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Heggerty provides daily lesson plans that focus on phonemic awareness. This is a quick classroom activity that only takes 10 minutes. Heggerty starts out with just repetition and then progresses to where students must provide the answer. If a student is still struggling, they can go back to the repetitive weeks and keep practicing those

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A phonics activity that is great for a classroom is picture and word sort. Students will have CVC words that they have to sound out and then match the word to the picture! If students are struggling with the CVC words, they can look for the picture first, name it and then try to find the word.

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Choral reading is when students read along as a group with a fluent reader, this fluent reader can be an adult or another student. This is a great activity for students to follow along as others are reading and it works on their reading fluency.

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This a great resource for families to use at home. It covers different activities for phonological awareness, phonemic awareness and why these are so important when chuldren are learning to read!

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That's a complicated sounding term, but it's meaning is simple: the ability to hear, recognize, and play with the sounds in spoken language. Phonological awareness is really a group of skills that include a child's ability to:

Identify words that rhyme

Count the number of syllables in a name

Recognize alliteration (words with the same beginning sound)

Segment (break) a sentence into words

Identify the syllables in a word

The most sophisticated phonological awareness skill (and the last to develop) is called phonemic awareness - the ability to hear, recognize, and play with the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. When playing with the sounds in word, children learn to:

Blend individual sounds to make a word

Stretch out a word into its individual sounds

Swap in a different sound to the beginning, middle, or end of a word to make a new word

Strong phonemic awareness is one of the strongest predictors of later reading success. Children who struggle with reading, including kids with dyslexia, often have trouble with phonemic awareness, but with the right kind of instruction they can be successful. Learn some of the warning signs for dyslexia in this article, Clues to Dyslexia in Early Childhood.

Parents can make a big difference in helping their children become readers by practicing these pre-reading oral skills at home. Try some of the simple rhyming and word sound games described here.

Try these speech sound activities at home

Rhyme time

"I am thinking of an animal that rhymes with big. What's the animal?" Answer: pig. What else rhymes with big? ( dig, fig, wig)

Road trip rhymes

While you're out driving in the car, spot something out the window and ask your child, "what rhymes with tree or car or shop?" Then switch roles and have your child spot something and ask you for a rhyme. This can turn into a game of nonsense rhymes ("What rhymes with tree stump?") but that's great for practicing sounds, too!

Word families

Word families are sets of words that rhyme. Start to build your family by giving your child the first word, for example, cat. Then ask your child to name all the "kids" in the cat family, such as: bat, fat, sat, rat, pat, mat, hat, flat. This will help your child hear patterns in words.

Silly tongue twisters

Sing songs and say silly tongue twisters. These help your child become sensitive to the sounds in words.

Tongue ticklers

Alliteration or "tongue ticklers" - where the sound you're focusing on is repeated over and over again - can be a fun way to provide practice with a speech sound. Try these:

For M: Miss Mouse makes marvelous meatballs!

For S: Silly Sally sings songs about snakes and snails.

For F: Freddy finds fireflies with a flashlight.

Syllable shopping

While at the grocery store, have your child tell you the syllables in different food names. Have them hold up a finger for each word part. Eggplant = egg-plant, two syllables. Pineapple = pine-ap-ple, three syllables. Show your child the sign for each and ask her to say the word.

"I spy" first sounds

Practice beginning sounds with this simple "I spy" game at home, on a walk, or at the grocery store. Choose words with distinctive, easy-to-hear beginning sounds. For example, if you're in the bathroom you can say, "I spy something red that starts with the "s" ssss sound ( soap)."

Sound scavenger hunt

Choose a letter sound, then have your child find things around your house that start with the same sound. "Can you find something in our house that starts with the letter "p" pppppp sound? Picture, pencil, pear "

Which letter sounds do I teach first?

Reading expert Linda Farrell recommends that you begin with teaching the letter names, and then focus on the letter sounds that are closest to their letter names (such as /v/). And here's a great tip for teaching the trickier letter name-letter sound combinations - use arm motions. In this video, Linda demonstrates motions for /x/ and /y/. (From our video series Reading SOS: Expert Answers to Family Questions About Reading.)

Sound games

Practice blending sounds into words. Ask "Can you guess what this word is? m - o - p." Hold each sound longer than normal.

First sounds

When you're reading together with your child, pick a word from the book and say it with emphasis on the first sound. Pick another word and compare them. "Zzz-zookeeper and rrr-rhinoceros. Can you hear what sound zzz-zookeeper starts with? Is it the same as rrr-rhinoceros?

Jump, skip, hop!

Create simple picture cards that you draw or cut out of magazines. Have your child, identify what's in the picture, and then break that word into its individual sounds. For example dog is d-o-g, three sounds (phonemes). Three sounds? You and your child do three jumping jacks, skips, or hops (followed by a high-five). You can also do this game outdoors without the cards, just call out simple words for your child.

Snail talk

Tell your child you're going to communicate in "snail talk" and they need to figure out what you're saying. Take a simple word and stretch it out very slowly (e.g., /fffffllllaaaag/), then ask your child to tell you the word. Switch roles and have your child stretch out a word for you.

"I spy" blending

Here's an easy phoneme blending game you can play while talking a walk. For blending, you can say, "I see a sign that says s-t-o-p" Then your child has to blend the sounds to guess your word - stop. (Remember to say only the sounds in the word - not the letters.) Keep the words short, moving from two to three to four sounds depending on your child's skill level.

Sound counting

Using LEGO bricks, beads, or pennies, say a word and have your child show you how many sounds the word makes. For example, top = t-o-p = three sounds, so your child would place three objects in a row. Then have them tap each object as they say the sound. Remember, your child is just showing you the sounds they hear. So the word bike would be = b-i-k (silent e) = only three sounds.

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Phonological and Phonemic Awareness: Activities for Your Kindergartener

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Phonological and phonemic awareness are important pre-reading skills, related to the ability to hear, identify, and play with the sounds in spoken language - including rhymes, syllables, and the smallest units of sound (phonemes). Children with strong phonological awareness skills are ready to become readers.

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This is a great resource for families that have students with dyslexia. This resource provides great definitions, and shows how the skills develops. It provides tips to help the students.

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With an understanding that research in the future may provide even more powerful pathways for reading success, this fact sheet presents guiding principles for instruction informed by what we know from research today. Science evolves and is dynamic. As reading research progresses, and as understanding and interpretation of the research advances, educators and policymakers must periodically adjust or refine practices and policies. Now it is time to implement what accumulated evidence indicates regarding a key component of reading acquisition, phoneme awareness (also known as phonemic awareness). Students who are learning to read must become aware of the smallest segmented parts of spoken words (phonemes) that are represented by graphemes (letters and combinations of letters) in written words. Phoneme awareness is the ability to be aware of and consciously think about these individual speech sounds in spoken words. It is a critical foundational skill for reading.

This fact sheet discusses phoneme awareness, why it is necessary, and how it develops. In it you will find tips for effective practices to build children 's phoneme awareness in kindergarten, first grade, and beyond. Based on current understanding of research findings, this fact sheet also covers the importance of integrating phoneme awareness instruction that links phonemes and associated graphemes with letter names and handwriting instruction. It further raises important considerations regarding the interpretations of research in commonly used programs, standards, evaluation rubrics, and legislative requirements for literacy instruction. To unpack what is known, it is helpful to first review relevant terminology

Phonological Awareness is a broad term that refers to the ability to think about and be consciously aware of the sound structures in spoken words, ranging from larger, more noticeable structures (such as syllables and rhymes) to individual phonemes. Phonological awareness is sometimes used to refer to awareness of a subset of those sound structures, but it is clearer to use the more specific terms, phonological sensitivity and phoneme awareness to be more precise and avoid misunderstandings.

Note: when representing the phonemes in spoken words in writing, phonemes are bracketed by diagonal lines; for example, /k/ signifies the speech sound represented by the first letters in kitten and cop

Phonological Sensitivity refers to awareness of the larger, sometimes more easily noticed sound structures in speech, including whole words and sound structures within words: rhymes, syllables, onsets, and rimes.

Rhymes-consisting of the stressed vowel in a word and what follows-can extend across one or more syllables (for example, cat/bat; mountain/fountain). Syllables include a vowel phoneme and may have one or more consonant phonemes before and/or after the vowel phoneme (for example, I, am, go, sit, spot, script). The onset, if present, is the first phonetic segment of a syllable before the vowel sound; in the word cat, it is the /k/. The rime includes the vowel phoneme and anything that follows it in the syllable; in the word cat, it is the two phonemes that follow the /k/.

Phoneme Awareness (or phonemic awareness) is the ability to be aware of and consciously think about individual speech sounds (phonemes) in spoken words, as noted above. Phoneme awareness is a necessary component of early reading and spelling development. It goes beyond the hearing or perceiving of the speech sounds in spoken words. Phoneme awareness involves conscious awareness that allows a learner to notice and think about the phonemes in words they hear and pronounce. This skill develops gradually, almost always in the context of learning about phonemes and letters in written words.

