Phonemic Awareness Jennifer Gondek Instructional Specialist for Inclusive Education TST BOCES jgondek@tstboces.org
Participants will: Understand the importance of phonemic awareness in early literacy development. Be able to describe and implement three researchbased interventions to increase PA skills. Share teacher-created interventions that have successfully improved PA skills. Locate additional resources for further support.
Phonemic Awareness is defined as: 1. Knowledge that words are composed of individual sounds that are smaller than syllables. 2. Knowledge of the features of individual sounds. (Torgensen, Al Otaiba, & Grek, 2005)
Precursor for reading development (Adams 1990, Snow et. Al 1998, Torgensen, 2002) Sets the stage for meaningful phonics instruction. (Torgensen, 2002) Teaches the relationship between sound and written symbols (Moats, 2000) Provides an awareness that single sounds can be combined to form words (Reading et al. 2007)
www.ldonline.org
Scaffolding is the intentional, strategic support that teachers provide that allows children to complete a task they could not accomplish independently. (McGee & Ukrainetz, 2009)
Level of Support Intense Moderate Minimal Information Provided Isolate and exaggerate phoneme in isolation and in the word, point to mouth and tell child to look, say the correct response, elicit response from child. Isolate phoneme and exaggerate, point to the mouth and tell child to look, exaggerate phoneme in word (use two or more depending on need). Emphasize beginning phoneme in the word. None Ask the question. No prompting.
Provided after some basic instruction in phonemic awareness and letter-sound relationships Variety of activities that combine phoneme segmentation and blending with the lettersound instruction. (Manyak, 2008)
Beginning-Middle-End Say-It and -Move-It Scaffolded Spelling Word Mapping Word Wall Boxes (Manyak, 2008)
Turtle Talk Blending Animal Names in Old MacDonald Tap and Sweep Blending Phonemes Syllable Puzzles Change that Word!
Phonemic Awareness and Phonics Instruction Explicit Systematic Research-based Key Idea: Introduce, Reintroduce, Build Accuracy, Build Fluency Flexible www.freereading.net
Pre-alphabetic phase: memorizing visual features of words or guessing words from their context. Partial-alphabetic phase: recognize some letters of the alphabet and can use them together with context to remember words by sight. Full-alphabetic phase: readers possess extensive working knowledge of the graphophonemic system, and they can use this knowledge to analyze fully the connections between graphemes and phonemes in words. They can decode unfamiliar words and store fully analyzed sight words in memory. Consolidated-alphabetic phase: consolidate knowledge of grapheme-phoneme blends into larger units that recur in different words. Ehri, 1999
No Place to Hide: Students respond at the same time, so it is easier to find students who are repeating what others say Teacher watches for non-responders or slow-responders Provides plenty of examples so that students (particularly at-risk students) can get solo practice, supported by the teacher Provides explicit strategies for helping students who give an incorrect response. www.freereading.net
Intervention A is a 40 week program (8, five-week periods of instruction) Some teachers may find it helpful to think of the complete 40- week sequence as eight five-week periods with overlapping elements. Practicing existing skills and introducing new skills are important in each period. www.freereading.net
http://www.freereading.net Click on Teach the program
What interventions have been successful for students in the past?