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Phonemic Awareness for English Language Learners

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Phonemic Awareness for English Language Learners

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Learning to read is a complicated process. If you teach English language learners (ELLs), however, there are a number of ways you can support their literacy and language development through targeted instruction.

This article highlights ELL instructional strategies based on the five components of reading as outlined in Teaching Children to Read by the National Reading Panel (2000). This report is a study of research-based best practices in reading instruction and it focuses on the following five instructional areas: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Fluency, Comprehension. In addition, the article includes information related to two additional important areas of instruction for ELLs, oral language and the role of the home language.

Each of these topics is explored below, and each section includes:

a definition

an explanation of why the component is important when learning to read

challenges that ELLs may face

strategies for ELL instruction

You will find references to more in-depth information about ELLs and effective reading instruction from recommended resources below.

Note: Since this article includes in-depth information on a number of topics, we encourage you to use it in professional learning communities, jigsaw activities, and other collaborative settings!

What does the research say?

Before jumping in, it's important to note that, in general, what we know about effective literacy instruction for English speakers holds true for ELLs, but modifications and adjustments may be needed (Goldenberg, 2008). Since the original National Reading Panel did not include ELLs' literacy development as part of its research review, a subsequent panel reviewed the research related to language learners and released a report authored by principal investigator Dr. Diane August and panel chair Dr. Timothy Shanahan titled Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth.

Within the executive summary of that report, the authors note that, "Instruction that provides substantial coverage in the key components of reading - identified by the National Reading Panel (NICHD, 2000) as phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension - has clear benefits for language-minority students." They continue, "However, while approaches that are similar to those used with native-language populations are effective, the research suggests that adjustments to these approaches are needed to have maximum benefit with language-minority students." (p. 3)

For example, many practices may need modifications or scaffolds which may not be reflected in different reading programs or materials (August, 2018; Goldenberg, 2008), and in some cases, certain strategies may not be appropriate even with adjustments. In addition, the authors note the important role of two areas that were not addressed in the original National Reading Panel: students' home language and oral language.

Many examples of specific modifications are outlined in the strategies below, along with discussion of home language and oral language. You can find additional research resources at the end of the article, including a recent working paper published by Pivot Learning, Narrowing Down to Find Common Ground: Shared Agreements for Effective Literacy Instruction in California.

An in-depth video book study highlighting Literacy Foundations for English Learners by Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan is also publicly available on YouTube.

When working with ELLs, students' home languages are a powerful tool that educators can use - even if they don't speak those languages or are working in a classroom with students who speak many languages. Drs. August and Shanahan write, "Oral proficiency and literacy in the first language can be used to facilitate literacy development in English" (2006, p. 5). And in hisColorín Colorado article about the value of students' home language, Dr. Fred Genesee writes:

Extensive research, again from around the world, has found that children who are learning to read in a second language are able to transfer many skills and knowledge from their first language to facilitate their acquisition of reading skills in the second language. The best evidence of this comes from studies showing that students with strong reading skills in the home language also have strong reading skills in their second language. Much of this work has been done on ELLs in the U.S. (August & Shanahan, 2006; Riches & Genesee, 2006).

Tapping into students' home languages (also referred to as a first or native language) as a resource can take different forms:

Helping students make connections between their language and English in order to identify similarities and differences, such as English/Spanish cognates

Providing opportunities to use the home language in the classroom for reading, writing, and discussion

Encouraging students to draw on all of their language skills across languages, which is called translanguaging

Promoting biliteracy through bilingual or dual-language instruction, which can support students' future opportunities and family ties (not to mention brain health!), with initiatives such as the Seal of Biliteracy, which has been adopted in many states

It is important to keep in mind that the extent to which a student's literacy skills from their first language transfer depends on many factors, such as how similar the alphabetic systems between the two languages are and whether they share any connection in their origins, such as two languages that both derive from Latin (Nieser & Cárdenas-Hagan, 2020, p. 65). The students' levels of literacy in their home language will also have an impact on their literacy development in their new language. Learning more about the languages students speak can help educators target instruction, notice patterns among speakers of the same language, and help students understand the relationship between their language and English

You can also provide students and families with access to bilingual books and texts and encourage families to continue using and developing the home language through activities such as rhymes, storytelling, and conversation at home. You will also find specific strategies related to home language throughout the key components below.

Recommended resources

In addition, as you will see below, oral language has a role to play across all reading skills, yet it often does not receive much attention as a critical part of ELLs' language and literacy development. Drs. August and Shanahan write, "Instruction in the key components of reading is necessary - but not sufficient - for teaching language-minority students to read and write proficiently in English. Oral proficiency in English is critical as well - but student performance suggests that it is often overlooked in instruction." (2006, p. 5)

Oral language supports students' literacy skills in different ways. For example, students need to be familiar not only with the sounds and letters they are learning but also the words in which they appear in order to support their word recognition and comprehension. Other more global oral language skills, such as facility with English syntax and grammar, and the ability to navigate specific language functions like describing, predicting, and comparing, also contribute to both reading and writing development for ELLs.

