Running Head: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 1

Literacy Case Study:

Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo

Kathryn H. Spalding

Michigan State University

Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 2

Background Information

At the age of eight, Milo is a boy who, at first glance, seemed uninterested in many of the

books on my classroom shelf. Upon learning more about him, however, I began to realize that it

is not that he is uninterested in the stories, but that he is unable to read them. School has been

trying for Milo. He repeated kindergarten in his initial elementary school building and remained

there throughout first grade as well, receiving additional services for speech (articulation and

grammar). He thereafter moved into our district for his Second Grade school year, entering

below grade-level in reading and math. Milo started his second grade year at a beginning-of-

first-grade reading level (reading at a DRA level of 3, when we look for a reading level 18 in the

fall), and has progressed to fluently reading a DRA level of 10 thus far (a mid-year first-grade

level), when we are looking for a level 28 by the end of second grade. His fluency scores (via

AIMSWEB) fell well below grade level as well, with Milo reading 14 words per minute with

60.87% accuracy (whereas the benchmark goal remains 80 words per minute), calling for Milo to

have an IRIP (Individualized Reading Improvement Plan) in place as required by the State of

Michigan. Milo’s NWEA state test scores also depicted Milo’s need for intensive, remedial

literacy instruction, as he fell within the 3rd percentile for reading, with an overall score of 161,

when the second grade benchmark remains a score of 18l.

Realizing Milo’s need to make an immense jump in his reading development, I began to

dig into what might help him become more successful as he learns to read. First, I had to capture

a picture of his strengths in order to use those as starting point for targeted lessons. Formative

data collected during quick checks and mini-lessons throughout the year helped me realize that

Milo performs well when working with short vowels most of the time, he can decode CVC

words, and he often realizes that “the sneaky, silent e makes the vowel say its name” in CVCe
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 3

words, with reminders. We have worked on segmenting and blending previously which has

equipped him to listen for individual phonemes in one-syllable words. He does want to learn,

and he tries very hard when he is encouraged, but seems overwhelmed, at times, by the variety of

activities used to promote phonemic awareness and the complexity of the progression of phonics.

Although I realize the many strengths Milo does have, I thereafter had to face his deficits

in order to conclude what practices of instruction might benefit him most in the future. Again, I

began to think back to many of the mini-lessons in which Milo and I have worked together, and

spent time reviewing some of the formative assessment data that I had collected throughout the

year. First, while looking over running records, I took note of Milo’s tendency to omit inflected

endings as he does not use them when he speaks. While reviewing these tests, I also noticed that

Milo could still use some support within the realm of phonemic awareness and phonics. He

struggles quite a bit with recoding phonemes, as, at times, he segments phonemes within words

to the best of his ability, but would blend entirely different phonemes into the final production of

those words.

It is clear that Milo could use quite a bit of work geared towards segmenting and

blending at this time. The importance of this ability is described within Chapter 8 of Gambrell &

Morrow’s Best Practices of Literacy Instruction (Fifth Edition), in which the author states,

“Phonemic awareness is one of the best predictors of success in learning to read.” (Cunningham,

2015). Keeping this predictor in mind, I took note of Milo’s struggles during previous mini-

lessons and decided that he desperately needed targeted lessons to help him slow down and

recognize the importance of each individual phoneme in the words he reads.

Apart from phonemic awareness, there remain many missing tools in Milo’s reading

toolbox. When it comes to phonics, for instance, Milo has yet to discover many spelling patterns
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 4

beyond basic short and long vowels, as I have heard when he tries to segment and blend new

words back together. I also noticed his tendency to produce the sounds of each individual vowel

rather than allowing them to work together as “vowel teams” or diphthongs. Finally, I have

noticed that Milo often completely overlooks the medial vowels, focusing on the initial and final

consonants, and thereafter taking his best guess, leading me to believe that he might benefit from

additional time spent isolating phonemes to stress the importance of each one. Within the

Reading Rockets article entitled, “Why Phonological Awareness is Important for Reading and

Spelling,” the authors summarize the importance of phonological awareness by stating that “…at

least 80 percent of all poor readers are estimated to demonstrate a weakness in phonological

awareness and/or phonological memory.” (Moats & Tolman, 2009). Realizing that Milo does

lack essential skills within the umbrella of phonological awareness, I decided to focus further

assessment on his ability to decode unknown words while paying particular attention to the ways

in which he would attempt to produce individual letter sounds correctly as he reads words aloud.

