Assessing Response to Basic Concept Instruction: Preliminary Evidence With Children Who Are Deaf

Research has demonstrated that academic success is significantly related to word knowledge. Basic concept words are important because of their use in classroom directions and assessment instructions. It is important that educators assess a child’s understanding of basic concept vocabulary at school entry. For children who demonstrate basic concept deficits, progress monitoring is needed to make certain that they acquire these vocabulary items through instruction. This preliminary study used a single-participant design to determine whether an experimental basic concept–curriculum based measure (BC-CBM) was able to accurately assess and monitor progress in basic concept acquisition as a result of instruction. Four children who were deaf or hard of hearing (M age = 4 years 6 months) participated in the experiment. Results revealed that the BC-CBM scores improved during intervention. The results of this experiment provide evidence to support the development of additional larger scale field-testing of the BC-CBM.