Early Reading Skills: Teaching

Phonemic Awareness
Brandy Clarke
CBC 2002

The Need for Early Reading

Interventions
Poor

reading ability correlates with longterm negative outcomes.

Reading is the cornerstone of academic
success.
Students with poor reading skills in the
beginning are likely to have poor skills
in the future.

Learning in Steps
Research has demonstrated a need for children to
learn to recognize words with speed and accuracy
to read with fluency and comprehension.
Progression of learning:

Understanding the concept of words

Alphabetic Awareness
Phonemic Awareness
Phonics
Word Recognition
Fluency
Comprehension

What is Phonemic
Awareness?
Phonemic

awareness is an
understanding that speech is composed
of individual sounds.
It is part of the hierarchy of reading
skills developed in early reading.
It is not a unitary skill, but is comprised
of various components.

 Five

levels of Phonemic Awareness

(Adams,1990).
1

3
4

Appreciation of sound in spoken language

(recitation of nursery rhymes).
Ability to compare and contrast sounds in words
by grouping words with similar or dissimilar
sounds (beginning, middle, and end of words).
Ability to blend and split syllables.
Phonemic segmentation or the ability to isolate
individual sounds in syllables.
Ability to manipulate phonemes by omitting and
deleting phonemes to make new words.

Why is it important?
It

is necessary in learning to read and

spell the English language because
English is alphabetic.
Sounds

correlate with letters to make

words.
Research

has demonstrated a strong

link between phonemic awareness and
beginning reading.

Why Phonemic Awareness

over Whole-language?

The Whole-language approach

Focuses on teaching reading by immersing students in

literature while providing minimal direct skill instruction.
Provides students with ample opportunities to read and
write and provides guidance as needed.
Students learn to read through whole-word recognition
which creates a guessing game when presented with new
words.

Students taught with phonics instruction read 54% of

new words correctly, students with whole-language
read 3%.
However, balance is necessary.

What skills are taught?

Early Reading Skills (Good III, Simmons &

Smith, 1998)

Area 1: Phonological Awareness

Area 2: Alphabetic Understanding

Link between a letter and a sound

Area 3: Phonological Recoding

Awareness of correlation of sounds to words

Use of relationship between phonemes and letters to

recognize printed words, then read and spell them

Area 4: Accuracy and Fluency with Connected Text

Comprehending what is read

How to assess skills

Dynamic

Indicators of Basic Early

Literacy Skills (DIBELS), University of
Oregon
Dynamic:

continuing evaluation of skills

Indicators: representative and correlated
with important skill areas
Predictive: future reading performance
Functional: related to reading aquisition

 DIBELS

Assessments:

Target age range: Preschool Second grade

Onset

Recognition Fluency

Late preschool through winter of kindergarten

Appropriate for monitoring progress of older
children with low phonological awareness

Letter

Naming Fluency

Fall of kindergarten through fall of first grade

Appropriate for monitoring progress of older
children with low skills in letter naming

 DIBELS

Assessments cont.:

Phoneme

Segmentation Fluency

Winter of kindergarten through fall of first grade

Appropriate for monitoring progress of older
children with low phonological awareness

Nonsense

Word Fluency

Fall of first grade through summer of first grade

Appropriate for monitoring progress of older
children with low skills in letter-sound
correspondence

How to teach Phonemic

Awareness

5 Features of effective interventions (Good III

et.al., 1998)
1.
2.
3.
4.

5.

Provide instruction at the phoneme level.

Scaffold tasks and examples.
Model skills prior to practice and provide opportunities
for students to produce isolated sounds orally.
Provide systematic and strategic instruction for
identifying sounds in words, blending and segmenting,
and culminate with integration of phonological
awareness and letter-sound correspondence
instruction.
Use concrete materials to represent sounds .

Modeling activities

Teaching vs. practice

The importance of scope and sequence:

Larger units before smaller units (words before syllables)

Continuous before stop sounds (cont.: f, l, m, n, stop: b, c, d,
g)
Fewer sounds before more sounds (VC or CV before CVC)
Auditory blending before segmenting (e.g. foooot-baaaall vs.
mmm-aaaaa-t)
Blending and segmenting before manipulation (e.g.
removing sounds to make new words)
Oral before written language

Phonemic Teaching Methods

Phonemic Awareness in Young Children: A

Classroom Curriculum.(Adams, Foorman,
Lundberg, & Beeler, 1998)

The use of language games

Play regularly (15-20 min)

Go in order of sequence
Use both segmenting (analysis) and blending (synthesis)
activities
Child should feel as though s/he is playing while learning
Consistently pronounce words slowly and clearly

The Language Games:

Listening game: Listening to Sounds

Rhyming: Poetry, Songs, and Jingles
Words and Sentences: Introducing the Idea of
sentences
Awareness of Syllables: Clapping Names
Initial and Final Sounds: Guess Who
Phonemes: Two-Sound Words
Introducing Letters and Spellings: Guess Who:
Introducing Sounds and Letters

Reading Intervention Program

Reading
Goal:

Recovery Program

Help struggling students catch up to

peers
Requires a lot of teacher monitoring (1:1)
Daily sessions last 30-40 minutes per
session and run 10-20 weeks

 Reading

Recovery Program Strategies

Reading

left to right
Using a return sweep rather than a slow
return
Monitoring whether story makes sense
Searching for cues from context
Rereading when unclear
Self-correction

Important Resources
http://dibels.uoregon.edu/
Provides

explanation of DIBELS research

and application

http://reading.uroegon.edu/
Big

Ideas in Beginning Reading

http://www.nifl.gov
National

Institute for Literacy

National Reading Panel Update

Application for CBC

It is important to understand what is needed to
promote early reading skills so that problems can be
identified and treated before negative trajectory is
established.
Assessment techniques allow for problem areas to
be targeted and monitored throughout interventions.
Teaching techniques can be used across settings to
facilitate partnerships in learning.
Consultants can provide consultees with further
resources to provide guidance throughout reading
development.

References
Adams, M.J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Adams, M.J., Foorman, B.R., Lundberg, I, & Beeler, T. (1998). Phonemic
Awareness in Young Children: A classroom curriculum. Baltimore, MD :
Paul H. Brooks Publishing Co.
Good III, R. H. Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS)
with CBM. Early Childhood Research Institute on Measuring Growth
and Development. Eugene, OR.
Good III, R. H., Simmons, D. C., & Smith, S. B. (1998). Effective academic
intervention in the United States: Evaluating and enhancing the
acquistion of early reading skills. School Psychology Review. Vol 27,
No. 1, pp 45-56.

References cont.
Grossen, B. & Carnine, D. (1991). Strategies for maximizing
reading success in the regular classroom. In Stoner, G., Shinn,
M. R., & Walker, H. M. (Eds) Interventions for achievement and
behavior problems. Silver Spring, MD: NASP
Pressley, M. (1998). Reading instruction that works: The case for
balanced teaching. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Snider, V. E. (1995). A primer on phonemic awareness: What is it,
why its important, and how to teach it. School Psychology
Review, Vol. 24, No. 3, 443-455.