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The understanding that print carries meaning, such as books contain letters and words. Print awareness also is the understanding that print is organized in a certain way, knowing that words are read from left to right and top to bottom. Some early stages of print concepts are that children are able to understand that print represents stories in a book and recognize letters to their sounds.

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Children typically demonstrate print awareness between the ages of 3 to five years old. Children become aware of print before they enter school.

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-Through Observations checklist:

The teacher can observe students during reading activities and take notes on whether the student knows concepts like directionality and differentiation between letters and words. Teachers will take notes on a checklist and if students are successfully able to follow along with the story, are they able to recognize the start of new sentences.

Print Concept Awareness Assessments:

This is a structured assessment where students are asked specific questions that test their print concept understanding. The teacher will give a one-on-one assessment to check for the student’s ability to identify words and letters. A teacher may ask the student to identify the front and back cover of a page as well as to point to a letter in the book. Responses are scored to determine the students progress.

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Interactive read-alouds:

By using interactive read-alouds , teachers will read a book aloud to the students while pointing to words and modeling print concepts like word boundaries and reading left-to-right. The specific content that is being taught is directionality of text. During the read aloud the teacher will point lead the story and use their finger as a guide so they can follow along. I can stop and ask the student to point to the beginning, middle and end of the story. By guiding and reading a story aloud students will gain the understanding that reading is read in a particular way.

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For English learners and students with dyslexia can benefit from multi sensory techniques. Teachers can engage students’ senses through tracing letters with their fingers or using pictures to represent words. Incorporating finger tracing with sand or glue can increase learning engagement. Especially for English learners, asking a student to match pictures with words can improve their ability to connect the picture with a word.

Another strategy that can be used is visual supports. Providing students with visual cues such as color coded letters or words can make the concepts of print more clear . For instance, a teacher can highlight or bold the beginning of a word which allow the student to differentiate the sentences.

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Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate sounds of sentences and words. Such as being able to identify words that rhyme or being able to identify the syllables in a word (Reading Rockets). Milestones of phonological awareness are being able to recognize and produce words that rhyme like cat, hat, bat). If students are able to break words into syllables and blend the syllables together to form a word is a sign of phonological awareness.

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3-6 years old

pre-K to first grade

-Word: Age 3

-Rhyme: Age 4

-Syllable blending: Age 4

-Syllable segmentation: Kindergarten

-Syllable deletion: Kindergarten

-Onset-rime: Middle of kindergarten

(Reading Rockets)

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PAST ( Phonological Awareness Screening Test)

DIBELS is another evidence based assessment that is used to assess the rapid letter naming ability. The students have one minute to name as many letters in the order that the letters appear on the page. This type of assessment does assess the number of correct phonemes per minute and students do receive scores for partially correct answers.

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Concept being taught is Phoneme Segmentation

Teachers can say a word slowly and “stretch out” the individual sounds such as the word bat becomes /b/ /a/ /t/. Teachers can also use Elkonin boxes which allows students to visually identify each word in the box which helps them to “stretch out” the individual word.

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Small groups:

English Learners and students with dyslexia can benefit from small group instruction. Having a small group allows students to receive more individualized support . In small groups teachers can provide manipulatives such as Elkonin boxes or cubes for each sound they hear in the root word.

Visual Supports:

Visual aids allow students with both English learners and students with dyslexia a better understanding of phonological awareness. English learners can use pictures or color-coded charts that help them connect sounds with words. For example, pairing up a picture of a tree with the written word can help reinforce the understanding of the words' sounds and the meaning.

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Phonemic Awareness is the ability to recognize, think about, and work with the individual phonemes in spoken words. Phonemic skills allow students to understand the relationship between sounds and letters when they begin to read and write.

Milestones:

Some of the milestones consist of students being able to identify individual sounds in words. An example of this is a student being able to recognize that the word cat has three sounds. Another sign that students are mastering the concept is successfully being able to blend individual sounds together to form a word. Lastly, another milestone is being able to identify and apply that by changing one phoneme in a word it can make a new word.