In addition, strengthening oral language supports students' ability to participate in peer groups and their proficiency in speaking and writing using academic language. Students need opportunities to practice applying their emerging oral language skills through partner talk and peer work (scaffolded with supports such as sentence frames), activities such as partner reading, and responding to comprehension questions using academic language.

Dr. Carrie Simkin, the director of our sister site AdLit.org, offers the following suggestions related to oral language:

Make it a learning target for lesson planning (e.g. be intentional about planning for it).

Consider how much of the learning time in your classroom is text based vs. discussion. Do students have opportunities to discuss ideas or do they mostly respond in written formats? We want to engage students in lively discussions!

Consider if students have opportunities to work in pairs as well as small groups and not just respond to teacher-generated questions.

Have you modeled how to orally respond to questions using the question as a sentence starter? Do you have sentence starters visible for share-outs?

Our strategies related to oral language are also woven throughout the components below.

Recommended resources

Note: You can read more about the role of oral language in the foreword of Comprehension and English Language Learners.

Phonemic Awareness and ELLs

Keeping the areas of home language and oral language in mind, let's dive into the five key skill areas, starting with phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness is an important indicator of how well children will learn to read. Sometimes it is difficult, however, for speakers of a second language to "hear" and say sounds in the language they are learning. If you have had a student who could not master a particular sound in English, the sound may not have been a part of the student's native language.

In her chapter of Literacy Foundations for English Learners, Dr. Virginia Lovelace-Gonzalez notes that, "Phonological awareness skills can transfer across languages when students have opportunities to build these skills in their native language and English" (2020, p. 53).

For example, there are multiple sounds in English and Spanish that will directly transfer between languages, even if the sounds are associated with different letters (p. 50). Dr. Lovelace-Gonzalez writes, "For ELs, phonemic activities in English can be complicated by having to recognize sounds in English that do not exist in their native language...Instructionally, it is important for teachers to determine some of the similarities and differences between English and the student's native language to ensure the opportunity to learn" (p. 53).

Phonemic Awareness: Considerations and Strategies

What: The ability to hear and manipulate the different sounds in our language.

Why it matters: Phonemic awareness is the foundation for spelling and word recognition skills.

Considerations for ELLs

Learn more about the students' home languages.

Start by visiting a resource such as MyLanguages.org or Omniglot.com, which shares an overview of many different global languages.

Ask bilingual colleagues about how their languages are similar or different from English and common areas that need attention when learning English. For example, a group of Ukrainian teachers shared some of the questions that Ukrainian speakers have when learning English in this Colorín Colorado article.

Identify whether there are any sounds that your students' languages share with English. Use these as a starting point in your instruction. In addition, find out which sounds might be new to your students and be sure to include explicit practice of those sounds.

Help students think about the connection between their language and English.

Ask students how their language is the same or different than English in terms of how the language is written, the sounds that letters or symbols make, and words that might be related.

Help students become familiar with sounds, letters, and symbols that are shared between languages, as well as those that are not shared between the languages. (Some examples across different languages are included in Literacy Foundations for English Learners.)

Ask students if they have words that begin with a particular sound, or if there are any words related to a particular word in English. This can work with students who have limited literacy skills in their first language too.

Help beginning readers learn to identify sounds in short words.

Have students practice identifying the sounds in the beginning, middle, and end of these words. You may wish to use words that begin with a consonant, have a short vowel, and end in a consonant (CVC words) such as mat, top, and bus.

One very effective method is having students match pictures of words that have the same beginning, middle, or ending sound.

Use words that students already know in English.

Videos

Learn how to pronounce the 44 phonemes in English.

Phonics and ELLs

Phonics instruction aims to help new readers understand that there are systematic and predictable relationships between written letters and spoken sounds. Students benefit from learning and practicing sounds and symbols, including blended combinations. ELLs often show many strengths in mastering early phonics skills but it's important to remember that decoding while reading and correctly spelling words does not ensure good comprehension.

That's why it's important to ensure that ELLs are familiar with the words they are learning to decode in order to support their comprehension. The authors of Words Their Way with English Learners write, "English learners need structured opportunities to learn many new words to add to their repertoires so that these words can become the material of their literacy learning" (2011, p. 79).

Phonics: Considerations and Strategies

Considerations for ELLs

Use a word study approach.

Word study is a powerful approach that connects letters, sound, meaning, word parts, and usage so that students are learning explicit foundational skills within a meaningful context. For example, ELLs need lots of opportunities to connect the sounds, letters, and words they are learning.

The authors of Words Their Way with English Learners write, "What is key to literacy development for English learners in the emergent stage is that they use language with teachers and peers and see oral language they understand captured in print" (Helman et al, 2011).

Look for opportunities to reinforce phonics in context.

Using literature and content material, you can introduce and reinforce:

letter recognition

beginning and ending sounds

blends

rhyming words

silent letters

homonyms

Vocabulary and ELLs

Vocabulary plays an important part in learning to read, as well as in understanding what is read.

