Early Childhood: Developing a Kindergarten Phonemic Awareness Program: An ActionResearch ProjectAuthor(s): Beverly J. Bruneau, Margaret Humadi Genisio, Renee Casbergue and KathleenReinerSource: The Reading Teacher, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Sep., 1998), pp. 70-73Published by: Wiley on behalf of the International Reading AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20202011 .

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EARLY CHILDHOOD_ Editors: Beverly J. Bruneau

Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, USA

Margaret Humadi Genisio

University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Wisconsin, USA

Renee Casbergue University of New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Author: Kathleen Reiner, Field Local Schools, Mogadore, Ohio, USA

Developing a kindergarten phonemic awareness program: An action research

project

Children enter kindergarten with vary

ing backgrounds and experiences. Many children have been read to regu

larly since infancy and have had lots of

opportunities to draw and talk about their drawings. Their caretakers have

pointed out environmental print in gro cery stores, while traveling in cars, and

in daily excursions. Some children be

gin their kindergarten year knowing al most all of the 26 letters and sounds of the alphabet. In contrast, other children enter kindergarten having had little or no interactions with storybooks, having done very little drawing and writing, and having little knowledge of the al

phabet. Each year I must implement an

appropriate literacy curriculum that will

help all of my children grow in knowl

edge, dispositions, and skills (Katz &

Chard, 1989) to become capable and confident emergent readers and writers.

For years I followed a commercially prepared "reading readiness and phon ics program" organized around a letter of the week. To help maintain the chil dren's interests and develop integrated instruction I worked with my col

leagues to develop activities centered around the weekly letter. However, I

always felt rushed and limited in what I could do within 1 week. I also began to realize that the weekly program left little time for listening to and respond ing to poetry, playing with words, and

engaging in journal writing. There nev er seemed to be enough time to do in

depth activities when my curriculum was organized in weekly units.

I compounded my time problem when I began to add holistic literacy ac

tivities into my daily routine. For ex

ample, each morning began with a

shared writing activity in which chil dren dictated the morning news, and I

also tried to include a daily shared read

ing of Big Books and poems (Bruneau, 1997). These shared print experiences successfully engaged many of my chil

dren, much more so than the weekly letter activities. During the 1995-96 school year I decided to center my cur

riculum more around stories and poems than weekly letters. However, I be lieved I needed to document that the children were, indeed, learning letters

and related skills specified in our local curriculum.

Working with a university-based col

league, I studied my children's growth in print awareness, alphabet letter

knowledge, growth in storybook read

ing, and growth in invented spelling (Bruneau & Reiner, 1996). Results of this study showed that my children did

grow appropriately in alphabet knowl

edge and enthusiasm and ability for sto

rybook reading. These were program

strengths. However, although many children were developing the skill to en

gage in invented spelling, many chil dren seemed to lack confidence in their

ability to write on their own.

I continued my quest for ways to im

prove my literacy program. I was in troduced to the concept of phonemic awareness, the awareness of sounds

within our language. Yopp (1992) ex

plained, "In order for children to bene fit from formal reading instruction,

youngsters must have a certain level of

phonemic awareness. Reading instruc

tion, in turn, heightens their awareness

of language. Thus phonemic awareness

70 The Reading Teacher Vol. 52, NO. 1 September 1998 ?1998 International Reading Association (pp. 70-73)

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is both a prerequisite and a conse

quence of learning to read" (p. 697). As I read more, I learned that children could develop phonemic awareness

knowledge through various activities such as language play; word play; lis

tening to rhymes, songs, and poetry; and engaging in shared reading of pre dictable literature.

I realized that phonemic awareness was a valuable piece missing from my

literacy curriculum. I began to consid er how to implement phonemic aware ness activities into my daily routine. As I prepared for the curriculum changes, I

continually asked myself (a) What are

specific activities I could use? (b) Will

phonemic awareness be a predictor of

reading success for my students? (c) Am I expecting too much from kinder

garten children? and (d) What are the children learning?

