Big Ideas in Reading: Phonemic Awareness

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Big Ideas in ReadingPhonemic Awareness

• Presented by April Kelley
• October 14th, 2009

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Phonemic AwarenessPre-test
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Learning Targets What You Should Know

• Definition of phonological awareness phonemic
  awareness (PA)
• Relation of phonological awareness to early
  reading skills
• Developmental continuum of phonological awareness
  skills
• Which phonological awareness skills are more
  important and when they should be taught

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Learning TargetsWhat You Should Be Able to Do

• Assess phonological awareness and diagnose
  difficulties
• Use a developmental continuum to select/design
  Phonological Awareness instruction
• Use the NE Language Arts Standards to assess your
  core reading program and determine appropriate
  supplemental activities

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My challenge to you

• As we work through today, always think
• What does this mean for me in my classroom?
• How might I adapt this for my grade level?

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Phonological Awareness

• Involves understanding how the sounds of spoken
• language can be segmented, combined and
• manipulated.
• Is an auditory skill that NEED NOT involve print.
• Is one strong predictor of childrens
• later reading success.

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Phonological Awareness Skills

• Easiest Hardest

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Phonological Awareness Continuum
Phoneme Blending, Segmenting, Manipulation
Onset-Rime Blending Segmenting
Phonemic Awareness
Syllable Blending Segmenting
Sentence Segmenting
Alliteration
Rhyming
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Levels of Phonological Awareness
Phonemic Awareness
Phoneme Segmenting, Blending, and Manipulation On
set-Rime Blending And Segmentation Syllable
Blending and Segmenting Sentence
Segmenting Alliteration Rhyming
Blending phonemes into words, segmenting words
into individual phonemes, and manipulating
phonemes in spoken words
Blending/segmenting the initial consonant
or Consonant cluster (onset) with or from the
vowel and consonant sounds spoken after it (rime)
Blending syllables to say words or segmenting
spoken words into syllables
Segmenting sentences into spoken words
Recognizing or saying words with common initial
sounds
Matching the ending sounds of words
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Phonological Awareness Cards

• Sorting Activity

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Phonemic Awareness

• Focus on the individual sounds (or phonemes) in
  spoken words

Phonemes are the smallest units of sound in
spoken words
/d/ /o/
/g/ 1st phoneme 2nd phoneme
3rd phoneme /sh/ /i/
/p/
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Phonemic Awareness is

• The ability to segment words into sound, blend
  them back together, and manipulate the sounds to
  make new words.
• The understanding that spoken words and syllables
  are made up of sequences of speech sounds.

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Phonemic Awareness

• PA requires the ability to attend to one sound in
  the context of other sounds in the word. Makes
  it difficult because sounds overlap and merge in
  speech.
• Not necessary to speak and understand speech, but
  children need to be aware of those small parts to
  read and spell in an alphabetic language.

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Pronunciation of Sounds
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What is a continuous sound?

• A sound that can be prolonged (stretched out)
  without distortion
• Words that begin with continuous sounds are
  easier to blend
• n r l sh m v f
• z (voiced) s(voiceless) all vowels

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What is a stop sound?

• A sound that you can not say continuously.
• g d ch b c j h k
  p x(voiced) t(voiceless)

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PA Research(thats valuable to classroom
teachers)

• PA can be taught and learned.
• PA instruction helps children learn to read.
• PA instruction helps children learn to spell.
• PA instruction is most effective when children
  are taught to manipulate phonemes by using the
  letters of the alphabet.
• PA instruction is most effective when it focuses
  on only one or two types of phoneme manipulation,
  rather than several types.

