Phonemic Awareness and

Proficiency: Sound Instruction

Rochester, MN
Foundational for Skilled Reading
Public Schools
Dr. Pam Kastner
August 31, 2022 kastnerpam@gmail.com
Twitter: @liv2learn
▪
 A bit about me…
Adjunct Professor
Mount Saint Joseph University
Doctoral Program
State Lead Consultant Reading Science
for Literacy

President,
The Reading League PA
My Family
 I. Theoretical Frameworks that
Our Road Underpin the Science of Reading
Map for this II. Phonological and Phonemic
Session Awareness (PA)
III. Non-Negotiables for Amplifying
Phonemic Awareness Instruction
IV. Additional Resources
Our Road
Map for this
Session I. Theoretical Frameworks that
Underpin the Science of Reading
Theoretical
Frameworks
that Underpin
the Science of
Reading

The Simple
View of
Reading
Gough & Tunmer,
1986
 LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION
BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE
SKILLED
SKILLED READING:
READING:
VOCABULARY fluent
fluent execution
execution &and
LANGUAGE STRUCTURES coordination
coordination ofof text
text
comprehension
comprehension and and
VERBAL REASONING word
word recognition.
recognition.
LITERACY/PRINT KNOWLEDGE

PRINTED WORD RECOGNITION

PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS

DECODING

SIGHT RECOGNITION
TIME
Scarborough, 2001 Used with Permission
Systems of
Language

Used with
permission
LETRS/Voyager
Sopris Learning
“Reading and writing depend on language. If you know this
then you will become a teacher of language. Not just of
reading and writing.” Moats
 II. Phonological and Phonemic
Our Road Awareness (PA)
Map for this
Session
- What it is
- Why it is important
- Research Findings
 What is ▪Phonological awareness is having an
Phonological and awareness of sounds in spoken words,
whether syllables, onsets, rimes, or individual
Phonemic phonemes.
Awareness?
▪Phonemic awareness is an awareness of
individual sounds/phonemes in spoken
Phonological words. It represents the most precise
Awareness subcategory of phonological awareness.
Phonemic
Awareness Because letters are designed to represent
Phonemic spoken phonemes, phonemic awareness is
Awareness the type of phonological awareness that is
essential for reading. Kilpatrick, (2015), p. 363.
 ▪We do not attend to the sounds of phonemes
as we produce or listen to speech
Why is ▪We process phonemes automatically,
directing attention to meaning and force of
Phonological the utterance as a whole
and ▪The instructional challenge is to get children
Phonemic
to notice phonemes, discover their existence,
Awareness and separability
Important?
Adams, (1998), p. 19.
 ▪ Poor readers and spellers typically do poorly
on measures of phonemic awareness,
Why is especially in the beginning stages of reading
Phonological ▪ Phoneme segmentation and blending
measures along with letter naming are the
and best predictors of reading success or failure In
Phonemic novice readers
Awareness ▪ Training in phoneme awareness improves
students’ ability to learn the alphabetic
Important? principle and to recognize words in print
(Moats, 2014, xii)
 “Faced with an alphabetic script, the child’s level
of phonemic awareness on entering school
may be the single most powerful determinant of
the success that she or he will experience in
Research learning to read and of the likelihood the she or
he will fail.”
Findings

Cloze “Measures of schoolchildren’s ability to attend to

and manipulate phonemes strongly correlate
Procedure with their reading success all the way through
the twelfth grade.”

(Adams, 1990, p. 304).