As students learn to read more advanced texts, they must learn the meaning of new words that are not part of their oral vocabulary. For ELLs, vocabulary development is especially important as students' develop academic language - in all subjects and activities! There are numerous ways to support explicit vocabulary instruction, which is essential for developing students' vocabulary knowledge. Dr. Coleen D. Carlson writes,

For EL students, drawing attention to unknown words during the initial presentation of the text, providing appropriate levels of definitions (e.g., providing English labels for words for which concepts and labels in one's native language are understood, quick definitions or demonstrations for simple words) and tying to background knowledge is critical. No amount of simply reading and rereading words will produce knowledge of unknown vocabulary. (2020, p. 97)

Vocabulary: Considerations and Strategies

Considerations for ELLs

Draw upon students' home languages.

You can draw upon students' home languages to build vocabulary by:

It is important to give students as much exposure and experience with new vocabulary words as possible before asking students to use them in a lesson or activity.

Select words that will support the reader's understanding of the story or text, as well as for other phrases and connectors that affect comprehension (even though, except, etc.). You can pre-teach vocabulary by using English as a second language (ESL) methods such as:

Role playing or pantomiming

Using gestures

Showing real objects

Pointing to pictures

Doing quick drawings on the board

Using the equivalent in students' languages and then asking students to say the word in English

Providing a student-friendly definition

Using graphic organizers

Cognates are words in different languages that are derived from the same original word or root. About 40% of all English words have cognates in Spanish (such as the English/Spanish cognate "family/familia"). This is an obvious bridge to the English language for Spanish speakers if the student is made aware of how to use this resource.

Teach students to recognize and use cognates, or words that are related across languages, and encourage students to be on the lookout for cognates from other languages as well.

Give students an opportunity to practice using new words.

As the teacher, you can explicitly teach word meanings to improve comprehension. However, to know a word means knowing it in all of the following dimensions:

The ability to define a word

The ability to recognize when to use that word

Knowledge of its multiple meanings

The ability to decode and spell that word

The ability to use different definitions word accurately in different contexts

Ensure students understand a new word by asking them to produce it themselves either orally or in writing.

I taught a summer school unit on habitats and healthy environments, and every student had to learn the phrase, "Reduce, reuse, recycle." Over the course of four weeks I gave students many opportunities to use those words to describe what we were doing: "We are reusing the grocery bag," or "We reused the scratch paper."

Build students' academic vocabulary.

You can increase students' academic vocabulary by teaching common structures and terms used in a specific content area. For example, sentence frames are a great way to get students familiar with these structures and can be used in writing and speaking:

You can learn more strategies in this related article.

The _____ is ______ than the _____.

I can conclude ______ because _______.

Videos

ESOL Specialist Sheila Majdi: Using sentence frames with ELLs

ESOL specialist Sheila Majdi from Arlington, VA explains what a sentence frame is and how she might use this strategy with ELLs.

Interactive reading of a story

In this classroom clip, first-grade teacher Albuquerque teacher Ali Nava leads her students through an interactive reading of Burro's Tortillas, a Southwestern adaptation of "The Little Red Hen."

Focusing on language in literacy instruction

In this classroom clip, fifth-grade teacher Clara Gonzales-Espinoza helps her students expand their understanding of the way language is used in a picture book version of Cinderella.

Instruction of key academic vocabulary with high school ELLs

In this lesson, students read a letter that Captain John Smith of the English Army wrote to Queen Anne in 1616. You can see lesson materials and reflection interviews from ELL teacher Anne Formato in our related classroom module.

Fluency and ELLs

Fluency is a tricky area when it comes to ELL reading instruction. For native English speakers, fluency and reading comprehension often share a strong correlation because fluent readers recognize words and comprehend at the same time. This is not always the case for ELLs.

Many ELLs can be deceptively fast and accurate in their reading because they are good readers in their primary language and have strong decoding skills. Yet they may demonstrate little understanding of the text, and hearing the text out loud may not necessarily provide a step towards comprehension as it is likely to do for native speakers. One important factor in the connection between fluency and comprehension is ELLs' oral language skills, which Dr. Carlson describes as "an important foundation that supports the role of fluency as a bridge to comprehension" (p. 93).

Fluency: Considerations and Strategies

Inaccurate indicator of ELLs' comprehension

It is not unusual for an ELL student to read a passage beautifully and then not be able answer more than a couple of comprehension questions correctly. Decoding skills (sounding out words) and comprehending the text are two different skills.

Limited benefit from hearing texts read aloud

Native speakers who are not strong decoders can often comprehend text that is read to them better than text that they read themselves. That's because when someone else is doing the reading, they can focus on meaning without having to struggle to get the words off the page.

With ELLs, however, comprehension problems tend to be associated with limited vocabulary and limited background knowledge. Thus, listening to text read by someone else won't enhance comprehension.

Comprehension and ELLs

Comprehension is the understanding and interpretation of what is read. To be able to accurately understand written material, children need to be able to 1) decode what they read; 2) make connections between what they read and what they already know; and 3) think deeply about what they have read. Comprehension can be the most difficult skill to master, however, and can elude students who have mastered word-level skills. According to the executive summary of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth,

An important finding that emerges from the research is that word-level skills in literacy - such as decoding, word recognition and spelling - are often taught well enough to allow language-minority students to attain levels of performance equal to those of native English speakers. However, this is not the case for text-level skills - reading comprehension and writing. (p. 4)

ELLs at all levels of English proficiency, and literacy development, will benefit from explicit instruction in comprehension skills along with other skills because improved comprehension will not only help them in language arts and ESL classes - it will help them in content-area classes and in daily activities. It will also improve the chances of their interest in reading for pleasure.

