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A short article about phonics for new teachers.

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As an educator, you have probably already heard of phonics. But chances are that no one has ever sat down with you to explain exactly what phonics instruction is. That's where we come in - with the help of phonics expert Wiley Blevins, we have compiled the basic information that you need to know before teaching phonics.

What is phonics?

Phonics involves the relationship between sounds and their spellings. The goal of phonics instruction is to teach students the most common sound-spelling relationships so that they can decode, or sound out, words. This decoding ability is a crucial element in reading success.

Why is phonics instruction important?

Most poor readers tend to rely so heavily on one reading strategy, such as the use of context and picture clues, that they exclude other strategies that might be more appropriate. To become skilled, fluent readers, children need to have a repertoire of strategies to draw on. These strategies include using a knowledge of sound-spelling relationships - in other words, an understanding of phonics. In addition, research has shown that skilled readers attend to almost every word in a sentence and process the letters that compose each of these words.

Therefore, phonics instruction plays a key role in helping students comprehend text. It helps the student map sounds onto spellings, thus enabling them to decode words. Decoding words aids in the development of word recognition, which in turn increases reading fluency. Reading fluency improves reading comprehension because as students are no longer struggling with decoding words, they can concentrate on making meaning from the text.

In addition, phonics instruction improves spelling ability because it emphasizes spelling patterns that become familiar from reading. Studies show that half of all English words can be spelled with phonics rules that relate to one letter to one sound.

How should you structure phonics instruction?

Phonics instruction should be explicit rather than implicit. Implicit instruction relies on readers "discovering" clues about sound-spelling relationships; good readers can do this, but poor readers are not likely to do so. Explicit instruction is the most effective type of phonics instruction, especially for children at risk for reading difficulties.

A good phonics lesson begins with an explicit explanation of the sound-spelling being taught along with guided opportunities for students to blend, or sound out, words using the new sound-spelling. These exercises should be followed by guided and independent reading practice in text that contains words with the new sound-spelling. This portion of phonics instruction is key. Therefore, phonics instruction should focus on applying learned sound-spelling relationships to actual reading, with smaller amounts of time spent on the initial task of learning phonics rules. That way, you can plan phonics lessons that are appropriate for all students, even if some have higher levels of phonics mastery than others.

How is phonics different from phonemic awareness?

Phonics involves the relationship between sounds and written symbols, whereas phonemic awareness involves sounds in spoken words. Therefore, phonics instruction focuses on teaching sound-spelling relationships and is associated with print. Most phonemic awareness tasks are oral.

Despite these different focuses, phonics instruction and phonemic awareness instruction are connected. In fact, phonemic awareness is necessary for phonics instruction to be effective. Before students can use a knowledge of sound-spelling relationships to decode written words, they must understand that words (whether written or spoken) are made up of sounds. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that a word is made up of a series of discrete sounds. Without this insight, phonics instruction will not make sense to students.

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As an educator, you have probably already heard of phonics. But chances are that no one has ever sat down with you to explain exactly what phonics instruction is. That's where we come in - with the help of phonics expert Wiley Blevins, we have compiled the basic information that you need to know before teaching phonics.

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Quick introductory read about phonics and decoding. Also, a wonderful general website tool for teachers

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Phonics instruction teaches the relationships between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language. To read, children need to understand the alphabetic principle - the idea that letters represent the sounds of spoken language. Decoding is when we use letter-sound relationships to translate a printed word into speech.

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Article: Phonemes vs. Graphemes Information

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Article: Phonemes vs. Graphemes Information

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An in-depth article describing the similarities and differences between phonemes (units of spoken sound) and graphemes (units of written language).

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What's the difference between a phoneme, a grapheme, a morpheme?

The science of teaching reading can sound like a foreign language, especially when you are first learning about Orton-Gillingham or Structured Literacy instruction. While you will likely be talking about digraphs and trigraphs, and blends before you know it, some of the specialized vocabulary can be a bit confusing. Let's discuss three important terms- phoneme, grapheme and morpheme.

What's A Phoneme?

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound. A phoneme is the smallest unit of spoken sound and is often the one thing that distinguishes one word from another. For example, cat and rat are only differentiated by the first phoneme. In many cases, a single letter represents a single phoneme, but in most cases, there are multiple ways of representing a particular phoneme in English spelling. And the case of the letter x, it is actually comprised of two phonemes /k/ & /s/. Generally, the accepted belief is that there are 44 phonemes in English. This includes short vowel sounds, long vowel sounds, digraph sounds such as /sh/, /th/ (voiced and unvoiced) and /ch/, and single consonant sounds. Most people consider the dipthong sounds /oy/ and /ou/ to be single phonemes as well. Linguistically, /ng/ and /ar/, /or/, /er/, /ear/, /oar/, and schwa are also phonemes. So, a single phoneme such as /n/ may be represented by letters in numerous different ways such as n, nn, kn, gn, or pn. Phonemes can be indicated through the International phonemic alphabet or by indicating a sound between slanted lines. Phonemic awareness, the ability to hear and manipulate individual sounds is foundational to the development of literacy. The ability for your students to segment and differentiate phonemes is crucial for accurate decoding, encoding, and understanding of speech. Meaning is very much affected by differences in words of a single phoneme which may differ only by whether it is voiced or unvoiced.

What's A Grapheme?

In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest unit of a written language whether or not it carries meaning or corresponds to a single phoneme. In different languages a grapheme may represent a syllable or unit of meaning. Graphemes can include other printed symbols such as punctuation marks. In this example, the grapheme <x> represents the phonemes /k//s/ while a single character in Japanese may represent a syllable. Different types/fonts of a single letter are considered the same grapheme. A basic alphabetic understanding and rapid recognition is a necessary first step to learning to read. Your student's ability to quickly, accurately and easily write graphemes is necessary to fluent writing and spelling. When we are speaking purely about English, you will often see another definition of grapheme. In this case a grapheme is a letter or group of letters that represent a single phoneme. This is a term used more or less synonymously with phonogram. There are often numerous graphemes (or phonograms) that can represent a single phoneme. For example, the /ā/ sound is a phoneme that can be represented by numerous graphemes including ai, ay, ey, ei, eigh, a-e. To make things even more confusing for young learners, a single grapheme such as ea may represent three different phonemes /ē/, /ā/, or /ĕ/. While English has 26 letters and 44 phonemes, there are approximately 250 graphemes.

What's A Morpheme?

Perhaps the most neglected term and concept in the study of teaching reading is the morpheme. A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning that cannot be further divided. So, a base word might be a morpheme, but a suffix or prefix or root also represents a morpheme. For example, the word red is a single morpheme, but the word unpredictable is made of the morphemes un + pre + dict + able. While none of these units stand alone as words, they are the smallest units of meaning. Morphemes can vary tremendously in length from a single letter such as the prefix a- to a place name derived from another language such as Massachusetts, which in English represents a single morpheme. As students move into reading and writing more sophisticated academic language, the concept of morphemes becomes increasingly important to their decoding and their spelling as well as their ability to infer meanings of new vocabulary. The root of a word makes tremendous differences in spelling words with the -ion suffix for instance. While linguists can spend hours debating the precision of certain aspects of morphology such as whether the word dog is made of one morpheme or 2 (the base word and the absence of a suffix or nul), the purpose of our pursuit of this study is far from a purely cognitive exercise. The reason for building this understanding is clear. English is by its nature a morpho-phonemic language. Not only is it phonemic in nature, but morphology also has a crucial role to play as well. In addressing both aspects of language learning, give your students the tools to understand the challenges of words that change pronunciation with the application of affixes such as clean and cleanse or sign and signature. Try to help them to understand seemingly random spellings like to and two when they learn about the relationship of two to twenty and twin and twelve.

English makes sense!

Rather than our language being random and illogical and full of exceptions, English has a deep and complex logic to its orthography that your students can learn to use. Knowledge of how English works extends beyond the 44 phonemes or the 26 letters of the alphabet to a much more sophisticated understanding about how words are made and broken.

How is this useful for your students?

Your students benefit when we are transparent and give them the tools and practice to think critically and analytically about our language. And it all begins with some shared understandings such as these terms. You can share the definitions in a reference binder like the Spelling Concepts and Strategies binder. You can learn more about it in this video, Spelling Concepts and Strategies Binder for Orton-GIllingham Lessons. *Be sure to subscribe to you can receive notifications when I create a new video.

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A Phoneme, A Grapheme, A Morpheme: What's the Difference? - The Literacy Nest

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The science of teaching reading can sound like a foreign language, especially when you are first learning about Orton-Gillingham or Structured Literacy instruction. While you will likely be talking about digraphs and trigraphs, and blends before you know it, some of the specialized vocabulary can be a bit confusing.

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This is an interesting read explaining what happens if phonics were left out while teaching students to read. (For teachers)

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Get important education news and analysis delivered straight to your inbox This story was produced by APM Reports and reprinted with permission.
It was 2015 and Jack Silva, the chief academic officer for the public schools in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, had a problem: Only 56 percent of third-graders in his district had scored proficient on the state reading test.

Reading scores had been low for a while, but for most of the five years that Silva had been chief academic officer, he and other school leaders had been consumed with a severe budget crisis. By 2015, the district had turned the corner financially, and Silva was wondering why the reading scores were so terrible. "It was really looking yourself in the mirror and saying, 'Which four in 10 students don't deserve to learn to read?'" he said.

The stakes were high. Research shows that children who don't learn to read by the end of third grade are likely to remain poor readers for the rest of their lives, and they're likely to fall behind in other academic areas, too. People who struggle with reading are more likely to drop out of high school, to end up in the criminal justice system, and to live in poverty. But as a nation, we've come to accept a high percentage of kids not reading well. More than 60 percent of American fourth-graders are not proficient readers, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and it's been that way since testing began in the 1990s.

One of the excuses educators have long offered to explain America's poor reading performance is poverty. There is plenty of poverty in Bethlehem, a small city in eastern Pennsylvania that was once a booming steel town. But there are fancy homes here, too, and when Silva examined the reading scores he saw that many kids at the wealthier schools weren't reading very well either. This was not just poverty. In fact, by some estimates, one-third of America's struggling readers are from college-educated families.

Silva didn't know anything about how children learn to read or how they should be taught, so he started searching online. As he soon discovered, virtually all kids can learn to read - if they are taught the right way. The problem is that many American elementary schools aren't doing that.

"We never looked at brain research. We had never, ever looked at it. Never."

The basic assumption that underlies typical reading instruction in many schools is that learning to read is a natural process, much like learning to talk. But decades of scientific research has revealed that reading doesn't come naturally. The human brain isn't wired to read. Kids must be explicitly taught how to connect sounds with letters - phonics.

"There are thousands of studies," said Louisa Moats, an education consultant and researcher who has been teaching and studying reading since the 1970s. "This is the most studied aspect of human learning."
The problem in Bethlehem
But this research hasn't made its way into many elementary school classrooms. The prevailing approaches to reading instruction in American schools are inconsistent with basic things scientists have discovered about how children learn to read. Many educators don't know the science, and in some cases actively resist it. The resistance is the result of beliefs about reading that have been deeply held in the educational establishment for decades, even though those beliefs have been proven wrong by scientists over and over again.

Most teachers nationwide are not being taught reading science in their teacher preparation programs because many deans and faculty in colleges of education either don't know the science or dismiss it. As a result of their intransigence, millions of kids have been set up to fail.

Even though Silva had known little about how children learn to read or how reading should be taught, he'd long been aware that some older students were struggling too. He'd been a middle school and high school teacher for years, and he had students who came across words they'd never seen before and had no idea how to sound them out.

"We never looked at brain research. We had never, ever looked at it. Never."