Pre-Assessment

Although I had Milo’s basic needs in mind, I knew the first step in identifying where to

start with tailored phonemic awareness and phonics instruction consisted of administering a

couple of different targeted phonics screeners. First, I chose to give Milo the Non-Word

Reading Test (artifact 4). This assessment remained very useful in testing Milo’s basic

knowledge of phonics without the results being swayed by his knowledge of a word he might

already know by sight. From the start, however, the test seemed arduous for Milo. Sometimes, I

would hear him producing all of the correct phonemes, but when he would go back to blend the

sounds together to recode the nonsense word, an entirely different sound would come out. I

gathered that at other times, he would either neglect his medial vowels or initial consonant
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 5

blends, or both. For instance, when asked to read the word “cread”, Milo sounded out /c/ /r/ /e/

/d/ and then stated, “chad”. Another time, he was asked to read “sworf” and stated “shof”. This

made it clear to me that he was either peeking at the beginning and ending sounds and blurting

out a corresponding non-sense word, or he was taking the time to sound out each of the

phonemes but then forgetting to include the medial vowels as he reproduced the word. In a third

instance, Milo was asked to read the word “plood” and stated, “pod” (with a short o sound). This

information, along with other words found on The Non-Word Reading Test, gave me the insight

that Milo could really use some assistance with the amount of attention he was paying to his

initial consonant blends. It also led me to believe that he relied heavily on short vowel sounds

and would need future lessons that included work with medial “vowel teams” as well as work

with differentiating between long and short vowel sounds.

Next, I tested Milo’s phonics abilities by administering both the Names and Early Names

Tests (artifacts 6 & 8). These assessments allowed me to test Milo’s set of basic phonics skills in

a less awkward context than the Non-Word Reading Test, as he was able to feel like he had the

purpose of reading names instead of silly, strange words. While proctoring this assessment, I

was able to pick up on a few additional areas of need for Milo. I often ran into the occurrence of

Milo confusing his short vowel sounds. In one instance, Milo read “Hop” instead of “Hap” and

“Jund Lam” instead of “Jud Lem”. He thereafter showed additional signs of inattention to the

medial vowels and initial consonant blends, as he read “Bad” for “Brad” and “Back” for

“Blake”. As he would attempt to read the names correctly, he would also regularly over-stress

individual letter sounds and would produce short letter sounds as he read, rather than paying

attention to the ways in which some letters work together (such as with a digraph or diphthong)

to produce one phoneme rather than two. As stated within Best Practices in Literacy Instruction
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 6

(Fifth Edition), phonemic awareness “has many levels and includes…the ability to blend and

segment words, and the ability to manipulate phonemes to form different words.” (Cunningham,

2015). As Milo struggles tremendously with many of these practices, especially segmenting and

blending words back together appropriately, I came to conclude that he would need quite a bit of

work toward developing his phonemic awareness and hoped to touch upon this area of emergent

literacy in the lessons to come.

Lesson Planning: Lesson #1

Using the information I gathered while administering assessments, I began to plan out

lessons that would assist Milo with his ability to distinguish between long and short O sounds, as

well as his foster his ability to blend and segment phonemes without overlooking initial

consonant blends and medial vowel sounds. After looking over the Common Core State

Standards for first and second grade, I decided to focus my first lesson on the following first and

second grade standards for literacy development:

Phonemic Awareness:

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.1.2.a Distinguish long from short vowel sounds in spoken

single syllable words.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF .1.2.b Orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds
(phonemes), including consonant blends.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.1.2.c Isolate and pronounce initial, medial vowel, and final
sounds (phonemes) in spoken single-syllable words.

(Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2018)

For my first lesson with Milo, I decided to flesh out an activity in which he would first

sort out a selection of the Florida Center for Reading Research (FCRR) picture cards

representing words containing long and short O sounds as an opportunity to reinforce our weekly

spelling pattern (short O, /o/ vs. Long O, /oo/). I included the following FCRR picture cards in
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 7

the lesson: block, mop, pod (pea), rocket, doll, lock, fox (short o, /o/); school, igloo, balloon,

spoon, tooth, moon rooster (long o, /oo/). (artifact 3). Thereafter, Milo would pick the cards in

any order of his choosing to work with. After tapping out the phonemes he heard as he

segmented the words aloud, he would cut the picture cards into strips, with each strip

representing one phoneme. My goal for the lesson would consist of Milo making progress in his

ability to segment and blend phonemes, as well as understand the importance of the inclusion of

each phoneme, and its particular order, in a word. Phonemic awareness remains so crucial to the

success of early readers that Cunningham discusses this process as a must for students to become

good readers (Cunningham, 2015).

