Reading and Phonemic Awareness Activities PreK-2

Margaret Adams

September 2012

Melrose Public Schools

Objectives

• Identify sequence of skills for phonemic awareness for your grade level.

• Create manipulatives to use in teaching phonemic awareness.

• Name activities for teaching phonemic awareness.

Agenda• Review of Phonemic Awareness• Sequence of Skills for Teaching Phonemic Awareness in

Grades K-2• Small Group Activities

Phonemic Awareness

• Phonemic Awareness is the ability to understand consciously and analytically that words are made up of sound segments that are abstract and can be manipulated.

• It depends on installing that system in long term memory and having it available to working memory when deciphering a printed word.

Teaching Our Children to Read: The Role of Skills in a Comprehensive Reading Program-Crowin ,p. 96 William Honig.

DECODING COMPREHENSIONWord

Recognition Strategies

Fluency Academic Language

Comprehension Strategies

• John Shefelbine/ Developmental Studies Center •

• Framework for Reading •

Phonological Awareness

Phonological Awareness

Rhyming

AlliterationSentences into Words

Words into Syllables

Words into Sounds:

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic Awareness

Segmenting Blending Manipulating

Words into Sounds

Most Critical Phonological Awareness Skills

Why is Phonemic Awareness important?

Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to read.

Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to spell.

Phonemic awareness skills assessed in kindergarten and first grade serve as a potent predictor of difficulties learning to read…we can predict with approximately 92% accuracy who will have difficulties learning to read.

Reid Lyon, NIH

The Research Says…“Children who fall behind in first grade reading have a one in eight chance of ever catching up to grade level.”(Juel, 1994)

“Phoneme awareness is the single best predictor of reading success between kindergarten and second grade.”(Adams, Stanovich, 1995)

“Phonemic awareness is more highly related to learning to read than are tests of general intelligence, reading readiness, and listening comprehension.” (Stanovich, 1993)

Alphabetic Principle• This does not come naturally or easily to humans. • Without direct instructional support, phonemic

awareness eludes about 25% white middle class first graders and more from less literacy rich homes.

• These children show evidence of serious difficulty learning to read.

• It is the basis for reading. • Readers must understand that spoken language is made

up of sequences of these little sounds.

Progression of Difficulty

• Words-syllables-individual phonemes

• Initial sound-final-medial

• Receptive-expressive

• Pictures-tokens-eventually graphemes

Who is it for?

• Preschool

• Kindergarten through second grade

Age 3 •Recitation of rhymes

•Rhyming by pattern

•Alliteration

Age 4 •Syllable counting (50% of children by age 4)

Age 5 •Syllable counting (90% of children by age 5)

Age 6 •Initial consonant matching

•Blending 2-3 phonemes

•Counting phonemes (70% of children by age 6)

•Rhyme identification

•Onset-rime division

Age 7 •Blending 3 phonemes

•Segmentation of 3-4 phonemes (blends)

•Phonetic spelling

•Phoneme deletion

Age 8 •Consonant cluster segmentation

•Deletion within clusters

Skills mastered by …

Developmental Sequence of Phonological Skills

• Usually engaged in as preschoolers.-Rhyme play and nonsense words-Syllables: Implicity segmenting as in chants and songs, clapping to syllables.

Word

Syllable

Phoneme

Linda Cummins, 2002

Areas of instruction• Isolation• Identify• Categorization• Blending• Segmentation• Deletion• Addition• Substitution

How Much Instructional Time?

“No more than 20 hours over the school year.”Stanovich, 1993

What does instruction look like?Direct Instruction Model

I Do

We Do

You Do

Phoneme Isolation

Children recognize

individual sounds in a word.

I do:

Teacher: What is the first sound in van?

The first sound in van is /v/.

Phoneme IsolationWe do: What is the first sound in:• Tire• PailYou do:• Goat• Clock• Star• FishWhat is the last sound in:

Phoneme Isolation

You Do: I spy something in the room that starts like:

• Purple

• Water

• Teacher

• Cat

Phoneme Identity

Children recognize the same sounds in different words

I Do:

Teacher: What sound is the same in

fix, fall, and fun?

The first sound /f/ is the same.

Phoneme Identity

We do: Which sound is the same in…?

• sat sister sorry

• run rice river

You do:

• bike bake birth

• mouse mat make

Phoneme Categorization

Children recognize the word in a set of three or four words that has the “odd” sound.

I do:

Teacher: Which word doesn’t belong?

bus, bun, rig

Rig does not belong. It doesn’t begin with /b/.