Focus on Phoneme Awareness
Why Phoneme Awareness Is Important for Learning to Read
To understand how the English alphabetic writing system works, the learner must realize that letters (or combinations of letters) represent the individual phonemes in spoken words. This awareness is referred to as gaining understanding of the alphabetic principle. An awareness of individual phonemes, subsequently linked with corresponding letters, provides an insight about the nature of writing that is essential for learning to read and write. This insight usually begins by becoming aware of one or more of the first phonemes in spoken words (the /k/ in cat; the /s/ in soup). Awareness of each of the phonemes in English in the different positions in spoken words, and knowledge of the corresponding letters or letter combinations (graphemes), unfolds over time, bringing about expanded mastery of the alphabetic system. In short, phoneme awareness is a critical cornerstone of that process. Without awareness of phonemes and the ways in which they are represented in print, written words would seem to be arbitrary sets of letters that must be memorized.
Why Phoneme Awareness Is Challenging to Acquire
Children's abilities vary in terms of how difficult it is to acquire phoneme awareness; this is unrelated to intelligence. Speaking and listening do not require being aware of the individual speech sounds in spoken words. Instead, those language skills are processed automatically by the language system in the brain. However, to learn to read, children must acquire a new metalevel skill that requires consciously thinking about words as a sequence of individual speech sounds rather than just attending to the meaning of what is being said, as they have been used to doing.

Contributing to the challenge of becoming aware of the individual phonemes, the articulation of a phoneme usually overlaps to some extent with the articulation of other phonemes that precede and/or follow it. This overlap happens because phonemes are produced with combinations of muscle gestures, such as opening and closing the lips, raising, or lowering the jaw, and vibration of the vocal cords; gestures that yield one phoneme may occur at the same time or overlap with the production of adjacent phonemes (known as coarticulation). For example, consider the pronunciation of the words see and sue: at the start of saying the /s/ in see, the lips are already wide for the long e vowel sound; for sue, they are rounded in anticipation of the u vowel sound. The difficulty of becoming aware of individual phonemes may stem in part from this coarticulation of the gestures across phonemes, given that the pronunciation of a phoneme in a word generally carries some information about neighboring phonemes as well. At the same time, focusing children's attention on the key articulatory components of a phoneme can be beneficial for fostering awareness of phonemes. As an example, even with the slight variation in lip position in the pronunciation of /s/ in see and sue, students can notice that /s/ in both cases is a hissy sound made by placing the tip of the tongue close to the upper front teeth and pushing air out at that location-the key articulatory components of that phoneme.
Phoneme Awareness as the Starting Point
Early research found that first-grade students had awareness of phonemes, but preschoolers did not. Because approximately half of the preschoolers tested demonstrated awareness of the larger phonological element of syllables, it raised a question: Must children first become aware of these larger chunks of speech sounds before developing phoneme awareness? Over the years, an assumption was widely embraced by researchers-and implemented by practitioners-that instruction should follow a developed that instruction should follow a sequence from larger to smaller phonological elements. However, research has confirmed that phoneme awareness can be taught to children who lack phonological sensitivity, demonstrating that acquiring phoneme awareness does not require students to first gain syllable segmentation skills. Multiple findings also corroborate that programs are effective when they begin with a focus on phoneme awareness rather than phonological sensitivity, and highly so when instruction then links phonemes with graphemes. This is documented both for beginning readers and for students who have struggled with acquiring reading skills. This research indicates that phonological sensitivity instruction (with larger units such as rhyme, syllables, and onset-rime) is neither a prerequisite nor a causal factor in the development of phonemic awareness.
How Phoneme Awareness Develops
Phoneme awareness develops gradually, most often as children are learning to read and spell. Direct instruction in phoneme awareness, promptly linked with letter knowledge, facilitates reading acquisition, and learning to read reciprocally expands awareness of phonemes.

Correspondingly, acquisition of the alphabetic principle unfolds gradually. It develops in tandem with the phoneme awareness ability to isolate and identify phonemes in spoken words, provided that phoneme awareness instruction is linked subsequently with letter knowledge (letter names and letter sounds). Blending and segmenting at the phoneme level are essential skills because they are central to decoding and encoding (spelling). Therefore, when teaching and practicing phoneme awareness skills, once the student has become aware of the phoneme, linking each speech sound with the grapheme that spells it will facilitate the transfer of skills to reading and writing.
Beginning Phoneme Awareness
The location of a phoneme influences the ease with which students become aware of that phoneme. It is easiest for students to isolate the initial phoneme in a spoken word, regardless of length of the word, if the first phoneme is not part of a consonant blend. For example, beginners can identify the initial phoneme /b/ in the spoken words bus and banana more easily than they can in blue or brown.

A simple syllable (such as bus or keep) is one that does not include a consonant blend. After becoming aware of initial phonemes (such as the /b/ in bus or the /k/ in keep), students generally become aware of final phonemes in simple one-syllable spoken words (the /s/ in bus, the /p/ in keep). The next level is becoming aware of the medial vowel phonemes in simple syllable words such as these. In short, explicit instruction in phoneme awareness (including phoneme segmentation) with words that are simple syllables facilitates a student's beginning awareness of phonemes.

Instructional Goal: With appropriate instruction, full acquisition of beginning phoneme awareness-awareness of each of the phonemes in simple syllables-is a realistic goal for kindergarten students, coordinated with instruction that links the phonemes with targeted letter names, letter sounds, and letter writing.
Later Phoneme Awareness
Once students master awareness of phonemes in simple syllables, they are ready for explicit instruction in words that are complex syllables. A complex syllable is one that includes one or two consonant blends (for example, clap, felt, crisp, splash). Note that long vowels can be included when doing an oral segmentation task (with words such as float or claim) once the child's spelling skills have advanced to include the graphemes that will spell that phoneme. Becoming aware of initial or final external consonants (the /k/ or /p/ in crisp) is easier than becoming aware of the internal consonants in two-phoneme blends (the /l/ in clap or felt; the /r/ and /s/ in crisp), or in three-phoneme blends (the /p/ and /l/ in splash).

Instructional Goal: Once awareness of phonemes in simple syllables is confirmed for individual students by the end of kindergarten or early in first grade, awareness of phonemes in complex syllables is an appropriate goal for first grade. Beyond first grade, a student who has not attained full phoneme awareness will need further instruction, first determining where the student is in their development of phoneme awareness and going forward from there.
Teaching Tip
Be alert to a student's spelling and reading errors that reflect a phoneme awareness weakness. Omission of a speech sound is a flag that the student may be unaware of one or more phonemes in the spoken word. For example, spelling bed as "bd" often reflects lack of awareness of the medial vowel; spelling plan as "pan" is an indication that the student is having difficulty being aware of the /l/ in the blend and needs to do activities that will foster awareness of internal consonants.
Why It Is Important to Coordinate Phoneme Awareness Instruction with the Teaching of Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondences, Spelling (Encoding), and Handwriting
When a child demonstrates awareness of a phoneme (for example, being able to isolate and pronounce an initial phoneme), this can be followed by introducing the letter or combination of letters that represents that phoneme. This sequence builds an understanding of the alphabetic principle, as noted earlier. The value of incorporating graphemes when building phoneme awareness (for example, in a spelling activity) has been verified both for beginning readers in kindergarten and students who have deficits in reading at any age who have phoneme awareness weaknesses. Further, this sequential pairing facilitates the links between phonemes and letters needed for orthographic mapping of words (storing the spellings of words in memory). Likewise, it is beneficial to work consistently on handwriting practice that is coordinated with the grapheme-phoneme relationships that have been learned, and to apply these skills in spelling, reading, and writing activities. This, too, strengthens students' mastery of phoneme-grapheme correspondences and is a key foundation for writing fluency.

This approach is an example of an important concept of Structured Literacy: student learning of foundational reading skills is facilitated by instruction that is integrated-that coordinates the development of phoneme awareness with the learning of letter and grapheme names and sounds and that includes instruction in handwriting along with practice writing the targeted letters. This approach helps students gain awareness of the alphabetic principle, supports the learning of each component, and lays a foundation for decoding, word recognition, and spelling. Once a student has early phoneme awareness and letter knowledge for a small set of consonants and one or two vowels (for example: a, m, s, f, l, i, t, p) they can begin to read and spell many words (sat, map, lip, fit, ...). With a set of vowels and consonants such as these, kindergarteners also can (and should) practice encoding and writing words that use the learned set of phonemes and letters. Likewise, they can (and should) practice applying these skills to read decodable text with these same phonemes/letters and with a small number of high-frequency words necessary to compose sentences. The exciting accomplishment of reading text is rewarding - and helps consolidate the skills being learned.

