ASHA 2011 A Phase I Steppingstones of Innovative Technology Grant Awarded to the Center for Literacy & Disability Studies, UNC-­‐CH A collaboration with Don Johnston, Inc. Penny Hatch, Ph.D. Karen Erickson, Ph.D. Kristin Nellenbach, Ph.D. Goals of Big Words
Big Words is a Phase I Steppingstones grant awarded to the
Center for Literacy & Disability Studies at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The primary goals of Big
Words were to:
(1) Develop an innovative, software program designed
to teach students how to decode novel,
polysyllabic words.
(2) Investigate the effectiveness of the resulting Big Words
program.
Big Words ASHA 2011 Lesson Content
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The Big Words software was developed using empirically
based information to guide the selection of targeted words
and morphemes.
• 
The sequence of lessons progresses in order of increasing
semantic transparency beginning first with nouns, then
verbs, and finally adjectives.
• 
Affixes are sequenced based on their frequency of
occurrence in written English. Thirty-six affixes were taught
in order of frequency with the most frequent prefixes (un, re,
in, dis) and suffixes (s, es, ed, ing) introduced first.
Lesson Content
•  Targeted Skills
•  In Phase I, 40 lessons were developed for Big
Words that targeted five specific skills:
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
Big Words (1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
The pronunciation of the morphemes.
Stripping and adding affixes to base words.
Building polysyllabic words.
Decomposing words to complete sentences.
Deriving words to complete sentences.
ASHA 2011 Lesson Content
•  SIX TYPES OF ACTIVITIES
•  (1) Spell Binder-Derive the appropriate form of a given root word to
complete a sentence.
•  (2) Alphabet Soup-Make as many words as possible from banks of prefixes,
suffixes,
• 
and root words.
•  (3) Word Builder-Select an appropriate root word and affix(es) to complete a
sentence.
•  (4) Slice and Dice-Use morphemes from two or more words to spell a new
word that
• 
completes a sentence.
•  (5) Sorting-Sort words created in each of the previous activities based on
the derivation
• 
that was made.
•  (6) Text Tiles-Make as many words as possible from the letters comprising a
polysyllabic word.
Research Methods
There were two separate investigations employed to determine the effectiveness of the
Big Words software program on students’ abilities to decode polysyllabic words:
(1) A randomized clinical trial involving 68 children in grades 3-5.
(2) A pre-experimental, single group pretest/posttest investigation with 10 students in
grades 6-8.
Both studies employed Carlisle’s (2004) measure of morphological awareness in
addition to reading comprehension as dependent variables with screening and selection
procedures to insure students had adequate word reading (at least 2nd grade) and
receptive vocabulary (within 1.5 standard deviations of age norms) to benefit from Big
Words instruction. In addition to completing the tests of morphological awareness, the
middle school students completed a standardized measure of reading at pretest and
posttest (Woodcock Reading Mastery Test-Revised/Normative Update, 1998) in order to
determine its usefulness in the proposed Phase II investigation. Members of the
research team individually administered all screening and pre/posttests to each
participant.
Big Words ASHA 2011 Research Methods
•  Elementary School. 68 students in grades 3-5 from one public elementary
school located in the Southeastern U.S. participated.
• 
Students were randomly assigned to intervention (i.e., Big Words
program) or control (i.e., business as usual reading and writing) using
stratified random sampling to insure equal representation of students in
grade 3 (n=12), 4 (n=21), and 5 (n=25) in each group.
• 
Elementary grade students in the intervention group worked on the Big
Words software in the school’s computer lab for 30 minutes first thing
each day for 8 weeks while students in the control group remained in their
classrooms completing business-as-usual reading and writing instruction.
Students using Big Words completed 36 lessons.
Research Methods
•  Middle School. 13 students in grades 6-8 from one
middle school, located within the same district and
region as the elementary school participated. Due to
external limitations (i.e., inclement weather, student
tardiness/absences, 4-days per week of intervention vs.
the scheduled 5), the group only completed 32 lessons,
with 10 of the 13 student participants completing all 32
lessons and post-testing before the winter break.
Big Words ASHA 2011 Research Results
•  Elementary School. Analysis of the pre- and post-tests
revealed gain scores for participants in the intervention group
on both tests of morphological awareness were greater than
gains for students in the control group.
•  Comparing the mean gains using independent samples ttests yielded no significant differences on the derivation test t
(65) = -1.035, p > .05, but the differences were significant for
the decomposition test t(65) = -2.749, p < .05.
•  The effect size given the mean gain on the combined scores
on the measures of derivation and decomposition was d = .
446.
Research Results
•  Middle School. Analysis of the pre- and posttests administered to
the 10 students in grades 6-8 revealed small, but significant gains
between pretest and posttest scores across all measures. Onetailed paired samples t-tests were conducted to determine if the 10
students made significant gains from pretest to posttest across
four measures.
•  There were significant differences from pre to post on the Word
Test (Carlisle, 2000), t=(9), = 3.375, p = .004 and the combined
decomposition and derivation Test of Morphological Structure
(Carlisle), t(9) = 5.964, p = .000. Students’ performance on the
WRMT-R/NU revealed small, but significant gains from pretest to
posttest, t(9) = 3.018, p= .007.
Big Words