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Phoneme matching and phoneme isolation- first sounds are typically mastered in the middle of kindergarten

phoneme isolation and phoneme blending -last sounds: the end of kindergarten or early first grade.

Phoneme segmentation: First grade

Phoneme manipulation — initial (first) sound and phoneme manipulation-final sound: First grade or early second grade.

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Phonemic assessment should be conducted at least three times a year during kinder and first grade.

Word Recognition Assessment:

A word recognition test like DIBELS Word Reading Fluency provides a measure of reading fluency skills. Student will be asked to read words from a list.

Phonics Elements Assessment:

The Basic Phonics Skills Test III is a phonic assessment that includes the recognition of letter sounds, specific phonic patterns and other skills that are used to test students' knowledge of specific phonic elements.

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concept being taught: Phonemic isolation by using sound mapping

Sound mapping teaches phoneme isolation through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic activities. It allows students to develop a deeper understanding of phonemes. It's a specific order, first the teacher says a word out loud and the students are asked to focus and listen to the sounds they hear in the word. Students are then provided with a visual representation of each sound in a word using a sound mapping chart. Such as the word “hat” will have a box for its individual phoneme. Student and teacher word together to map each sound in the word. Teachers provide a kinesthetic component into the lesson that allows the student to trace each sound to represent each sound. This allows students to engage with the phonemes. The same process is repeated with different words, and it gets a bit more complex once the students are confident with isolating the individual sounds in a word.

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Multisensory approach with letter tiles

students can do finger tracing while saying the sounds, this allows these students to connect their senses.  Tactile letter and finger tracing allow them to identify and apply the physical shapes of letters and their sounds. Students with dyslexia allow them to reinforce phonemic skills by using letter tiles. Letter tiles can be used in multiple ways which allow students to be able to move the letters around.

Rhyming activities:

Using rhyming activities support phonemic awareness by engaging students through listing and producing rhymes which is essential for understanding phonemes. For English Learners, it allows them to recognize patterns in a word and improve their understanding of the word. Repeated exposure to rhyming words also strengthens the students vocabulary and phoneme recognition. Students with dyslexia can help retain the phonemic concept and can also benefit from the repetition with rhyming words. Repetition makes the concept less overwhelming since students are manipulating words in an auditory way.

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Letter naming skill involves the ability to recognize and name the letters of the alphabet including upper and lowercase.

Signs that students are mastering letter naming: students can recognize and identify both uppercase and lowercase letters with no hesitation. Students are able to associate each letter with its sounds. When students can name letters accurately which shows that they are growing in their foundational skills.

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Before students start kindergarten, some students may have recognized letters. The typical grade group is kindergarten.

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Letter Naming Fluency:

In this assessment students are shown a paper with a random sequence of upper and lower case letters and how quickly and accurately they could name the letters. This assessment allows teachers to assess their fluency and letter recognition. The students' progress is tracked by comparing their previous work to their more recent.

Observations:

Teachers can keep track of every student’s ability to name letters.The teacher can assess letter naming skills through observations as student interaction with their classmates or if they participate. Using observations provides useful information that include their progress and score

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Letter Recognition with Interactive alphabet chart

Using an alphabet chart is an interactive way that displays both uppercase and lowercase letters that have pictures that correlate with the letter. Teachers can introduce the word of the day to their students and ask them to identify both upper and lower case letters.

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Small group: students can be placed in a small group when they receive personalized help on learning how to identify letter names and sounds. English Learners can benefit from a small group setting since they are able to focus on letter naming. Students with dyslexia can focus more on practicing their letter sound connection and this allows them to receive the support they need.

Multi-sensory approach: English Learners can benefit from a multi-sensory instruction since students are engaged through multiple senses. English Learners can use visuals that allow them to make a correlation between the letter and the sound. Students with dyslexia can use manipulatives or visuals that allow them to retain information better.