You might be surprised by the recommendation to coordinate letter knowledge and writing skills with phoneme awareness tasks in light of the fact that a number of programs do not. The practice of not incorporating letters stemmed from early findings showing that good readers are better than poor readers at doing oral phoneme manipulation tasks without letters (for example, what is smile without the /s/?). At the time, there was widespread agreement on the implications of this research, and the practice of attempting to develop phoneme awareness skills without any connection to graphemes was an appropriate interpretation of what was known at the time. However, further research indicates that such skills are the consequence of spelling and reading development: when good readers are asked to manipulate the phonemes in a spoken word by substituting, deleting or adding a phoneme, they automatically access their knowledge of the spelling (the orthographic representation) of that word. Students who can do manipulation tasks orally for words that are complex syllables are likely to be good readers and spellers who are beyond the need for phoneme awareness instruction. For other students who do need to increase their awareness of phonemes, research still is needed to determine whether oral-only manipulation of complex syllables (without including letters) is beneficial. Given the lack of evidence to support oral-only phonemic awareness manipulation activities and because existing research shows those tasks associated with stronger effects when integrated with print, incorporating letters in phoneme manipulation tasks is recommended to enhance awareness of phonemes in spoken words and to support memory of letter-sound correspondences.

Note that this is not to say that all oral phoneme awareness tasks are inappropriate. For example, it's fine to ask students to isolate and/or identify an individual phoneme or to say each phoneme in an oral segmentation measure, if these activities are introduced at the appropriate point in students' phoneme awareness development. Keep in mind that, even with these tasks, it can be helpful to promptly make connections to the graphemes that spell the phonemes. Using letters helps establish the functional value of the phoneme awareness task because it connects phoneme awareness with reading and spelling.
Teaching Tip
Whenever phoneme manipulation tasks are used to build awareness, provide letter tiles or written letters in some form to represent the spellings of the phonemes in the word and the phoneme being manipulated. Asking students to do such manipulation without letters can strain working memory, putting a counter-productive, unnecessary burden on beginners and struggling readers.
The Impact of Speaking a Second Language or a Different Dialect
Whenever there is a difference between the language or dialect background of a student learning to read and write in General American English (GAE), the student will have extra language and cognitive learning demands. In U.S. schools, approximately 400 different languages other than English are spoken; Spanish is the most common. The second language learner must become consciously aware of the phonemes in English, including any English speech sounds that are not in the student's native language.

A similar situation exists for speakers of English dialects, with a significant case being the African American English (AAE) dialect in which phonological rules differ from GAE regarding how certain phonemes are pronounced in particular contexts (for instance, consonant clusters in final position in a word may be reduced to a single final consonant). Linguistic analyses have long established that AAE meets all the systematic, rule-governed characteristics of a spoken language, reinforcing the need for positive attitudes about this dialect.
Teaching Tip
Teachers need to be well informed about the phonemes of English and be aware of which speech sounds are particularly challenging for the second language learner depending on the child's first language. This awareness will enable them to provide extra support to help the student gain mastery of those phonemes. For example, when students whose first language is Spanish encounter the phoneme /sh/ (a phoneme not in the Spanish phonology), they may confuse it with the similar phoneme that is present in both Spanish and English: /ch/ (spelling ship as chip). Attention to how /sh/ and /ch/ differ in articulation may be helpful, as may be sorting activities with cards depicting objects that in English start with one or the other of these phonemes.

Likewise, teachers may be better able to teach AAE speakers if they gain an understanding of when and how particular phonemes are pronounced differently in the two dialects and provide extra support as needed pertaining to phoneme awareness, as well as to other differing linguistic aspects of AAE and GAE. With that understanding, teachers can respectfully help students learn how spoken GAE differs, while also explicitly linking it to written English.

Other Questions You May Have
What to Do if Students Lack Phonological Sensitivity
Lack of phonological sensitivity (awareness of the larger sounds structures in spoken words such as rhymes, syllables, etc.) and phoneme awareness is particularly common for young children and for children coming from low socioeconomic circumstances. Though phonological sensitivity can be taught to young students, doing so delays the instruction needed to build students' phoneme awareness and corresponding letter knowledge-skills that are necessary to become successful readers. It can also introduce confusion for learners when they switch to a focus on phonemes. Because an instructional continuum from phonological sensitivity to phoneme awareness is not necessary, delaying phonemic awareness instruction by starting with phonological sensitivity activities is unlikely to be the most direct and beneficial path to launching students' phoneme awareness skills and reading success.
Teaching Tip
Start right away with activities that target phoneme awareness, focusing first on initial phonemes, the easiest phoneme position in a word for beginners to isolate. Two practical guidelines should influence which phonemes are selected to be in the words used.

First, the instructor (and ideally, the curriculum) should begin with words in which the phonemes are easier to become aware of because they are produced in the front of the mouth (and hence are more visible in a mirror or when produced by another speaker) and can be stretched out-such as the /m/ in "mmmmmmap." Phonemes such as these can be used to make a number of common one-syllable words.

Second, the phoneme awareness program should not be disconnected from the district's foundational skills program and thought of as an add-on to the curriculum. Rather, the district should follow a logical scope and sequence for foundational skills curricular materials and decodable books, and the phonemes targeted for phonemic awareness should be coordinated with that sequence to systematically link phoneme awareness, letter skills, and reading development.
W hen to Provide Instruction in Syllable and Rhyme Structures
There can be benefits to teaching students about syllable and rhyme structures, but mostly for reasons unrelated to phoneme awareness. Young children notice rhyme and alliteration as part of hearing and remembering nursery rhymes and songs. The rhyme concept also can be a focus later if students are writing poems. When targeting awareness of an initial phoneme, generating alliterative sequences can help bring that phoneme to children's attention (for example, Tommy talks to Tess- /t/-/t/-/t/-/t/!), which can foster early phoneme awareness. Introducing syllables is valuable when focusing on spelling; teachers can explain that words may have more than one syllable and that each syllable has a vowel. Syllables are also the focus when introducing spelling patterns for syllable types and for syllable division tasks. Thus, these concepts are useful for other purposes.

Implications for Instruction and Assessment

Early success at learning to read fuels interest in reading in the years that follow, whereas a slow, difficult process of reading acquisition does not. Research has provided exciting insights into early phoneme awareness instruction that have the potential to launch more successful readers in kindergarten and first grade.

Three points are evident:

1. Educators should begin right away with phoneme awareness instruction in kindergarten (and when working with older students with phoneme awareness deficits). The best use of instructional time in kindergarten and beyond is to focus on phonemic awareness while greatly reducing time spent on phonological sensitivity elements. Educators do not need to follow a continuum that requires instruction in each element of phonological sensitivity (counting the words in a sentence, rhyme recognition and production, syllable counting, syllable segmenting/blending, and so on) prior to beginning instruction to develop phoneme awareness.

2. By focusing immediately on phoneme awareness instruction coordinated with letter/grapheme knowledge and handwriting, teachers can assess and teach the key skills connected to reading success and thus help students build foundational reading skills more effectively and quickly. These activities provide students with direct instruction and insights about how the writing system works, boosting motivation, confidence, and success.

3. Whenever phoneme awareness instruction is needed, either for beginning readers or for older struggling readers, teachers should focus on phoneme awareness at the level appropriate for the student, keeping these recommendations in mind: start with initial phonemes, then final phonemes, followed by medial vowel phonemes in words that are simple syllables; after these beginning levels of phoneme awareness are accomplished, next work on awareness of the internal consonants s in complex, one-syllable words that include consonant blends.

This fact sheet has focused on phoneme awareness and related instructional elements that are critical beginning steps for reading and writing proficiency. However, we want to acknowledge that these components, plus letter knowledge and handwriting, are only part of a comprehensive Structured Literacy program. The content and instruction described in this fact sheet should, of course, be a component of fully integrated and robust instruction in reading, spelling, and writing.

The methods summarized here can contribute to impressive literacy gains in the first year of school and can offset the reading difficulties too often observed for socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Moving forward, it will be important to make changes in materials, literacy standards, evaluation rubrics, legislation, and teacher preparation to reflect these gains in understanding about optimal practices for teaching the foundational skills of reading.

Hallmarks of a Strong Phoneme Awareness Program

To summarize, the key points regarding phoneme awareness instruction are as follows:
Representative References (organized by topic) Importance of Phoneme Awareness When Learning to Read

Focuses on building phoneme awareness, rather than phonological sensitivity, from the beginning;

Systematically links phoneme awareness instruction to grapheme and letter knowledge from the beginning and throughout later manipulation activities;

Integrates practice of phoneme awareness, letter and grapheme knowledge, and handwriting;

Works toward mastery of beginning phoneme awareness in simple syllables in kindergarten, progressing to later phoneme awareness of internal consonants in complex syllables in first grade

Provides instruction informed by assessment of students' phoneme awareness skills, determining where students are in their development of phoneme awareness and differentiating instruction accordingly;

Provides instruction for second language learners and speakers of English dialects (such as AAE) that builds awareness of variations in pronunciation and of phonemes not occurring in their first language or dialect; and

Assesses the extent of phoneme awareness in struggling readers in any grade, and if weaknesses in phoneme awareness are evident, calibrates intervention to follow the sequence of phoneme awareness development.

