Jennifer ColemanVivian Harris

Christine MooreUniversity of Arkansas at Little Rock

March 7, 2013

Phonemic Awareness Highlighted

No area in reading research has gained a much attention over the past two decades as phonological awareness. Perhaps the most

important finding from research is that critical levels of phonological awareness can

be developed through explicit instruction.

( Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1995)

Byrne, B., Fielding-Barnsley, R., (1995). Evaluation of a Program to Teach Phonemic Awareness to Young Children: A 2-and 3-Year Follow-Up and a New Preschool

Trial. Journal of Educational Psychology,87,488-503.

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Phonemic AwarenessWhat is it?

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, andmanipulate individual sounds(phonemes) within spoken words.

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Historical Overview

Trinkle (2006) stated, “Phonemic awareness is not phonics. The simplest explanation is that phonics is to the printed word what phonemic awareness is to the sounds of the parts of spoken words.”

Trinkle, C.(2006). Library media specialist’s word wall and beyond: Integrating the five components of reading instruction, School Library Media Activities Monthly, 23(1),40-43.

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Historical Overview

How to teach and when to teach phonemic awareness has been a concern for a number

of years? Yopp (2000) acknowledge that phonemic awareness is significant in learning to read.

Yopp, H. ,& Yopp, R.(2000). Supporting phonemic awareness development in the classroom. Reading Teacher, 54(2),130.

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Historical OverviewSlavin (2009) evaluated sixty three studies of

beginning reading programs and seventy nine studies of upper elementary reading programs. Several important patterns developed with this study. “..this article finds extensive evidence supporting forms of cooperative learning in which students work in small groups to help one another master reading skills and in which success of the team depends on the individual learning of each team member.”

Slavin, R., Lake, C., Chambers, B., Cheung, A., & Davis, S. (2009), Effective reading programs for the elementary grades: A best –evidence synthesis, Review of Educational Research, 79(4), 1391-1466.

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Historical Overview

Bhat et all (2003) conducted a study to determine if middle school students with

learning disabilities could improve phonological awareness.

Bhat, P., Griffin, C., & Sindelar,P. (2003), Phonological awareness instruction for middle school

students with learning disabilities, Learning Disability //quarterly, 26(2), 73-87.

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Historical Overview

The Bhat (2003) was a significant because almost all research targets elementary and preschool aged children when looking at

phonological awareness. The study showed that interventions used with the learning

disabled students were sustained for over 6 to 8 months.

Bhat, P., Griffin, C., & Sindelar,P. (2003), Phonological awareness instruction for middle school

students with learning disabilities, Learning Disability //quarterly, 26(2), 73-87.

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Historical OverviewMorris (1983) investigated an experiment on

the phoneme awareness and the concept of word task. The researcher noted that children’s awareness of phoneme units play an important role into learning to read. The researcher used a poem reading strategy to capture the developmental character of the beginning reader (Morris, 1983)

Morris, D. (1983). Concept of word and phoneme awareness in the beginning reader, Research in the Teaching of English, (17)4, 359-373

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Phonemic AwarenessWho is it for?

Preschool children

Kindergarten through second grade

Basic and below grade level readers

Castle, J.M., Riach, J., & Nicholson, T., (1994). Getting Off to a Better Start in Reading and Spelling: The Effects of a Phonemic Instruction Within a Whole LanguageProgram. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 350-359.

National Reading Panel Findings

The National Reading Panel concluded that “scientific based evidence shows that

teaching children to manipulate sounds in language (phonemes) helps them learn to

read.”

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.vharris

National Reading Panel Findings

“The NRP (2000) concluded that leading phonemic awareness to children significantly improves their reading when compared to instruction

without any attention to phonemic awareness.”

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

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National Reading Panel Findings

The NRP (2000) reported that, “the results of experimental studies led the panel to conclude

that phonemic awareness training led to improvement in students phonemic awareness in

reading and spelling.”

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read:

An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

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Areas of Instruction in Phonemic AwarenessIsolationIdentifyBlendingSegmentingDeletionAddition Substitution

Best Type of Instruction for Struggling LearnersResearch suggests the most effective

instruction is explicit or focused instruction within a small group setting.

Varying levels of scaffolding to meet individuals needs.

Koutsoftas, A.D., Harmon, M.T., & Gray, S., (2009). The Effect of Tier 2 Intervention for Phonemic Awareness in a Response-to-Intervention Model in Low-Income

Preschool Classrooms. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 40, 116-130.