13
Phonological Look
Fors
 ▪ Trouble learning common nursery rhymes,
such as “Jack and Jill”
▪ Difficulty learning (and remembering) the
names of letters in the alphabet
The ▪ Seems unable to recognize letters in his/her
own name
Preschool
▪ Mispronounces familiar words; persistent
Years “baby talk”
Look-Fors ▪ Doesn’t recognize rhyming patterns like cat,
bat, rat
▪ A family history of reading and/or spelling
difficulties (dyslexia often runs in families)
▪ © Sally Shaywitz, Overcoming Dyslexia, p. 122
 ▪ Reading errors that show no connection to the
sounds of the letters on the page—will say
“puppy” instead of the written word “dog” on
an illustrated page with a picture of a dog
▪ Does not understand that words come apart
▪ Complains about how hard reading is;
K-1 Years “disappears” when it is time to read
Look-Fors ▪ A history of reading problems in parents or
siblings
▪ Cannot sound out even simple words like cat,
map, nap
▪ Does not associate letters with sounds, such as
the letter b with the “b” sound
 Reading
▪ Very slow in acquiring reading skills. Reading
is slow and awkward
Second ▪ Trouble reading unfamiliar words, often
making wild guesses because he cannot
Grade sound out the word
Look-Fors ▪ Doesn’t seem to have a strategy for reading
new words
▪ Avoids reading out loud
Our Road
Map for this III. Non-Negotiables for Amplifying
Session Phonemic Awareness Instruction
Repeat after me,

“There is no magic bullet! There is no magic bullet!”

“Teachers teach kids, not programs!”

Louisa Moats
Implementing
Phonemic K-2 ELA Instruction:
Awareness
into Daily
Explicit Phonemic Awareness 10-12 minutes
daily
Instruction
Non- ▪Daily Explicit Instruction
Negotiables ▪Teach Skills from Least Complex to Most
for Teaching Complex
Phonemic ▪Teach the Speech Sounds of the English
Awareness Language
▪Common Language and
Multisensory/Multimodal Practices
“ Practice isn’t something you do after you’re good.
It’s the thing you do that makes you good.”

Malcolm Gladwell
Non- ▪Daily Explicit Instruction
Negotiables ▪Teach Skills from Least Complex to Most
for Teaching Complex
Phonemic ▪Teach the Speech Sounds of the English
Awareness Language
▪Common Language and
Multisensory/Multimodal Practices
Non- ▪Daily Explicit Instruction
Negotiables ▪Teach Skills from Least Complex to Most
for Teaching Complex
Phonemic ▪Teach the Speech Sounds of the English
Awareness Language
▪Common Language and
Multisensory/Multimodal Practices
 Accurate and consistent
modeling and
pronunciation of all
sounds
www.tools4reading.com
▪"Awareness of articulatory gestures
facilitates the activation of grapho-
phonemic connections that helps
children identify written words and
secure them in memory.“

Castiglioni-Spalten & Ehri, 2009

Literacy
How
Phoneme
Articulation
Video
 Orton-
Gillingham
Card Deck

Free APP

Accurate and consistent modeling and

pronunciation of all sounds
 ▪Daily Explicit Instruction
Non-
▪Teach Skills from Least Complex to Most
Negotiables Complex
for Teaching ▪Teach the Speech Sounds of the English
Phonemic Language
Awareness ▪Common Language and
Multisensory/Multimodal Practices
Common
Hand
Motion and
Language
Stems

Resource
Common
Hand
Motion and
Language
Stems

Resource
Critical
Features for
▪Incorporate multimodal
Teaching
Phonemic practices
Awareness
Language Functional
at all Levels Language Systems:
▪Language by ear
Think about ▪Language by eye
all these ▪Language by
pieces in mouth
the lesson. ▪Language by hand

(Berninger & Wolf, 2016)

36
Non- ▪ Daily Explicit Instruction
Negotiables ▪Teach Skills from Least Complex to Most
for Teaching Complex
Phonemic ▪Teach the Speech Sounds of the English
Awareness Language
▪Common Language and
Multisensory/Multimodal Practices
Let’s I Do
Do A We Do
Lesson! You Do
Phonological
Awareness
Grade 1
Lesson
PaTTAN
Youtube
Channel

26 PA
Videos
Pre-K to
Grade 2
PaTTAN
Youtube
Channel

26 PA Videos
Pre-K to
Grade 2

https://tinyurl.com/ydc7kwvw
Focus Skill: Rhyming
Phonological Skill
 •Rhyming is the ability to identify and
produce how words sound the same
at the end.