Learn more from the following articles:

Comprehension: Considerations and Strategies

Considerations for ELLs

ELLs who struggle with comprehension may read more slowly, have a hard time following a text or story, have a hard time picking out important events, and feel frustrated. They may also have problems mastering new concepts in their content-area classes or completing assignments and assessments because they cannot comprehend the texts and tests for these subjects.

Check comprehension frequently.

As students read, ask them open-ended questions about what they are reading, and informally test students' ability to sequence material from sentences or a story by printing sentences from a section of the story on paper strips, mixing the strips or word order, and having students put them in order.

Use questions after reading.

After the ELLs and/or whole class have completed the reading, you can test their comprehension with carefully crafted questions, taking care to use simple sentences and key vocabulary from the text they just read.

These questions can be at the:

Videos

This video showcases a 5 th-grade team planning a science lesson about the difference between vascular and non-vascular plants. ESOL specialist Katy Padilla plays a key role in advocating for ELLs throughout the lesson planning process and sharing her strategies for engaging and supporting students.

Making Dual-Language Immersion Work

This video provides an introduction to Claremont Immersion School's dual language model and shows how teachers collaborating to develop a language arts language in English and Spanish.

Assessment for ELLs

Learn how third-grade teacher Samantha Kirch uses informal assessment in her classroom to better evaluate ELLs and their progress.

Story setup: Pre-reading strategies for comprehension

Learn about pre-reading strategies that will lay the groundwork before high school newcomer ELLs tackle a new text.

Teaching ELLs in upper elementary, middle school, and high school

Older ELLs bring a lot of valuable experience and interests to the classroom. At the same time, they face the double challenge of needing to learn content and a new language at the same time, which is further complicated if their literacy skills are limited. While they may still need foundational skills work, it can be hard to find materials that are age-appropriate. You can learn more about specific tips for supporting this diverse population from the following resources:

For great classroom videos at the secondary level, see our classroom video library!

Concluding Thoughts

This is a lot of information, but we hope that these resources and recommendations can inform your work with students as well as the conversations about literacy in your setting. The more familiar your team is with best practices for ELLs, the more effectively you can determine which practices and resources will best support your students in their ongoing literacy development - and future successes!

Recommend Resources

This new working paper released by Pivot Learning reflects collective consensus among literacy experts on key topics concerning (1) literacy and multilingual and English learner students; (2) early screening and assessment; and (3) foundational skills.

To learn more about the paper and how it was developed, see Can common ground be found on teaching reading in California? (EdSource)

Research articles and chapters

Books

Literacy Foundations for English Learners by Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan (You can see the related book study on YouTube.)

Words Their Way with English Learners: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling (2nd Ed.) by Dr. Lori Helman, Dr. Donald R. Bear, Dr. Shane Templeton, Dr. Marcia Invernizzi, and Dr. Francine Johnston

Literacy Instruction for English Language Learners by Dr. Nancy Cloud, Dr. Fred Genesee, and Dr. Else Hamayan

Dual Language Instruction from A to Z: Practical Guidance for Teachers and Administrators by Dr. Else Hamayan, Dr. Fred Genesee, and Dr. Nancy Cloud

Webcasts

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Reading 101 for English Language Learners

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Learning to read is a complicated process. If you teach English language learners (ELLs), however, there are a number of ways you can support their literacy and language development through targeted instruction. This article highlights ELL instructional strategies based on the five components of reading as outlined in Teaching Children to Read by the National Reading Panel (2000).

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Defined as the ability to distinguish and manipulate phonemes, the smallest units of speech sound that can carry a meaning

A critical skill that all readers must develop

Students should be assessed early (kindergarten) for the ability

Must be taught explicitly to dyslexics, though this is not required for more efficient readers

Is taught through activities in sound identification, sound substitution, rhyming, word blending and word segmentation

Often falsely equated with skills in phonics

The 'phonological deficit hypothesis' is considered the dominant explanation for dyslexia and directly implicates awareness of phonemes

Definitions

Phonemic awareness is the ability to distinguish and manipulate phonemes, the smallest units of speech sound that can carry a meaning. In English there are 44 of these sounds. The awareness can be demonstrated in the ability to isolate, blend and otherwise manipulate the essential sounds of language-for example by recognizing a set of words all beginning with the /h/ sound or isolating a sound at the beginning, middle or end of word. It does not require spelling or even the use of letters.

"Phonological awareness is the ability to listen inside a word"
-Dyslexia researcher and author Jo Fitzpatrick

But isn't it just phonics?

No, phonics is about the relationship between letters and sounds whereas phonemic awareness is strictly about sounds, does not require a student to know the alphabet, or even be able to identify a single letter. For example asking a child which word results from taking the /m/ sound off the end of the word '

farm' would be a test of their phonemic awareness. Asking him or her to sound out the word by looking at the letters would be a test of phonics.