Kim Harper, the district's supervisor of literacy, noticed the same thing. She'd been a high school English teacher in Bethlehem and said that a disturbing number of her students, even students in honors classes, weren't very good readers. "They didn't like to read," she said. "They avoided reading. They would tell me it was too hard."
Related: Can Common Core reading tests ever be fair?
She didn't know what to do about it either, so she more or less shrugged it off. "I think it became easy to say, 'Well that's just the way it is. You know, we're always going to have X percent of kids who it's just going to be a struggle for,'" she said.

Even the school board president, Mike Faccinetto, said it was pretty much accepted that a lot of kids in the district would never be very good readers. "It was always, 'Well, that's not a reflection of Bethlehem,'" he said, referring to the reading scores. The kids who weren't doing well, "'Ah, well, you know those kids, their parents aren't around, or maybe they don't have two parents. And that's the best they're going to do.'"

Silva wanted to figure out what was going on. So in 2015, he assigned Harper to visit all of Bethlehem's elementary schools and find out how children were being taught to read.
We are not born wired to read
Harper went to a professional development day at one of the district's lowest-performing elementary schools. The teachers were talking about how kids should attack words in a story. When a child came to a word he didn't know, the teacher would tell him to look at the picture and guess. The most important thing was for the child to understand the meaning of the story, not the exact words on the page. So, if a kid came to the word "horse" and said "house," the teacher would say it's wrong. But, Harper said, "if the kid said 'pony,' it'd be right because pony and horse mean the same thing."

Harper was shocked. First of all, pony and horse don't mean the same thing. Second, the idea that you look at pictures and guess when you don't know a word seemed odd to her. "I wouldn't have been able to use that strategy at the secondary level," she said. There were no pictures in the books her high school students read.

The teachers described their approach to reading instruction as balanced literacy. Harper didn't quite know what that meant, but her colleague Jodi Frankelli had heard lots about balanced literacy. Frankelli was the district's new supervisor of early learning. Though her teaching experience and training were in the upper grades, too, she'd been a principal at one of Bethlehem's elementary schools. She said it hadn't been completely clear to her what balanced literacy was. The main idea seemed to be: Give kids lots of good books, and with some guidance and enough practice, they become readers. "We never looked at brain research," she said. "We had never, ever looked at it. Never."

The scientific research on reading goes back decades, from work psychologists were doing in the 1960s to more recent discoveries by neuroscientists using brain imaging technology.

More than 60 percent of American fourth-graders are not proficient readers, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Researchers have been doing their work in labs that were sometimes right across the quad from schools of education, but reading researchers and education researchers kind of live in separate universes; they go to different conferences, publish in different journals. The big takeaway from all the scientific research on reading is that learning to read is not a natural process. We are not born wired to read.

"Balanced literacy was a way to defuse the wars over reading. It succeeded in keeping the science at bay and it allowed things to continue as before."

We are born wired to talk. Kids learn to talk by being talked to, by being surrounded with spoken language. That's all it takes. No one has to teach them to talk.
Balanced literacy
But, as numerous studies have shown, reading is different. Our brains don't know how to do it. That's because human beings didn't invent written language until relatively recently in human history, just a few thousand years ago. To be able to read, structures in our brain that were designed for things such as object recognition have to get rewired a bit.

Another big takeaway from decades of scientific research is that, while we use our eyes to read, the starting point for reading is sound. What a child must do to become a reader is to figure out how the words she hears and knows how to say connect to letters on the page. Writing is a code humans invented to represent speech sounds. Kids have to crack that code to become readers.

Children don't crack the code naturally. They need to be taught how letters represent speech sounds. But by the time scientists had done all the studies to conclude this for sure, a different set of beliefs about reading was already deeply entrenched in many American schools and colleges of education.

Debates about reading go back centuries. In the 1800s, Horace Mann, the father of the public-school movement in the United States, railed against the idea of teaching children that letters represent sounds. He referred to letters of the alphabet as "bloodless, ghastly apparitions" and argued that children would be distracted from comprehending the meaning of what they were reading if they focused too much on letters. He believed children should be taught to read whole words.

On the other side of the debate were people who believed in phonics. That means teaching children that words are made up of parts and showing them how different letters and combinations of letters connect to the speech sounds in words.

No one really knew how children actually learned to read, or how they should be taught. "It was more debates among people who had philosophies," Moats said. By the 1980s, the debate was so intense that people began referring to it as "the reading war." It was phonics versus what had come to be known as "whole language."

Whole language was a movement of people who believed that children and teachers needed to be freed from the tedium of phonics instruction. Phonics lessons were seen as rote, old-fashioned, and kind of conservative. The essential idea in whole language was that children construct their own knowledge and meaning from experience. Teaching them phonics wasn't necessary because learning to read was a natural process that would occur if they were immersed in a print-rich environment. Whole language proponents thought phonics lessons might actually be bad for kids, might inhibit children from developing a love of reading by making them focus on tedious skills like breaking words into parts.

By the early 1990s, the idea that kids didn't need phonics had taken hold in many schools and teacher preparation programs, and was even a guiding principle behind reading instruction across the entire state of California. But the phonics folks kept pushing back.

The battle between whole language and phonics got so heated that the U.S. Congress eventually got involved, convening a National Reading Panel to review all the research on reading. In 2000, the panel released a report. The sum of the research showed that explicitly teaching children the relationship between sounds and letters improved reading achievement. The panel concluded that phonics lessons help kids become better readers. There is no evidence to say the same about whole language.

After the National Reading Panel report, whole language proponents could no longer deny the importance of phonics. But they didn't give up their core belief that learning to read is a natural process, and they didn't give up the reading programs they were selling, either. Instead they advocated for doing both, a balance. So, whole language didn't disappear; it just got repackaged as balanced literacy. And in balanced literacy, phonics is treated a bit like salt on a meal: a little here and there, but not too much, because it could be bad for you.

"Balanced literacy was a way to defuse the wars over reading," said Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive neuroscientist and author of the book "Language at the Speed of Sight." "It succeeded in keeping the science at bay, and it allowed things to continue as before."

He says the reading wars are over, and science lost.
'When we know better, we do better'
Seidenberg knows of a child who was struggling so much with reading that her mother paid for a private tutor. "The tutor taught her some of the basic skills that the child wasn't getting in her whole language classroom," he said. "At the end of the school year the teacher was proud that the child had made so much progress, and the parent said, 'Well, why didn't you teach phonics and other basic skills related to print in class?' And the teacher said 'Oh, I did. Your child was absent that day.'"

For scientists like Seidenberg, the problem with teaching just a little bit of phonics is that according to all the research, phonics is crucial when it comes to learning how to read. Surrounding kids with good books is a great idea, but it's not the same as teaching children to read.

Experts say that in a whole-language classroom, some kids will learn to read despite the lack of effective instruction. But without explicit and systematic phonics instruction, many children won't ever learn to read very well.

By the end of 2015, Silva and other district leaders in Bethlehem had figured out that balanced literacy didn't line up with the science.

Now they had to figure out what to do about it. They decided the first step would be a series of training sessions over the course of a school year for all the principals at the district's 16 elementary schools. The district leaders reasoned that the principals needed to be convinced of the science if they were going to convince their teachers to change the way they taught reading.

If there was one principal who was sure to resist, it was Kathy Bast, the principal of Calypso Elementary School. She was known as the district's No. 1 balanced literacy champion. "Decoding was never part of anything I ever did," Bast said. She happened to be out on medical leave when the training began, but her colleagues warned her she wouldn't like it. "They said to me, 'Kathy, we know you. You're not going to take well to this training.'"

Education as a practice has placed a much higher value on observation and hands-on experience than on scientific evidence.

But Bast had a secret. Before becoming a principal, she'd been a reading specialist. It was her job to help struggling readers. In her training to become a reading specialist, she learned a lot about how to identify children with reading problems, but she learned nothing about how to help those children learn to read. "I didn't know what to do, except just give them more books," she said. "And it wasn't working."

With time on her hands while she was on medical leave, Bast began poking around online and discovered the vast scientific literature on reading. It wasn't being published in a lot of the journals and newsletters she got as a school principal, but as her boss, Silva, had discovered, all it takes is a Google search to find it. When Bast returned to work from medical leave and joined her fellow principals in the training on reading science, she was ready to hear what the trainer had to say. And it kind of blew her mind. "Wow!" she thought. "OK, let's go get at this."

The training used a curriculum written by Moats called "Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling" or LETRS. The principals went through the training in the 2015-16 school year, the kindergarten teachers went through it the next year, and then first- and second-grade teachers did it, too.

For many teachers, the science of reading training was overwhelming at first. "I remember sitting there and my head was throbbing 'cause it was like, 'How can I take all this in?'" said Adrienne Ibarra, a reading specialist at Bethlehem's Lincoln Elementary School. She hadn't learned much about phonics when she was in college studying to be a teacher. Neither had Michelle Bosak, an English as a second language teacher at Lincoln. "It was very broad classes, vague classes and like a children's literature class," Bosak said. "But not actually teaching phonics."

Candy Maldonado, a first-grade teacher at Lincoln, described the district's old approach to reading instruction this way: "We did like a letter a week. So, if the letter was 'A,' we read books about 'A,' we ate things with 'A,' we found things with 'A,'" she said. "All we did was learn 'A' said 'ah.' And then there's apples, and we tasted apples."

The teachers had no idea how kids actually learned to read. "It was just that they do," Ibarra said.

"Almost like it's automatic," Maldonado added.
'My kids are successful, and happy, and believe in themselves'
After learning about the reading science, these teachers were full of regret. "I feel horrible guilt," said Ibarra, who's been a teacher for 15 years.

"I thought, 'All these years, all these students,'" said Bosak, who's been teaching for 26 years.

To help assuage that guilt, the Bethlehem school district has adopted a motto: "When we know better, we do better." And soon, they were doing much better.

The Bethlehem schools now use a curriculum in the early elementary grades that mixes teacher-directed whole-class phonics lessons with small-group activities to meet the needs of children at different points in the process of learning to read. At first, some of the teachers recoiled a bit at the scripted nature of the lessons; the curriculum is explicit and systematic, with every teacher on the same page each day. If the curriculum says today's the day for kindergarteners to learn words that begin with the sounds "wuh" and "guh," you can walk into any kindergarten classroom in the district and see the teacher doing that lesson.

Lynn Venable, a kindergarten teacher at Calypso who has been teaching elementary school for 21 years, said she used to think reading would just kind of "fall together" for kids if they were exposed to enough print. Now, because of the science of reading training, she knows better. She said her current class of kindergartners had progressed more quickly in reading than any class she'd ever had. "My kids are successful, and happy, and believe in themselves," she said. "I don't have a single child in my room that has that look on their face like, 'I can't do this.'"

When you don't give kids insight into the code and don't arm them with insight into language, both spoken and written, what happens is, 'This is a mystery. I'm not sure I'm getting what these words really say."

The teacher prep problem
At the end of each school year, the Bethlehem school district gives kindergartners a test to assess early reading skills. In 2015, before the science of reading training began, more than half of the kindergartners in the district tested below the benchmark score, meaning most of them were heading into first grade at risk of reading failure. At the end of the 2018 school year, after the principals and kindergarten teachers were trained in the reading science, 84 percent of kindergarteners met or exceeded the benchmark score. At three schools, it was 100 percent.

Silva is thrilled with the results, but cautious. He's eager to see how the kindergartners do when they get to the state reading test in third grade. "We may have hit a home run in the first inning," he said. "But there's a lot of game left here."

It's impossible to know if the science of reading training is what led to the test score gains. Some of the schools in the district moved from half-day to full-day kindergarten the same year the training began, so that could have been a factor. But Bast, the principal at Calypso, thinks if her teachers had continued with the old approach to reading instruction, she'd still have a lot of struggling readers in her school. "We're actually teaching," she said. "We're doing our jobs."

You can find schools and school districts across the United States that are trying to change reading instruction the way Bethlehem has, but according to Moats, ill-informed, ineffective reading instruction is the norm. "The gap between science-based ideas and practices and those most often used in our classrooms remains very wide and persistent," she wrote in a recent article.