Classroom activities

During the winter holiday break, I

planned major changes in my daily lit

eracy routines. Previously, the children had written in journals 2 afternoons a

week. I decided to move journals to the

morning, following a daily phonemic awareness activity. My goal was to im

merse my children in language play, rhymes, word play, and rich predictable literature (Bishop & Bishop, 1996).

After the holiday break I started us

ing specific activities to help children become more aware of words and

sounds within words. Building on our shared reading of a predictable book,

we acted out the story, had the children become the words (see Cunningham, 1995, for more on these activities),

clapped syllables, played with rhymes, and read and played with more nursery

rhymes. I also used the pocket chart as a basis for children to find words, find

missing words, and build sentences from books or nursery rhymes we had read (McCracken & McCracken, 1986). The children seemed to have the most fun sorting words by length and sorting

words by letters (Cunningham, 1995). All of these activities led to the

Names Activity (Cunningham, 1995).

Daily, I focused on a child's name and used his/her name to help the children look carefully at the letters within

words. Once we had counted and

named the letters, the class built an ex

perience chart for that particular child. The children interviewed our "name

person." "What is your favorite food?" "How many people are in your fami

ly?" "What do you like to do at home?" were typical questions the children asked. As the child answered, I record ed responses on chart paper.

We then counted the letters in the

name, looked for little words, and looked for clues to help us read the name. For example, when I selected the name Luke from the name basket, T.J.

said, "Hey, there is a quiet e at the end of his name." And R.J. said, "There are

four letters but I only hear three!" After we discussed the charted story, each student wrote the selected child's name on a piece of paper, drew a picture of the focal child, and completed the sen

tence, "I like_because _." At first I took dictation,

but as the weeks progressed the chil dren began to write their own respons es. These pages were then bound, and the book was shared with the class be fore the focal child took it home.

Because I was concerned about what the children were learning (and also si

multaneously beginning a graduate course focusing on action research) I decided to keep a daily log of the chil dren's responses to the literacy lessons. For example, on January 15,1 record ed the following dialogue on an expe rience chart after we had studied the name Katherine.

Megan: There's a /th/ like the beginning of thumb.

T.J.: Another silent e, Mrs. Reiner.

Kathy: You don't really hear the e by the r either.

Robert: I see the word in (and pointed it out using the word finder). (The word finder is a fly swatter with

a hole cut out of the middle.)

The children were good observers.

However, up to this point in the year

they were drawing pictures, writing a few isolated letters, and copying words seen in the classroom. This was typical of what children in my previous classes had accomplished. On January 21,1

gave the following directions, "Today, I would like you to write some words that you know and then draw a pic ture." I was very excited to receive the

following responses: "I am omost 6,"

"My mom is butifl," "apl," "bruthr," "Mi hrt is red," "no," "yes," "mom,"

"dad," names of other children with il

lustrations, and animal names with il lustrations. For the first time, children

were confident and enthusiastic as they began writing!

Data collection

As I observed the children participat ing in various phonemic awareness ac

tivities I needed a way to document their progress. I began to keep my own

daily teaching journal, but I also want

ed some type of progress report to pre sent to the parents. And I was required to collect classroom data as part of my

graduate action research requirements. I decided to use the children's daily journal writings to assess their prog ress. I believed I could gain a vast amount of information from each child's personal writing.

For my own assessment purposes, I

kept monthly charts (see the Figure) documenting each child's writing. Once each month I reviewed each child's writing and dated the growth I saw developing. This way I could easi

ly view growth for each month. At the

February parent-teacher conferences, I

presented every parent with a copy of the journal checklist and explained it to them.

The checklist showed growth from

September through February. Most

parents were pleased with the informa tion and stated they would encourage

writing at home. For my action research project, I

continued to assess and review every child in my class. Twice a month, I used the charts to document each child's progress in daily writing activi ties. This gave me a good understand

ing of how each child was developing in alphabet sound knowledge.

Although I charted the information

only twice a month, I continued to look at the children's journals and recorded

what they were writing in my own

notebook. I developed a weekly chart with each child's name and a space to

write daily comments. I used this dur

ing conferences with children as they completed their daily journal entries.

