Effects of naturalistic instruction on phonological awareness skills of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Six preschoolers with intellectual or developmental disabilities played in their regular classroom.

While they played, staff slipped in quick phonological awareness games.

For example, during block play the teacher said, “Let’s find things that start with /b/.”

The team tracked each child’s skill growth across three sound tasks using a multiple-baseline design.

Every child learned the targeted skills once the play-based teaching started.

No child needed extra tabletop drills or flashcards.

Skills held steady two weeks later.

Wunderlich et al. (2017) also taught pre-reading skills to preschoolers with DD/ASD.

They used short discrete trials at a table and still saw strong generalization.

Berkovits et al. (2014) show you can get the same gains without ever leaving the toy area.

Grow et al. (2017) likewise embedded extra learning into play, but they added instructive feedback during tact trials.

Together these papers line up: play settings can carry heavy teaching loads.

You can drop phonological awareness goals into free-play centers tomorrow.

No new materials are needed—just scripted comments and questions.

Try it during kitchen, blocks, or toy cars.

Track the child’s responses on a sticky note.

If growth is flat after a week, add clearer models or peer models, then keep playing.