A big part of the problem is at the university level, in schools of education, according to the authors of a 2016 article in the Journal of Childhood & Developmental Disorders. "Faculty have ignored the scientific knowledge that informs reading acquisition," the authors wrote. "As a result, the pre-service teachers who are being educated at these institutions fail to receive the necessary training."

In 2016, the National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, reviewed the syllabi of teacher preparation programs across the country and found that only 39 percent of them appeared to be teaching the components of effective reading instruction.
'Is this your science or my science?'
Seidenberg says the scientific research has had relatively little impact on what happens in classrooms because the science isn't very highly valued in schools of education. "Prospective teachers aren't exposed to it or they're led to believe that it's only one of several perspectives," he said. "In a class on reading, prospective teachers will be exposed to a menu in which they have 10 or 12 different approaches to reading, and they're encouraged to pick the one that will fit their personal teaching style best."

Education as a practice has placed a much higher value on observation and hands-on experience than on scientific evidence, Seidenberg said. "We have to change the culture of education from one based on beliefs to one based on facts."

Kelly Butler has been trying to do just that for nearly two decades in Mississippi.

Butler works for the Barksdale Reading Institute, an organization founded with a $100-million gift from the former CEO of Netscape to help Mississippi children improve their reading skills. Back in the early 2000s, after the panel convened by Congress released its report, Butler and her colleagues wanted to know: Were teacher preparation programs in Mississippi instructing teachers to teach reading in ways backed up by the science?

So they did a study of the teacher preparation programs at the state's eight publicly funded universities. The institute reviewed syllabi and textbooks, surveyed the students in the classes, observed some of the classes, and interviewed the deans and faculty. The study found that teacher candidates in Mississippi were getting an average of 20 minutes of instruction in phonics over their entire two-year teacher preparation program. Kelly Butler was alarmed. She and her colleagues went to state education officials and pleaded with them to take action.

In 2003, in a rather extraordinary move, the state Department of Education mandated that every teacher preparation program in Mississippi require two courses in early literacy to cover what was in the National Reading Panel report. It was extraordinary because even though states have the authority to regulate teacher preparation programs, only a handful of states have specific requirements about what prospective teachers learn about reading. Colleges and universities generally don't like state officials telling them what to do. "Professors pretty much have academic freedom to construct learning in the way they think best," Butler said.

"I think we all agree that this is right. And maybe we're here because of that. And the whole language ones are not here because I think they would really resist, a lot."

Angela Rutherford, who works with Butler and is a professor in the school of education at the University of Mississippi, put it more bluntly. "Faculty members close the door and do whatever the heck they want to," she said.

Rutherford wasn't sure the state mandate would make a big difference because many of her colleagues in teacher preparation didn't know the science themselves or didn't believe in it. She said many of them have long believed in whole language. "I had a colleague challenge me back in the fall," she said. "And her question was, 'What do you believe?' I said, 'I believe what I see in research.'"

Butler says the resistance to the science among college faculty and administrators baffles her, but it runs deep. Once, when she was talking to an education school dean about the reading science, the dean said to her, "Is this your science or my science?"

It was not clear how much impact the state mandate to teach reading science was having. Then in 2015, the Mississippi legislature passed a law called the "Literacy-Based Promotion Act." The law says that kids who aren't reading on grade level by the end of third grade cannot be promoted to fourth grade. The legislature appropriated millions of dollars to pay for training in the science of reading for all of the state's elementary school teachers.
Changing the way teachers are taught
However, if new teachers coming out of teacher prep programs didn't know reading science, the state would be spending money perpetually retraining teachers. At this point, no one really knew what prospective teachers were learning in those early literacy classes required by the state.

So in 2015, Butler and her colleagues decided to repeat the study they'd done in 2003. This time they looked at private colleges in Mississippi, too. They examined the early literacy courses at 15 teacher prep programs. They found, with one exception, that all the state's teacher prep programs appeared to be teaching the components of reading identified by the National Reading Panel report. But when Butler interviewed deans and faculty, most of them admitted they'd never actually read the report. And when she asked them basic questions about the science of reading, most of them didn't know the answers. The schools of education were complying with the letter of the law, but many faculty members didn't really understand the science themselves.

The professors needed training.

Teachers in the K-12 education system are used to professional development. College professors are not.

A Mississippi governor's task force decided the professors would benefit from the same training that the state's elementary school teachers were getting. The teacher training used LETRS, the curriculum the teachers in Bethlehem went through. No one was going to require college instructors to do the training, but state legislators had passed a measure to encourage it. Since 2016, teacher candidates in Mississippi have been required to pass a test on reading science. If you don't pass what's known as the Foundations of Reading test, you don't get licensed to teach elementary school in Mississippi. It's now in the best interest of faculty to teach the science, because if they don't, their students won't get jobs.

In a session of LETRS training for faculty in Jackson, Mississippi, in March 2018, the trainer, Antonio Fierro, passed out a quiz. The first question was: "True or false? Speaking is natural, reading and writing are not." The answer is "true," but the question was being asked because it's not a given that the 37 people in this training, a mix of mostly tenured faculty and adjuncts, would know that.

Roshunda Harris-Allen, a professor in the teacher preparation program at Tougaloo College, said she wasn't taught reading science in college or as part of her doctorate. And she didn't learn phonics as a kid. "We were just taught - here are your sight words, you need to memorize them," she said. She said that she struggled with reading when she was a child.
The whole language hold-outs
Trashonda Dixon, a literacy instructor at Tougaloo, says she did get phonics instruction when she was young, but she never learned how to teach phonics. "I think we did have issues with a lack of knowledge initially," Dixon said, referring to herself and her fellow faculty members in LETRS training. "But I think we're making great strides here to correct that."

The Mississippi faculty came together for training several times over the course of a year, and some even received mentoring as they were teaching reading science to their college students. Moats said she once did some LETRS workshops for college faculty in Colorado many years ago and one of her colleagues did abbreviated training for faculty in Maryland, but Mississippi is the only place she knows of where college faculty are going through an extended course.

"I feel blessed to be part of this change," said Barbara Bowen, an instructor at the University of Southern Mississippi who went through the training. "I think we all agree that this is right. And maybe we're here because of that. And the whole language ones are not here because I think they would really resist, a lot."

The faculty who most resist reading science weren't in the LETRS training. Two professors at the University of Southern Mississippi agreed to be interviewed about why they didn't want to attend.

"I am philosophically opposed to jumping on the bandwagon of the next great thing that's going to teach every child how to learn to read," said Stacy Reeves, an associate professor of literacy. "Phonics for me is not that answer."

Reeves said she knows this from her own experience. In the early 1990s, before she started her Ph.D., she was an elementary school teacher. Her students did phonics worksheets and then got little books called decodable readers that contained words with the letter patterns they'd been practicing. She said the books were boring and repetitive. "But as soon as I sat down with my first-graders and read a book, like 'Frog and Toad Are Friends,' they were instantly engaged in the story," she said.

"I am philosophically opposed to jumping on the bandwagon of the next great thing that's going to teach every child how to learn to read. Phonics for me is not that answer."

She ditched the phonics workbooks and the decodable readers. "And once I started teaching in a more whole way, a more encompassing way of the whole child - What does this child need? What does that child need? Let's read more real books," she explained, "my teaching improved, the students learned more. I feel they came out the other side much better." She admitted she had no evidence her students were learning more, but she said they seemed more engaged.

One of the central tenets of whole language is that teachers are best able to judge whether their students are learning, not standardized tests. Another key idea is that all children learn to read differently and need to be taught in different ways. But research has shown that's not true.

Our brains are much more similar than they are different, and all children need to learn basically the same things to change their nonreading brains into reading brains. "Cultural, economic, and educational circumstances obviously affect children's progress," Seidenberg wrote in his book. "But what they need to learn does not change." One of the most consistent findings in all of education research is that children become better readers when they get explicit and systematic phonics instruction.

The students who suffer most when schools don't give their students insight into the code are kids with dyslexia. They have an especially hard time understanding the relationship between sounds and letters.

Mary Ariail, former chair of the Department of Curriculum, Instruction and Special Education at the University of Southern Mississippi, remains opposed to explicit phonics instruction. She thinks it can be helpful to do some phonics with kids as they're reading books, maybe prompt a child to sound something out or to notice a letter pattern in a word. But she believes kids will be distracted from understanding the meaning of what they're reading if teachers focus too much on how words are made up of letters. "One of the ideas behind whole language is that when [reading] is meaningful, it's easy," she said. "And when it's broken down into little parts, it makes it harder."

Despite research to the contrary, Ariail and Reeves said they believe learning to read is a natural process.

"I believe children learn to read as soon as they start learning to hear," Reeves said. "Being surrounded by books, being read to often."
Phonics isn't enough
"It's like learning to talk," Ariail said. "A lot of children come to school already reading because they have been immersed in print-rich environments from the time they were born."

It's not clear how much they had read about reading science, but they said they do not agree with it. "One of the bones of contention is that the phonics-based approach is the scientific approach," Ariail said. "It's their science."

Ariail left her job and returned to her home state of Georgia at the end of the 2018 academic year, in part because of her frustration with the effort to change reading instruction in Mississippi. She sees it as an example of lawmakers telling educators what to do, and she doesn't like it.

When you talk to whole language proponents, it's clear pretty quickly that the distrust of phonics instruction is motivated by a fear that reading will be reduced to rote and boring phonics drills. One of the reasons whole language flourished in the 1970s and '80s is that it rejected the idea that children should sit quietly in rows listening to a teacher direct a lesson. "In whole language, the battle was seen as, 'Are you in favor of literacy or are you in favor of skills?'" Seidenberg said.

He said no one is advocating for rote and boring lessons. But the science shows clearly that when reading instruction is organized around a defined progression of concepts about how speech is represented by print, kids become better readers. There is also widespread support in the research for the effectiveness of teacher-directed lessons as opposed to letting children discover key concepts about reading on their own.

"I didn't know what to do, except just give them more books. And it wasn't working."

What's also clear in the research is that phonics isn't enough. Children can learn to decode words without knowing what the words mean. To comprehend what they're reading, kids need a good vocabulary, too. That's why reading to kids and surrounding them with quality books is a good idea. The whole language proponents are right about that.

But, according to the research, kids who can't decode will never be good readers. Some children learn decoding quickly with minimal instruction. Others need a lot more help. But good phonics instruction is beneficial for all kids, even those who learn to decode easily; research shows they become better spellers.

The belief that learning to read is a natural process that occurs when children are surrounded by books is a problem not just because there's no science to back it up. It's a problem because it assumes the primary responsibility for teaching children to read lies with families, not schools. If you're not fortunate enough to grow up in a household where there are lots of books and adults who read to you, you may be out of luck.

There is no debate at this point among scientists that reading is a skill that needs to be explicitly taught by showing children the ways that sounds and letters correspond.

"It's so accepted in the scientific world that if you just write another paper about these fundamental facts and submit it to a journal they won't accept it because it's considered settled science," Moats said.

According to all the research, what you should see in every school is a heavy emphasis on explicit phonics instruction in the early grades. There is no evidence this turns kids off to reading or makes reading harder. In fact, it's the opposite. If you do a good job teaching phonics in the early grades, kids get off to a quicker start. "And they accelerate their progress faster and read more and like it better and so it becomes a self-reinforcing cycle," Moats said. "Whereas the converse is true. When you don't give kids insight into the code and don't arm them with insight into language, both spoken and written, what happens is, 'This is a mystery. I'm not sure I'm getting what these words really say. Therefore, I'm uncomfortable. And therefore, I don't really like it.'"

