Students were pretested before each interval’s onset to determine baseline
understanding of each targeted word, using study-created instrumentation for each
interval. The study-created instrumentation combined receptive and expressive
vocabulary measures to best meet the needs of young children. Each interval-specific
form of the instrument was iteratively adapted for improved student understanding
throughout the intervention. Then each child was posttested with the same
instrumentation after each interval to determine growth after instruction. Dependent t-test
results were favorable; students deeply learned the targeted vocabulary words. Although
the results of formative research are not largely generalizable, these results suggest that a
more thorough investigation of the instructional techniques implemented is warranted.