Why phonemic awareness matters:
The phonological deficit hypothesis

According to Julian Elliott and Elena Grigorenko in their 2014 book The Dyslexia Debate, the phonological deficit hypothesis has been the dominant cognitive explanation of dyslexia for over four decades. According to this hypothesis, "children with dyslexia are hindered by faulty representation of speech sounds, which leads to problems involving the precise processing of spoken words." (Chapter two, Explanations at the cognitive level.)

Assessing and improving the cognitive processing of spoken words should be an objective of every preschool, kindergarten and early grade school reading programs because phonemic awareness is a prerequisite to a suite of critical skills including letter sound decoding (phonics), rapid word identification (use of sight words) and fluency. Piles of academic research has found that explicitly teaching students the sounds of language is a potent instructional technique:

In a 2012 study of the relationship between phonemic awareness, rhyme awareness, short-term memory and children's reading skills, Melby and Lervag et al. found the phonemic awareness was the strongest predictor. The authors wrote of the "pivotal role of phonemic awareness as predictor of individual differences in reading development."

In 2000, the U.S National Reading Panel found that "teaching children to manipulate phonemes in words was highly effective under a variety of teaching conditions with a variety of learners across a range of grade and age levels and that teaching phonemic awareness (PA) to children significantly improves their reading more than instruction that lacks any attention to PA."

G.R. Lyon found that "the best predictor of reading difficulty in kindergarten or first grade is the inability to segment words and syllables into constituent sound units" (Lyon, 1995, Toward a Definition of Dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia, 45, 3-27.)

Renowned professor of the psychology of reading, Keith Stanovich has found that phonemic awareness is the most powerful predictor of success in learning to read, more highly related to reading than tests of general intelligence, reading readiness, and listening comprehension. (Stanovich, 1986, 1994)

In contrast, alternative approaches to teaching reading emphasize context, vocabulary and meaning, sometimes referred to as the whole language approach, now widely believed to be inferior to explicit phonemic and phonic instruction.

Vocabulary: Rhyme vs Rime

Rime: Derived from the Germanic rim, it means a sequence or series. More specifically it refers to a part of a word with a particular spelling pattern, beginning with a vowel sound and ending before the next vowel sound in the word. For example in the words , dog and fog the letters ' og' are the rimes. The initial letters of the word (h, d, f) are known as the 'onset'.

Rhyme: A correspondence of sounds between words. If two words contain similar sounds, usually at the beginning or end, then we say that they Rhyme. For example the words core, door and four all rhyme but do not contain the same rime.

In summary, words that rhyme don't always have the same rime. Got it?

Below are the specific skills that someone with phonemic awareness should be able to demonstrate. Skills are listed below by the approximate age they usually appear.

Word awareness (ages 2+)

Children have to become aware that speech is made up of discrete knowable words, mentally parsing them where one ends and the next begins. This occurs naturally but it is a surprisingly difficult learning task, one a toddler will not even recall mastering. Those studying a second language readily understand just how spoken words can stick together. Progress is when a garble of formerly mysterious sound is magically deciphered into a series of meaningful words. We just get used to the magic.

Rhyme and alliteration awareness (Ages 3+)

Awareness of rhyme may be revealed though their enjoyment of rhyming verses read to them from storybooks, playful use of rhymes in songs, or from being able to actually identify rhymes in speech or even text.
Syllable awareness (Ages 3-4)

Syllable awareness is an understanding that words are composed of smaller sound chunks. Children can demonstrate knowledge of syllables by clapping out words such as hip-o-pot-a-mus. If they clap the right number of times, they are aware of syllables. Syllables are not phonemes, but awareness of them indicates a knowledge that words are composed of discrete sounds which can later be isolated and manipulated.
Rhyme Generation (Ages 3-4)

Building on their abilities to identify rhymes and syllables allows young readers to demonstrate rhyme generation involving manipulation of both the onset and rime. (See side box for definitions).
Identifying phonemes (Ages 5+)

If a child can identify the first sound in the word cat or the last sound in the word bit, sat and wet, then they have demonstrated this skill. dog or identify a common phoneme in a group of words like
Blending and segmenting phonemes (Ages 5-6)

Blending is the ability to assemble a word from its onset and rime (/b/ + /ug/ = bug) or from its phonemes, such as the sounds /c/ /a/ /p/ blending to form the word cap. Segmenting is simply reversing the process by asking students to break the words ' bug' or 'cap' down into their syllables and sounds.
Isolating phonemes (Ages 5-7)

This skill involves isolating where in a word a specific sound resides. For example, in the word 'bug' where is the /g/ sound located-at the beginning, middle or end? The most difficulty and last kind of isolation to be learned is identifying phonemes in the middle of words. Remember that this exercise is done orally, not using letters on paper and is harder for young children than it sounds.
Deleting phonemes (Ages 6-7)

If we remove the last sound from the word ' cart', what word are we left with? If a child understands that the word ' car' is left over then they can delete phonemes.

Substituting phonemes (Ages 6-7)

This skill involves being able to replace one sound in a word with another and recognizing the new meaning. For example, if we replace the /m/ sound in the word stem with the /p/ sound, what new word do we have?