The students who suffer most when schools don't give their students insight into the code are kids with dyslexia. They have an especially hard time understanding the relationship between sounds and letters. If you're a child with dyslexia from an upper-income family, someone is probably going to notice that you're struggling and pay for you to get the help you need. But kids from poor families often get left behind, and there's evidence that a disproportionate number of them eventually end up in the criminal justice system. American prisons are full of people who grew up in poor families, and according to a study of the Texas prison population, nearly half of all inmates have dyslexia. They struggled to read as kids and probably never got the help they needed.

For Butler, the main problem at this point is ignorance. Too many teachers, school administrators and college professors don't know the science. She's betting that teaching them the science is the answer. "Part of my optimism about this is it's not like we're setting out to try to figure out how to teach reading so we can then teach everybody how to do it," she said. "We know how to do it."

Seidenberg is less optimistic. He makes a comparison to climate change research. "One thing that we've learned from climate change and the other issues over which we have polarization in this country is that facts aren't the thing that change people's beliefs," he said. "In fact, confronted with data that contradict deeply held beliefs, instead of bringing people closer together, it can have the paradoxical effects of entrenching them further."

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Kids struggle to read when schools leave phonics out

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Get important education news and analysis delivered straight to your inbox This story was produced by APM Reports and reprinted with permission. It was 2015 and Jack Silva, the chief academic officer for the public schools in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, had a problem: Only 56 percent of third-graders in his district had scored proficient on the state reading test.

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Article: New Ideas for Teaching Phonics  

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Article: New Ideas for Teaching Phonics  

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A short article with unique teaching strategies for teaching phonics and reading.

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Phonics instruction is all about helping developing readers understand how letters are linked to sounds. There are two ways to teach phonics: incidentally and systemically. Teachers who use incidental instruction teach intervention strategies as they arise and are needed. With systemic phonics instruction, teachers use specific lessons in a prescribed order ensuring lessons build on each other and work together.

With both strategies, you need to have strong activities that engage your students. Here are six different activities that build on different ways kids can learn:

1. Sound and Picture Match-Up

Pictures are the first symbols a child learns. She might not know how to spell cow, but she knows a cow when she sees one. Using pictures or videos to teach sounds can build confidence in students who struggle with letters. With picture cards, students can learn key words that are used to remember the sounds and shapes of the letters of the alphabet. Try out this free printable to help your learners light up when they see pictures they recognize. Reinforce their learning with these funny animated alphabet videos.

2. Sing-Alongs That Teach Specific Sounds

Combining the rythm and action of songs or chants with clapping and dancing helps children connect sounds and letters in an easy, memorable, and active way. You can find lots of alphabet songs and chants, and you can use this printable poster to help guide children through an alphabet chant.

3. Movement and Sound Play

The more kids move around, the more their brains build the gray matter needed to retain information. Every class can be a time to learn the sounds of letters and words. Check out this free locomotion phonics lesson for physical education.

4. Hand-On Letters

Kinesthetic, also known as tactile, learning is a way to get children moving and doing; using the body in some form or fashion as they learn to read. This cool pool noodle phonics activity helps kids who thrive on tactile learning experiences.

5. Phonics With a Friend

When planning your lessons, be sure to add a group component. Partner work and sharing motivate students to participate and learn together. Here's a lesson from FastTrack Phonics that has a social component built right in.

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5 Simple Intervention Strategies to Strengthen Phonics Skills

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Phonics instruction is all about helping developing readers understand how letters are linked to sounds. There are two ways to teach phonics: incidentally and systemically. Teachers who use incidental instruction teach intervention strategies as they arise and are needed. With systemic phonics instruction, teachers use specific lessons in a prescribed order ensuring lessons build on each other and work together.

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A wonderful book highlighting the importance of reading aloud to children. For parents and teachers!

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We're sorry. This preview is not currently available on this browser. In the meantime, you can read on one of these supported web browsers:

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The Read-Aloud Family: Making Meaningful and Lasting Connections with Your Kids

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Shared via Kindle. Description: You will never regret reading aloud to your kids. The stories we read--and the conversations we have about them--help shape family traditions, create lifelong memories, and become part of our legacy. Reading aloud not only h...

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Article: Interesting Read About How Learning Phonics Effects the Brain

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Article: Interesting Read About How Learning Phonics Effects the Brain

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Beginning readers who focus on letter-sound relationships, or phonics, instead of trying to learn whole words, increase activity in the area of their brains best wired for reading, according to new Stanford research investigating how the brain responds to different types of reading instruction.

In other words, to develop reading skills, teaching students to sound out "C-A-T" sparks more optimal brain circuitry than instructing them to memorize the word "cat." And, the study found, these teaching-induced differences show up even on future encounters with the word.

The study, co-authored by Stanford Professor Bruce McCandliss of the Graduate School of Education and the Stanford Neuroscience Institute, provides some of the first evidence that a specific teaching strategy for reading has direct neural impact. The research could eventually lead to better-designed interventions to help struggling readers.

"This research is exciting because it takes cognitive neuroscience and connects it to questions that have deep meaning and history in educational research," said McCandliss, who wrote the study with Yuliya Yoncheva, a researcher at New York University, and Jessica Wise, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin.

Instructional strategies

Theories on reading development have long supported the importance of a phonics foundation, especially for early learners and struggling readers, yet investigating the way in which brain mechanisms are influenced by the choices a teacher makes is a fairly recent endeavor, according to McCandliss.

As the field of educational neuroscience grows, however, both brain researchers and educational researchers can improve their understanding of how instructional strategies can best be harnessed to support the brain changes that underlie the development of learning, he added.

In the study, released this month in the journal Brain and Language, the researchers devised a new written language and contrasted whether words were taught using a letter-to-sound instruction method or a whole-word association method. After learning multiple words under both approaches, the newly learned words were presented in a reading test while brainwaves were monitored.

McCandliss's team used a brain mapping technique that allowed them to capture brain responses to the newly learned words that are literally faster than the blink of an eye.

Remarkably, the researchers said, these very rapid brain responses to the newly learned words were influenced by how they were learned.

Words learned through the letter-sound instruction elicited neural activity biased toward the left side of the brain, which encompasses visual and language regions. In contrast, words learned via whole-word association showed activity biased toward right hemisphere processing.

McCandliss noted that this strong left hemisphere engagement during early word recognition is a hallmark of skilled readers, and is characteristically lacking in children and adults who are struggling with reading.

In addition, the study's participants were subsequently able to read new words they had never seen before, as long as they followed the same letter-sound patterns they were taught to focus on. Within a split second, the process of deciphering a new word triggered the left hemisphere processes.

"Ideally, that is the brain circuitry we are hoping to activate in beginner readers," McCandliss said.

By comparison, when the same participants memorized whole-word associations, the study found that they learned sufficiently to recognize those particular words on the reading test, but the underlying brain circuitry differed, eliciting electrophysiological responses that were biased toward right hemisphere processes.

"These contrasting teaching approaches are likely having such different impact on early brain responses because they encourage the learner to focus their attention in different ways," McCandliss said. "It's like shifting the gears of the mind - when you focus your attention on different information associated with a word, you amplify different brain circuits."

While many teachers are now using phonics to teach reading, some may be doing it more effectively than others, McCandliss said.

"If children are struggling, even if they're receiving phonics instruction, perhaps it's because of the way they are being asked to focus their attention on the sounds within spoken words and links between those sounds and the letters within visual words," he said.

"We can direct attention to a larger grain size or a smaller grain size, and it can have a big impact on how well you learn."

Monitoring brain waves

The study involved 16 literate adult participants, yet, according to McCandliss, gained its statistical power by teaching all participants in two different ways, much like what a typical student may experience when learning from different teachers or trying to master irregular words that don't conform to letter-to-sound mapping, such as "yacht."

The new written language was based on line features that formed symbols representing different letters of a new alphabet. The symbols were joined to represent a distinct visual word.

Each participant was trained to read two sets of three-letter words under identical conditions that provided practice viewing words and listening to corresponding spoken words. The only difference between the two training conditions was a set of instructions at the beginning that encouraged the readers to approach learning the words in one of two ways.

One instruction asked learners to approach the task of learning each word by picking out each of the three-letter symbols and matching each to the corresponding sound in the spoken word. The other focused on teaching the association between whole printed and spoken words.

After training was completed, participants were hooked up to an electroencephalograph, or EEG, that monitored brain waves while they took a reading test on word-figures they had already learned. Following the letter-sound style of training, participants were also tested on their ability to read new words composed of the same letters.

"When we looked under the hood, we found that the participants could learn to read under both forms of instruction but the brain activation showed that learning happened in very different ways," McCandliss said.

He said the results underscore the idea that the way a learner focuses their attention during learning has a profound impact on what is learned. It also highlights the importance of skilled teachers in helping children focus their attention on precisely the most useful information.

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Stanford brain wave study shows how different teaching methods affect reading development

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Beginning readers who focus on letter-sound relationships, or phonics, instead of trying to learn whole words, increase activity in the area of their brains best wired for reading, according to new Stanford research investigating how the brain responds to different types of reading instruction.

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A game allowing students to practice consonant blends.

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Challenge your little speller to hone her reading skills with a fun spelling game. This one focuses on words with beginning blends. A consonant blend occurs when two consonants appear next to each other and make both letter sounds, blended together (br, st, sp). This type of sound is different than a digraph sound (sh, th, ph). For each word, most of the spelling has been completed. It's up to you to figure out the two consonants that blend together to complete each word. Let's start word-building!

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Spelling blends words can be an important skill to build for early readers. Practice sounding out the letters by filling in the blank spots.

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A website including resources for teachers with multiple strategies for teaching high-frequency words.

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Sight words instruction is an excellent supplement to phonics instruction. Phonics is a method for learning to read in general, while sight words instruction increases a child's familiarity with the high frequency words he will encounter most often.

Use lesson time to introduce up to three new words, and use game time to practice the new words.

A sight words instruction session should be about 30 minutes long, divided into two components:

Sight Words Lesson - Use our Teaching Techniques to introduce new words and to review words from previous lessons - 10 minutes

Sight Words Games - Use our games to provide reinforcement of the lesson and some review of already mastered sight words to help your child develop speed and fluency - 20 minutes

Video: Introduction to Teaching Sight Words

2.1 Introduce New Words

When first beginning sight words, work on no more than three unfamiliar words at a time to make it manageable for your child. Introduce one word at a time, using the five teaching techniques. Hold up the flash card for the first word, and go through all five techniques, in order. Then introduce the second word, and go through all five teaching techniques, and so on.

This lesson should establish basic familiarity with the new words. This part of a sight words session should be brisk and last no more than ten minutes. As your child gets more advanced, you might increase the number of words you work on in each lesson.

2.2 Review Old Words

Begin each subsequent lesson by reviewing words from the previous lesson. Words often need to be covered a few times for the child to fully internalize them. Remember: solid knowledge of a few words is better than weak knowledge of a lot of words!

Go through the See & Say exercise for each of the review words. If your child struggles to recognize a word, cover that word again in the main lesson, going through all five teaching techniques. If he has trouble with more than two of the review words, then set aside the new words you were planning to introduce and devote that day's lesson to review.

Note: The child should have a good grasp of - but does not need to have completely mastered - a word before it gets replaced in your lesson plan. Use your game time to provide lots of repetition for these words until the child has thoroughly mastered them.

2.3 Reinforce with Games

Learning sight words takes lots of repetition. We have numerous sight words games that will make that repetition fun and entertaining for you and your child.

The games are of course the most entertaining part of the sight words program, but they need to wait until after the first part of the sight words lesson.

Games reinforce what the lesson teaches.
Do not use games to introduce new words.

NOTE: Be sure the child has a pretty good grasp of a sight word before using it in a game, especially if you are working with a group of children. You do not want one child to be regularly embarrassed in front of his classmates when he struggles with words the others have already mastered!

