Positive effects of the Letterland curriculum on kindergarteners’ word reading skills and engagement behaviors: A comparison of two programs

Learning to read words is a major educational goal for children. This quasi-experimental study compared two kindergarten programs on the early word reading skills and engagement during literacy instruction of 258 kindergarten children. Six matched schools were assigned to the Letterland program or a structured literacy program. Children received 30–45 min of daily instruction in phonemic awareness, letter names and sounds, and word decoding. Regular classroom teachers implemented the instruction. Word reading instruction differed primarily in the use of characters whose character image contained letter forms while plain letters with a separate keyword were used in the structured literacy program. Children in both groups made significant gains on beginning reading skills. Letterland children made greater gains on letter sound fluency, with educationally meaningful differences on phonemic segmentation fluency and word decoding fluency. Letterland participants’ engagement during instruction was rated higher by teachers than was structured literacy program participants’.