Assessment

How can you tell when a child is struggling with phonemic awareness? There are some very simple, informal methods that parents and teachers can use as well as formal diagnostic tests administered by professionals.

Read out loud: For children in kindergarten or the first grade, the easiest way to reveal problems with phoneme awareness is by having them read of a list of words out loud. Ideally the list should be made up of age appropriate words which have not previously been practiced, free of context clues and pictures. If their reading is slow and errors are frequent, it may indicate a phoneme awareness problem. It is harder for parents of an only child to know what constitutes 'slow' but parents with more than one child and all teachers quickly learn how typical students read.

Importantly, the errors made won't be random. Those with weak phonemic awareness skills will guess at words based on shape and similarity of letters, because they cannot sound it out. There will be letter (b for d) and word (saw for was) reversals, but more common will be odd guesses such as reading lunch for bunch, except for expect.

Rhyming games: Ask the child to identify or create rhymes-tasks which can be done orally. Asked to generate words that rhyme with truck, a child with dyslexia may reply car and bus rather than duck or luck. The inability to complete this seemingly easy task is a very reliable indicator of dyslexia.

Formal

There are several diagnostic tests for awareness of phonemes. Dynamic Indicators of Basis Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP-2), Test of Phonemic Awareness (TOPA), the Yopp Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation, Aimsweb Test of Early Literacy and others. For more information see our dyslexia testing page.

These test should be administered by a qualified psychologist or assessor trained to administer them.

Teaching strategies & helpful resources

Better reading programs explicitly teach phonemic awareness. How do they do it? By employing creative, fun, auditory and often visual exercises which help develop each of the skills above. Below are two helpful resources.

1) Essential Strategies for Teaching Phonemic Awareness from the book 50 Reading Strategies for K-8 Learners from Sage Publications. A helpful book for teachers of kindergarten and elementary students.

2) The Reading Rockets website features helpful ideas for classroom activities.

Final Sounds

Every teacher of beginning readers should be aware of the importance of phonemic awareness, have their students assessed for it and be able to provide interventions for those students lagging in development. By fostering this ability during the critical window of early language development, teachers can make a lifelong difference for their students.

Back to the top of Phonemic Awareness

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Defined as the ability to distinguish and manipulate phonemes, the smallest units of speech sound that can carry a meaning A critical skill that all readers must develop Students should be assessed early (kindergarten) for the ability Must be taught explicitly to dyslexics, though this is not required for more

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Learning Disabilities Association of America

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Reading is the single most important educational skill your students will learn. Understanding the organization and meaning of text and instruction in both phonics and literature is essential to helping young children read. By understanding the prerequisite skills for reading, teachers can build a solid foundation for their students to learn and succeed in school. Here are some ways to create appreciation of the written word, develop awareness of printed language, teach the alphabet, develop phonological and phonemic awareness, teach the relation of sounds and letters, teach children how to sound out words and to spell words, and help children develop fluent, reflective reading.
Create Appreciation of the Written Word

Share stories with children and invite them to explore a story's magic.

Share informational texts and invite children to wonder about the new ideas presented.

Take every opportunity to point out the ways in which reading is essential to the communications of everyday life (e.g., on labels, instructions, and signs).

Develop Awareness of Printed Language and the Writing System

Make sure students know how books are organized. They should be taught the basics about books-that they are read from left to right and top to bottom, that print may be accompanied by pictures or graphics, that the pages are numbered, and that the purpose of reading is to gain meaning from the text and understand ideas that words convey.

Read to children from books with easy-to-read large print. Use stories that have predictable words in the text.

Use "big books" to help children notice and learn to recognize words that occur frequently, such as a, the, is, was, and you.

Label objects in your classroom.

Teach the Alphabet

A strong predictor of the ease with which a child learns to read is his or her familiarity with letters of the alphabet. This familiarity is a critical building block for learning to read.

It is important to go beyond knowing the names of letters. Students must also develop a sense of the purpose of letters.

Help them notice the letters in the print that surrounds them and that you share with them every day.

Engage the students in activities that will help them learn to recognize letters visually.

Help students learn to form the letters and encourage them to embellish their work with their names and with other first attempts at writing.

Develop the Students' Phonological Awareness

In listening and speaking, we pay attention to the meaning of language rather than to its sound. To learn to read, however, students must be taught to attend to the sounds, or phonology, of language. This is necessary for them to understand how speech is represented by print. Children with learning disabilities need special help in learning to develop such phonological awareness.

Model and demonstrate how to break short sentences into individual words. For example, use the sentence "Frogs eat bugs," and demonstrate with chips, cards, or other manipulatives how the sentence is made up of three words and how the order of the words matters. Using manipulatives to make sentences, play with each word and put it in order.

Develop students' awareness of the sounds of individual words by asking them to clap out syllables and to listen for and generate rhymes.

Once children are comfortable in playing games with words, syllables, and rhymes, move onto phonemic awareness.

Develop Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness refers to an understanding that words and syllables are comprised of a sequence of elementary speech sounds. This understanding is essential to learning to read an alphabetic language. The majority of children with reading disabilities fail to grasp this idea.

In teaching phonemic awareness, the focus of all activities should be on the sounds of words, not on letters or spellings.