Introduce new sight words using this sequence of five teaching techniques:

1. See & Say - A child sees the word on the flash card and says the word while underlining it with her finger.

2. Spell Reading - The child says the word and spells out the letters, then reads the word again.

3. Arm Tapping - The child says the word and then spells out the letters while tapping them on his arm, then reads the word again.

4. Air Writing - A child says the word, then writes the letters in the air in front of the flash card.

5. Table Writing - A child writes the letters on a table, first looking at and then not looking at the flash card.

These techniques work together to activate different parts of the brain. The exercises combine many repetitions of the word (seeing, hearing, speaking, spelling, and writing) with physical movements that focus the child's attention and cement each word into the child's long-term memory.

The lessons get the child up to a baseline level of competence that is then reinforced by the games, which take them up to the level of mastery. All you need is a flash card for each of the sight words you are covering in the lesson.

Of course, every child will make mistakes in the process of learning sight words. They might get confused between similar-looking words or struggle to remember phonetically irregular words.

Use our Corrections Procedure every time your child makes a mistake in a sight words lesson or game. Simple and straightforward, it focuses on reinforcing the correct identification and pronunciation of the word. It can be done quickly without disrupting the flow of the activity.

Do not scold the child for making a mistake or even repeat the incorrect word. Just reinforce the correct word using our script, and then move on.

Q: Progress is slow. We have been on the same five words for a week!
A: It is not unusual to have to repeat the same set of words several times, especially in the first weeks of sight words instruction. The child is learning how to learn the words and is developing pattern recognition approaches that will speed his progress. Give him time to grow confident with his current set of words, and avoid overwhelming the child with new words when he hasn't yet become familiar with the old words.

Q: Do I really need to do all five techniques for every word?
A: Start out by using all five techniques with each new word. The techniques use different teaching methods and physical senses to support and reinforce the child's memorization of the word. After a few weeks of lessons, you will have a sense for how long it takes your child to learn new words and whether all five exercises are necessary. Start by eliminating the last activity, Table Writing, but be sure to review those words at the next lesson to see if the child actually retained them without that last exercise. If the child learns fine without Table Writing, then you can try leaving out the fourth technique, Air Writing. Children who learn quickly may only need to use two or three of the techniques.

Q: How long will it take to get through a whole word list? I want my child to learn ALL the words!!!
A: That depends on a number of factors, including frequency of your lessons as well as your child's ability to focus. But do not get obsessed with the idea of racing through the word lists to the finish line. It is much, much better for your child to solidly know just 50 words than to "kind of" know 300 words. We are building a foundation here, and we want that foundation to be made of rock, not sand!

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Sight words instruction is an excellent supplement to phonics instruction. Phonics is a method for learning to read in general, while sight words instruction increases a child's familiarity with the high frequency words he will encounter most often. Use lesson time to introduce up to three new words, and use game time to practice the new words.

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Fun, printable coloring pages for students to practice the alphabet, sight words, blends, and letter sounds.

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Coloring Pages Help Kids Master the Alphabet, Learn Numbers and Write

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In this section we have collected coloring that help kids master the alphabet, learn numbers and, most importantly, learn how to write neatly

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Gives students a visual representation by picture matching with vowel sounds in a fun, interactive game.

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Long and Short Vowel Sort Game | Game | Education.com

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Time to shop! Kids must sort short and long vowel words at the toy store.

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This game helps students make connections between letter sounds and visuals containing those sounds.

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A critical step in learning to read is immediately connecting a word with the thing it defines. Your kid can get valuable practice with that skill with Roly's phonics quiz. Your early reader hears vowel and consonant sounds and matches them with objects whose words contain those sounds. It's awesome phonics practice and awesome phonics fun at the same time!

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Letter Sound Game | Game | Education.com

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A critical step in learning to read is immediately connecting a word with the thing it defines. Your kid can get valuable practice with that skill with Roly's phonics quiz. Your early reader hears vowel and consonant sounds and matches them with objects whose words contain those sounds.

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Free phonics application for students. Games, lessons, videos, and activities to practice spelling, sight words, letters, blending, etc.

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Screenshots

Discover a brand new world of education with ABC Spelling - Spell & Phonics, a fun and free game for parents and children to play together!

ABC Spelling is a colorful and easy to use educational game that helps young children learn the alphabet, sound out words, and associate letters with pictures. Play anytime and anywhere, it only takes a moment to turn on your phone and help your child learn the ABCs!

Featuring three games in one:

Spelling:
A picture is shown on the screen with letters outlined just above it. Children match the letters at the top by choosing from the tiles below, placing them in the correct order to spell out words.

Fill In Blank:
Kids spell out the name of the picture using letters on the screen. There's just one catch, though: all the letters are jumbled up!

Blank Spelling:
Letters are placed at the bottom of the screen, but this time there's no clue at the top!

ABC Spelling was designed with both adults and children in mind. Kids will love the bright graphics, the easy to touch icons, and the fun cartoon drawings. Parents will love the report card feature that helps track learning progress.

Best of all, ABC Spelling - Spell & Phonics is absolutely free, with no third party ads, paywalls, or other distractions.

Features:
- Fun, educational activities for toddlers, kids, and parents alike!
- Colorful graphics and wonderful animations to help kids learn.
- Sounds to help children learn phonics for letters and words.
- Report cards show learning progress so parents can help their kids at every turn.
- Parents have complete control to set options and customize game modes to make learning more effective.
- Collect stickers to celebrate learning achievements!

Note to Parents:

ABC Spelling is a passion project for us. We want to reach kids across the world and give them an educational advantage. Children in cities, towns, even remote places where cell phones are more common than schools can benefit from a learning app like this one. There are so many kids who lack proper schooling, and that's why we want to remove as many barriers as possible to help them learn.

As parents, you can do a lot to help us spread the joy of education. Share this app with friends, family, schools, daycares, non-profit organizations, or simply post about it on Facebook or Twitter. One share, one tweet, can make a huge difference.

We're parents ourselves, and it's our goal to keep making free educational apps for kids. We need your help to make that happen. Every child should have a chance to learn the basics of spelling, phonics, and numbers. Together, we can give countless kids an opportunity they've never had. Thank you!

- Best wishes from the parents at RV AppStudios

Version 1.0.5

Help teach your kids the importance of phonics with the colorful and fun edutainment game ABC Spelling. We've added some performance enhancements and fixed small bugs to make it even easier for parents and kids to sit down and learn together, complete with creative mini-games and sticker rewards. No third party ads, no in-app purchases, just a free and fun learning experience!

Information

Compatibility

OS X 10.9.0 or later, 64-bit processor

Copyright

© 2020 RV AppStudios

Family Sharing

With Family Sharing set up, up to six family members can use this app.

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‎Discover a brand new world of education with ABC Spelling - Spell & Phonics, a fun and free game for parents and children to play together! ABC Spelling is a colorful and easy to use educational game that helps young children learn the alphabet, sound out words, and associate letters with pictures....

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Fun activities for
young readers.

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Screenshots

Monkey Junior is currently the #1 Learn-to-read program with millions of happy learners and counting. Children can learn 6 languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, French, Russian, and Vietnamese.

Monkey Junior has built a massive and comprehensive lesson system so children are always ready to learn every day. Each lesson lasts around 10 minutes, and children can learn one or more lessons each day. No preparation required for parents. It is fast, fun, and effective.

The curriculum in each language is divided into different levels, each of which guides your little readers to learn from individual words and phrases to complete sentences along with a wide range of phonics rules. Children can simultaneously learn proper pronunciation, how to combine tones to form words, how to recognize whole words, and how to apply recently learned words to particular situations.

Not only do your children improve their vocabulary and their pronunciation but they will also be enriched with encyclopedic knowledge. Our reading program covers 30+ topics familiar to kids, ranging from basic topics such as animals, actions, body parts, and things at home to advanced ones such as occupations, businesses, and science.

Our reading program uses sight, sound, and touch to keep your children engaged in the whole lesson. We have a huge multimedia library with 48,000 images, and 16,000 interactive videos that are used to illustrate all words and sentences. Monkey Junior also provides a collection of diverse interactive games and prize stickers after each lesson that definitely attract and inspire children when they use the program.

Monkey Junior is proudly considered one of the most comprehensive programs available to teach children to read.

SUBSCRIPTION:
- Subscribe to unlock unlimited access to all lessons in multiple languages.
- Payment will be charged to iTunes Account at confirmation of purchase.
- Subscription automatically renews unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24-hours before the end of the current period.
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- Subscriptions may be managed by the user, and auto-renewal may be turned off by going to the user's Account Settings after purchase.
- No cancellation of the current subscription is allowed during an active subscription period.
- Any unused portion of a free trial will be forfeited when the user purchases a subscription to Monkey Junior.

MAIN FEATURES:
- Learn multiple languages
- 5,500+ lessons in total
- 3,000 categorized words; 6,000 sentences illustrated by 8,000 images and videos in each curriculum
- Text highlighted along with audio
- Interactive educational games
- Stickers as a reward after each lesson
- Multiple profiles supported
- No advertising, pop-up ads, or links to other sites

DOWNLOAD MONKEY JUNIOR NOW TO HELP YOUR CHILD LEARN TO READ!

About Us
Monkey Junior is developed by Early Start Co. As we specialize in early education, our motto is "Education starts at birth." We believe that education should be joyful and engaging. We have helped millions of children become confident early readers, and we can help your kids be one too.

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Have questions? Please email us at support@monkeyjunior.com.

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Version 24.1.7

Improve UI/UX to make Monkey Junior more user friendly.

Amazing.... I love it !!!!!

it's amazing it shows kids how to learn about all types of thing in different types of languages. In this case my kids learnt french and they had a blast leaning every night before going to bed the would get the computer out and practice and they would be on it for about an hour before going to sleep, they absoulutely adore it and now they can even speak it and well i'm jealous since i am having a bit of a hard time understanding them.I guuess it's my turn to learn a different language too :)

Good material, but can't use with mutiple Mac users

We have this on a Mac that is normally offline, since we don't have fast Internet. We took the computer to a location with fast internet and spent several hours downloading all the lessons. But upon returning home, we discovered that only the original Mac user can access the downloaded lessons. We want to have our daughter in her own protected Mac account. Alas, all other Mac users (as opposed to inside-the-app profiles) require redownloading hundreds of megabytes of lesson files.

Also, despite purchasing the whole US lesson kit, there is no way to download all the lessons at once. You have to navigate to each of the fifteen lessons and download them, which takes about ten minutes each on a fast Internet connection, and has to be baby-sat during the process. This is not good app design for multiple users!

Great learning app

My son is loving this app so far. cant wait to see how far he can advance with it. Thank you for a great product. would be nice if they would give the child more time to read the word before saying it or when doing the word review they went a bit slower to allow the child to read the words.

Information

Seller

EARLY START CO., LTD.

Compatibility

OS X 10.9 or later, 64-bit processor

Copyright

© 2014 Early Start Co. LTD

In-App Purchases

1. All Languages $4.99

2. All Languages $24.99

3. All courses in all levels (US) $24.99
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Family Sharing

With Family Sharing set up, up to six family members can use this app.

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‎Monkey Junior is currently the #1 Learn-to-read program with millions of happy learners and counting. Children can learn 6 languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, French, Russian, and Vietnamese. Monkey Junior has built a massive and comprehensive lesson system so children are always ready to learn e...

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A visual presentation of digraphs for students to watch and practice.

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Digraphs are combinations of two letters that together make just one sound. These extra special words are very common but can be tricky, as kids typically learn that letters make unique sounds. Practice this skill with these learning resources now!

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Fun children's book for students to familiarize themselves with alphabet sounds.

