WHY? Because of students like Vivian1, a sweet , outgoing Kindergarten student with whom I worked a few years ago. Her classroom teacher was teaching and reviewing letter names and sounds; and I was working with Vivian in a small group twice a week, but she still could not retain letter names and sounds for all but one or two letters. Even these few letters sounds, she identified hesitantly. I eventually started seeing her one-on-one because she could not keep up with the other students in the group. Vivian was able to learn and repeat a letter-sound correspondence during a lesson and at the end of a lesson, but by the next day, she could not remember what had been learned the previous day. It seemed like a vicious cycle that kept her from progressing.
Vivian wasn’t the first student I had encountered who had this issue of learning something in the moment, but then not being able to recall it the next day. Each year there seemed to be a few students in each class who fell behind even with small group support a few times a week and the use of research-based programs. I always wondered if there was some strategy, some method that could help these students better retain information. Then, last fall, I came across a post on the UFLI Foundations Facebook page that described exactly this problem:
Among other replies to this post, was the following one from Dr. Matt Burns:
I was intrigued. I printed the recommended article by Peterson et al. (2014)2 and read it through. I was amazed that not only was Incremental Rehearsal (IR) an evidence-based method, but it had been successfully implemented with English Language Learners (ELLs) in letter sound learning as well. The ELLs in this particular study spoke, Hmong, Spanish and Polish; therefore a variety of languages were represented and it was successful for all three students who participated. These students had been chosen for the study because they were below benchmark for letter sound learning by January in Kindergarten. All three students received one-on-one IR intervention, three times a week for 10-15 minutes each time.
After eight weeks of intervention, all three students were at benchmark for letter sound fluency! Not only that, “intervention effects in letter-sound fluency were maintained over three weeks after intervention was terminated. (p.105)” IR not only helped students remember facts such as letter sound for a few days, but even weeks after the intervention.
I decided to try IR with some of my students who were were having similar problems with recalling taught letter sound correspondences even with additional, whole class practice 2-3 times a day. Incredibly, IR was effective with all the students who received it as an intervention. Each student showed accelerated growth in letter sound knowledge when they received IR three times a week in addition to effective classroom (Tier 1) instruction, using research-based resources! I used the ONlit Mnemonic Alphabet cards which are double-sided and allow for fading of the picture scaffold. Classroom Teachers used the same ONlit Mnemonic Alphabet cards to review letters 2-3times a day and the UFLI Foundations curriculum for phonics lessons.
Why is this such a big deal? Why is it so important for students to gain automaticity with letter-sound correspondences?
In order for students to be able to apply letter-sound knowledge to decoding words and connected text, students must be accurate and fluent with all taught letter sounds. If it takes a student even a few seconds to recall each sound in a CVC word such as “sit” accurately, it will be difficult for the student to decode the word because so much cognitive energy and focus is required just to remember the sound of each letter; never mind also blending the three sounds into a word, recognizing the word and connecting it to meaning. This can also be seen in the Instructional Hierarchy Model below. Students need to acquire new knowledge (in this case letter sounds) and become fluent with that new knowledge in order to apply it to a new context (in this case blending sounds into words).
When students can learn the information, but can not remember it the next day,
these students need more frequent practice – more opportunities to retrieve the information they have learned.
Incremental Rehearsal (IR) provides this additional, interleaved practice.
HOW? To begin with, I highly recommend you read the study by Peterson et al. (2014) for yourself (see footnote 2). It is a nine page read and will leave you excited to try out Incremental Rehearsal (IR)! However, you will also need to know which letter-sound correspondences your students know and whether they know them to automaticity. For this purpose, I’ve developed a tracking sheet that allows me to see a whole class’s data on one spreadsheet. Since we use the UFLI curriculum, the spreadsheet follows the UFLI Scope & Sequence. I am also mainly concerned with lowercase letters since the majority of print that students will see is lowercase, as such, I use lowercase letters for this assessment.