Brady, S. (2020). A 2020 perspective on research findings on alphabetics (phoneme awareness and phonics): Implications for instruction. The Reading League Journal, 1(3), 20-28.

Ehri, L., Nunes, S., Willows, D., Schuster, B., Yagoub-Zadeh, Z., & Shanahan, T. (2001). Phoneme awareness instruction helps children learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel's meta-analysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 36(3), 250-287.

Hulme, C., Bowyer-Crane, C., Carroll, J. M., Duff, F. J., & Snowling, M. J. (2012). The causal role of phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge in learning to read: Combining intervention studies with mediation analyses. Psychological Science, 23(6), 572-577.
Lack of Necessity to Teach Phonological Sensitivity Skills before Teaching Phoneme Awareness
Shankweiler, D., & Fowler, A. (2004). Questions people ask about the role of phonological processes in learning to read. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 17(5), 483-515.

Ball, E., & Blachman, B. (1991). Does phoneme awareness training in kindergarten make a difference in early word recognition and developmental spelling? Reading Research Quarterly, 26(1), 49-66.

Brady, S. (2020). A 2020 perspective on research findings on alphabetics (phoneme awareness and phonics): Implications for instruction. The Reading League Journal, 1(3), 20-28.

Cary, L., & Verhaeghe, A. (1994). Promoting phonemic analysis ability among kindergartners: Effects of different training programs. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 6(3), 251-278.

Gillon, G. (2018). Phonological awareness: From research to practice (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Geudens, A., & Sandra, D. (2003). Beyond implicit phonological knowledge: No support for an onset-rime structure in children's explicit phonological awareness. Journal of Memory and Language, 49, 157-182.

Nancollis, A., Lawrie, B. A., & Dodd, B. (2005). Phonological awareness intervention and the acquisition of literacy skills in children from deprived social backgrounds. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 36, 325-335.

Savage, R., & Carless, S. (2005). Learning support assistants and effective reading interventions for 'at-risk' children. Educational Research, 47(1), 45-61.
Importance of Connecting Phonemes with Letters in Phoneme Awareness Activities
Ukrainetz, T., Nuspl, J., Wilkerson, K., & Beddes, S. (2011). The effects of syllable instruction on phonemic awareness in preschoolers. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 26(1), 50-60

Boyer, N., & Ehri, L. (2011). Contribution of phonemic segmentation instruction with letters and articulation pictures to word reading and spelling in beginners. Scientific Studies of Reading, 15(5), 440-470.

Brady, S. (2020). A 2020 perspective on research findings on alphabetics (phoneme awareness and phonics): Implications for instruction. The Reading League Journal, 1(3), 20-28.

Brown, K. J., Patrick, K. C., Fields, M. K., & Craig, G. T. (2021). Phonological awareness materials in Utah kindergartens: A case study in the science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S249-S272.

Ehri, L. C. (2004). Teaching phonemic awareness and phonics: An explanation of the National Reading Panel Meta-Analyses. In P. McCardle & V. Chhabra (Eds.), The voice of evidence in reading research (pp. 153-186). Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.

Ehri, L., & Roberts, T. (2006). The roots of learning to read and write: Acquisition of letters and phoneme awareness. In D. K. Dickinson & S. B. Neuman (Eds.), Handbook of Early Literacy Research (Vol. 2, pp.113-131). Guilford.

Gillon, G., McNeil, B., Scott, A., Denston, A., Wilson, L., Carson, K., & Macfarlane, A. H. (2019). A better start to literacy learning: Findings from a teacher-implemented intervention in children's first year at school. Reading and Writing, 32, 1989-2012.

McCandliss, B., Beck, I., Sandak, R., & Perfetti, C. (2003). Focusing attention on decoding for children with poor reading skills: Design and preliminary tests of the word building intervention. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7(1), 75-104.
Influence of Orthographic Knowledge on Phoneme Awareness Tasks
Møller, H., Mortenson, J., & Elbro, C. (2022). Effects of integrated spelling in phonics instruction for at-risk children in kindergarten. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 38, 67-82.

Castles, A., Holmes, V. M., Neath, J., & Kinoshita, S. (2003). How does orthographic knowledge influence performance on phonological awareness tasks? The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 56(33), 445-467.

Ehri, L., & Wilce, L. (1980). The influence of orthography on readers' conceptualization of the phonemic structure of words. Applied Psycholinguistics, 1(4), 371-385.
Impact of Speaking a Second Language or a Different Dialect on the Process of Learning to Read
Shankweiler, D., & Fowler, A. E. (2004). Questions people ask about the role of phonological processes in learning to read. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 17(5), 483-515.

Brown, M., Sibley, D., Washington, J., Rogers, T., Edwards, J., MacDonald, C., & Seidenberg, M. (2015). Impact of dialect use on a basic component of learning to read. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1-17.

Kester, E. S. (2014). Difference or disorder? Understanding speech and language patterns in culturally and linguistically diverse students. Bilinguistics, Inc.
Importance of Handwriting
Washington, J., & Seidenberg, M. (2021, Summer). Teaching reading to African American children: When home and school language differ. American Educator, 45(2), 26-33, 40.

Graham, S., MacArthur, C.A., & Fitzgerald, J. (2007). Best Practices in Writing Instruction. (See chapters by David Coker Writing instruction for young children: Methods targeting the multiple demands that writers face, Ch. 5, pgs. 101-118) and by Bob Schlagal (Best practices in spelling and handwriting, Ch. 9, pgs. 179-201). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Puranik, C. S., & Al Otaiba, S. (2012). Examining the contribution of handwriting and spelling to written expression in kindergarten children. Reading and Writing, 25(7), 1523-1546.

Ray, K., Dally, K., Rowlandson, L., Tam, K. I., & Lane, A. E. (2022). The relationship of handwriting ability and literacy in kindergarten: A systematic review. Reading and Writing, 35, 1119-1155.

The International Dyslexia Association (IDA). IDA encourages the reproduction and distribution of
this fact sheet. If portions of the text are cited, appropriate reference must be made. Fact sheets
may not be reprinted for the purpose of resale. © Copyright 2022, published June 2022. The
International Dyslexia Association (IDA). For copyright information, please click here

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Building Phoneme Awareness: Know What Matters - International Dyslexia Association

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With an understanding that research in the future may provide even more powerful pathways for reading success, this fact sheet presents guiding principles for

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Reading Rockets is a great website for phonics! This webpage provides many different activities that families can do at home to help their child with phonics.

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You are welcome to print copies for non-commercial use, or a limited number for educational purposes, as long as credit is given to Reading Rockets and the author(s). For commercial use, please contact the author or publisher listed.

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Letters and Sounds: Practical Ideas for Parents

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Provide your child with the opportunity to learn that written words are made up of letters that match the sounds in spoken words.

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This is fantastic resource for ELL families to help their children with phonics!

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Family Phonics™ is a new program and tool for engaging English-language learner (ELL) parents helps schools provide a fun and effective approach for Parent Engagement with the parents of English Learners. Family Phonics ™ is our newest program that helps ESL teachers who work with Spanish speaking parents so that parents can learn basic phonemic awareness, in order to help their kids with basic English phonics.

Research proves that phonic awareness, that is, the awareness of speech sounds in words, knowledge in letter names, sound-symbol correspondence, and vocabulary are critical to positive outcomes in reading and spelling. By making Family Phonics a bilingual format, parents will learn English skills with some Spanish support if needed. The book set provides a tool that enhances phoneme awareness and other phonological tools for the bilingual family where the parents are Spanish-speakers and the children are learning English in school. It's a win-win situation when material for parents is already in a bilingual format.

Learn more about the Family Phonics™ book sets, visit Lectura Books.

Tags: bilingual education, English Language Learners, English Learners, english spanish, family phonics, parent engagement, Spanish speakers

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Family Phonics™: A New ELL Parent Engagement Tool

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Family Phonics™ is a new program and tool for engaging English-language learner (ELL) parents helps schools provide a fun and effective approach for Parent Engagement with the parents of English Learners. Family Phonics™ is our...

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This website gives insight to many ways to help your child succeed when it comes to reading!

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IMSE is Here to Support
You and Your Growing Reader.

Early literacy development is vital to a child's success in school and beyond.
Even if you took to reading and writing naturally as a child, you shouldn't
assume that your children will too. That is why it is important to nurture their
literacy skills and understand how the brain learns to read.

Where Do I Start?

For the best start, parents should understand the five essential components
to reading instruction and how they best fit in each grade level. These
components include:

Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness The awareness that words are composed of sounds and those sounds have distinct articulatory features.

Phonics

Phonics Phonics is the ability to recognize letter-sound relationships in words.

Fluency

Fluency Fluency is the ability to read at an appropriate pace with accuracy and proper expression.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary Vocabulary size and word-meaning strategies predict comprehension.

