Using KPALS as a Tier-1 Intervention with Diverse Kindergarten Learners
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Resourceful Research
I am the Instructional Facilitator at Indian Trails Elementary School in the Fort Osage School District in Independence, MO. Previously, I taught kindergarten for 6 years in North Kansas City. Literacy is my passion! I have always been interested in the best, most effective ways to teach kindergarten students how to read. This is a struggle for kindergarten teachers for two reasons. First, kindergarten students come to school with a wide range of abilities. Some students are already reading grade-level text and higher, and some students have not yet learned how to hold a pencil or read and write their own name. Every primary and early childhood teacher can relate to this frustration. Second, with the rapidly increasing demands of our young children to read, we need to find effective and efficient research-based strategies to use in our instruction, so we can do everything in our power to get them reading at grade level or above between August and May, no matter how equipped they are when they enter our classrooms.
It wasn't until I completed my Education Specialist in Language and Literacy at the University of Missouri Kansas City that I actually had time (and an assignment) to explore some research questions of my own that had always interested me. As a classroom teacher, I thought a lot about my students' individual needs and used their data to reach them in Tier 1, Tier 2, and sometimes Tier 3 instruction (Response to Intervention (RTI) model). When students come to Kindergarten, our first job in the building blocks of literacy is to introduce, teach, and apply alphabet, phonics, and phonemic awareness knowledge and skills. This should be done quickly, yet efficiently, so students can take off in their reading and soar early in the school year. I needed my students to master alphabetic and phonics knowledge, and I needed them to do it quickly. I wanted to see how their rate of letter and sound acquisition would be affected if I used one of my favorite Tier 2 RTI programs in a whole group, Tier 1 setting. Therefore, I taught Kindergarten Peer Assisted Learning (KPALS) in the whole group, Tier 1 setting in addition to core ELA instruction.
The following article is the result of my research. It explores the effectiveness of KPALS in a Tier 1 setting by comparing the rate of letter and sound acquisition of two Pre-K summer school classes. One class received core ELA instruction, while the other class received the same core ELA instruction as well as 30 minutes of KPALS instruction daily. I was pleased to see the positive results of this program as a proactive measure, rather than a Tier 2 intervention. I hope you can appreciate the findings as much as I did and walk away from this article with some ideas for your own classroom. Enjoy!
Topic
Using KPALS as a Tier-1 Intervention with Diverse Kindergarten Learners
by Research in Reading Award Winner Kristi Odell
Kristi Odell is the Instructional Facilitator at Indian Trails Elementary School in Fort Osage, MO. She received her Educational Specialist degree in Literacy from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.