin or end with the focus sound. Students also complete activities and play games that involve identifying objects that begin or end with the focus sound.

(Dialogic reading, which was partnered with Sound Foundations in one of the studies evaluated here, is an interactive method of reading picture books with children. Please refer to the LINKS write-up of dialogic reading for more information on this intervention.)

EVALUATION(S) OF PROGRAM

Byrne, B. & Fielding-Barnsley, R. (1991). Evaluation of a Program to Teach Phonemic Awareness to Young Children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83(4), 451-455.

Evaluated population: 126 children from four pre-schools in New South Wales, Australia constituted the study sample for this investigation. The children were, on average, 55 months old at the commencement of the study.

Approach: At baseline, children’s verbal facility was assessed using the Revised Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. Children were also tested on their knowledge of letter names, their rhyme recognition, and their ability to identify words with the same beginning and ending sounds (phonemes).

Children were randomly assigned to a treatment group and a control group. Children in the treatment group were trained in subgroups of 4-6 students, for 25-30 minutes a week, for 11 successive weeks. Only a subset of the Sound Foundations focus sounds was taught, due to time constraints. Children in the control group also trained in groups of 4-6 students, for 25-30 minutes a week, but these children received training on semantics. These children received no phoneme training.

Following the 11-week intervention, children were re-assessed on their ability to identify phonemes. They were assessed both on sounds they had learned during the Sound Foundations intervention and on sounds they had not learned. Additionally, the children took a new test that presented them with written words and two possible verbal utterances of each word. Children were then asked to identify which utterance corresponded with the written word before them.

Results: At post-test, compared with control children, treatment children made significantly greater improvements in phoneme recognition. Improvement on learned sounds was greater than was improvement on unlearned sounds; however, the treatment group outperformed the control group on both trained and untrained sounds. Treatment children also performed significantly better on the test of matching written words to verbal utterances.

Whitehurst, G.J., Zevenbergen, A.A., Crone, D.A., Schultz, M.D., Velting, O.N., & Fischel, J.E. (1999). Outcomes of an Emergent Literacy Intervention From Head Start Through Second Grade. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91(2), 261-272.

Evaluated population: 127 children attending Head Start in 1992 (cohort 1) and 153 children attending Head Start in 1993 (cohort 2) served as the study sample for this investigation. Children were recruited from eight Head Start centers in Suffolk County, New York and came from 37 different Head Start classes. 43% of the children were African American, 33% were European American, 18% were Latino, and 6% were of other ethnic background. 35% of the children lived in single parent homes, and only 5% of the children had a primary caretaker who had completed college.

Approach: All children were pre-tested at their Head Start Centers on measures of receptive vocabulary and emergent literacy skills.

Classrooms were randomly assigned to a treatment condition or to a control condition.

Treatment classrooms taught the Sound Foundations curriculum for five months. Treatment classrooms also engaged in small-group dialogic reading three to five times a week. The parents of children in treatment classrooms were provided with books to read at home with their children as well. All parents and teachers were trained in dialogic reading using a videotape and role-plays. (Please refer to the LINKS write-up of dialogic reading write-up for more information on this program.)

Immediately following the intervention, at the end of Head Start, all children were tested on measures of receptive vocabulary, emergent literacy skills, and expressive vocabulary. Children were re-assessed on these measures one year later, at the end of kindergarten. At the end of first grade and second grade, children were tested on their ability to match printed words with pictures and on their ability to sound out printed pseudo-words.

Results: At post-test, compared with children from control classrooms, children from treatment classrooms did significantly better on measures of writing skills, print concepts, and letter memory and marginally better on measures of auditory skills and expressive vocabulary. At the one-year follow-up, treatment children scored significantly higher than control children on all measures except print concepts. No differences were found across the two cohorts.

251 of the original 280 students were available for two- and three-year follow-up analyses. The control group and treatment group remained closely balanced on pre-test measures despite attrition, however. At the end of 1^st grade and 2^nd grade, students from treatment classes did not differ significantly from students from control classes on any of the measures of literacy skills.

SOURCES FOR MORE INFORMATION

Curriculum materials available for purchase at:

http://www.onestopenglish.com/

References:

Byrne, B. & Fielding-Barnsley, R. (1991). Evaluation of a Program to Teach Phonemic Awareness to Young Children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83(4), 451-455.

Program categorized in this guide according to the following:

Evaluated participant ages: 4

Evaluated participant grades: pre-school

Program age ranges in the guide: early childhood

Program components: early childhood education

Measured outcomes: education & cognitive development

Program information last updated on 7/25/07.