Comprehension

Comprehension Understanding the meaning of text and integrating it with previous knowledge.

How Can I Help My Reader at Home?

Find more information below for age and grade level appropriate skills and
activities. We encourage parents to begin activities in the lower levels to help
analyze your child's development.

Pre-Kindergarten (Birth - 4 Years Old)

Phonological awareness is the foundation for learning to read. Phonological awareness skills begin to develop as a baby and throughout preschool beginning with the concept of a spoken word, recognizing and producing rhyme, and transitioning into syllable awareness around kindergarten. You can help your child develop these skills by making language a part of daily life.
Check out these Phonological Awareness Resources for parents of students in pre-kindergarten:

Kindergarten - 2nd Grade (5 - 7 Years Old)

Once students enter kindergarten, they will move into more advanced phonological awareness skills and begin to be taught foundational phonics skills. Setting the foundation with phonological awareness and phonics will help children prepare for more advanced concepts helping them develop into fluent readers. Fluency is the bridge to comprehension and typically develops around first grade. Fluency can be practiced in several ways, including repeated readings, reader theaters, and decodable readers.
Check out these Phonological Awareness, Phonics, and Fluency Resources for parents of students in kindergarten through second-grade:

3rd Grade and Beyond (8+ Years Old)

Around 3rd grade, there is a shift from learning to read to reading to learn. While many students may begin to read more for pleasure at this point, comprehension can be significantly affected because of the lack of vocabulary knowledge. Over half of the words students will encounter in texts will be multisyllabic. It is essential that students be taught prefixes, suffixes, and base words. Common Latin and Greek bases can be introduced after that. Breaking words down to the smallest units of meaning, called morphemes can help students build understanding and increase comprehension.
Check out these Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension Resources for parents of students in third-grade and beyond:

Steps for Parents of Struggling Readers

Ensure you are doing all that you can to help your struggling reader by taking the
below steps to address your child's learning both at homeand in the classroom

3. Communicate

Communicate any concerns you may have about your child's reading with their teacher or principal.

5. Inquire

Inquire about programs and materials you can be using at home to help with reading support.

6. Observe

Ask to sit in on your child's reading lessons to understand how they best learn.

Explore Free Resources

IMSE is constantly providing free resources for parents to use with their struggling readers at home. Be sure to follow IMSE on Instagram to learn how you can use these tools at home.
Follow IMSE

1-in-5 Children Struggle with
Dyslexia. Know the Signs!

Visit our Orton-Gillingham.com resource site to
learn more about dyslexia and resources to help
you understand how to effectively teach all
children to learn to read.
Learn More

Looking for an IMSE-Trained Tutor?

Many of IMSE's Instructors and certified members are also tutors in their areas.
Search our database to find an IMSE-approved tutor near you.

IMSE is a proud partner of Learning Ally, a national, non-profit organization
that has helped millions of students who are blind, dyslexic, or have other
learning disabilities, achieve confidence and independence in the classroom
and in life. Learning Ally has a large community of tutors nationally. Search
their tutor database here.

Products for Parents

IMSE offers a variety of resources that can assist parents of struggling readers.
From activity books to parent videos, all our products can be used to help
children learn to write, read, and spell.

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IMSE | institute for multi-sensory education

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Parents are a child's first teacher. IMSE offers support to parents so you can learn how to teach a child to read in the beginning stages of literacy development.

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This is a great website that provides resources for parents of special needs students to help improve their reading skills.

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Special Education Resources to Improve Reading Skills

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The Watson Institute offers a collection of resources to help children learn to read and advance their reading and literacy skills!

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Read Alouds are a great way to increase children's vocabulary skills! This is a good time to introduce new words to the children.

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Talking to and reading with your pre-K child are two terrific ways to help them hear new words. Conversations and questions about interesting words are easy ways to get new words into everyday talk.

Even very young children love to hear and learn new words! Help your child expand their word bank and knowledge of the world by using interesting and vivid words instead of simpler language in your everyday conversations. For example, instead of saying, "this pizza is good" you might say, "this pepperoni pizza tastes spicy."

Reading aloud exposes your child to lots of vivid language that is not found in books for beginning readers. When you come upon a new and interesting word, take the time to stop and ask your child what they think that word might mean in the context of the story. Then offer a kid-friendly definition of the word and connect it to a similar word and a shared experience.

Word learning and vocabulary growth takes time and patience. Don't expect your child to learn a new word after one conversation or one read aloud. True word learning happens after being exposed to words several times. We all learn about words throughout our lifetime. You're getting your child off to a great start by developing an early interest in words.

Try these vocabulary activities at home!

Read aloud every day

Reading aloud to your child and having your child read books on their own is the best way to increase their vocabulary. Books provide words they won't encounter in everyday conversations as the language of books is more complete and formal than talking. A great story also provides context and illustrations for learning a new word.

Bring in the nonfiction

Nonfiction and informational books (such as the picture books by Gail Gibbons and Sneed Collard) offer young children a treasure chest of new and interesting words about our world. If the book has a glossary, spend some time discussing the words with your child, and as you read aloud stop as often as needed to think about new words and how they connect to what your child already knows about.

Grocery store vocabulary

Use the items on the grocery shelf to give your child practice finding something above their belly button, below their nose, on the bottom shelf, and between other items on a shelf. Opportunities to use superlatives, those little endings that help describe size, are all around the grocery store. Have your child find a big fruit, a bigger fruit and the biggest fruit in the produce section. What's the smallest item in the cart? The largest item?

Explore your world

Visits to a museum, the zoo, the botanical garden, historical sites, and even your neighborhood park are terrific opportunities to introduce your child to new words. Spend some time looking at the signage and identifying new words, then connecting them to what you see right there.

Talk about new words during read alouds

Talking to and reading with your child are two terrific ways to help them hear and read new words. Conversations and questions about interesting words ("The book says, 'The boy tumbled down the hill,' and look at the picture! How do you think he went down the hill?") are easy ways to get new words into everyday talk.

Sharing a new word with your child doesn't have to take a long time: just a few minutes to talk about the word and then focus back on the book or conversation. Choose which words to talk about carefully - choosing every new word might make reading seem like a chore. The best words to explore with your child are ones that are common among adult speakers but are less common to see in the books your child might read.

When introducing new words to your young learner, keep the following four helpful hints in mind:

First, provide a simple, kid-friendly definition for the new word:

Enormous means that something is really, really big.

Second, provide a simple, kid-friendly example that makes sense within their daily life:

Remember that really big watermelon we got at the grocery store? That was an enormous watermelon!

Third, encourage your child to develop their own example:

What enormous thing can you think of? Can you think of something really big that you saw today? That's right! The bulldozer near the park was enormous! Those tires were huge.

Lastly, keep your new words active within your house.

Over the next few days and weeks, take advantage of opportunities to use each new vocabulary word in conversation. Kids often need to hear a new word in context ten times or more before they "know" that word.

Vocabulary apps

Reviews provided by Common Sense Media.

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Vocabulary: Activities for Your Pre-K Child

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Long before young children learn to read, they are hearing lots of words in everyday conversations and through read alouds. Building up a child's "word bank" from a very young age is great preparation for reading fluency and comprehension later on.

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Story Sequencing is a great way to check for comprehension! Students can use pictures to put the story in order!

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SplashLearn Blog - Educational Resources for Parents, Teachers & Kids

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12 Best Reading Comprehension Activities for Kids in 2024

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Enhance your child's reading journey with our curated list of must-try reading comprehension activities, perfect for developing young minds and imaginations.

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This is a great resource for families to see the importance of reading comprehension and what there child will be able to do!

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Comprehension is the reason for reading. If readers can read the words but do not understand or connect to what they are reading, they are not really reading. Good readers are both purposeful and active, and have the skills to absorb what they read, analyze it, make sense of it, and make it their own.

Strong readers think actively as they read. They use their experiences and knowledge of the world, vocabulary, language structure, and reading strategies to make sense of the text and know how to get the most out of it. They know when they have problems with understanding and what thinking strategies to use to resolve these problems when they pop up.

Teachers can play a critical role in helping students develop their comprehension skills. Reading research has shown that comprehension instruction can help students do a better job of understanding and remembering what they read. Good instruction can also help students communicate with others, verbally and in writing, about what they've read.

What good readers do

Draw on prior knowledge. Good readers draw on prior knowledge and experience to help them understand what they are reading.

Draw inferences. In addition to understanding the literal points that the author is making, good readers are able to "read between the lines" and draw inferences about a wide range of hidden meanings, such as why events are unfolding as they do, why characters behave in a certain way, what the characters are thinking, and what might happen next.

Self-monitor. During reading, good readers learn to monitor their understanding, adjust their reading speed to fit the difficulty of the text, and address any comprehension problems they have. After reading, they check their understanding of what they have read. Students who are good at monitoring their comprehension know when they understand what they're reading and when they don't.

