Nonsense Word Fluency
Incremental Rehearsal (from Intervention Central and submitted by Cindy Thompson)
Incremental rehearsal builds student fluency by pairing unknown items with a steadily
increasing collection of known items. This intervention makes use of concentrated practice to
promote fluency and guarantees that the student will experience
a high rate of success.
Materials: Index cards & pen/marker
Steps to Implementing This Intervention:
•
On individual index cards, the teacher writes down each nonsense word that a student is
expected to decode. The following words are taken from the fall administration of
AIMSWeb and should be used following the fall AIMSWeb probe. When a student has
mastered all of these, the teacher should add appropriate grade-level words to see if the
student has mastered nonsense word fluency.
im
des
vok
loz
jem
iv
sej
jid
jok
kul
rak
reg
pon
zon
lik
kep
yoc
aj
vuz
doz
zij
bal
kak
kod
bub
wob
yem
sal
mam
yob
wuk
fil
sem
tod
fim
fuf
nak
hip
zeb
tuj
det
luc
rud
mol
zez
zis
nib
jut
pob
bef
um
lis
yit
vuc
bof
beb
rom
hon
jal
tup
zec
tat
lut
zuf
vez
ses
wil
doc
os
vus
pog
kac
pav
tal
sup
• The teacher/tutor reviews the collection of index cards with the student.
a) Any of the words that the student can decode orally within five seconds are
considered to be known and are separated into one pile.
b) Words that the student cannot yet decode within five seconds are considered
'unknown' and collected in a second pile -- the 'unknown word’ deck.
• The teacher/tutor next randomly selects 9 cards from the pile of known words (if there
are at least 9 known words; if not, select all of the known words) and sets this subset of
cards aside as the 'known' deck. The rest of the pile of cards containing known words is
put away ('discard deck'), not to be used further in this intervention.
Each day of the intervention the tutor follows an incremental-rehearsal sequence:
•
•
•
•
•
First, the tutor takes a single card from the 'unknown words' deck, decodes the word on
the card aloud and then prompts the student to decode the word.
Next, the tutor takes a card from the 'known words’ deck and pairs it with the unknown
word. When shown the two cards in sequence, the student is asked to decode each word.
a) The student is judged to be successful if he or she orally decodes each word within 5
seconds. If the student commits an error on any card or hesitates for longer than five
seconds, the tutor decodes the word on the card aloud, then prompts the student to
decode the same word.
b) This review sequence continues until the student decodes the words on both cards
within five seconds each without errors.
The tutor repeats the sequence--taking yet another card from the 'unknown words' deck to
add to the expanding collection of words being reviewed ('review deck'). Each time, the
tutor prompts the student to decode the whole series of words in the review deck,
beginning with the unknown and then moving through the growing series of known
words that follow it.
When the review deck has expanded to include one 'unknown' word followed by nine
'known' words (a ratio of 90 percent 'known' material to 10 percent 'unknown' material),
one of the original 'known' words is discarded (put away with the 'discard deck').
The student is then presented with a word taken from the ‘unknown' deck. With each new
'unknown', the review sequence is again repeated as described above until all words are
decoded correctly.