Literature Review
Typical literacy instruction in an early elementary classroom involves the use of auditory and visual stimuli. This method has proved successful for many children. However, the English language is one of exceptions rather than rules, with forty-five sounds associated with twenty-six letters. The accumulation of this sound/letter information may be very confusing to some children. What would happen if gestures, namely hand shapes, were added to that instruction? Would the storage of that information become more efficient? Would the retrieval become more accurate?
There is some evidence which suggests that gestures, used in conjunction with typical instruction, tend to promote learning (Cook & Goldin-Meadow, 2006). Novak, et al (2016) additionally infer that learners are more likely to profit from instruction when it is accompanied by gestures. Measurement of learning was done following instruction in algebra problem-solving. Students recalled more of the process to solve equations when instruction was accompanied with gesture.
See the Sound/Visual Phonics (STS/VP) can be viewed as a gestural system. Hand shapes are used to represent letter or letter combinations within the context of a word. In addition, written symbols are used as cuing mechanisms for spelling. We are in the process of gathering information about the use of STS/VP as an adjunct to literacy instruction, using both published and unpublished sources (Knox, et al, 2017).
There is, in addition, anecdotal information attesting to the veracity of STS/VP use with a variety of children with a variety of challenges. These include children who are hard of hearing or deaf (Trezek, Wang, Woods, Gampp, & Paul, 2007, for example), staffed into a special education setting (Atkinson-Cornwaite, 2012, for example), or have communication challenges (Dyke, Gergits, Veale, Anthony, & Smitley, 2009, for example).
We were able to find several papers, combined with our own research, which reported data gathered from the use of STS/VP with children in regular education. Especially interesting to this project were those studies dealing with preschool to first grade students, who were reportedly not at risk for reading problems. The studies varied in design, length of treatment, and use of controls. We were able to secure both published and unpublished material.
Slauson & Carrier (1992) reported results of a randomized controlled experiment involving forty kindergarten children. Thirty-two of the children were categorized as being “advanced” or “typically” developing, according to a district test. These children were randomly assigned to either a group receiving STS/VP as part of their literacy instruction, or to a group where this was not the case. The classroom teacher provided literacy instruction to both groups. The Woodcock-Johnson Revised Achievement Test was administered to all students at the end of the school year. Analysis of the results indicated an overall trend toward greater progress by students who were “taught STS hand signs, with the typical students improving most.” (Slauson & Carrier, p.3).
Haarstad (2010) was a first-grade teacher in Minnesota. She divided her class of twenty students into three groups at the beginning of the school year. The groups were categorized as being upper, beginning, and nonreaders, based on her own assessment. She used a combination of daily phonics and STS/VP throughout the first semester of the school year. At the end of the semester she administered a posttest involving phonemic awareness skills, letter/sound knowledge, and vocabulary. The results of this descriptive study indicated enhanced improvement for all groups compared to previous years when STS/VP was not used.
Marron (2010), in a correlational study, used STS/VP to augment literacy instruction with three kindergarten students. Her program only lasted two weeks, consisting of literacy instruction using wordless books. In the end the children wrote the text to the books. Analysis consisted of comparisons of pre- and posttest results from both Dibels and a CBM probes. She did not characterize the results of these measures in terms of STS/VP use.
Carlson and Sorensen (2010) supplemented literacy instruction with STS/VP use with one preschool student. They used a multiple baseline design for this single-subject study, which lasted six weeks. They analyzed their data in terms of percent gains in sound segmentation and sound blending skills. They concluded that the greatest gains seemed to be in sound blending skills.
Meier, et al (2012) used retrospective data on literacy assessments done with two groups of kindergarten students. One group was in a classroom where the teacher did incorporate STS/VP into her literacy instruction. The other group was in a classroom where the teacher did not use this adjunctive instructional procedure. Data was gathered from phonemic awareness and CBM assessments which had been administered at the beginning and at the end of the school year. The differences were very minimal but did trend towards the children from the STS/VP group being at a higher reading level at the end of kindergarten compared to the other class.
Knox & Krupke (2015) have completed a year-long, random-controlled treatment study, comparing the single-word decoding abilities of two randomly-assigned groups of first grade students. On group was in a classroom where STS/VP was used. The other group did not use this technique. Probes were devised to measure progress in the acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of sound/letter information, using the District-mandated spelling program. Results did indicate that the children in the STS/VP group did have higher accuracy of correct identification of words. This was true for the whole group, for gender, and for literacy group enrollment. Plans are in progress for enrolling additional subjects to this research, as well as subject these data to statistical analyses.
The above review suggests that the addition of STS/VP to literacy instruction may enhance that instruction. This is probably more likely to happen during the early stages of literacy acquisition. Yet, what would be the long-range effect of STS/VP exposure? If first grade students could benefit from the addition of STS/VP in their classroom, would there be any carry-over effect to second grade literacy?