1. Assess your students’ letter-sound knowledge. Print out the Whole Class Spreadsheet for Letter Sounds (above) and write out all your students’ first names in the left column in pen. The letters across the top follow the UFLI scope & sequence and will make it easier for you to prioritize IR for students who do not yet have automaticity with letters sounds taught earlier in the scope & sequence. (If you use a different evidence-based phonics program, you would want to adjust this assessment sheet to align with that program’s scope & sequence.) Assess each student individually, making sure to mark each box in one of three ways:
- an “X” across a box indicates that the student responded with the letter sound with automaticity, the student did not need to think about it
- a “/” across a box indicates that the student gave an accurate response, but it took more than 2 seconds for them respond or they responded in a hesitant manner, unsure of their answer
- a blank box indicates that the student did not know the sound or gave an incorrect response. If it is helpful to know the incorrect response, (ie student said /h/ for /n/, as this provides insight for instruction), then note it in the box.
Highlight all the blank boxes AND boxes with “/” in yellow highlighter. All the blank boxes (or those with an incorrect response noted) indicate all the letters that require more instruction. All the boxes with a “/” show all the letters that require more practice in order to gain automaticity. Here is an example:
Shown above is the spreadsheet for one of my gr. 1 classes from the beginning of year assessment which was done at the end of September/beginning October. I’ve removed the names of the students and the teacher for anonymity. You can see all the letters sounds already mastered marked by an “X”, the blank squares and those with a slash “/” are highlighted yellow to show where instruction and practice are still needed.
Since the end of September, this teacher has been teaching and reviewing letter sounds (beginning of grade 1) at the pace of one letter a day, using a selection of the Day 1 and Day 2 UFLI routines. She has also been using the ONlit Mnemonic Letter Cards to practice all taught letter names and sounds an additional 2-3 times a day. At the end of October, I followed up with all the students who had a yellow box highlighted in the High Utility Letters (HUL), the first nine letters in the scope & sequence. The HUL which were now fluent, I marked with an “X” over the yellow box and then highlighted green. This allows me to see when they were mastered, 31 OCT 2025.
Above, we can see that students #13 M. and #22 K. have not still not mastered all the High Utility Letters (HUL). These are the students who are ideal candidates for IR because the high quality and evidence-based classroom instruction and review have not been sufficient and they require more instruction and/or practice. #13 M. is accurate, but requires more practice to become fluent. #22 K. gave an incorrect response and needs instruction and practice.
*Be strategic. This teacher was already teaching /e/ when I assessed the HUL. I did not bother to assess further at this point because I had already found the students who would benefit from IR the most. Had all students mastered the HUL, I would have assessed any Mid-Utility Letters (MUL) that had been already taught to see which students, if any, were falling behind.
2. Materials. You will need a set of lowercase letter cards such as the ones from ONlit. I find these are ideal because I can prompt the student to recall the picture cue on the opposite side of the plain letter and quickly flip the card to jog the student’s memory if needed. I find it helpful to organize the letter cards according to the scope and sequence and group them by High Utility Letters (HUL), Mid-Utility Letters (MUL), and Low Utility Letters (LUL). These groups of letters are divided by a bold line on the spreadsheet above. I find these groupings easy to use for the Letter Sound Assessment and Incremental Rehearsal, so I always keep a set organized in this format: a-o, d-r, l-z
You also need a way of recording what you do during your Incremental Rehearsal (IR) session so that you can track how often you work with the student and what kind of progress they are making. For example, they may be able to tell you a letter sound after an IR session, but you need to be able to follow up next time to see if they have retained it. Sometimes you will practice the same letter sound two or three sessions in a row, so you don’t want to mark it as a ‘known’ sound before the student is able to recall it fluently on several separate occasions.
You can simply record what you do on a sheet of paper, however, as I work with three gr. 1 classes, I find it easiest to track IR sessions and progress on a Word Document. This also allows me to share the document with the Classroom Teacher and Learner Support Teacher. When I have an IR block in my schedule, I grab my cards and my laptop and I am ready to work with students and record what we practice and any observations.
In the Word IR Document above, you can see that I have started working with M. and K. using IR and I can track their progress from session to session.