Skill: Rhyming •Rhyming improves students oral

language skills.

•Rhyming is the beginning of students

having the ability to manipulate the
sounds of their language.
Must students master rhyming before moving on to
more advanced phonemic awareness skills?
Dr
Focus Skill:
Onset Fluency
Phonemic Awareness Skill
 The "onset" is the initial consonant(s) of
Skill: Onset any word (e.g. /c/ in cat) and the term
Fluency "rime" refers to the vowel and
everything that follows in the syllable
(e.g. /at/ in cat).
 The ability to isolate the first sound in
Why Teach a word is an important phonemic
Isolating Initial awareness skill that is highly related
Sound? to reading acquisition and reading
achievement (Yopp, 1988)
Focus Skill:
Blending
Phonemic Awareness Skill
 Blending is the skill of joining
Skill: individual speech sounds
Blending (phonemes) smoothly and
fluidly together to make a
word.
 Blending is a crucial skill in
learning to read since being able
to mentally join speech sounds
Why Teach together to make words helps
Blending? students to decode unfamiliar
words using letter-sound patterns
when reading.
Phonological
Awareness
Continuum of
Subskills

53
 I DO
We Do
Focus Skill:
Final & Medial
Sounds
Phonemic Awareness Skill
 ▪ The ability to hear the ending sound and medial
sound (usually a vowel sound) in a word.

Skill: Identifying ▪ Once students can identify initial sounds of a word

Medial or Final the next step along a phonemic awareness
continuum is identifying final sounds.
Sounds
▪ Once final sounds are secure the next step along a
phonemic awareness continuum is identifying
medial sounds.
 ▪Students need to become
increasingly aware of ALL of the
Why individual speech sounds in a word.
Identifying
Medial or ▪To become a proficient reader,
Final Sounds? speller and writer students must be
phonemically aware of ALL of the
individual speech sounds in a word.
Phonological
Awareness
Continuum of
Subskills

58
 I DO
We Do
Focus Skill:
Segmenting
Phonemic Awareness Skill
 ▪Phoneme segmentation is essential in
developing reading, spelling, and
writing skills.
Why
Segmenting? ▪In order to write or type words, students
must be able to:
▪ break the word down into its component
sounds
▪ select the letters that represent these
sounds.
Skill: Phoneme segmentation is the ability
Segmenting to break words down into individual
Phonemes sounds. For example, the learner
breaks the word fish into its
component sounds – /f/ /ĭ/ /sh/.

/f/ /ĭ/ /sh/

 Phoneme blending and segmentation are
recognized as the most critical forms of
Why is phonological awareness instruction. Phoneme
blending involves listening to a sequence of
Blending separately spoken sounds, or phonemes, and
and combining them into a recognizable word (NRP,
2000).
Segmenting
Important? Blending and segmenting impacts memory.
Blending involves pulling together individual sounds
or syllables within words.
Phonological
Awareness
Continuum of
Subskills

64
 I DO
We Do
Focus Skill:
Phoneme Addition
Phonemic Awareness Skill
 The process of making a new
Skill: Adding word by adding a phoneme to
Sounds an existing word.
Phonological
Awareness
Continuum of
Subskills

68
 I DO
We Do
Advanced Phonemic
Awareness
Deletion, Substitution, Reversal
 Advanced phonemic awareness include the
manipulation of individual speech sound.
Students manipulate phonemes in the following
ways:
Skill:
Advanced
▪Deleting phonemes (“Say ‘cat’. Say it again
Phonemic without the /k/”. Correct answer ‘at’)
Awareness ▪Substituting phonemes (“Change the /m/ in
mad to /s/. What is the new word? Sad.)
▪Reversing phonemes within words (Say ‘map’.
Now say it backwards. ‘pam.’)
Why Teach Advanced phonemic awareness is necessary for
Advanced sight word development and if they don’t have it,
Phonemic they cannot efficiently add to their sight vocabulary.
Awareness
Skills? Unless their problem with advanced phonemic
awareness is fixed, poor word-level readers don’t
catch up.
Substituting (Kilpatrick 2018)
and Deleting ADE Science of Reading
Sounds Conference
 Phonemic Proficiency