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Perfect for gift-giving, here isTHE alphabet book to top all others, an over-sized work of brilliance from the illustrator of the #1 New York Times bestselling The Day the Crayons Quit!
If words make up the stories and letters make up the words, then stories are made up of letters. In this menagerie we have stories made of words, made FOR all the letters.
The most inventive and irresistible book of the year spans a mere 26 letters (don't they all!) and 112 pages. From an Astronaut who's afraid of heights, to a Bridge that ends up burned between friends, to a Cup stuck in a cupboard and longing for freedom, Once Upon an Alphabet is a creative tour de force from A through Z. Slyly funny in a way kids can't resist, and gorgeously illustrated in a way readers of all ages will pour over, this series of interconnected stories and characters explores the alphabet in a way that will forever raise the bar.

In Once Upon an Alphabet, #1 New York Times bestseller Oliver Jeffers has created a stunning collection of words and artwork that is a story book, alphabet book, and gorgeously designed art book all in one.

Praise for ONCE UPON AN ALPHABET:

An AmazonBest Book of 2014!

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year!

A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year!

A New York Times Bestseller!

* "The silly, spare, slightly surreal text occasionally rhymes and endlessly surprises. An utterly delightful alphabet book."- Kirkus Review, starred review

* "With wry humor, equally droll ink illustrations, and a solid dose of alliteration, Jeffers creates delightful mini-narratives for each letter of the alphabet."- Publishers Weekly, starred review

* "An altogether stimulating, surprising, and satisfying reading experience."- School Library Journal, starred review

* "Whimsical, funny, occasionally tragic, and highly entertaining, this collection of (sometimes) interlocking tales is brilliantly inventive."- Horn Book, starred review

"Jeffers knows how to catch the attention of his young audience while challenging their imagination, intellect and vocabulary. This whimsical exploration of letters and language begs to be read over and over again."- BookPage

"Handsome, humorous and clad in bright tomato-red, [this] is the sort of book you may want to rush into the arms of imaginative, good-natured children between 4 and 10 years old. [T]his is no traditional abecedarian exercise.The stories are wonderfully varied, sometimes philosophical and often end surprisingly; the drawings are just as quirky and unpredictable."- The Wall Street Journal

"[W]itty from A to Z . . . no one would blame you for having a copy even if there are no kids in the house. Think of it as Edward Gorey for the preschool set - and their hip parents."- The Washington Post

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once upon an alphabet: short stories for all the letters

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early learning: abc books / alphabet books

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bedtime books for toddlers;gift;special edition;gift book;children;abc;alphabet;alphabet book;children's book;funny;humor;picture book;letters;short stories;stuck;birthday gift;storybook;story book;christmas gift;astronaut;alphabet books;picture books;kids books ages 2-4;funny gifts;toddler books ages 1-3;books for 3 year olds;books for toddlers;toddler books;books for 4 year olds;books for 2 year olds;books for 5 year olds;funny kids books;childrens books by age 1-3;toddler books ages 2-4

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gift; special edition; gift book; children; alliteration; deluxe edition; abc; alphabet; alphabet book; children's book; funny; humor; picture book; letters; short stories; oversized; concept book; day the crayons; stuck; birthday gift; storybook; story book; christmas gift; coffee table book for kids; zeppelin; astronaut; cup; alphabet books; picture books; books for 5 year old girls; books for 4 year old girls; books for 3 year old girls; books for 5 year old boys; childrens books by age 3-5; books for 4 year old boys

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early learning: abc books / alphabet books

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Once Upon an Alphabet: Short Stories for All the Letters

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Amazon.com: Once Upon an Alphabet: Short Stories for All the Letters (0884784272804): Jeffers, Oliver, Jeffers, Oliver: Books

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A funny, engaging book for students including letter grouping. This particular link is a read-aloud video.

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THERE'S A BEAR ON MY CHAIR: BY ROSS COLLINS / READ ALOUD BOOKS / CHILDREN'S BOOKS

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(Initial Teaching) Article: Lesson Ideas & Information

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(Initial Teaching) Article: Lesson Ideas & Information

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This is an article for teachers who are beginning to plan lessons for phonics and phonemic awareness. The first 3 sections and the sections titled, "Identification of Sound Positions," and " Sound Segmentation" are relevant to teaching syllables.

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Research indicates a strong relationship between early phoneme awareness and later reading success, and it links some reading failure to insufficiently developed phoneme awareness skills. Intervention research clearly demonstrates the benefits of explicitly teaching phoneme awareness skills.

Many children at risk for reading failure are in general education classrooms where phoneme awareness training is not part of their reading program. This article presents a set of developmental phoneme awareness training activities that the special educator can integrate collaboratively into existing kindergarten and first-grade reading programs.

Instructional considerations

Before preparing to conduct phoneme awareness activities in a general education setting, the special educator needs to become familiar with the method being used to teach reading and should observe the class in action.

Most of the phoneme awareness activities should not take more than 15 or 20 minutes to complete and should fit the context of the classroom. Although a particular activity can be selected well in advance, the specific words targeted for phoneme awareness should be selected from material used actively in the class, such as a story or picture book that was just read and discussed, the immediate environment, words fitting a thematic unit being taught, or discussions about a field trip.

Phoneme awareness activities work well in classrooms where teachers implement shared reading. Typically, after previewing the text with the class, the teacher reads aloud a large-print text on a chart or in a big book, the teacher and children read the selection together, and then students complete individual activities related to the selection (Holdaway, 1979). Phoneme awareness activities are a natural extension of the shared reading activities.

To be successful, however, the general educator and special educator must plan ahead for sharing time, space, and teaching together in a collaborative effort. The benefits for the children far outweigh any disadvantages for the teachers. The willingness of the special educator to fit the activities to the contexts of the classroom can help diminish any existing reluctance a general education teacher might have toward phoneme awareness training.

Specific guidelines

Teachers need to be aware of the developmental requirements of phoneme awareness activities. For example, when teaching children to partition words into parts, segmenting a compound word into its two parts ("What two words do you hear in cowboy?") precedes segmenting syllables and sounds.

Similarly, identification tasks ("Which one doesn't rhyme - cat, hat, sun?") are generally easier than production tasks ("Tell me the first sound in car"). The difficulty level of most activities can be manipulated by changing the input or response modes. For example, "Find the picture that starts with /r/" will be easier than "What sounds do you hear in robe?" A set of guidelines to keep in mind when planning instructional activities is provided below.

Instructional Guidelines for Planning Phoneme Awareness Activities

1. Identify the precise phoneme awareness task on which you wish to focus and select developmentally appropriate activities for engaging children in the task. Activities should be fun and exciting - "play" with sounds, don't "drill" them.

2. Be sure to use phoneme sounds (represented by / /) and not letter names when doing the activities. Likewise, remember that one sound may be represented by two or more letters. There are only three sounds in the word cheese: /ch/-/ee/-/z/. You may want to target specific sounds/words at first and "practice" beforehand until you are comfortable making them.

3. Continuant sounds (e.g., /m/, /s/, /i/) are easier to manipulate and hear than stop sounds (e.g., /t/, /q/, /p/ /b/). When introducing continuants, exaggerate by holding on to them: rrrrrring. With stop sounds, just pronounce the short "pure" consonant sound one time and without the "uh" sound added at the end, to ensure accurate blending. For example, /b/ should not be pronounced "buh".

4. When identifying sounds in different positions, the initial position is easiest, followed by the final position, with the medial position being most difficult (e.g., top, pot, setter).

5. When identifying or combining sound sequences, a CV pattern should be used before a VC pattern, followed by a CVC pattern (e.g., pie, egg, red).*

*Note: CV = consonant-vowel; VC = vowel-consonant; CVC = consonant-vowel-consonant

Awareness of onset and rime

Phonograms are the common elements in word families (e.g., the letter sequence "and" in sand, hand, band, and land). The initial consonant that changes the meaning of the word is called an onset and the following vowel/consonant combination that remains constant is called a rime. Because an awareness of syllables, onsets, and rimes develops before an awareness of phonemes (Goswami, 1994, p. 36), the first set of suggestions focuses on ways to expose children to word play.

Literature

A natural and spontaneous way of providing children with exposure to phonemes is to focus on literature that deals playfully with speech sounds through rhymes. Simple rhyme patterns are easily recalled after repeated exposure, and children will get the idea of creating new rhymes.

In There's a Wocket in My Pocket (Seuss, 1974), initial sounds of everyday objects are substituted as a child talks about the strange creatures around the house, such as the "zamp in the lamp." Children can make up their own strange creatures in the classroom such as the "zuk in my book."

Alliteration is the repetition of an initial consonant sound across several words, such as presented in the alphabet book Faint Frogs Feeling Feverish and Other Terrifically Tantalizing Tongue Twisters (Obligato, 1983).

Assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds within words, is often combined with rhyme, as in "It rains and hails and shakes the sails" from Sheep on a Ship (Shaw, 1989) or in humorous ways such as "The tooter tries to tutor two tooters to toot" in Moses Supposes His Toeses Are Roses (Patz, 1983). Some books include music to go with the rhymes, such as Down by the Bay (Raffi, 1987), in which two children try to outdo one another in making up questions that rhyme, such as "Did you ever see a goose kissing a moose?"

Yopp (1995) presented an annotated bibliography of 44 books for young children that deal playfully with language. She also provided guidelines for using these books in class:

1. read and reread the stories;

2. comment on the language use;

3. encourage predictions of sound, word, and sentence patterns;

4. comment on or elicit specific aspects of sound patterns (e.g., "What sound do you hear at the beginning of all those words?"); and

5. be creative in inventing new versions of the language patterns utilized in the stories.

Word families chart

The exposure to rhymes leads naturally to the use of phonograms and the creation of word family charts. Charts can contain words from one story or a brain-stormed list from the children.

A story that leads naturally to a word family chart is Tog the Dog (Hawkins & Hawkins, 1986), which is constructed so that as each page is turned, a different letter lines up with the rime "og." For example, when Tog takes a jog, the letter "j" lines up with the "og." The children can dictate to the teacher words to be placed on a word family chart. As they begin to develop letter/sound knowledge, they can copy or write the words themselves.

You can use magnetic letters to "create" words for a word family chart. Provide a rime of plastic letters (e.g., at) and have the children take turns placing different letters in the onset position to create new words (e.g., hat, bat, sat, rat). These charts can be used as reference charts (or the children can make their own word families reference book) for spelling and creative writing activities.

Direct instruction

Children who are struggling with recognizing and creating rhymed words may need more direct intervention. Initial rhyme recognition can be reinforced by direct modeling of instances ( nose/ rose) and non-instances ( bed/ car) of rhyming word pairs. The children are then presented other word pairs and asked if the two words sound the same or sound different.

This can be made into a game-like activity by having them respond with a "happy face" card if the words rhyme and a "sad face" card if they don't (or they can use a "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" response). It is important for the teacher to ask a child to repeat the rhyming pairs in this and the following activities to reinforce the verbal production of rhymed words.

Pictures provide visual cues for rhyme recognition and can be used during the modeling phase of instruction. The teacher can then present three pictures and ask the child to select and say the two that rhyme. A variation would be to display two nonrhyming pictures and have the child select the one that rhymes with the word being said by the teacher.

Bradley and Bryant (1983) used an activity called "Odd Word Out," which can be done with or without pictures. Four words, three of which rhyme, are presented by the teacher (e.g., weed, bead, pill, seed). The child determines which word is the odd one that doesn't belong with the others.

The game of concentration or memory is a good practice activity for rhyme recognition. Separate pictures (not printed words) of rhyming word pairs (e.g., cat/ bat) are shuffled, and all are placed facedown in a grid pattern. The children take turns turning two cards face-up, trying to match a rhyme pair. If a match is made, the child keeps that pair and takes another turn. If not, the cards are turned facedown and the next child gets a turn.

A summary of activities to heighten awareness of onset and rhyme is offered in the table below.
Awareness of Onset and Rime
Simple phonemic awareness

Isolated sound recognition

As stated by Lewkowicz (1980), "Children should be familiarized with speech sounds in isolation before they attempt to detect sounds within words" (p. 694). Because children are usually unaware that words are made up of individual speech sounds that can be produced in isolation, it is up to the teacher to provide children with a concept of speech sounds.