Form mental images. Good readers often form mental pictures, or images, as they read. Readers (especially younger readers) who picture the story during reading understand and remember what they read better than readers who do not create a picture in their mind.

Summarize and retell. Summarizing requires students to determine what is important in the text and then put it into their own words by retelling, verbally or in writing. Instruction in summarizing can help students become more purposeful as they read and more skillful in comprehending. Summarizing can help students to:

Identify main ideas orally or in writing.

Connect the main or central ideas orally or in writing.

Learn to weed out unnecessary information.

Remember what they have read.

Can your child tell you what happened in the story?

This video is from Home Reading Helper, a resource for parents to elevate children's reading at home provided by Read Charlotte . Find more video, parent activities, printables, and other resources at Home Reading Helper .

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Comprehension is understanding what you read - the goal of reading! It is the thinking process readers use to understand what they read. Strong vocabulary, background knowledge, and an understanding of how language works are keys to comprehension.

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This website is great for ESL students to practice their reading comprehension! It provides many different stories with short comprehension questions at the end!

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Reading Comprehension Resources For EFL And ESL Learners - My English Pages

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Unlock Your Ultimate English Reading Comprehension Texts!

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This is a good website that explains the term vocabulary and explains how a teacher will teach the students about vocabulary! It also provides more activities for families to do together!

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Ready4K® - Evidence-Based Family Engagement

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I recently got into a debate about learning languages with a fellow educator. As an ELL teacher, my friend had worked with students who spoke a huge variety of home languages - Urdu, Spanish, Mandarin, French, Russian, Hindi, and Bengali, just to name a few. Our conversation centered on the question of which language was most complex to learn, as a first or as a second language.

After dueling over the intricacies of sentence structure, pronunciation, and verb conjugation, we arrived at the topic of vocabulary development. Our debate morphed into curiosity, and we ended up researching the alphabet and the total count of words estimated in each of the top three languages spoken in the world today (according to Berlitz). Here's what we learned:

1. English is estimated to have over 1 million words made using 26 letters (though the average dictionary only contains around 400,000 defined entries.)

2. Mandarin uses about 7,000 characters to create 106,230 words.

3. In Hindi, writers have access to over 1.5 lakh (i.e. 150,000 words) using 48 letters, but only if they're using the Devanāgarī alphabet - Brahmi is a bit different.

Though we still have differing opinions about language complexity, my friend and I did agree on one thing: our students' vocabulary development is essential for their future success in school and the world beyond.

Vocabulary development and its impact on literacy

Let's take a closer look at the intricacies of vocabulary development and its impact on a student's reading skills like decoding and other core abilities!

What do educators mean by "vocabulary"?

Put simply, when we educators talk about a student's vocabulary, we are referring to the words they know and can use accurately to communicate. There are four types of vocabulary that children build as they grow:

Listening vocabulary, which refers to the words a child needs to know to understand what they hear

Speaking vocabulary, or the words a child uses when talking

Reading vocabulary, also known as the words a child needs to know to understand what they are reading

Writing vocabulary, which refers to the words a child uses in writing

Each plays an important role in vocabulary development overall. They also have positive effects in building early reading skills and more, too.

What's the nature of vocabulary acquisition and growth?

Language is a foundation for literacy, so it's not surprising that vocabulary development in children starts at the same time as their oral language development, beginning as early as 10 months of age. There are two types of language that children build in these early years. Expressive language refers to the use of words, sentences, gestures, and writing to convey meaning to others. Receptive language refers to understanding words and language around a child, though not necessarily using them.

Both expressive vocabulary and receptive vocabulary are important for children to communicate effectively. They also play an essential role in vocabulary development and other areas of literacy, such as phonetic skills, later in that child's life. Individual differences in children's early language skills can be affected by a number of factors, too, like home environment and socio-economic status. When combined, these can contribute to or reduce the risk of a vocabulary gap developing between kids by the time they reach age 2 ( Attig & Weinert, 2020).

This method of learning has been studied by researchers for decades, helping educators understand why a language-rich environment matters for early vocabulary development in young children ( Hansen & Broekhuizen, 2020). Educators and families both can make meaningful differences in individual children's literacy when they help them build both expressive vocabulary and receptive vocabulary early on.

How do teachers teach vocabulary?

In addition to exposing children to a wide range of words in multiple ways, educators can - and should - also explicitly teach vocabulary to individual children to build their knowledge of words and expand their ability to communicate in multiple ways. More specifically, effective and explicit vocabulary instruction should "[bring] students' attentional focus to words in ways that promote not just knowing word meanings, but also understanding how words work and how to utilize word knowledge effectively" ( McKeown, 2019).

Here's how one teacher describes her approach to vocabulary instruction in the classroom:

"My daily Language Arts classroom routine begins with silent independent reading (indirect). We continue on with the direct instruction of the day's two new vocabulary words and then on to the literary analysis [of reading material] and/or writing tasks of the day... No matter what, vocabulary instruction is paramount."Vocab Gal

Because of the nature of vocabulary acquisition, teachers have a huge variety of ways they can teach students new words and their meanings from context or more explicitly. These include, but are not limited to:

Using semantic mapping, where words are visually displayed with connections linking to related words or concepts

Repeatedly exposing students to words across multiple contexts, such as seeing them on a poster board in class, hearing them spoken by their teacher, and reading them in different texts

Teaching students specific word analysis strategies that help students break apart a word into recognizable parts to help them practice saying it and understanding it in context

Creating a visual reference for a word, like a picture or even a visual dictionary, to pair with print vocabulary and help students understand its meaning from context

For more methods driving vocabulary development in school, take a look at WeAreTeachers' list of activities for kids across grades K-12.

How can teachers assess vocabulary growth? Do "vocabulary scores" exist?

Vocabulary growth and knowledge is highly nuanced, which makes any measure of vocabulary equality nuanced. In their article published with Reading Rockets, Katherine Stahl and Marco Bravo share that US educators often assess vocabulary development in American children "at the end of a unit using a multiple-choice task, a fill-in-the-blank task or matching task." There are other generalized tools available to teachers as a measure of vocabulary, such as the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test or other standardized tests that might vary by state.

In short, there are a number of tools available that may serve as a measure of vocabulary, but no single method is the way to assess this knowledge. What's clear, though, is that becoming a strong, confident reader means much more than having specific vocabulary scores or other measures of word knowledge.

Continue reading Stahl and Bravo's article to explore the nuances of vocabulary assessments further.

What impact does learning vocabulary have on reading?

A student's development of vocabulary isn't just about learning a new language, independent reading, or improving crossword puzzle skills - though it certainly helps! Vocabulary is a core factor that contributes to a child's overall literacy and reading competency, both of which help children thrive academically, socially, and emotionally.

As the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education explains, "To learn to read, children must develop both fluent word reading and language comprehension ( Gough & Tunmer, 1986). Language comprehension encompasses vocabulary and morphology, knowledge, syntax, and higher-level language skills."

It's worth noting that each of these factors of literacy come from a body of scientific literature known as the science of reading. Though commonly misunderstood as a specific curriculum or type of instruction, the science of reading really refers to what research tells us about reading development and things like the nature of vocabulary acquisition.

In their 2015 study, Duff, Tomblin, and Catts found meaningful differences in vocabulary growth between students, impacted by a student's reading ability. A student's rate of vocabulary growth after 4th grade was significantly related to that student's word reading in the 4th grade. As the authors described it, "Strong readers [in 4th grade] experienced a higher rate of vocabulary growth than did average readers."

This effect on vocabulary growth rates matters hugely for vocabulary development - especially for the 25 million American children who struggle with reading and English language learners who may need up to 14 exposures to a word and its meaning in order to fully learn it.

It's essential to understand that vocabulary development isn't just critical for toddlers or school-age children. Yes, little ones are especially good at absorbing new information about the world around them, sponging up things like words and their meanings. And yes, the number of words in a student's vocabulary in kindergarten can affect the expansiveness of their 10th-grade vocabulary.

However, vocabulary development also continues well into adulthood. In their 2022 examination of longitudinal studies on adult vocabulary, Gitit Kavé found that in general vocabulary scores and knowledge increases across one's life all the way up to and through their mid-60s. While there is much to be studied about the precise nature of vocabulary acquisition in adulthood, it's clear that learning new words and gaining exposure to them benefits students long after they leave the classroom.

The role of families in building a strong vocabulary

And... vocabulary development in school can be positively impacted by vocabulary development at home, and vice versa!

Parents, caregivers, and guardians play an essential role in their children's language development across all ages, from fundamentals like phonetic skills to more complex knowledge like academic vocabulary. Families also possess immense wealth of knowledge about that child's use of language at home and out in the community. This information can be crucial for an educator to guide that student's vocabulary growth. Further, for multilingual learners especially, effective family engagement strategies are especially powerful in helping them improve their knowledge of the English language.

When school staff employ a strengths-based approach to partnership, they unlock amazing support for student vocabulary development that complements formal reading instruction. If you're familiar at all with ParentPowered and our ParentPowered curricula, our enthusiasm for getting families involved in vocabulary development shouldn't be a surprise!