Administering Lesson #1: Phonemic Awareness—Segmenting & Blending

To start the lesson, I presented Milo with the picture cards, and together we named the

cards (moon, etc.) as he sorted them into two different piles (long/short O). Milo was able to

place all of the cards into the appropriate piles, which led me to believe that he was able to hear

the differences between the long and short O phonemes when they were said/read to him, and

also when he produced those sounds himself. His struggle, I determined, must be with actually

looking at the letters, taking the time to focus on those letters to produce each appropriate sound,

and then blending those phonemes back together correctly.

For the next part of the lesson, Milo was asked to count out individual phonemes found

within these words and literally cut the pictures into strips to show the number of phonemes

(sounds) found within the words represented by the picture cards. We started with the word,

“mop”. I modeled the process for Milo, saying (while cutting a piece for each sound), /m/ (cut),

/o/ (cut), /p/. I then laid the pieces out for Milo, counted them, and said, “The word mop has

three sounds, or phonemes, so I have three picture pieces. Can you show me how to do this with
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 8

the next card that shows a picture for the word “block”?” Milo seemed hesitant, grumbled a bit,

and then agreed to try. At first, the coordination of cutting and producing phonemes was a bit

tricky, but by the third word, Milo had the process down. Like I had noticed during my pre-

assessment, he did have the tendency to want to chunk blends like BL in the word “block” or ST

in the word “rooster” into one piece (rather than two), so this proved to be a great opportunity to

work on paying special attention to producing all of those sounds found within the words

separately, while still blending the appropriate letters.

After Milo cut the long/short O words into strips based on number of phonemes, I then

asked him to place the pieces back together in order to blend all of the sounds together. This

piece proved to be even more complicated for Milo. Words like mop and doll (without blends)

were easily blended back together. However, the first couple of times he left out a sound or

accidentally chunked blends like BL together as strip, he became frustrated and even mad that he

had made mistakes. This remained a great instructional opportunity because it provided him

with the answer to his own question of “why do I have to slow down?” as well as the answers to

my two questions for him: “Why do you think you are reading these words incorrectly?” and

“Why do you think are you forgetting to say some of the sounds when you read new words?” He

agreed that this piece of the lesson had provided him with a “lightbulb” moment and it had

taught him to slow down, “think harder”, and include all of “the sound pieces” in the words. By

the end of this section of the lesson, Milo became better at self-correcting his mistakes and was

even seen smiling. I found it useful that the puzzles strips ended up being self-correcting as well,

and helped Milo think about the number of phonemes first, before asking for assistance from me.

As a final assessment piece, Milo was asked to save two of the picture cards for the very

end of the lesson to cut into strips, count phonemes, and blend them back together on his own.
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 9

He was asked to narrate his thinking aloud so I could hear him work through the process of

segmenting and blending. The two words that were leftover to segment and blend for his lesson

assessment piece remained balloon and rocket. For some reason, at first Milo wanted to cut

balloon into two pieces (syllables rather than phonemes). I noticed him clapping out “buh”

“loon”. Then he shook his head at himself and said, /b/ /l/ /oo/ /n/. He ended up cutting “balloon

into four pieces rather than five, leaving out the A (schwa), as he combined that sound with the

/b/ for “buh”. While segmenting the word “rocket”, Milo initially cut the picture card into four

pieces to account for four phonemes: /r/ /o/ /k/ /t/ (combining E and T to make “et” as one

sound). He double checked his work and said, “r-o-ck-t…no, that’s wrong”, then cut the T piece

again and said, “Eh...E! Rock-E-t!” with a grin on his face. Although Milo did not complete the

assessment piece perfectly, he had progressed from totally excluding parts of blends and medial

vowels, to successfully including phonemes for those letters in each of the two assessment

words. At the end of the lesson, we packaged up the dismantled picture cards with paper clips to

be used as puzzles for practice throughout the rest of the week.