This is probably best done by associating phonemes with a creature, an action, or an object that is familiar to the child. For example, the phoneme /s/ can be associated with the hissing sound a snake makes - sssssss. A sound personality can be created by calling /s/ the "Sammy snake" sound. Many sounds have natural associations, such as a crowing rooster for /r/, a buzzing bee for /z/, and the "be quiet" sound for /sh/.

Figure 1. An example of pictures of sound personalities incorporating letter-shape association.

Sound personalities can be introduced naturally and in context by selecting a particular sound to talk about that is stressed in alphabet or other books that use alliteration. For example, Obligato (1983) presented "smiling snakes sipping strawberry sodas" for the alphabet letter S. It is helpful to create or provide pictures that represent these sound personalities and to post them in the room as each is introduced. A natural connection can sometimes be made between the sound and the letter, such as presenting a picture of "Sammy snake" drawn in the shape of the letter S or "Buzzy bee" flying in a pattern of the letter Z (see Figure 1).

Besides providing a label to facilitate talking about sounds, the pictures provide self-correcting cues for children engaged in initial sound isolation and sound-to-word matching activities.

Word, syllable, and phoneme counting

Because words and syllables are more salient and more directly perceivable than individual phonemes, activities that involve counting the number of words in a sentence or syllables in a word can be used as initial steps leading to isolated phoneme synthesis and segmentation (Lundberg, Frost, & Peterson, 1988).

Word counting can be done for any sentence selected from a reading or writing lesson. The sentence should be read to the children without being visible. The children listen and place a marker from left to right for each word heard. The teacher can confirm the number of words by showing the printed sentence to the children, pointing to each word as it is read, and having the children touch their tokens in one-to-one correspondence. Or the teacher can reinforce the children's "counting" using auditory input only by repeating the sentence and having them touch each token to confirm the number of words heard.

To count syllables in words, activities can be used such as clapping hands, tapping the desk, or marching in place to the syllables in children's names ( Ma- ry), items in the immediate environment ( win- dow), or words from a favorite story ( wi- shy, wa- shy). Initially, two-syllable words can be targeted, building up to three. Visible, manipulable representation of sounds also helps to clarify and guide counting and segmentation tasks for beginners (Lewkowicz, 1980).

The marker activity used for word counting can be adapted for use in counting syllables by providing each child with two or three horizontally connected boxes drawn on a sheet of paper. The children place a token in each box from left to right as they hear each syllable in a word. These same activities can be used to count sounds in words.

Sound synthesis

Sound synthesis or sound blending is an essential skill related to later reading ability (Lewkowicz, 1980; Lundberg et al., 1988; Wagner, Torgeson, Laughon, Simmons, & Bashotte, 1993) and one of the easiest phoneme awareness tasks for children to perform (Yopp, 1988).

Sound synthesis can be done using the following sequence: blending an initial sound onto the remainder of a word, followed by blending syllables of a word together, and then blending isolated phonemes into a word.

The teacher can model blending an initial sound onto a word by using the jingle, "It starts with /l/ and it ends with ight, put it together, and it says light." When they have the idea, the children supply the final word.

An element of excitement can be created by using children's names for this activity and asking each child to recognize and say his or her own name when it is presented - "It starts with /b/ and it ends with etsy, put it together and it says ." Context can be provided by limiting the words to objects that can be seen in the room or to words from a particular story the children just read. As the children become proficient, they can take turns using the jingle to present their own words to be blended by the class.

Guessing games that utilize words broken into syllables or isolated phonemes provide fun sound blending activities.

One involves using a puppet (perhaps representing a character from a current reading lesson) who speaks "funny" by saying words syllable-by-syllable or sound-by-sound for the children to figure out. Initial clues can be provided by displaying three pictures, one of which is the word being said by the puppet. The puppet can confirm or negate a student response by picking up the picture and saying the word being segmented: "/f/-/i/-/sh/ - I said fish!"

Another is the familiar "What's in the bag?" activity. Instead of describing what is in the bag, the teacher says the word syllable-by-syllable or sound-by-sound and the children guess the word. A correct response is confirmed when the teacher brings the object out of the bag.

Yopp (1992) suggested the use of song games and presented an example to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands":

If you think you know this word, shout it out!
If you think you know this word, shout it out!
If you think you know this word,
Then tell me what you've heard,
If you think you know this word, shout it out!

The teacher says a segmented word such as /k/-/a/-/t/, and the children respond by saying the blended word (pp. 700-701).

Sound-to-word matching

Sound-to-word matching is useful as a beginning step in sound segmentation. Basically, sound-to-word matching requires that the child identify the beginning sound of a word.

Awareness of the initial sound in a word can be done by showing the children a picture (dog) and asking the children to identify the correct word out of three: "Is this a /mmm/- og, a /d/d/d/- og, or a /sss/- og?" A variation is to ask if the word has a particular sound: "Is there a /d/ in dog?" This can then be switched to "Which sound does dog start with - /d/, /sh/, or /l/?" This sequence encourages the children to try out the three onsets with the rime to see which one is correct.

It is easiest to use continuants that can be exaggerated and prolonged to heighten the sound input. Iteration should be used with stop consonants to add emphasis.

Yopp (1992) also suggested the use of songs in sound matching activities. One of several examples she presented uses the tune of "Old MacDonald Had a Farm":

What's the sound that starts these words?
Turtle, time, and teeth.
(Wait for a response from the children.)
/t/ is the sound that starts these words:
Turtle, time, and teeth.
With a /t/, /t/ here, and a /t/, /t/ there,
Here a /t/, there a /t/, everywhere a /t/, /t/.
/t/ is the sound that starts these words:
Turtle, time, and teeth! (p. 700)

The children might use favorite stories from their reading lessons to identify different sets of three words that start with the same sound to incorporate into the song. Each repeated verse could then emphasize a different sound. The teacher again is cautioned to use the phoneme sounds, not the letter names for these activities.

Identification of sound positions

Establishing that sounds occur in different positions of words - initial, final, and medial - helps some children with the later task of segmenting whole words into isolated sound components.

One method of representing sound positions is to display a picture of a train composed of an engine, a passenger car, and a caboose. Three connecting boxes can be drawn under each component: one under the engine, connected to one under the passenger car, connected to the one under the caboose (use poster board and laminate). Explain that words have beginning, middle, and end sounds just like the train has a beginning, a middle, and an end part.

Demonstrate by slowly articulating a CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant word (e.g., /p/-/i/-/g/) and pointing to the box corresponding to the position of each sound in the word. You can then repeat the word and ask the children to identify where they hear the different sounds - "Where do you hear the /g/ in pig?" Slowly articulate other CVC words for them to listen to and have them mark the box under the train that indicates the position of the sound you specify.

Sound segmentation

Segmenting refers to the act of isolating the sounds in a spoken word by separately pronouncing each one in order (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Spector, 1992; Wagner et al., 1993).

Yopp (1988) stated that segmenting the sounds in a word is one of the more difficult simple phonemic tasks for children to perform. Lewkowicz (1980) and Yopp (1992) suggested starting with isolated productions of initial phonemes as a precursor to segmenting entire words. The previous sound-to-word matching and identification of position activities help in early recognition and practice with initial phonemes.

Figure 2. An example of Elkonin boxes used for hearing sounds in words.

Several researchers (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Bradley & Bryant, 1985; Griffith & Olson, 1992; Lewkowicz, 1980) have used visual and tactile cues based on Elkonin boxes (Elkonin, 1973) to help with phoneme segmentation. A card is prepared with a picture of a simple word at the top. Below the picture is a matrix that contains a box for each phoneme (not letter) in the word (see Figure 2).

The teacher models the process by slowing articulating the word phoneme-by-phoneme while pushing a counter into a box for each phoneme. The children can say the word with the teacher while the counters are being placed. Gradually the children should participate in this "say it and move it" (Ball & Blachman, 1991) activity by taking turns placing the counters in each box while saying each sound in a word. Both the matrix and picture can be eliminated over time so that the children are segmenting the word without visual clues.

Words should be selected from familiar text to ensure a whole-to-part sequence of instruction and to provide the children with contextual cues that link word segmentation to everyday classroom lessons.

Letter-sound association

Many researchers (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Byrne & Field- Barnsley, 1993; Hurford et al., 1994; Iversen & Tunmer, 1993) have demonstrated the advantage of combining phoneme awareness with letter knowledge in a classroom setting. As stated by Griffith and Olson (1992), "The most pedagogically sound method of phoneme awareness training is one that eventually makes explicit the complete letter-to-sound mappings in segmented words" (p. 518).

All phoneme awareness activities that use tokens or other visual representations of sounds can be modified to include letter- sound associations. As individual sounds are mastered by the children, their corresponding letter names can be introduced and placed on the tokens (magnetic letters or Scrabble tiles can be used) and gradually introduced into the segmentation activities.

At first, only one letter or tile should be provided, and the remainder should be blank. After the child has successfully segmented with one letter or tile, others can be added as new letter names are mastered.

To reinforce letter names, Blachman (1991) played "post office" - the children select a picture, say the initial sound of the picture, and identify the letter represented by the first sound by "mailing" it in the appropriate letter pouch.

A modified game of bingo can provide practice in sound-letter association. The desired letters to be emphasized are selected, starting with two or three, and adding more as the children progress. The letters are printed in random order on cards that have 4-by-4 or 5-by-5 grids drawn on them, one card for each child.

The teacher draws from a container letter tiles matching those on the children's cards. The teacher says the phoneme for the letter drawn from the container (replacing it each time) and asks the children to identify the letter corresponding to the phoneme by placing a marker in the appropriate box on their cards. Any child who fills a row or column can then name the letters aloud.

The practice of invented spelling in a classroom can also be used to make explicit connections between sound segments and letters. Children select words they wish to write but don't know how to spell.

A box is drawn for each sound in the word (remember that one sound may be represented by two or more letters - the word shoes, for example, has only three phonemes, /sh/-/oo/-/z/). A child can fill in the letters he or she hears and knows with the teacher's help. The teacher can fill in any letters the child does not know.

A summary of activities for enhancing simple phonemic awareness is presented in the table below.
Simple Phonemic Awareness

Targeted Skill

Example

Isolated sound recognition

Sammy snake sound says... (/s/)

Word/syllable/phoneme counting

How many (words/syllables/sounds) do you hear in this (sentence/word)?

Sound synthesis

It starts with /l/ and ends with ight, put it together and it says... ( light)
What word am I saying?
Put these sounds together to make a word - /f/-/i/-/sh/.

Compound phonemic awareness

Word-to-word matching

Compound phonemic awareness requires holding a given sound in memory while performing a second operation such as determining whether two words begin with the same sound in a word-to-word matching task (e.g., "Do cup and cake begin the same?"; Yopp, 1988). Byrne (1991) offered several games for practicing word-to-word matching.

1. Make a set of dominoes that have two pictured objects on each card. The children are required to join cards sharing beginning (or ending) sounds.

2. A version of "snap" uses cards having one picture. The children take turns drawing a card from a face-down pile and placing it in a face-up pile. When a newly drawn card has the same beginning (or end) sound as the top card in the face-up pile, the first child to identify the match by saying "snap" collects the pile.

3. Sound bingo uses bingo cards with pictures that children mark if one of their pictures has the same beginning (or end) sound as the word said by the caller.

Each of these games can be related to other classroom activities by having the children make their own dominoes, snap cards, and bingo cards using pictures cut from catalogs or magazines, or hand drawn and laminated. The pictures selected by the children can represent things related to the literature and themes being covered in class.

Sound deletion

Because sound deletion tasks require manipulation of phonemes in words, they are considered to be more difficult than other types of phoneme awareness tasks.