High-impact family engagement is at the heart of everything that we build. This emphasis on strong family-school partnerships stems from research long indicating the benefits that engaged families offer to school communities. Among these benefits are improved reading scores, increased attendance rates, and increased graduation rates - just to name a few.

In the end, families contribute greatly to student literacy, and especially vocabulary development. It takes the adults both at school and at home to create strong readers with expansive vocabularies.

Expanding vocabulary development at home, from birth to adolescence

Across all grade levels, families have the opportunity to positively influence students' level of vocabulary knowledge. We've compiled a list of family activities geared towards building reading, writing, listening, and oral vocabulary with kids, from birth to adolescence. Share them with your community today, or continue exploring more examples of family engagement activities at home!

Infancy & early childhood

In the first months of a child's life, they develop their earliest speech and language skills that will later support learning vocabulary as they get older. A variety of factors can influence this early learning and rates of vocabulary growth, for better or worse. In fact, longitudinal studies have shown that the effects of socio-economics are evident in children at just 18 months of age ( Fernald, Marchman & Weisleder, 2013).

Insights like this underscore the essential role of families in vocabulary development - and the need for educators and community organizations to support all families equitably in that role. After all, equity in education is critical for student success at any age.

Here is a family-friendly and equitable activity from ParentPowered curricula to support infants with early language development:

For more insights about early language and speech development, take a look at key milestones by age outlined by Stanford Children's Health.

PreK & Kindergarten

As children approach their first day of formal schooling, their vocabulary development shifts into a higher gear. Children's total vocabulary expands rapidly between ages 4 to 6, with students acquiring an average of 70 new words and their meanings per month!

Research also shows that children's vocabulary during these years is closely connected with their development of comprehension skills later in elementary school, so it is essential for families to continue nurturing word recognition, usage, and exposure.

Share this activity from our ParentPowered programs with your PreK families to expand kids' vocabularies and set them up for successful reading in the future:

Did you know? ParentPowered has a series of family workshops for families and kids alike! These videos guide students to explore and practice critical academic and life skills, including learning new words. Share these and more clips from The Big Fancy Word Lady with your PreK and kindergarten families!

Elementary school

Students continue expanding their vocabularies throughout elementary school, combining this knowledge with greater maturity as they also develop their comprehension skills, fluency, and more abilities that contribute to reading.

While classroom activities often apply explicit approaches to build vocabulary, teachers also use subtle ways, such like reading out loud. As one elementary school teacher puts it, "The key to 'real-life-like' vocabulary instruction is not to force it...what's more crucial to ongoing vocabulary development is modeling when and how to be inquisitive about words."

Outside of the classroom, families can also foster students' curiosity through exposure to new words, their meanings in context, and their use in language. Most recommendations emphasize the importance of creating a language-rich environment around their children, which research suggests boosts not only children's vocabulary in kindergarten but also later in elementary school ( Walker et al, 1994). But "language-rich" doesn't just mean having more books or other resources around a student at home. Elementary school families can nurture vocabulary development without needing extra time, tools, or expertise.

Your upper elementary school families will love this ParentPowered activity geared towards helping 4th-grade students explore new words:

For more family-friendly ways to support elementary school vocabulary growth, take a look at this list of activities from Upper Elementary Snapshots.

Middle & high school (aka adolescence)

Between the ages of 6 and 12, just before adolescence, an average student has grown their total vocabulary knowledge from about 20,000 words to over 50,000! That rate of word acquisition is the fastest in a student's learning life thus far. But vocabulary development in school doesn't stop here - and neither does a family's role in building these skills.

Research indicates that ongoing growth of vocabulary is essential for middle school students' literacy needs ( Harmon, 2000), as larger vocabularies allow students to dive deeper into learning in other subject areas. But vocabulary development can be challenging for adolescents who already struggle with reading. A lack of word knowledge also disrupts both reading comprehension and fluency in reading, two critical literacy skills at any grade level.

It's also important to recognize that high school and middle school family engagement look quite different from that of elementary school. Rather than take a direct approach to support student learning, families can make a greater impact in adolescents' learning through indirect approaches like academic socialization and supporting social-emotional development.

This activity is one of our favorite ways to encourage adolescent family engagement and boost vocabulary and reading development in students at home:

Many classroom-based activities can also be adapted to the home environment. Take a look at Professor William P. Bintz' exploration of middle school vocabulary instruction, or explore these activities shared by teachers from the field. For both middle and high school activities, this guide to vocabulary development in secondary grades is a helpful starting point.

Expanded vocabulary unlocks expanded potential

"There's a power in words. There's a power in being able to explain and describe and articulate what you know and feel and believe about the world, and about yourself."Tracy Chapman

A student's words hold immense potential and influence in their learning journey. Developing and expanding their vocabulary knowledge becomes essential to empower each and every child to become a self-sufficient, compassionate, and collaborative adult in the world.

When educators and families come together with this mission in mind, they create a continuous and supportive learning community around a student that catalyzes their growth. In such an environment, students can navigate any challenge - whether it's learning multiple languages, solving a crossword puzzle, or changing the world!

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4 Vocabulary Development Activities for Families at All Ages

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Vocabulary development is essential for reading and writing. Discover how ParentPowered helps families boost students' word knowledge!

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This website provides many different literacy resources for families with children that have special needs!

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These resources offer different ways to help your child with literacy skills. Browse them all or jump to the section you need.

Best practices for teaching and learning literacy

Reading Interventions Video Series: This series from Reading Rockets shows how a reading expert works with kids in different grades to teach specific skills. (7 episodes, 12-18 min each) Also see Working with Struggling Readers - Every Child Can Succeed.

Target the Problem: Learn how teachers (and parents) can identify trouble spots and help students improve their skills in those areas. From Reading Rockets.

What the Words Say: Many children struggle with reading - and children of color are far less likely to get the help they need This article describes how common reading struggles are, how they can affect a child's life, and some of the teaching strategies that are critical to helping kids learn to read in the early school years.

How do I know if my child's reading skills are on target?
Learn more:
Resources to help your child at home

Reading Practice Strategies and Activities:

Is your child struggling with reading? Here are 5 ways you can help at home. Blog from Exceptional Lives.

Tools from Learning Heroes: Choose for a subject and then your child's grade. Get a list of specific reading activities.

Working on specific skills: Learn what parents, teachers and kids themselves notice when they struggle with each skill, and then what each can do to improve it. From Reading Rockets.

Videos:

Understanding literacy-related learning disabilities (LDs)

About Reading Disabilities, Learning /Disabilities, and Reading Difficulties: This short article from Reading Rockets describes reading disabilities, how they differ from reading difficulties, and what you can do to help.

Also see Dyslexia Resources, below.

Dyslexia Resources

Does my child have dyslexia? This page from Exceptional Lives shares the basics of dyslexia, including what it is, the common signs, and what to do about it. This is a page from a whole guide about What to Do if Your Child Struggles in School.

Basics of Dyslexia: Through video and other resources, learn about dyslexia and how to help kids who have it. From Reading Rockets.

15 Guided Reading Activities, Classroom Accommodations, and Teaching Strategies for Students with Dyslexia: This article from Waterford.org is meant for teachers, but can also give parents an idea of what can help their child with dyslexia.

Dyslexia: FAQs for Parents. Lists and answers frequently asked questions about what to do if you think your child may have dyslexia, and how the Louisiana schools should respond.

A Guide to Dyslexia in Louisiana: This covers the policies in LA for identifying and teaching students with dyslexia. It is mainly written for teachers and school districts but has useful information for parents about the process and their rights.

The resources below are from Louisiana, but everything except the LEAP testing information should be helpful to anyone.

Louisiana Dept. of Education (LDOE) Resources

Louisiana's Literacy Plan: Describes the state's 4 "pillars" of literacy education goals, and how the LA Department of Education is supporting teachers and families to improve literacy outcomes.

Virtual Instruction Guide: Tips for Parents about virtual learning

ELA Guidebooks Parent Guides: Explain the purpose and activities of the English Language Arts units for each grade level. They include extra activities for students who are struggling, including vocabulary support, audio recordings and video supplements to learn more about the topic.

K-12 Standards for ELA: This detailed document describes the reading and writing skills that students are supposed to master in each grade level. This can help parents to understand what their children should be learning to do with written text, and how the skills should progress from Kindergarten through high school. Also see ELA/Literacy skills by grade.

Dyslexia: FAQs for Parents. Lists and answers frequently asked questions about what to do if you think your child may have dyslexia, and how the Louisiana schools should respond.

A Guide to Dyslexia in Louisiana: This covers the policies in LA for identifying and teaching students with dyslexia. It is mainly written for teachers and school districts but has useful information for parents about the process and their rights.