Reflection of Lesson #1

The first lesson, catered to phonemic awareness, was crafted in order to help Milo work

through the process of isolating phonemes as Elkonin boxes might, but in a fresh, new way for

him. My goal for the lesson consisted of Milo discovering the importance of including initial

blend and medial vowel sounds as he produced new, unknown words, rather than focusing on the

first letter and last letter of a word and taking a quick guess at the word as a whole. I also

wanted Milo to realize that there is not always a one-to-one correspondence with all graphemes

and phonemes, and that items like blends call for two Elkonin boxes or cut “strips”, while items

like vowel teams (long O as /oo/), might call for just one Elkonin box or cut “strip”. This would
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 10

then give him some insight into the importance of including each sound as he tries to decode and

produce the phonemes found within an unknown word, without overstressing the sound that each

individual letter would make if it produced a short sound on its own.

Milo made progress in a short amount of time after participating in this lesson’s

activities. He improved in his abilities to notice blends and produce the associated phonemes

without skipping through the second letter in the blend, as seen in his ability to correctly

complete the activity steps with the word, “igloo.” He also made progress in his ability to focus

on the medial vowel sound, rather than producing the sounds for the initial and ending consonant

phonemes and arbitrarily adding any medial vowel sound into the word, as observed in his

successful work with the words “doll” and “tool.”

If I were to make any changes to this particular lesson, I might add an extension piece in

which Milo could work on applying the phonemic awareness to written expression/producing

graphemes as well. Within the extension piece, Milo might place corresponding graphemes

(letters) onto the picture card strips so that he could visualize how the written letters are

segmented and then blended back together. This would also help Milo make the connection

between the unknown words he sees in letter form versus just listening to the phonemes heard

when discussing the picture form of the word.

Lesson Planning: Lesson #2

Within Best Practices in Literacy Instruction (Fifth Edition), the authors state that, “To

become good readers and writers, children must learn to decode words. In the beginning stages

of learning to read, phonemic awareness is crucial to success. As children move through the

primary grades, they must develop phonics strategies.” (Cunningham, 2013). Moving forward

with my second lesson, I decided to touch upon the same words we had used within the previous
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 11

day’s phonemic awareness lesson in order to extend our learning and apply it toward an activity

geared towards phonics acquisition. While crafting the lesson, I tried to keep in mind the

importance of presenting a lesson that would consist of engaging material. Often, children

remain engaged when asked to participate in fresh, new activities that they have yet to

experience. The course text sums up Davis’ thinking, pointing out the significant fact that

“several studies since the NRP report suggest that effective phonics instruction might include a

variety of approaches.” (Cunningham, 2015). Keeping this fact in mind, I decided to move

beyond my initial plan of having Milo write the corresponding letters in Elkonin boxes to spell

the words on the long/short O picture cards. Instead, I pulled ideas from Cunningham’s “Making

Words” strategy calling for students to manipulate letters to make new or secret words using a

given set of tiles (Cunningham, 2013). I also looked over the contents of the following Common

Core State Standards which best highlight his needs:

Phonemic Awareness:
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF .1.2.b Orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds
(phonemes), including consonant blends.
Phonics:
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.3.b Know spelling-sound correspondences for additional
common vowel teams.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.3.c Decode regularly spelled two-syllable words with long
vowels
(Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2018)
Using Cunningham’s strategy of “Making Words,” Milo could work on spelling common

medial vowels (in this case, the /oo/ diphthong) while also touching on beginning blends as they

are found within words containing these diphthong patterns as he “made” the words.

Administering Lesson #2: Phonics—Making Short/Long O Words

Within the second lesson, Milo had to accomplish the task of “making” short and long O

words using letters tiles that had been provided for him. He was asked to spell each word found
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 12

on the picture cards from the previous lesson. These FCRR picture cards represented the

following words containing either a short o sound or the /oo/ diphthong: block, mop, doll, fox,

rocket, pod, sock (short o, /o/); school, igloo, spoon, tooth, moon, rooster, balloon (long o, /oo/).

Another goal for the lesson was for Milo to re-read the final word he had made without

forgetting to produce phonemes for initial consonant blends and medial vowels (diphthongs).

I started Milo’s lesson with the picture card for “block”, as I had done during the

previous day’s lesson. I explained to Milo that I had given him the letter tiles he would need to

spell the word depicted by the picture (block), and that it was his job to correctly rearrange the

letters to do so. Milo quickly noticed that although we discovered four phonemes in the word

“block” the previous day, he would have to use five letters (with c and k next to each other) to

spell block. He quickly asked, “Mrs. Spalding, why are there five letters here, when I hear four

sounds in block…/b/, /l/, /o/, /k/?” This opened up into a conversation about the number of

sounds not having to match the number of letters found within a word. I showed Milo that in this

example, the c and the k made one sound, just /k/.

