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Identify words and phrases in stories or poems that suggest feelings or appeal to the senses.

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Assessments for First Grade  Reading Standard

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Assessments for First Grade  Reading Standard

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When assessing students look for their understanding of the essential skills and concepts for example knowing the differences between, words, phrases and sentences. Ask students question stems and prompts.

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Assessment Tips for Reading Comprehension

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Assessment Tips for Reading Comprehension

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One type of informal classroom based assessments for reading comprehension is an Informal Reading Inventory (IRI) or a Qualitative Reading Inventory (QRI), asking the students questions based on what the text suggests instead of facts found in the texts.

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Most of the assessments here should be given one-on-one. It is important that you have a non-distracting, comfortable testing environment for students, and that the rest of the class is engaged in a task or assignment and working quietly. It's even better if you can arrange for another teacher to be present while you are performing assessments.

This list of informal assessments is not all-inclusive; there are components of reading that these tools do not assess. This information is also available in chart form.

Letter/sound recognition

About this assessment

Familiarity with the letters of the alphabet is essential to the development of reading skills. Instruction should be geared towards unknown letters and their sounds. Students should be able to recognize the letters in both uppercase and lowercase forms.

What it measures

Ability to recognize letters and sounds.

Examples of assessment questions

Show student one letter at a time and ask:

Can you tell me what letter this is? (Record the student's response)

Can you tell me what sound it makes? (Record the student's response)

Age or grade typically mastered

Many students enter kindergarten with the ability to recognize letters. Fewer students recognize the letter sounds. Both are taught in kindergarten.

When should it be assessed?

Assess letter/sound recognition three times during kindergarten, at the start of school, at mid-year, and at the end of the year.

Concepts of print awareness

About this assessment

Concepts of print are usually learned incidentally as children are exposed to books and story readings at home and at school. Concepts of print include an understanding that: print carries meaning, that books contain letters, words, sentences, and spaces. It also includes understanding what books are used for, and that books have parts such as a front cover, back cover and a spine. Eventually, students learn more sophisticated ideas such as understanding that we begin reading on the left and read across the page to the last word on the right, and then we got to the next line, begin reading on the left, and so on.

What it measures

If a student understands:

That print has meaning

That print can be used for different purposes

The relationship between print and speech

There is a difference between letters and words

That words are separated by spaces

There is a difference between words and sentences

That there are (punctuation) marks that signal the end of a sentence

That books have parts such as a front and back cover, title page, and spine

That stories have a beginning, middle, and end

That text is read from left to right and from top to bottom

Examples of assessment questions

Give the student a book and ask the following questions. "Can you show me:"

a letter?

a word?

a sentence?

the end of a sentence (punctuation mark)?

the front of the book?

the back of the book?

where I should start reading the story?

a space?

how I should hold the book?

the title of the book?

how many words are in this sentence?

Age or grade typically mastered

Some students enter kindergarten with an understanding of print concepts, but other will master it as the school year goes on.

When should it be assessed?

Assess concepts of print twice during kindergarten, at the start of school and at mid-year. In addition, as you model story reading techniques to help guide instruction, identify students who need additional support, and determine if the pace of instruction should be increased, decreased, or remain the same.

Phonological awareness

About this assessment

Phonological awareness is a necessary part of reading instruction. Children can show you they have phonological awareness in several ways. It is necessary as the classroom teacher to determine strengths and weaknesses to plan instruction.

What it measures

Recognizing a word in a sentence shows the ability to segment a sentence

Recognizing a rhyme shows the ability to identify words that have the same ending sounds

Recognizing a syllable shows the ability to separate or blend words the way that they are pronounced

Understanding onset-rime shows the ability to blend the first sound in the word (onset) and the rest of the word (rime)

Examples of assessment questions

Word
How many words are in this sentence? "I am happy." (Correct response: 3)

Rhyme
Do these words rhyme? big, fig(Correct response: Yes)

What about key, tree? (Correct response: Yes)

Syllable blending
I am going to say a word in parts. Listen: o...pen What word did I say? (Correct response: open)

Syllable segmentation
Can you tell me the two word parts in open? (Correct response: o...pen)

Syllable deletion
Say open without the -pen. (Correct response: o)

Onset-rime
What word do these sounds make? /s/ – /ee/ (Correct response: see)

How about /h/ – /op/? (Correct response: hop)

Age or grade typically mastered

Word: Age 3

Rhyme: Age 4

Syllable blending: Age 4

Syllable segmentation: Kindergarten

Syllable deletion: Kindergarten

Onset-rime: The middle of kindergarten

When should it be assessed?

Typically, phonological awareness is assessed during kindergarten and throughout first grade. During the beginning of kindergarten, assessment should be limited to recognizing words, rhyme, syllable blending, and segmentation to help guide instruction.

Phonemic awareness

What it measures

Phoneme matching is the ability to identify words that begin with the same sound.

Phoneme isolation is the ability to isolate a single sound from within a word.

Phoneme blending is the ability to blend individual sounds into a word.

Phoneme segmentation is the ability to break a word into individual sounds.

Phoneme manipulation is the ability to modify, change, or move the individual sounds in a word.

Examples of assessment questions

Remember, when a letter appears between slash marks, you should say the letter sound, and not the letter name.