Phoneme Categorization

We do:

• shake ice shave

• milk butter bug

You do:

• candle cookie gutter

Phoneme Blending

Children listen to a sequence of separately spoken phonemes, and then combine the phonemes to

form a word. Then they write and read the word.

We do:Teacher: What word is /b/ /i/ /g/?Children: /b/ /i/ /g/ is big.

Types of Blending

Continuous Blending

Sound by Sound Blending

Vowel-First Blending

Types of BlendingI do: What word is /_/ /_/ /_/?

• /h/ /ou/ /s/

• /p/ /i/ /t/ • /f/ /o/ /k/ /s/

Phoneme SegmentationChildren break a word into its separate

sounds, saying each sound as they tap out or count it.

Then they write and read the sounds.

We do:Teacher: How many sounds are in grab?Children: /g/ /r/ /a/ /b/. Four sounds.

Segmentation Levels• Counting words in a sentence

• Counting syllables in words

• Compound words

• Counting phonemes in words

Segmentation LevelsWe Do: How many sounds are in ___?

• Cake

• Lock

• Hen

• Flag

Phoneme Deletion

Children recognize the word that remains

when a phoneme is removed from

another word.

I do:

Teacher: What is smile without the /s/?

Children: Smile without the /s/ is mile.

Phoneme DeletionWe do: What is ___ without the /_/?

• Ball without /b/

• Fly without /f/

You do:• Rent without /r/

• Eight without /t/

Phoneme Addition

Children make a new word by adding a phoneme to an existing word.

I do:Teacher: What word do you have if you add /s/ to

the beginning of park?

Spark.

Phoneme AdditionI do: What word do you have if you add /_/ to the beginning of ____?• /s/ to the beginning of mile

• /c/ to the beginning of law

You do:• /g/ to the beginning of lad

• /t/ to the end of pass

Phoneme Substitution

Children substitute one phoneme for another to make a new word.

I do:

Teacher: The word is bug. Change /g/ to /n/. What’s the new word?

Children: Bun.

Phoneme Substitution

We do: The word is ___. Change /_/ to /_/. What’s the new word?

• Tight /t/ to /m/

• Bag /b/ to /w/

You do:

• Lid /d/ to /p/

• Cot /o/ go /a/

May seem like play; however,

• Requires explicit teaching

• Highly structured practice

• Independent practice

Which methods have the greatest impact?

• Blending and Segmenting

Phoneme Awareness instruction is most

effective when it focuses on only one or

two types of phoneme manipulation, rather

than several types.

Developmental Sequence for Remediation

• Word, syllable, and sound awareness

• Rhyming

• Odd one out/alliteration

• Blending and segmenting

• Manipulation

Phonological Awareness Instruction

• Use different materials to represent sounds.

Larger materials for larger chunks of sounds Segmenting sentences into words

Smaller materials for smaller chunks of sound

Segmenting words into sounds

Segmenting words into syllables

Syllable Cards • Use for Blending

• “Blend this into a word “bas-ket-ball.” Touch each space as you say each part. Let’s blend together… ‘bas-ket-ball’ What word is it? Yes, it’s basketball.

• Use for Segmenting• How many parts? Touch each space as you say each part of the word.

Repeat after me- ‘elephant.’ Let’s break it up together…’el-e-phant’ • Use for Segmenting Recognition Task

• Give students several strips with different #’s of spaces (labels)• Raise up the card with the correct number of parts in this word

‘octopus.’ That’s right! There are three!

Syllable vs. Phonemes

• Struggling readers often get the concept of phonemes mixed up with the concept of syllables when doing phonological awareness tasks.

• Teach syllable awareness and sound awareness in separate lessons until there is sufficient understanding of each.

Scaffolding• Why provide scaffolding when developing

phonological awareness?• Students needs support as they work towards mastery. • The most helpful scaffolding is taking something abstract

and making it concrete. For example, students can touch objects and move them as they say the sounds or syllables in a word. It helps them understand phonological awareness at a deeper level.

• Scaffolding is dismantled as students master the concept. A new skill or new level of difficulty requires the scaffolding to be reintroduced.

Goal of Phonemic Awareness Instruction

• The ultimate goal of taking a student from speech to print is to have the phonological components of a word correspond to orthographical components (the print or spelling patters) so that decoding and encoding can become automatic.

Summary• Phoneme awareness is necessary, but not sufficient.• Phoneme awareness can be directly taught.• Phoneme awareness does not require extensive

teaching time.• Phoneme awareness should be assessed in the early

grades.• Focus majority of instruction on blending and

segmenting sounds.