The effect of teaching early grade reading components on first graders letter word reading competency: Gish abay general primary school, west Gojjam, Ethiopia

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of teaching early grade reading components on first graders’ letter word reading competency. For this study, quasi-experimental research design was employed. Participants of the study were selected using group identification test and simple random sampling technique from the selected primary school. Pretest was administered to 50 students to check whether participants of the study were found at equal performance in letter word reading competency or not. The results of the pre-test revealed that all the participants of the study were found at equal performance. Hence, 25 students were assigned in the experimental group, and the other 25 students were assigned in the control group. Data were collected with pre and posttests, and analyzed using T- test. After the intervention, the independent T- test results from the post-test indicated that the performance of the students in the experimental group was found to be statistically significant in all early grade-reading components. However, the result of paired T- test in the control group indicates that there was no a statistically significant difference between the pre and post test. Therefore, teaching early grade reading components with explicit instruction enable first graders to improve their letter word-reading competency.