Next, he moved onto the word “pod.” He stated that this one was easy and said, “P, /p/,

O, /o/, D, /d/, POD.” Thereafter, he wanted to try the word “pocket”. He stated, “P” (sliding the

P in place), “/o/…O, /k/…K, /e/…E, /t/…T! POKET. There’s a C left!” I referred back to the

word, “block”, and pointed out how it was spelled. Milo compared the two words for a few

moments and then slid the C in “pocket” to the appropriate spot before the K. Milo grinned from

ear to ear at this accomplishment and said, “Which word should we try next?”

Reflection of Lesson #2

Milo’s small victory was also a victory for me, as I could see in the occurrence of his

happiness and motivation that he was making connections while becoming highly motivated to
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 13

continue onward with his work. After the first couple of words presented in the lesson, he did

continue on with his process of “making words” and his achievement of spelling and blending

new words together, only struggling with “school” because of the consonant digraph (ch), and

“rooster”, due to the ST blend, areas that had proven difficult for him in the past. I did notice

that he rarely struggled with the /oo/ diphthong after our first lesson the previous day, and if he

did initially use one O to represent the /oo/ phoneme, when he realized he had one remaining O

left, he quickly slid it into its appropriate place within the word.

Milo’s ability to manipulate the letter tiles to spell and produce the words found on the

FCRR picture cards with ease showed me that the use of Cunningham’s strategy of “making

words” produces results. Milo not only showed growth within the lesson, both academically and

personally, but also within the findings of his post-assessments.

If I were to change anything about the second lesson, I would have given Milo more time

at the end of the lesson to manipulate the letters in order to build words, starting with one group

of letters, and rearranging them to make his own new words (apart from the words found on the

picture cards). This would have provided him with the opportunity to compare words with

similar sounds/spellings, listen for rhyming words, and so forth.

Post-Assessment Findings

After working with Milo during his two literacy lessons, I re-administered the

assessments that I had initially given to Milo. First, I utilized the Non-Word Reading test. This

time, I did not subject him to the entire test, but instead, paid close attention to words containing

consonant blends, consonant digraphs, and medial vowels (especially, those containing short o

and long o (/oo/) sounds. During this post-assessment period, when Milo attempted to read non-

sense words such as “cread”, he was able to produce “cred”, which showed improvement over
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 14

his first attempt of “chad”, since he did pay attention to the initial CR blend and involved some

sort of E sound, although short instead of long. When reading the word, “plood” the second time

around, Milo was able to read the entire non-sense word correctly, including the initial consonant

blend (PL), and the medial OO diphthong as /oo/ instead of “pod” with a short O sound, like his

first attempt. This showed Milo’s growth when working with blends and medial vowels.

Upon re-administering the Names and Early Names Tests, I found improvements in

Milo’s phonological awareness. Initially, Milo read “Bad” instead of “Brad.” This time, Milo

successfully including the phoneme /r/ when decoding the word, a part of the word he had

skipped entirely before our two lessons. When decoding the word “Blake”, Milo did make the

mistake of providing me with a short A sound instead of the long A sound, but did make the

improvement of including the L in the initial consonant blend BL, which he had overlooked the

first time he was tested. In this way, Milo produced “Black” for the word “Blake.” This was

another instance that showed growth in Milo’s ability to decode initial consonant blends in

unknown words.

Conclusion

During my time spent working with Milo over the past couple of months, from

administering pre-assessments, planning lessons while keeping Milo’s needs in mind, working

through the lesson activities with Milo, and discovering his accomplishments both during the

lessons and while looking over post-assessment findings, I have discovered a greater

understanding of the importance of phonemic awareness skills in young, emergent readers.

Thankfully, I have also discovered many fresh, new strategies for working with my struggling

readers. I hope to utilize these strategies both one-on-one, as well as during small-group time

during my Daily 5 literacy block. In the past, when welcoming a new group of students in the
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 15

fall, I might have felt overwhelmed by the task of providing opportunities for growth for students

who remained well below grade level in their literacy development. Now, I feel confident that

the gains I have made throughout the course of this experience have empowered me to start off

each new school year with renewed hope and excitement for my budding readers.
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 16

References

Common Core State Standards Initiative; English Language Arts Standards – Reading:

Foundational Skills – First Grade. (2018). Retrieved from

http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RF/1/.

