Using the Supplemental Heggerty Curriculum to Increase Phonemic Awareness in At-Risk Kindergarteners

Learning to read is a significant skill as it is required to succeed academically and in everyday life. One of the “Big Five” important components of reading identified by the National Reading Panel is Phonemic Awareness (PA). Phonemic Awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate the sounds in a word. Without Phonemic Awareness, students are usually poor readers and considered at-risk. Students who are at-risk require interventions to succeed academically. Interventions for at-risk readers can be provided in the form of supplemental curriculum. This project investigated the effect of a supplemental PA curriculum, Heggerty, to improve Phonemic Awareness skills in a group of at-risk Kindergarteners. These students were considered at-risk based on low Phonemic Awareness scores during Winter benchmark. Results on Spring benchmark scores, in addition to separately administered Phoneme Segmentation Curriculum Based Measurements (CBMs), were assessed. Due to various limitations, we cannot determine whether Heggerty helped to improve PA skill. Implications for future use of supplemental PA curricula include careful attention to implementation fidelity, collecting ongoing progress monitoring data, and using evidence-based interventions to improve Phonemic Awareness