School Description
As of October 2018, there were 188 students enrolled in our building. In the 2018-2019 school year 24% of the students in our building were qualified as English Language Learners. 72% of our students qualified for free and reduced lunch. Within the same school year, 63.83% of our students were classified as a minority. I realize this data is slightly out of date, however, I feel this still accurately reflected my current classroom and school during the 2020-2021 school year.
Class Description
For my capstone project I focused on 19 of my 25 kindergarten students. At the time of this study, 50% of students attended school every other day due to our A/B schedule. On A days I had 12 students, and on B days I had 13 students. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic some of the students in my classroom started the year learning remotely and joined my class at a later time. Within my class, I had one student that is deaf and hard of hearing who required full time paraprofessional support, as well as the support of a sign language interpreter. I also had a few students in my classroom that had experienced at least one form of trauma in their life already. This included being in foster care and having an incarcerated parent to name a couple. Due to this trauma, I noticed students who came into school significantly behind other students. This was shown in the form of students not knowing any colors, any letters, or any letter sounds. I also noticed these students not being focused during class as well as often not following directions. I had seven students who were qualified at the time of this study as English Language Learners in my classroom.
The Need For My Study
The data that I had collected before my study began showed my students would benefit from more focused instruction in the area of letter sound recognition. Based on anecdotal notes collected, I noticed my students needed more support identifying letter sounds. For example, when I had asked students to tell me what sound the letter “A” makes, students usually could not tell me the sound or would make a random sound. Another example of this was when I asked a student what the letter I had written down was and they did not tell me “A” (the correct response), but rather told me a number. This showed me that a particular student did not understand the concept that letters and numbers are different. Before conducting my study, my fall MAP (Measure of Academic Progress) data showed that I had 12 students in the low to low average range on the MAP reading assessment. To be more specific, some scores from this assessment were 125, 133, 115, and 124 to name a few. In comparison, the mean average score for the fall kindergarten MAP reading assessment for the year 2020 was a score of 136. My observations also showed my students were not able to identify which letter makes what sound. This was evident when I would ask students to tell me what letter makes a certain sound. My students were also not able to tell me what sound a letter makes if I would name the letter, or show them a letter and ask what sound it makes. In addition to my observations, my beginning of the year assessments showed most of my students had little to no knowledge of letter sounds. Out of the 26 letter sounds tested, students were able to identify a total of 3 letter sounds on average when shown the letter. My 1st quarter assessments showed most students were not able to identify even a quarter of their letter sounds with a few scores being 2/26, 0/26, 4/26, and 1/26.
Importance
This study is important because letter sounds are one of the first building blocks to develop reading skills. Without the foundations of letter sounds in place, students will continue to struggle to read and write. This is due largely to the fact that students would not be able to sound out an unknown word while reading. Sounding out words is a key skill in developing a wider vocabulary and reading texts of increasing complexity. As far as writing, without the knowledge of letter sounds, students are not able to know which letters go into a word when sounding it out. This would make writing unknown words virtually impossible. Reading and writing are key skills in being successful in life. Without these skills students would not be able to, or would struggle greatly to find a job or reach many other milestones in their lives. Because letter sounds play such a vital role in the reading and writing process, it is extremely important that students have a strong knowledge of letter sounds.
To learn more about the importance of alphabet knowledge please see my Literature Review