Cunningham. P.M. (2013). Phonics they use: Words for reading and writing (6th ed.). Boston:

Pearson Education

Cunningham, P. M. (2015). Best practices in teaching phonological awareness and phonics. In Gambrell,

L. B. & Morrow, L. M. (Eds.), Best Practices in Literacy Instruction (pp. 169-194). The Guilford

Press: New York, NY.

Moats, L, & Tolman, C (2009). Excerpted from Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading

and Spelling (LETRS): The Speech Sounds of English: Phonetics, Phonology, and

Phoneme Awareness (Module 2). Boston: Sopris West.

Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 17

Artifact 1

Lesson #1: Phonological Awareness --Phoneme Segmenting and Blending

Subject: Literacy/Language Arts
Grade Level: 2nd Grade
Date: April 9, 2018
Duration: 15 minutes (During Daily 5/Literacy Block-- 1:1 Instruction)
Lesson Objectives: In this lesson students will learn the phonological task of segmenting and
blending phonemes in order to orally produce unknown words.
CCSSs: (first grade, based on individual student need)
RF.1.2.c Isolate and pronounce initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in spoken
single-syllable words.
Materials: Scissors, paper picture cards for each word (Short O: block, rock, mop, fox, doll,
sock, rocket, pod; Long O (oo): rooster, igloo, tooth, spoon, moon, balloon,, school (artifact 3)

Resources: Picture cards from FCRR Segmenting & Blending Lessons (Selection of Long/Short
O word cards)

Rationale/Background: Students will first sort words based on their medial vowel sounds. Next,
students will work on segmenting words (read orally via a picture cue) in order to isolate
individual phonemes. Finally, students will blend these sounds back together to orally produce
the entire word. Sorting words based on their vowel sounds should provide students with the
opportunity to distinguish between long and short vowels. By improving phoneme segmenting
and blending skills, students will better understand the importance of each individual phoneme
when decoding new words, and include each of these sounds when orally producing the whole
word. Students need many opportunities to work with word-level processes such as segmenting
and blending, as it is one of the more difficult skills involved in emergent reading. (Cunningham,
2015).

Activity Steps:

1. Set up workspace with long and short O word picture cards and scissors.
2. Student first sorts word cards into vowel sounds by long o (/oo/) or short o (/o/).
3. Next, student picks a picture card from either pile.
4. Student works with teacher assistance to orally segment and count out the different
number of sounds made by the selected word by tapping sounds out with fingers on the
table.
5. Student cuts the picture into strips based on how many sounds were heard within the
word.
6. Student and teacher count out phonemes together one more time after pieces of picture
are cut to ensure all sounds are accounted for.
7. Student pushes the picture strips back together while blending the sounds aloud.
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 18

8. Continue the process for all but two of the picture cards.
9. After the lesson, as a quick assessment, have the student attempt to cut two different
picture cards into strips independently to represent the number of phonemes in the word,
and then blend the strips/sounds back together aloud to produce the whole word.

Teacher Dialogue:

Opening: The words we speak, write, and read are made up of many small sounds put together.
These small sounds, working together, form words. It is important that we do not leave out or
ignore any of these small sounds as we are trying to read new words that we do not know yet.
Just like a puzzle, if we leave any sounds out, the word will be incomplete and we will read it
wrong.

Today, you are going to help me break apart word sounds by cutting apart picture cards. This
way, we should be able to hear all of the important pieces, or sounds, in the word, and see how
many sounds, or pieces of the word, there actually are. Then, we will work together to put the
words back together. When we break apart the words, we will be segmenting them. When we
put them back together, we will be blending them and we will hear the whole word again.

Before we get to cutting, first, we are going to name the word that the picture shows. Then, as a
refresher from Monday’s lesson, we are going to sort the pictures into words that make the short
o sound in the middle, and words that say the long o sound with an oo. Can you help me name
and sort the pictures by the sound its O makes?

• Teacher should guide the student in sorting the following FCRR picture cards into their
appropriate piles: Short O: block, rocket, mop, doll, pocket, pod
Long O (oo): rooster, igloo, balloon, raccoon, school

Middle: Now that you’ve sorted the picture cards into the sound it’s O makes, I would like us to
work together to count out how many sounds we can find in each of our words. Can you help
me?