Substitution

Segment
Manipulation Isolate
tasks Delete
Add
Blend
Focus Skill:
Phoneme Deletion
Phonemic Awareness Skill
Skill: The process of identifying the word or
Deleting word part that remains when a
Phonemes phoneme(s) is removed from the word.
Phonological
Awareness
Continuum of
Subskills

76
 I DO
We Do
Focus Skill:
Phoneme
Substitution
Phonemic Awareness Skill
Teaching The process of substituting one
Substituting phoneme for another to make a
Sounds new word.
Phonological
Awareness
Continuum of
Subskills

80
 I DO
We Do
Why Teach Letter Naming Activities should be part of every
Letter lesson and practiced to support the alphabetic
principal - 1 to 1 letter names and sounds.
Naming?
The 2 best predictors of reading success are
alphabet recognition and phonemic awareness.

(Marilyn Adams)

Letter-sound knowledge is essential for reading.

(Ziegler & Goswami, 2005)
Teaching Tips 1. Deliver a comprehensive phonemic awareness
lesson, EVERY DAY (all 9-10 skills) in one sitting.
2. Keep the lesson brief (10-12 minutes) and use a
perky pace!
3. No schwa-ing!
4. Stop and correct when needed.
5. Everyone participates!
6. Teacher says – student repeats EVERYTIME.
7. Phonemic Awareness Every Day.
Systems of
Language

Used with
permission
LETRS/Voyager
Sopris Learning
MULTICOMPONENT, INTEGRATED
STRUCTURED LITERACY INSTRUCTION
Fidelity
Checklist
Our Road
Map for this
Session IV. Additional Resources
Phonemic Awareness -
How?

https://bit.ly/3cwDOYb 88
Rachel Woldmo from Western University, Canada
Phonemic Awareness
How?

Blending and
Segmenting

89
Phonemic Awareness
How?

Sort by Syllable or
Phoneme

90
Phonemic Awareness
How?

Phoneme Bead
Counting

91
Phonemic Awareness
How?

See it- Say it-Move it

92
93
94
Phonemic Awareness
How?

Elkonin (sound) Boxes

95
 Phonemic Awareness
How? Elkonin Boxes & Chips
 Speech to Print
 Boxes represent speech sounds
 Chips are tactile & engage
motor function
 Focuses student’s attention on
internal details of words
 Does NOT involve print

96
Phonemic Awareness
Elkonin Boxes & Chips

Florida Center for

Reading Research >
Center Activities

★ Vetted, FREE and

ready to print!

https://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/elkonin_b 98

oxes
 Adams, M. (1990). Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print.
Boston, MA: MIT Press.

Adams, M. (1998). Phonemic Awareness in Young Children. Baltimore, MD:

Brookes Publishing.

References Adams, M. (1998). The Elusive Phoneme. Spring/Summer. American Federation of Teachers.

Blachman, B., Ball, E., Black. R. & Tangel, D. (2000). Road to

the Code. Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing.

Campbell, G. Progress Monitoring Tool for Phonological Awareness.

 Kilpatrick. D. (2015). Essentials of Assessing, Preventing,
and Overcoming Reading Difficulties. Hoboken, NJ:
Wiley & Sons.

Kilpatrick, D. (2016). Equipped for Reading Success.

Syracuse, NY: Casey & Kirsch Publishers.

References
Lentz, K. (2019). Phonics Isn’t Enough: Improving Phonological
Awareness Skills.
Lentz, K. (2019) Phonological Awareness Development Chart.

Moats, L. (2010 ). Speech to Print. Baltimore, MD:

Brookes Publishing.

PaTTAN Literacy Team. (2018). Training: Foundations of Reading: Beyond Blending and
Segmenting- Advanced Phonemic Awareness.
Questions?
 Dr. Pam Kastner
Thank kastnerpam@gmail.com
you!!! Twitter: @liv2learn