1. Big Ideas in Reading: Phonemic Awareness
Presented by April Kelley
October 14th, 2009

2. Phonemic Awareness Pre-test

3. 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

4. Learning Targets What 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

5. 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?

6. 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 children’s
later reading success.

7. Phonological Awareness Skills
Easiest Hardest
Take PA puzzle pcs. Out of envelope and place them on table in front of them left to right, easiest to hardest.
Leave out for next activity.

8. Phonological Awareness Continuum
Phoneme Blending,
Segmenting, &
Manipulation
Onset-Rime
Blending
& Segmenting
Phonemic
Awareness
Syllable
Blending
& Segmenting
Sentence
Segmenting
Alliteration
Rhyming

9. Levels of Phonological Awareness
Phonemic
Awareness
Phoneme Segmenting,
Blending, and
Manipulation
Onset-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

10. Phonological Awareness Cards
Sorting Activity
Have them take out PA Awareness cards from envelope. Sort the activity cards by placing them under the appropriate PA category.

11. Phonemes are the smallest units of sound in spoken words
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 nd phoneme rd phoneme
/sh/ /i/ /p/

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. Pronunciation of Sounds

15. 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

16. g d ch b c j h k p x(voiced) t(voiceless)
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)

17. PA Research (that’s 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.

18. PA Research (that’s 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)

19. 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

20. 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 don’t develop PA initially can develop it within a few weeks.

21. Phoneme Analysis Segmenting tasks
Students must say individual phonemes in a word or delete an initial or final sound
So, how do we do this? Well, there are 2 types of instruction that they found to be the most critical. One is…

22. Phoneme Synthesis Blending tasks
Student must pronounce a word after hearing the segments (either individually phonemes or onsets and rimes)
The second most critical PA skill is…

23. 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

24. 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?

25. 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.

26. 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 it’s taught in the program
Complete Activity: PA Reading Program Evaluation

27. Curriculum Maps
Use as a reference to help determine a scope and sequence of PA skills.
If we had more time, we’d really dive into these but for times sake, I wanted you to become more familiar with our NE standards for PA and how (if at all) they’re addressed in your rdg. Program.

28. Assessing PA Program Assessments CORE Phonemic Awareness Survey DIBELS
Initial Sound Fluency
Phoneme Segmentation Fluency

29. Template for Onset-Rime Blending Instruction
Card #4

30. Template for Phoneme Segmentation Instruction
Card #5

31. Template for Phoneme Segmentation Instruction
Card #6

32. Website to Find Templates

33. Phonological Awareness Packets

34. Find Phonological Awareness Activities to Supplement Your Core Program
Use flags to mark your favorites!!!

35. 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.”
Just some last minute tips I want you to be aware of when picking PA activities and planning for instruction in your classrooms:

36. 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 minutes per day of your reading instruction block.

37. 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

38. 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.

39. 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.

40. 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.

41. Phonemic Awareness Pre-test

42. Additional Resources

43. Questions???
THANK YOU!!!