• Teacher and student tap out the sounds found within the selected word, counting as they
go. For example: block-- /b/ /l/ /o/ /ck/. “I heard 4 sounds, so I tapped 4 times. Did you
hear four sounds also?” If the student counts 3, the teacher might use this as an
opportunity to show what the word would sound like if it were missing its medial vowel
sound (“blk”), or one of the sounds in the consonant blend (“bok”).

You and I heard four sounds, so we are going to cut these pictures up into 4 strips to show how
many sounds that picture word made.
• Teacher and student cut up the picture for the word “block” into four pieces: one piece
for /b/, one piece for /l/, one piece for /o/ and one piece for /ck/.

End: Now that we’ve cut up the word, “block”, into four pieces, I want to show you how I can
blend the pieces back together to hear every sound included in the word “block”. Then I will say
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 19

them together, from beginning to end, to smoothly say the whole word. I will put the first part of
the picture first, and say /b/. Next comes the next piece of the picture, /l/. The next piece of the
word says /o/, and finally the last piece says /k/. If I jumble up the picture pieces, it won’t look
like a block anymore. In the same way, I have to be careful not to jumble up the sounds for each
piece, or I will say the whole word wrong. I will point to the pieces again and say, /b/, /l/, /o/,
/k/, “block”. Now that we’ve done block together, can we try the next picture word?

Assessment: Now that we’ve worked together to cut apart the picture cards to find and hear
each sound in the words that have an O sound in the middle, I want you to try to do the same
thing on your own, with two pictures. Can you show me how to cut apart (segment) and blend
these picture card words back together? I want to hear the sounds each piece makes as you cut
them apart and blend them, okay? (Student should complete the activity in order to segment and
blend two of the words represented by the FCRR picture cards independently).

Closing: I want you to try to remember that all words are like puzzles, and the order of the
letters and their sounds (phonemes) is very important. If we segment and blend these words out
of order, we will end up saying the wrong word, and often times, it will end up being a silly word
that doesn’t make sense. If we leave out pieces of the words we are trying to read or say, we will
also be producing the wrong word. You should try do this with any new word you read.

Adaptations and Extensions: If the student struggles with the words containing more than one
syllable or consonant blends, the teacher might adapt the word list to include “O” words with
fewer syllables and phonemes. In the same way, if the lesson seems too simple, the teacher
could modify the lesson to include words with a larger number of phonemes and/or syllables.
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Artifact 2

Lesson # 2: Phonics— Letter/Sound Correspondence & Encoding Graphemes

Subject: Literacy/Language Arts

Grade Level: 2nd Grade

Date: April 9, 2018

Duration: 15 minutes (during Daily 5/literacy block—1:1 instruction)

Lesson Objectives: In this lesson, students will manipulate letter tiles to match graphemes to
spoken initial, final, and medial phonemes.

CCSSs:

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.3.c Decode regularly spelled two-syllable words with long

vowels.

Materials: Plastic letter tiles, Paper picture cards for each word (Short O: block, rocket, mop,
doll, pocket, pod; Long O (oo): rooster, igloo, balloon, raccoon, school (artifact 3)

Resources: Picture cards from FCRR Segmenting & Blending Lessons (Selection of Long/Short
O word cards)

Rationale/Background: Word building, or “making words” activities provide students with the
opportunity to work with letter manipulatives in order to think about letters and phonemes in
meaningful, connected ways. The activity should give students insight into the importance of
each small change in letter placement and how these changes create new words, unique from the
word they may have started with. As mentioned in Best Practices in Literacy Instruction (Fifth
Edition), McCandliss, Beck, Sandak, and Peretti found that, “Children who receive this word-
building instruction demonstrated significantly greater improvements on standardized measures
of decoding, comprehension, and phonological awareness.” (Cunningham, 2015). Therefore,
this lesson should support heightened reading growth in emergent readers.

Activity Steps:

1. Set up workspace with long and short O word picture cards and corresponding letter tiles
for each picture (scrambled).
2. Teacher models the activity using the word “block” (see teacher dialogue).
3. Student selects a picture card to begin the activity as modeled.
4. Student works (with teacher assistance) to “make words” with short O, /o/ and long O,
/oo/ medial vowel sounds.
5. Student is assessed using the last two remaining words available (independent).
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Teacher Dialogue:

Opening: Yesterday, you helped me break up picture words into the different little sounds they
make. Then, we blended those sounds back together to say the whole word. First, we picked
out O word picture cards and sorted them into piles by the sounds their vowels make. Then, we
cut those picture cards into the number of sounds we could hear as we stretched and tapped those
words out. Finally, we blended them back together to say the whole word again.