One of the things I really appreciate about IR is that it always starts with an assessment. As a result, I always know that I am working on just the right thing for my students. This is especially true because I prioritize letters according to the UFLI scope & sequence.
3. Set aside short blocks of time, 5-10 minutes, three or more times a week for IR. During this time you will pull individual students to implement the IR procedure. Times when students are normally independent such as snack time, play time, or soft start are ideal.
4. Incremental Rehearsal Procedure. Each time you work with a student, you will:
- Assess known and unknown letter sounds until you reach 6 (or more) known letter sounds and 1 unknown.
- Interleave the 1 unknown letter card with the 6 known letter cards to build an increasingly larger recall gap. First 1 known card, then 2 known cards, then 3 known cards, then 4 known cards, then 5 known cards, and finally 6 known cards in between the unknown letter. See the video example below. It shows both the assessment and practice with first disfluent (unknown) letter sound.
Next, add another unknown letter sound if student stamina permits.
- Add 1 additional unknown letter sound and repeat the IR procedure above.
- Continue to add one unknown letter at a time if the student continues to answer correctly and stamina permits.
- Stop once student has made any 3 errors. These can be errors with letters that were knowns or unknowns. Errors indicate that a student has reached their cognitive limit for the session. The video below shows adding a second unknown sound.
On occasion, it is possible that a student needs a slower pace of Incremental Rehearsal. In this case, it is possible to slow down the pace by interleaving the unknown letter with the 6 known letters more frequently. See the video below for an example of this:
The video below is from Dr. Matt Burns and shows one of his doctoral students modeling IR for a student working on fluency with High Frequency Words.
HOT TIP: As you can see in the video above from Matt Burns, IR can be used in various applications where items need to be memorized. This can be High Frequency Words that have already been orthographically mapped in instruction, or even math facts. Matt Burns has a number videos of these different IR applications on his Youtube Channel.
5. If your student does not yet know 6 letter sounds, you can use picture cards. Even if your student isn’t fluent with 6 letter sounds yet, you can substitute picture cards for any number of the 6 ‘knowns’. The only consideration here is that the picture card elicits a fluent response. These can be simply colour cards or popular children’s characters.
HOT TIP: I find it easiest to use stickers to create these cards.
HOT TIP: When working with a student who has less than 6 ‘knowns’, lay out a variety of picture/colour cards and ask your student to choose some favourites. Use them in IR mixed in with the other known cards to make a total of 6 knowns.
Recently, I was working with a student who was not very motivated to learn. The simple addition of a few of these cards put a smile on his face. He chose Spiderman, blue and red. I intermingled these three ‘known’ cards with three known High Frequency Words and he had a smile on his face the whole time we practiced. WIN!
Learn from my mistakes. I have been using IR with students who have a hard time recalling letter sounds for two years now and have not encountered a student for whom the procedure did not work to improve recall and fluency! However, when I first started, I spread myself too thin and tried to do IR with too many students and was only able to practice with students once or twice a week. IR was not very successful in this context. When I revisited the parameters of the study, I noticed that IR was used with students 3 times a week. I have learned that it is more important to focus on adding extra retrieval practice for the whole class first and then see which students need even more instruction/practice. When you are able to narrow it down to 2-4 students, and use IR with them minimum 3x a week, it is a very effective intervention for learning facts such as letter sounds!
Possible Extension. Last year I worked with a K teacher who would also use IR whole class when she introduced a new letter. She felt it was quite successful. If you want to try this out, I suggest putting a clipboard or whiteboard on your lap to hold the cards that you put down.
If you try out Incremental Rehearsal, let me know how it goes! It has been a game changer for my literacy work with students.
Footnotes
- Student’s name and picture has been altered to preserve privacy. ↩︎
- Peterson, M., Brandes, D., Kunkel, A., Wilson, J., Rahn, N. L., Egan, A., McComas, J. (2014). Teaching Letter Sounds to Kindergarten English Language Learners Using Incremental Rehearsal. Journal of School Psychology, 52, 97-107. ↩︎
