Literacy is an essential skill for life, as well as an academic skill with a basis in language. Children who have language disorders face unique challenges in accessing literacy instruction when they have difficulty understanding the language concepts used in instruction. The purpose of this investigation was to explore whether early literacy performance as measured by the DIBELS FSF would significantly improve after participants received language therapy to remediate deficits in the basic concept vocabulary pair first/last, as compared to the baseline. This investigation used a single-case research design in the form of a multiple baseline across participants. Three participants with educationally relevant language deficits and Tier 3 reading support were recruited, and two participants completed the intervention addressing basic concept vocabulary. Both participants displayed statistically significant gains in scores on the DIBELS FSF following intervention as determined by the Two Standard Deviation Band method (Portney & Watkins, 2015); however, neither participant displayed a statistically significant gain in basic concept performance as measured by a researcher-made probe. The PND was 75% for the participant “Benjamin,” and 100% for the participant “Carlos.” These findings demonstrated that addressing basic concept vocabulary for children in the primary grades with language disorder and literacy needs may be beneficial in improving early literacy performance. Further research is needed to more thoroughly explore the relationship between basic concept vocabulary and early literacy performance.