Today, we are going to use the same picture cards to spell the words with letter tiles and actually
see how the letters work to make those sounds, instead of just listening to the sounds in the long
and short O words.

Now, let’s pull out our picture puzzle card of the block. Yesterday, we worked hard to figure out
that block had 4 sounds: /b/, /l/, /o/, /ck/, and we also talked about how silly that word would
sound if we took out one of those important pieces out. For example, if we didn’t say the L
sound, the word would just say “bok.” How silly! Today, you are going to help me spell the
words by putting my letter tiles in the right order. We will know they are in the right order when
we can blend the letter sounds (phonemes) back together and hear a word that doesn’t sound silly
and matches our picture. I will give you the right letters to spell the word shown on each picture
card, but the letter tiles will be scrambled. It will be your job to unscramble the letters to spell
the word the right way. I will give you a hint: there won’t be any extra letter tiles.

Let me show you what I mean. I’m looking at the first picture of the block. Now, when I tap out
the sounds in the word block, I heard four sounds. So, yesterday, we cut the picture into four
strips. The first sound I hear is /b/, so I’m thinking that I better put the B letter tile first. Next,
when I listen to the sounds in “block”, I hear /l/, so I should put the L letter tile next. Now I’m
thinking again.../b/, /l/, /o/! So I place the O letter tile in the next spot, because I know O says
/o/. Finally I hear /k/, and I know K says /k/, so I will place the K letter tile next.

But wait, I have one piece left. I have four sounds, but five letters. Now, I know that sometimes
one sound is made up of two letters, like C and K, together, make the sound ‘k’, so that sneaky
little C must go right before the K. So now I’ve spelled “block”, BLOCK, and when I say the
sounds in order and blend them all together, I hear “block”. What would happen if I took out the
L? (looking for student to produce the word “bock”). I would hear BOCK! That’s silly. So I
have to make sure I put the L back so the word actually says, “block.”

Today, I want you to focus on saying the word shown in the picture aloud and then find each of
the sounds that the letters in the word makes, in order. Then, just like I did, you will put down
the letter tile that matches each of those sounds. When you are done, I want you to look at the
letters you’ve put down, in order, and read the whole word to me, again. This is how we spell
words. This lesson will also help us figure out how to read new, unfamiliar words. You can use
the picture cards to help you remember the words you are trying to make.

Middle: (The student should use Cunningham’s strategy of “Making Words” to spell each of
the words depicted by the FCRR word cards using the corresponding letter tiles provided for
each word, with teacher assistance if needed. The teacher can use teachable moments to touch
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 22

on instances of rhyming words like pocket and rocket being spelled similarly (with simply a
different beginning letter (initial consonant)). The teacher should also point out that the words
with short o, /o/, vowel sounds (in this instance) are spelled with one O, while the diphthong
created by two Os, /oo/, is included in the long O words.)

Assessment: Now that we’ve worked together to spell the words shown on the picture cards and
then read those letters together again as a whole word, I want you to try to do the same thing
with the last two words, on your own. (Student should complete the activity in order to segment
and blend two of the words represented by the FCRR picture cards independently).

Closing: Yesterday, you helped me break apart (segment) the SOUNDS found within words and
then put them back together, or blend them, in the right order to say a real word that doesn’t
sound silly. This was good practice to make sure we say every sound found in a word.
Today, we used letter tiles to help us show those sounds using written letters (graphemes). Using
those letter tiles helped us realize how important each tile (letter), and its matching sound is
when we’re trying to make and read a word the right way.
If we put the sounds and their letters in the right order, we can spell words the right way. We
also learned that if a word is already spelled for us, we can figure out what it says, without it
sounding silly, by including ALL of the matching sounds in the right order, like a puzzle.
Adaptations and Extensions: If the student struggles with the words containing more than one
syllable or consonant blends, the teacher might adapt the word list to include “O” words with
fewer syllables and phonemes. In the same way, if the lesson seems too simple, the teacher
could modify the lesson to include words with a larger number of phonemes and/or syllables.
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Milo 23

Artifact 3
(Florida Center for Reading Research Picture Cards, 2006)
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Artifact 10