McGee, L.M., & Ukrainetz, T.A., (2009). Using Scaffolding to Teach Phonemic Awareness in Preschool and Kindergarten.

The Reading Teacher, 62, 599-603.

How Much Phonemic Awareness Instruction is Enough?The NRP (NICHD, 2000) suggested,

“In the NRP analysis, studies that spent between 5 and 18 hours teaching PA yielded very large effects on the acquisition of phonemic awareness” (p .2-41).

They went on to explain that the studies that taught phonemic awareness activities in less than 20 hours tended to demonstrate transfer to actual reading.

Examples of Phonemic Awareness Lessonsfor Emergent Readershttp://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resourc

es/lesson-plans/generating rhymes-developing-phonemic-212.html

An essential skill for emergent readers is understanding how to generate rhymes and recognition of rhyming patterns. The lesson found in the link supports students by helping them to recognize and generate rhymes through games, songs, and poetry.

How to teach explicit phonemic blending by using letter/sound associationhttp://bcove.me/5bnkagga

Provided is a link that shows a short video clip of a reading teacher instructing a student in phonemic blending by using letter sound association. Dr. Reid Lyon of the National Institutes of Health, HICHD provides information on the benefits of explicit instruction.

Current Research in Phonemic Awareness

“The Foundation of reading is speech, and the organization of reading skills in the brain must

be built on this foundation.” Herron (2008, p. 80)

Herron, J. (2008, September). Why phonics teaching must change. Educational Leadership, 66, 77-81.

Current Research in Phonemic Awareness: EncodingTorgesen’s encoding research with first graders who

were introduced to the 40 phonemes using finger strokes on a keyboard to type dictated words and sentences showed significant gains in:

phonemic reading skillsword attack skillsword recognition skillsreading fluency

Torgesen, J.K. (2004). Lessons learned from intervention research. In P. McCardle & V. Chhabra (Eds.), Voice of evidence in reading research (pp.374-375). Baltimore: Paul Brookes.

Phonemic Awareness Instruction Through EncodingStudent pronounces word to be built which

activates pronunciation and meaningMotor system of speech is used to segment wordStudents retrieve sound/letter associationsAssembling of letter tiles or writing of words on

dry erase board

Herron, J. (2008, September). Why phonics teaching must change. Educational Leadership, 66, 77-81.

Phonemic Awareness Instruction: Phoneme and Grapheme Association

http://youtu.be/H0cC7V-U-hY

Brian, B., & Fielding-Barnsley, R., (1993). Evaluation of a Program to Teach

Phonemic Awareness to Children: A 1-Year Follow-up. Journal of Educational

Psychology, 85,104-111.

“An understanding of phoneme identity, when combined with letter-sound knowledge, supports a discovery of the alphabetic principle” Brian Byrne & Ruth Fielding-Barnsley, (1993, p. 104)

Phonemic Awareness Instruction: Onset-RimeInstructing students to recognize and break

words onset-rimehttp://youtu.be/TFrlNrYC-84

Phonemic Awareness Instruction: Encoding

Retrieving sound/letter associationshttp://youtu.be/9cc390oVNMA

The Effects of Phonemic Awareness within a Response-to-Intervention (RTI) program

Koutsoftas, Harmon, & Gray (2009), examined the effects of a Tier 2 intervention for beginning sounds.

Improvement of beginning sounds was shown in 71% of students within the Tier 2 intervention.

The Tier 2 intervention “helped narrow the gap in beginning sound awareness that had began to emerge before the treatment”

Koustsoftas, Harmon, & Gray, (2009, p. 116)

Koutsoftas, A.D., Harmon, M.T., & Gray, S., (2009). The Effect of Tier 2 Interventionfor Phonemic Awareness in a Response-to-Intervention Model in Low-Income

Preschool Classrooms. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 40,116-130.

Current Research: Implications for InstructionEmphasize letter sounds over letter namesAssociate graphemes with phonemes, no

need to count themFocus attention on mouth movement when

making speech sound (phonemes)Teach the 40 phoneme sounds and

representationsDictate sentences to be encodedSpell words by saying the word slowly and

writing the sounds heardHerron, J. (2008, September). Why phonics teaching must change.

Educational Leadership, 66, 77-81.