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PA Research(thats valuable to classroom
teachers)

• Children who begin school with little PA will
  have trouble acquiring the alphabetic principle
  which will, in turn, limit their ability to
  decode words. (Blachman, 1991)
• PA is teachable and promoted by attention to
  instructional variables. (Smith, 1995)

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The best predictor of reading difficulty in
kindergarten or first grade is the inability to
segment words and syllables into constituent
sounds units (phonemic awareness).
-Lyon, 1995
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Good News

• Evidence indicates that most (80-85) of children
  acquire PA by the middle first grade.
• Research also indicates that 2 of these 3 or 4
  students in each classroom who dont develop PA
  initially can develop it within a few weeks.

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Phoneme Analysis

• Segmenting tasks
• Students must say individual phonemes in a word
  or delete an initial or final sound

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Phoneme Synthesis

• Blending tasks
• Student must pronounce a word after hearing the
  segments (either individually phonemes or onsets
  and rimes)

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Performance on both segmenting and blending is
highly correlated to the acquisition of early
reading skills, although segmenting appears to be
a more complex linguistic activity.
-Perfetti, Beck, Bell, Hughes,
1987
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Phonemic Awareness Fun

• How many speech sounds are in played?
• How many speech sounds are in street?
• How many speech sounds are in though?
• What is the 3rd sound in fixed? 4th?
• Take /m/ away from time. What word do you have
  left?
• Take /p/ away from splat. What word?

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Phonemic Awareness Fun

• What is driver without the /v/?
• Say ice backwards.
• Say teach backwards.
• Say enough backwards.
• Write the letter groups that stand for each sound
  in church.
• Write the letter groups that stand for each sound
  in shrink.

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NE L.A. Standards Reading Programs

• Take the NE Language Arts Standards Or Early
  Learning Guidelines (Pre-K)
• Look through your program (using either a scope
  and sequence or actual lessons) and place a tally
  mark next to each standard every time its taught
  in the program
• Complete Activity PA Reading Program Evaluation

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Curriculum Maps

• Use as a reference to help determine a scope and
  sequence of PA skills.

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Assessing PA

• Program Assessments
• CORE Phonemic Awareness Survey
• DIBELS
• Initial Sound Fluency
• Phoneme Segmentation Fluency

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Template for Onset-Rime Blending Instruction

• Card 4

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Template for Phoneme Segmentation Instruction

• Card 5

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Template for Phoneme Segmentation Instruction

• Card 6

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Website to Find Templates

• http//csi.boisestate.edu/readingfirst/RF_Resource
  sForCoaches28InstructionalRoutineTemplates29.htm

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Phonological Awareness Packets
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Find Phonological Awareness Activitiesto
SupplementYour Core Program

• Use flags to mark your favorites!!!

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Effective Classroom Instruction includes

• Playful and game-like activities, much like
  children manipulate the language of songs, chants
  and rhymes on their own.
• Rhyming, alliteration, word games, songs and
  poetry.
• Activities that promote word play are part of a
  classroom culture - roaming around in
  phonological space.

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Critical Feature of Instruction 1

• Phonemic Awareness is a critical component of
  reading instruction but not an entire reading
  program.
• It needs to be taught explicitly, but should only
  be 10-15 minutes per day of your reading
  instruction block.

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Critical Feature of Instruction 2

• Instruction must focus on
• a few types of phonemic awareness for the highest
  payoff.
• the 2 critical skills of
• blending
• segmentation

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Critical Feature of Instruction 3

• Research has found that you get better results
  when teaching phonemic awareness to small groups
  of children rather than an entire class.

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Critical Feature of Instruction 4

• Phonemic awareness needs to be taught explicitly.
• The instructional program must show children what
  they are expected to do.
• Teachers must model skills they want children to
  perform before the children are asked to
  demonstrate the skill.

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Critical Feature of Instruction 5

• Teachers increase effectiveness when the
  manipulation of letters is added to phonemic
  awareness tasks.
• Phonemic awareness is an auditory skill, but once
  children start to become familiar with the
  concept, teachers can introduce letter tiles or
  squares and manipulate them to form sounds and
  words.

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Phonemic AwarenessPre-test
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Additional Resources
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Questions???

• THANK YOU!!!