Use strategies that make phonemes prominent in children's attention and perception. For example, model specific sounds, such as /s/ in the word sat, and ask children to produce each sound in isolation and in many different words until they are comfortable with the sound and understand its nature.

Begin with simple words and simple challenges, e.g., listen for initial /s/ in sat, sit, sip, and sad . . . or for long /e/ in me, see, bee . . . .

Teach students to blend phonemes into words. Begin by identifying just one phoneme, e.g., /m/-ilk, /s/-at, working gradually toward blending all the phonemes in words, e.g., /s/-/a/-/t/.

Teach students to identify the separate phonemes within words, e.g., what is the first sound of soup? What is the last sound of kiss? Beginning phonemes are easier to identify than final phonemes.

Once students are comfortable listening for individual phonemes, teach them to break up words, into component sounds, e.g., /m/-/oo/-/s/= "moose".

Create a sequence of segmenting and blending activities to help students develop an understanding of the relationship between sounds in words.

Provide children with more support when first teaching a task. For example, model a sound or strategy for making the sound, and have the children use the strategy to produce the sound. Model and practice several examples. Prompt the children to use the strategy during guided practice, and gradually add more examples. As the students master these skills, provide less teacher-directed instruction and more practice and challenge.

Make teaching phonological awareness a top priority. Opportunities to engage in phonological awareness activities should be plentiful, frequent, brief, and fun.

Phonemic awareness is essential for learning to read, but it is not enough by itself. It must be coupled with instruction and practice in learning the relationship between letters and sounds.

Teach the Relation of Sounds and Letters

Students should learn the letters of the alphabet and discriminate each letter from the other, because each stands for one or more of the sounds that occur in spoken words.

When presenting each letter, model its corresponding sound and have children produce the sound themselves. For children with learning disabilities, the teaching activities must be explicit and unambiguous.

At first, teach and work with only a few letter-sound correspondences that have high utility in many words (e.g., /m/ in man, mad, him, and ham). Postpone teaching less frequently occurring letters until students have a firm understanding of how left-to-right spellings represent first-to-last sounds (alphabetic understanding).

Teach Children How to Sound Out Words

After students have mastered a few letter-sound correspondences, teach them to decode words or sound them out. Begin with small, familiar words. Teach the children to sound out the letters, left to right, and blend them together, searching for the word in memory.

Model sounding out the word, blending the sounds together and saying the word. The ability to sound out new words allows children to identify and learn new words on their own.

Give children stories containing words that reflect the letter-sound patterns that have been taught, and encourage them to sound out words whenever they are uncertain.

Help children learn spelling conventions, such as the use of final /e/ to mark long vowels, by comparing and contrasting lots of examples.

Teach Children to Spell Words

Teach children to spell words by sounding their letters one by one. Model the sounding and spelling process for children as they spell.

Begin with short words children can sound out, because these words follow regular spelling conventions, e.g., cap, bat, and sit instead of cape, bait or sight.

Begin with simple words that do not contain consonant blends, e.g., ham and pan instead of slam and plan.

Encourage students to use spelling knowledge and strategies regularly in their own writing.

Introduce spelling conventions systematically. Begin with words that exemplify the most frequent and basic conventions, and provide support and practice to help students generalize from these words to others. The goal is to help them see the spelling conventions in the words.

Use words in which letter-sound correspondences represent their most common sounds (e.g., get instead of gem).

Develop a sequence and schedule of opportunities that allow children to apply and develop facility with sounds and words at their own pace. Specify what skills to assess and when to assess them so that you will know when to move on. Take into account each student's background knowledge and pace in moving from sounding out to blending words to reading connected text.

Help Children Develop Fluent, Reflective Reading
ERIC Clearinghouse on Disabilities and Gifted Education

Help children learn to read fluently by requiring them to read new stories and reread old stories every day.

Help children extend their experience with the words, language, and ideas in books by interactively reading harder texts with them and to them every day.

Relate information in books to other events of interest to children, such as holidays, pets, siblings, and games. Engage children in discussion of the topics.

In both stories and informational texts, encourage wondering. For example, "I wonder what Pooh will do now?" "How do you think the father feels ?" or "I wonder what frogs do in the winter? Do you think that's a problem? Why?"

Model comprehension strategies and provide students with guided assistance.

Point out how titles and headings tell what a book is about.

Help students identify the main ideas presented in the text, as well as the supporting detail. Graphics help to reveal main ideas, and the relationship between text and graphics helps students understand what they are reading.

Point out unfamiliar words and explore their meaning. Revisit these words frequently and encourage students to use them in their own conversations.

Show children how to analyze contextual clues to figure out the meaning of an unfamiliar word. Research shows that most vocabulary growth comes from learning new words in reading.

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Reading is the single most important educational skill your students will learn. Understanding the organization and meaning of text and instruction in both phonics and literature is essential to helping young children read. By understanding the prerequisite skills for reading, teachers can build a solid foundation for their students to learn and succeed in school....