The conferences took time, so again,

EARLY CHILDHOOD 71

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Monthly journal writing checklist

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this led to major changes in my daily plans. The beginning of a Writers'

Workshop will be addressed shortly.

Data analysis After reviewing my monthly docu

mentation charts, I found that I still did not have a clear picture of what was re

ally happening in my classroom. I

could see progress and I noted changes in enthusiasm for writing, but it wasn't until I put the facts together on a large chart that I realized how much growth had taken place. I used my monthly progress chart format to compile class data. I completed a chart for each

month, listing every child's name and

checking the writing abilities I had doc umented. In this way I could easily see

class progress across the entire year.

From September through November most of the children were still drawing

pictures; a few were copying words.

The class progressed from 24 children

scribbling and drawing pictures in their

journals to only 4 children scribbling by the end of January. By April, the class had progressed to 0 scribblers, 1 who drew pictures, 4 who wrote isolat ed letters, 1 who copied only, 3 who

wrote words from memory, 8 who used invented spelling, 2 who wrote phrases, and 6 children who wrote simple sen

tences! Additionally, I noticed a change in the children's enthusiasm and dispo sition to read storybooks. Previously there had been little interest in choosing

books as a free choice activity. By the

year's end, many children were enthu

siastically choosing books as a self selected activity.

Changes in my practice When I started using phonemic

awareness activities in my classroom, I was very apprehensive. I thought the

idea was a good one, but I had so few children interested in literacy at the be

ginning of that year, I wasn't sure if it would work with this particular class. I

thought I would try the activities for 2 months. If things were not going well

by March 1, I would try another ap

proach. Happily, the phonemic aware ness activities worked very well.

As I reflect on changes in my teach

ing, I find I'm much happier with how I am teaching literacy. I knew the "letter of the week" program was not meeting the needs of all children, especially those children who have not had much

previous experience with print. Child ren with limited print experience typi cally had difficulty remembering the "letter of the week." Even those chil dren who learned their letters easily were not really interested in reading, rarely choosing to look at books or to

try any individual writing beyond copying. The increased enthusiasm the

children express for literacy activities has definitely supported the changes in

my teaching. The action research project required

me to document children's learning. When I realized that every child had

grown as a reader and writer, I became confident of the changes I had made. I had evidence to show that my students'

literacy growth exceeded district ex

pectations. I began this school year with the

name game activities I started last year at mid-year. I continue to document the children's growth, which shows me that

my students are making good progress. I communicate this growth to parents,

who also see children's growth and re

spond positively to my program changes. I've learned that it is possible to system

atically engage kindergarten children in

appropriate reading and writing activi ties. My students are growing as eager and confident readers and writers.

References

Bishop, A., & Bishop, S. (1996). Teaching phonics, phonemic awareness, and word

recognition. Westminster, CA: Teacher

Created Materials.

Bruneau, B. (1997). The literacy pyramid or

ganization of reading/writing activities in a

whole language classroom. The Reading Teacher, 51,158-160.

Bruneau, B., & Reiner, K. (1996). Focusing on kindergarten children's literacy devel

72 The Reading Teacher Vol. 52, No. 1 September 1998

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opment: A tale of two practices. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED

403 547)

Cunningham, P.M. (1995). Phonics they use: Words for reading and writing. New

York: HarperCollins.

Katz, L.G., & Chard, S.C. (1989). Engaging

children's minds: The project approach.

Newark, NJ: Ablex.

McCracken, R., & McCracken, M. (1986).

Songs, stories, and poetry to teach read

ing and writing. Chicago: American

Library Association.

Yopp, H. (1992). Developing phonemic awareness in young children. The Reading

Teacher, 45, 696 -

703

The Early Childhood column explores issues related to early literacy learning and

teaching. RT readers may contact the editors through Margaret Humadi Genisio,

University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Department of Reading, 800 Algoma Boulevard, Oshkosh WI 59401, USA. E-mail: genisio@vaxa.cis.uwosh.edu

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EARLY CHILDHOOD 73

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