Phonemic Awareness Project for UALR

1. Jennifer Coleman
Vivian Harris
Christine Moore
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
March 7, 2013

2. 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.

3. Phonemic Awareness
What is it?
Phonemic awareness is the
ability to hear, identify, and
manipulate 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.

4. 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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5. 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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6. Historical Overview
Slavin (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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7. 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
vharris students with learning disabilities, Learning Disability //quarterly, 26(2), 73-87.

8. 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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9. Historical Overview
Morris (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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10. Phonemic Awareness
Who 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 Language
Program. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 350-359.

11. 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.
vharris 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

12. 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.
Vharris

13. 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.
vharris

14. Areas of Instruction in Phonemic
Awareness
Isolation
Identify
Blending
Segmenting
Deletion
Addition
Substitution

15. Best Type of Instruction for Struggling
Learners
Research 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.

16. 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.

17. Examples of Phonemic Awareness Lessons
for Emergent Readers
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-pla
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.

18. How to teach explicit phonemic blending by
using letter/sound association
http://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.

19. 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.

20. Current Research in Phonemic Awareness:
Encoding
Torgesen’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 skills
word attack skills
word recognition skills
reading 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.

21. Phonemic Awareness Instruction
Through Encoding
Student pronounces word to be built which activates
pronunciation and meaning
Motor system of speech is used to segment word
Students retrieve sound/letter associations
Assembling 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.

22. Phonemic Awareness Instruction:
Phoneme and Grapheme Association
“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)
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.

23. Phonemic Awareness Instruction:
Onset-Rime
Instructing students to recognize and break words
onset-rime
http://youtu.be/TFrlNrYC-84

24. Phonemic Awareness Instruction:
Encoding
Retrieving sound/letter associations
http://youtu.be/9cc390oVNMA

25. 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 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.

26. Current Research:
Implications for Instruction
Emphasize letter sounds over letter names
Associate graphemes with phonemes, no need to
count them
Focus attention on mouth movement when making
speech sound (phonemes)
Teach the 40 phoneme sounds and representations
Dictate sentences to be encoded
Spell words by saying the word slowly and writing the
sounds heard
Herron, J. (2008, September). Why phonics teaching must change. Educational
Leadership, 66, 77-81.