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Whole class seat work

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Working with Words: Making Words in First Grade

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Beginning Sounds

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Kindergarten phonics activities for reading: memory game

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Phoneme Fingers: A phonological awareness activity

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Interactive Read Aloud: How to Do It and Why It Works

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Interactive Read Aloud: How to Do It and Why It Works

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Every teacher should know how to do an interactive read aloud. Here is why it works and how to do it.

When you consider a framework for best literacy methods within a classroom, daily read alouds from a variety of genres should be a foundational teaching practice.

There are a variety of purposes for reading books out loud. Sometimes it is simply for pleasure, and that is an experience many students never received.

develop background knowledge necessary for understanding a topic

target vocabulary development

demonstrate prosody

learn how to inference, make judgements and use meta-cognition strategies

integrate higher order questioning skills

set the stage for a unit or lesson

develop connections to a text (text-to-self, world or another text)

meet academic content standards at a students frustration level

However you choose to use reading aloud to kids, it should be done in a variety of ways across different genres, every single day.

What is an Interactive Read Aloud?

An interactive read aloud is comprised of a series of purposeful activities that also incorporates reciprocal teaching.

Previewing the book

Scaffolding on prior knowledge

Modeling vocabulary development

Teaching reading fluency

Emphasizing elements of the story

Asking purposeful questions

Using think-alouds to assist comprehension

Summarizing the story to bring closure

Texts used during the interactive read aloud should be from a wide variety of genres. They should tap into the readers' interests and be full of rich vocabulary. These same texts can be used as part of a focus lesson where kids learn to read during the Reading Workshop.

Stories about Cinderella are fabulous for interactive read alouds!

Strategies for Reading Aloud

Previewing the book is the first step of an interactive read aloud. It means to look at the elements of the text before reading to children. During the preview time I begin scaffolding the students prior knowledge to those elements.

This means taking what the students already know and helping them to use it to make sound predictions about the text. Each prediction should be based on what they see or hear in the preview. Always ask why they made the prediction.

Look at the cover and predict if the book is fiction or non-fiction and why. Older grades should predict what specific genre they think the book is. What story elements would they expect to find in this particular genre (i.e. fairy tales have animals that talk).

Ask what the title is, who the author is and if there is an illustrator shown. This is especially important for primary grades who need continual reinforcement of basic story elements.

Discuss the type of artwork used on the cover. The artwork is often a clue to the type of genre a book is. I also like to refer back to this if the students write a story similar to the read aloud as they can include artwork like the author and illustrator did. A great example of this is "Little Cloud" by Eric Carle.

Read the back cover. This is a great teaching moment for discussing a "hook" that draws readers into the story and allows an opportunity for refining predictions.

Take a picture walk - that means do not read any of the text! Give the students a chance to look at the pictures to begin to construct meaning. If it is not a picture book, take a chapter walk - use the chapter titles in the table of contents to make predictions about each part of the book.

Scaffolding on prior knowledge means that the teacher is helping students to make predictions and connections to what they already know. This is critical for deep comprehension. Think about it: if I was asked to read a book about biochemical engineering, I can guarantee you that I would understand very little of it.

They need you to help them relate to the text in order to make concise, accurate predictions and connections. This is also the time to introduce rich vocabulary words found in the text.

*Using read aloud books is a great Tier 1 Response To Intervention. It is simply a best teaching practice that is good for all learners.

3. Emphasizing Elements of the Story

When you choose a book to use as an interactive read aloud, be aware of the elements of the story. Elements of a story are generally concerned with setting, characters, and the plot (problem and solution) in the primary grades. If you are working with older students, you then need to address exposition and climax, as well as introducing the terms conflict and resolution instead of problem and solution.

This is also the appropriate place to discuss what readers would expect to find within certain genres. These elements should be discussed through predictions, scaffolding and as you read the story. For example:

"Once upon a time..."

Conflict between good and bad characters

Magic

Events often occur in threes or sevens

Characters are people who really could have lived at that time

Place and time are set in a real historical period/location

Most events are historically accurate

Characters are shaped by the setting

Consider the questions you model, if they are of real value, and where they fall within Bloom's Taxonomy Questions.

Gear your questions towards a specific comprehension skill you are working on, such as inferencing or recalling a sequence of events. Kids learn to read and comprehend when they are hear the teacher model purposeful thinking using Think Alouds and are given opportunities to respond either orally or in writing.

"I wonder why did the character said that?"

"Who is going to be the hero in this situation? Why?"

"That is a great word the author used to describe the character! It must mean ____, because I remember he did this earlier."

"This story reminds me of another one I read..."

"What do you think the author is trying to tell us on this page?"

5. Summarizing and Sharing Thoughts About the Story

Summarizing the story is essential to solidify your students' comprehension of the text. An interactive read aloud should always include how the students related to the story.

Making deep connections and inferences are critical reading comprehension skills that are embedded in helping kids learn to read. Reading stories isn't a waste of class time - it's an intelligent and purposeful use of our time.

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Interactive Read Aloud: How To Do It and Why It Works

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Every teacher should know how to do an interactive read aloud. Here is why it works and how to do it. When you consider a framework for best literacy methods within a classroom, daily read alouds from a variety of genres should be a foundational teaching practice.

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What is the difference between PA and phonics?

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Difference between Phonemic Awareness & Phonics