Cole and Mengler (1994) stated that it is not until a mental age of approximately 7 years that children are able to perform phoneme deletion tasks adequately. Lewkowicz (1980) suggested that sound deletion activities be done after the children exhibit some skill in segmentation and after letter names have been introduced. Because phoneme deletion of medial consonants puts an undue burden on young children's memory, sound deletion should target only initial or final sounds in words.

To introduce the idea of deleting parts of a word, the teacher can show pictures or point to objects in the room that are compound words and demonstrate how each word can be said with a part missing. For example, "This is a seesaw. If I say seesaw without the see, it says saw (give other examples). Now you try it. This is a hotdog. Say hotdog without the dog." An element of fun can be introduced by making it a "Simon says" activity: "Simon says, 'say bookmark without the book.'"

Identification of a missing sound can be accomplished through a "What's missing?" guessing game. The teacher says two words for comparison and asks the children to identify the missing element: "Listen: eat/ meat. What's missing in eat that you can hear in meat?"

Final position deletions can be done in the same way (e.g., "What's missing in play that you can hear in plane?"). The children can be encouraged to make up their own "What's missing?" words for the initial position by referring to the phonograms on the word families charts: "What's missing in an that you can hear in pan ( man, ran, can)."

Identifying the missing element using phonograms tends to be easier than using unrelated words because the initial consonant determines the meaning of the word for the child and the rime remains constant.

The actual task of deleting a sound from a word can be made easier by building on earlier segmentation practice, playing a game of "sound take-away." The teacher models how to orally segment a word into the "target" sound plus "everything else" and then take the target sound away.

A modified version of the sound blending jingle can be used: " Chair. It starts with /ch/ and it ends with air; take the first sound away, and it says air." The jingle can be used until the children can delete sounds with a simple prompt: "Say ball without the /b/." A sound deletion that results in a "real" word such as deer becoming ear or card becoming car is easier than one resulting in a "nonsense" word such as book becoming ook or sun becoming su (although some children enjoy making "alien" or funny words).

Children who have difficulty with deleting sounds might benefit from visual clues. By placing two colored blocks side-by-side, the teacher can designate one as representing the target sound and the other as representing the remainder of the word: "I'm going to use these blocks to say moon. This (red block) says moo and this (yellow block) says /n/." The child is then asked what the first block says when the second block is removed.

A summary of compound phonemic awareness activities is given in the table below.
Compound Phonemic Awareness
Conclusion

Research has demonstrated not only a predictive relationship between phoneme awareness and reading success, but also a causal relationship. Phoneme awareness that has a positive impact on reading can be developed in children through systematic instruction in kindergarten and first-grade settings. Early training in phoneme awareness should be a priority for those interested in improving early reading instruction and in reducing reading failure.

General and special educators should be supported in their efforts to collaborate on incorporating phoneme awareness activities into kindergarten and first-grade classrooms.

These activities are not intended to replace children's interactions with meaningful language and print, but to be incorporated into classrooms as part of a language-rich environment. Reading aloud, using big books and predictable books, developing language experience charts, and using other language-oriented practices give children valuable reading experiences.

However, by supplementing these experiences with related phoneme awareness activities, general and special educators can draw children's attention to a critical aspect of their language - its phonemic base.

It takes only a few minutes a day to integrate activities that emphasize the sounds of language into the rich, oral language environments we are creating for our children. Those few minutes can result in a lifetime of reading benefits to children who otherwise might not learn to read.

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How Now Brown Cow: Phoneme Awareness Activities

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Research indicates a strong relationship between early phoneme awareness and later reading success, and it links some reading failure to insufficiently developed phoneme awareness skills. Intervention research clearly demonstrates the benefits of explicitly teaching phoneme awareness skills. Many children at risk for reading failure are in general education classrooms where phoneme awareness training is not part of their reading program.

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Video: Short Lesson for 1st Grade Phonics

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Video: Short Lesson for 1st Grade Phonics

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Sight Words with Peppa Pig - Level 1 List 1 Sight Words

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(Initial Teaching) Article: Introduction To Teaching Syllables

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(Initial Teaching) Article: Introduction To Teaching Syllables

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This is informative article offers strategies for teaching syllables.

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As students progress in their literacy understanding, they move from reading and writing single syllable words (often with consonant-vowel-consonant constructions) to reading and writing multisyllabic words. Instruction focused on teaching students about syllables often focuses on teaching different…

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Perhaps the most popular way to teach counting syllables.

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Drumming Out Syllables: Foundations for Phonemic Awareness

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Assessment For Identifying Proficiency in Syllables

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Assessment For Identifying Proficiency in Syllables

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This activity builds upon the initial teaching activity (see "Drumming Out Syllables" link), and can be used for assessment.

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How Many Beats: Clapping Out Students' Names

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Activity for Learners With Special Needs: Multiple Ways to Teach Syllable Counting

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Activity for Learners With Special Needs: Multiple Ways to Teach Syllable Counting

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For kinesthetic, visual, or auditory learners! There are also many different adaptable lesson ideas for teaching special needs students.

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Are you looking for ideas to teach syllable counting? Or resources to help kids practice their syllable counting skills?

Have you ever wondered why we teach syllable counting to young children? Are you looking to gain clarity on what exactly a syllable is?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are in the right place!

I had an idea to create a simple Syllable Counting printable, but the project kept growing, and growing, and growing. . . until it turned into an entire Syllable Counting Activity Pack!

That's right, I have put together an incredible resource with everything you ever wanted to know about syllable counting, including what makes a syllable, strategies for teaching children to count syllables, syllable word cards, and several interactive activities and games to get kids practicing their syllable counting skills including syllable race, syllable mazes, syllable counting clip cards, and more.
Note: For more early language and literacy ideas, see my Literacy Activities for Kids Page.
What is a syllable?

The dictionary definition for a syllable is: "a unit of pronunciation having one vowel sound, with or without surrounding consonants, forming the whole or a part of a word."

You can also think of syllables as single, unbroken sounds of a spoken word. Sometimes syllables are referred to as the "beats" of language.

A word can have 1, 2, 3, 4, or even more syllables.

1 syllable words: hi, fun, kites

2 syllable words: hello, runner, party

3 syllable words: elephant, fantastic

4 syllable words: alligator, photography

Every syllable must contain at least one vowel, as it is the opening and closing of the mouth to say the vowel sound that makes a syllable.

However, it is the number of vowel sounds that determines the number of syllables in a word, not the number of vowels.

For example, words like 'bike' and 'cake' have two vowels but only one vowel sound. And words like 'sound' and 'boil' are spelled with vowel teams that make a single vowel sound. As such, these words all have just one syllable.

Also note that 'y' can make a vowel sound as in the words 'try' and 'fly.'

While every syllable must contain a vowel, a syllable may or may not include consonants.

A syllable may have no consonants, such as in the word 'I' or the syllable 'a' at the beginning of the two-syllable word 'apex.'

A syllable may have consonants at the beginning, such as 'he' or 'pro.'

A syllable may have consonants at the end, such as 'is' or 'un.'

A syllable may have consonants at both the beginning and end, such as 'has' or 'run.'

The number of syllables in a word is unrelated to the number of letters in the word. 'Sounds' with six letters and 'red' with three letters both have just one syllable.

Similarly, the number of phonemes (the smallest unit of sound) is also unrelated to the number of syllables in a word. 'Light' has three phonemes (/l/ /igh/ /t/) and 'go' has two (/g/ /ō/), but both words have only one syllable.

To reiterate, it is the number of vowel sounds, not the number of vowels, letters or phonemes, that determines the number of syllables in a word.

Of course, your children can learn to count syllables without knowing any of this background information. But as an educator, you may have find this information helpful and clarifying.

Why is counting syllables important?

Counting syllables is a pre-reading skill that children are expected to master in preschool or kindergarten. Learning to count syllables is important because:

Dividing words into syllables helps the process of decoding

Knowing the rules for syllable division helps students read words more accurately and fluently

Knowing the rules for syllable division helps children to understand the conventions for spelling English words

How to teach syllable counting

When you start to teach syllable counting, have your child start with words of high interest to them, such as their names and the names of their family, pets, and friends. Then you can move on to other words that are relevant to them, such as naming their favorite foods or animals.

Below are several fun and simple strategies children can use when counting syllables:

Clap out syllables: Teach your child to clap each syllable as they say a word.

Tap out syllables with sticks: Instead of clapping, hand your child a set of sticks (e.g., craft sticks, drum sticks, or pencils). Your child should hold one stick in each hand and tap them together for each syllable in a word.

Stomp syllables: Have a child that likes to get up and move? Have them stomp the ground for each syllable they say in a word.

Hum syllables: Have your child hum the word and count the distinct 'hums' they make while saying the word. Since vowel sounds are the sounds that can be sustained, they are the sounds that get emphasized when we hum. As such, humming a word facilitates counting its syllables. Try humming the word "elephant" and see how you make three distinct bursts of humming sounds while you do.

Talk like a robot: Have your child pretend to be a robot that talks in a very stiff, stilted way. Have your children "speak robot" while saying words, counting the syllables as they do.

Mark syllables on paper: Place a piece of paper on the table, and hand your child a marker. Have your child say a word, and encourage your child to press the marker to the paper each time they hear a syllable. At the end, your child can count how many marks they made on the paper. (Worksheets to support this strategy are included in my Syllable Counting Activity Pack.)

Count jaw drops: Each syllable has one vowel sound, and the mouth must open to say the vowel sound. As such, your child can count the number of syllables in a spoken word by placing their hand under their chin and feeling the number of times the jaw drops open.

Tools for practicing syllable counting

I have created a Syllable Counting Activity Pack chock full of fun, simple, and hands-on ways for children to learn and practice syllable counting skills.

Three pages of syllable background information for the educator: All of the information in this post in a print-friendly format you can access at anytime.

Word cards for 1, 2, 3, and 4 syllable words: These word cards can be used along with several other materials in the Syllable Counting Activity Pack to provide children with diverse opportunities to practice counting syllables.

Syllable counting strategy cards for playing games: Print the strategy cards and place them into a differentiated instruction cube. Have your child roll the cube and then count the syllables in a word using the strategy rolled. (If you don't have a differentiated instruction cube your child can simply select a strategy card from a pile.)

Syllable sorting labels: Use the included labels and word cards to have your child sort words based on the number of syllables in the word.

Syllable race game: Play a syllable race game for additional practice with counting syllables.

Syllable counting clip cards: Have your child count the number of syllables in the object on the card and then clip the appropriate number with a clothespin.

Syllable mazes: Practice syllable counting with these fun and colorful mazes! Children start at the top and then have to find all the words with the same number of syllables in a trail leading to the finish circle at the bottom.

Marking syllables activity worksheet: Your child can use dot markers to dot a number each time they say a syllable in the word.

Want a copy of my Syllable Counting Activity Pack?

Add this product to your cart by clicking the button below!

More ways to teach to early language & literacy skills

More early language activities from Gift of Curiosity:
You can find more ways to teach early language and literacy skills on my Literacy Activities for Kids page and my Letter Learning Pinterest board.
Follow Katie @ Gift of Curiosity's board Learning Letters on Pinterest.

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Are you looking for ideas to teach syllable counting? Or resources to help kids practice their syllable counting skills? Have you ever wondered why we teach syllable counting to young children? Are you looking to gain clarity on what exactly a syllable is?

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Article: Activities/Accommodations for English Language Learners 

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Article: Activities/Accommodations for English Language Learners 

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This article provides information about teaching ELL's about syllables, and how to provide them extra support for learning.

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Phonics for MLs - A World of Language Learners

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Learn about some of the differences between teaching phonics to ELLs and native English speakers. Also discover some new resources.

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Fun video for students to learn how to clap syllables

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Clap It Out - Learn Syllables | Songs For Kids | Dance Along | GoNoodle

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My favorite syllable video ever! This video is visual, auditory, and so funny for the kids!