Bulletin 1903: Regulations and Guidelines for Implementation of the Louisiana Law for the Education of Dyslexic Students. This describes the legal responsibilities of the school system in identifying and teaching students with dyslexia. It is a complicated document, but includes specific information that can help parents to be sure the school is complying with the process and rights of their child. It could be a good thing to print out and discuss with your child's teacher or IEP team.

LEAP 2025 Testing:

LEAP stands for Louisiana Educational Assessment Program. These are standardized state tests that measure how well a student has learned the course content for a certain subject. There are LEAP 2025 tests for these subjects: English I, English II, Algebra 1, Geometry, US History and Biology.

Activities to Support Reading from the Louisiana Department of Education:

At Home Literacy Activities: Brief descriptions of several activities. If you need these in another language, go to this link and scroll to the bottom.

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Literacy resources for families of children struggling with reading

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If your child is struggling with reading, there are many resources you can use to support them. Here are some of our favorites.

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1. Read to students every day

2. Support students' comprehension as much as possible

3. Teach the alphabet when necessary

4. Teach phonics in context

5. Check comprehension frequently

7. Support native language literacy

8. Encourage reading outside of the classroom

9. Establish an English Language Learner Center

10. Make up individualized activity packs for your newcomers

You are welcome to print copies for non-commercial use, or a limited number for educational purposes, as long as credit is given to Reading Rockets and the author(s). For commercial use, please contact the author or publisher listed.

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Supporting ELLs in the Mainstream Classroom: Reading Instruction

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You can and should use what you already know to be effective, research-based reading instruction to English language learners (ELLs). However, ELLs will need additional support in learning how to read, and the strategies here will help you to provide assistance in your everyday teaching, particularly for newcomers (students who have recently arrived in the U.S.).

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Help bring the science of reading to your school. Discover resources, deepen your literacy knowledge, and take action today.

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Using text-to-speech tools boosts access and engagement for students with reading disabilities, leading to improved academic outcomes.

I'll never forget the wide-eyed look and broad smile on a fourth-grader's face when I asked him if he was willing to read in a different way. He had a reading disability, and I had just taken him to the school library and told him to choose any chapter books that he was interested in reading, not just the "baby books"-his words-that he could independently decode. His picks were available and downloaded within minutes from Bookshare, an Office of Special Education Programs -funded organization that provides a vast library of free accessible ebooks for students with print disabilities who qualify.

This intersection of choice, self-determination, and technology was powerful-it started an entire new chapter of self-confidence and independence for this student.

Students with reading disabilities can interact with texts in a variety of ways. They can decode, they can listen to an in-person read-aloud, or they can listen to human audio text or digital text, also called text-to-speech (TTS). Using TTS allows for equity and access. If struggling readers are limited to text they can decode, how can they enjoy the richness of written language, participate in class discussions, learn academic content, and develop a love for reading? Text-to-speech opens up new worlds for them.

Research demonstrates that using text-to-speech tools increases engagement and allows students to access grade-level content and material, as well as websites and books of interest. Interaction with curricular content can help students improve their vocabulary, comprehension, reading accuracy, and fluency. Perhaps most importantly, the use of TTS improves students' positive feelings about reading and school.

Assistive Technology Tools and Digital Text Build Capacity

Students and teachers need a variety of tools in their toolboxes. Bookshare delivers with its extensive repository, reading tools, and ability to provide textbooks and honor text requests, giving students vast digital resources for both personal and academic use.

Learning Ally, a fee-based organization that sometimes takes requests, provides books with human audio, which is sometimes preferred for pleasure reading. Human audio text may or may not have simultaneous text highlighting to support tracking and does not have a mechanism to interact directly with text.

Many factors affect tool choice and use. A student reading a novel might use an assistive technology (AT) tool that can highlight and annotate digital text, instead of relying on a phone app that reads a menu or email, for example.

Settings where students learn and work, such as large classrooms, small groups, or the kitchen table, also impact tool choice and use. Staff, family, and student buy-in, as well as access to and ability to use AT tools, remain key factors in effective implementation. Keep in mind that students, environments, tasks, and technology change. Ideally, exploring AT tools and services should be an ongoing, problem-solving process throughout students' academic careers.

To assist students, teachers need to ask, "What is the goal of the activity? And is the student learning to read, or reading to learn?" Remediation and accommodation can coexist, and they can be balanced and beneficial in educational settings. Remediation assists the student in overcoming academic challenges and developing mastery, while accommodations such as AT include alterations of the environment, curriculum format, or equipment that empower an individual with a disability to gain access to content and/or complete assigned tasks. Using AT is not cheating; rather, assistive technology can change the academic trajectory of students with reading and writing challenges.

Teacher, Parent, and Student Teamwork Is Key

It's not enough to know what AT tools can do. We need to teach students how to use the tools, how they can improve their work, how to advocate for tool access, and how to choose the right tool for the task and environment. We need to make time for students to explore the tools in-depth and collect data on how the tools aid engagement and performance.

Furthermore, teachers need support in learning the tools, integrating the tools, and troubleshooting problems in real-time. "Show and tell" alone doesn't cut it-ongoing student and teacher coaching with clear expectations for tool use, understanding of how and when to access support, and outcome measures are key. And when teachers collaborate and communicate across content areas to ensure tools are successfully embedded across the curriculum, students succeed.

Parent education is also critical. Parents need to know when their child will be better served decoding text, reading digital text, or listening to audio text. They need to understand AT use and how to support their children at home and across educational settings so they can meaningfully participate and advocate within educational teams.

In many districts and households, lack of knowledge and limited budgets can negatively impact access to and provision of quality AT services. The individual and societal costs of illiteracy are immense. Bottom line: The literature supports the premise that students with learning differences who use AT transition more successfully to high school, show improved quality of work, gain positive perceptions of themselves as learners, and experience positive post-school outcomes. Such intersection of choice, self-determination, and technology can be powerful. How can we afford not to provide a valuable resource like assistive technology tools?

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Tools for Supporting Students With Reading Disabilities

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Using text-to-speech tools boosts access and engagement for students with reading disabilities, leading to improved academic outcomes.

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1. Dole, J. A., Duffy, G. G., Roehler, L. R., & Pearson, P. D. (1991). Moving from the old to the new: Research on reading comprehension instruction. Review of Educational Research, 61, 239-264.

2. Anderson, R. C., & Pearson, P. D. (1984). A schema-theoretic view of basic processes in reading. In P. D. Pearson, R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, & P. Mosenthal (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (pp. 255-292). New York: Longman.

3. Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Anderson, R. C., Reynolds, R. E., Schallert, D. L., & Goetz, E. T. (1977). Frameworks for comprehending discourse. American Educational Research Journal, 14, 367-382.

4. Pichert, J. W., & Anderson, R. C. (1977). Taking different perspectives on a story. Journal of Educational Psychology, 69, 309-315.

5. Armbruster, B. B., Anderson, T. H., & Ostertag, J. (1987). Does text structure/summarization instruction facilitate learning from expository text? Reading Research Quarterly, 22, 331-346.

6. Wood, E., Woloshyn, V. E., & Willoughby, T. (1995). Cognitive strategy instruction for middle and high schools. Cambridge, MA: Brookline Books.

7. Pressley, M., Symons, S., McGoldrick, J. A., & Snyder, B. L. (1995). Reading comprehension strategies. In M. Pressley & V. E. Woloshyn (eds.), Cognitive strategy instruction that really improves children's academic performance. Cambridge, MA: Brookline Books.

8. Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Hansen, J., & Pearson, P.D. (1983). An instructional study: Improving the inferential comprehension of fourth grade good and poor readers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 75, 821-829.

9. Gillet, J. W., & Temple, C. (1994). Understanding reading problems: Assessment and instruction (4th ed.). New York: Harper Collins.

10. Honig, W., Diamond, L, & Gutlohn, L. (Eds.). (2000). Teaching reading sourcebook for kindergarten through eighth grade. Novato, CA: Arena Press; National Reading Panel, 2000.

11. Pressley, G. M. (1976). Mental imagery helps eight-year-olds remember what they read. Journal of Educational Psychology, 68, 355-359.

12. Gambrell, L. B., & Bales, R. J. (1986). Mental imagery and the comprehension-monitoring performance of fourth and fifth-grade poor readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 21, 454-464.

13. National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

14. Dole et al., 1991; Palincsar, A. S., & Brown, A. L. (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension-fostering and comprehension monitoring activities. Cognition & Instruction, 2, 117-175.15. Paris, S. C., Wasik, B. A., & Turner, J. C. (1991). The development of strategic readers. In R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 2, pp. 609-640). New York: Longman.

16. National Reading Panel, 2000.

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How can classroom reading instruction help poor readers - indeed, all students - become more like good readers? Research suggests that the answer may lie in providing students with instruction that both teaches them the comprehension strategies that work so well for good readers and helps them to develop the necessary metacognitive awareness of how and when to use these strategies.

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Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately, quickly, and with expression.Fluent reading builds stamina for reading lengthy or complex texts. Reading fluency serves as a bridge between word recognition and comprehension.