Phoneme matching
Which words sound alike? man, sat, sip (Correct response: sat, sip)

Phoneme isolation – initial (first) sound
What's the first sound in sat? (Correct response: /s/)

Phoneme isolation – final (last) sound
What's the last sound in sat? (Correct response: /t/)

Phoneme isolation – medial (middle) sound
What's the middle sound in sat? (Correct response: /a/)

Phoneme blending
What word do these sounds make? /h/ – /o/ – /t/ (Correct response: hot)

Phoneme segmentation
What sounds do you hear in hot? (Correct response: /h/ – /o/ – /t/)

Phoneme manipulation – initial (first) sound
Say mat without the /m/ sound. (Correct response: at)

Phoneme manipulation – final (last) sound
Say mat without the /t/ sound. (Correct response: ma)

Phoneme manipulation – substitution
Say pig. (Correct response: pig)

Now change the /p/ in pig to /f/. (Correct response: fig)

Age or grade typically mastered

Phoneme matching: The middle of kindergarten

Phoneme isolation – initial (first) sound: The middle of kindergarten

Phoneme isolation – final (last) sound: Late kindergarten or early first grade

Phoneme isolation – medial (middle) sound: Late kindergarten or early first grade

Phoneme blending: Late kindergarten or early first grade

Phoneme segmentation: First grade

Phoneme manipulation – initial (first) sound: First grade

Phoneme manipulation – final (last) sound: First grade

Phoneme manipulation – substitution: Middle to end of first grade or early second grade

When should it be assessed?

Phonemic awareness assessments should be done three times during the kindergarten and first grade years to help guide instruction.

Informal (qualitative) reading inventory

What it measures

Grade level reading

Fluency

Comprehension

Vocabulary

Oral reading accuracy

Examples of assessment questions

Choose a grade level passage for the student to read. As the student is reading complete the oral reading accuracy and reading fluency assessments. After the student finishes the passage, check for understanding through explicit and implicit questions. Also, ask open-ended questions about the vocabulary found in the passage.

Age or grade typically mastered

This assessment can be given to students in grades one through twelve. Students should be expected to master age-appropriate material.

When should it be assessed

The informal reading inventory is an on-going assessment, and should be completed several times throughout the child's schooling. In kindergarten, perform the informal reading inventory twice per year, at mid-year and at the end of school. In first and second grades, it should be done three times, at the beginning of the school year, at mid-year, and at the end of the year. If a child is struggling, the inventory should be done more often in order to have an accurate picture of the child's progress.

Reading comprehension

About this assessment

Reading comprehension assessments are the most common type of published reading test that is available. The typical type of reading comprehension assessment involves asking a child to read a passage of text that is leveled appropriately for the child's age or grade, and then asking explicit, detailed questions about the content of the text. An example of a common reading comprehension assessment is the Informal Reading Inventory (IRI), also known as the Qualitative Reading Inventory (QRI).

There are variations on the basic reading comprehension assessments. For example, instead of questions about facts found directly in the text, the child could be asked to answer questions about information that is implied in the text, or the child might be asked to retell the story in the child's own words.

Oral reading accuracy

About this assessment

This assessment provides a measure of a student's oral reading accuracy by giving teachers insight into a student's individual reading level. It allows the teacher to listen and record reading behaviors such as the number of errors a student makes, if the student substitutes words, or if the student needs prompting from the teacher.

The information offered by this assessment is limited. For example, it does not measure phonological ability, vocabulary, or comprehension. This is why it is often given in conjunction with other assessments such as the informal reading inventory. It should never be used in isolation.

Note: When children read orally, they usually concentrate on reading accurately and do not pay as much attention to comprehension of the content. It is also important to remember that if this assessment is used with students who are new to learning English, it should be given both in English and the child's primary language.

What it measures

Oral reading accuracy. It also provides the teacher with insight into a student's ability to use strategies to decode unfamiliar words.

Examples of assessment questions

Choose a passage for the child to read aloud. As the child reads, take notes on words read correctly and incorrectly.

Age or grade typically mastered

First through third grade.

When should it be assessed?

Reading accuracy assessments can be given as part of an informal reading inventory or combined with a comprehension assessment to yield more information. Reading accuracy should be assessed several times throughout the year to help you plan on-going instruction. Are students reading on grade level? Do some students require additional support? Do your students have rich vocabularies? Are your students able to read age-appropriate material?

Steps in administering this assessment

1. Choose a book that is age appropriate, but unfamiliar to your student. (This gives a more accurate picture of a child's ability in handling texts.)

2. Ask the student to read the story aloud to you and then at the end tell you what the story was about.

3. You should familiarize yourself with the following scoring information prior to administering this assessment:

Reading behavior

How to score

Read correctly (no error)

Check mark over word

Omission (one error)

Long dash over word omitted

Insertion (one error)

^ at point of insertion with the inserted word written above it

Repetition of a word (no error)

Mark above word with a capital R

Repetition of a phrase (no error)

Capital R with a line and an arrow stretching across phrase repeated

Self correction (no error)

Capital SC above the word to indicate child has self-corrected

Unable to read word (one error)

T for Teacher prompt

Decodes a word in an obvious manner (no error)

Mark individual sounds read within the word followed by a check mark if eventually read correctly or a circle if read incorrectly

Read incorrectly (one error)

Circle word

What should you count as an error when giving this assessment?

Substituting a word

Passage reads: The tall fir tree.

Omitting a word

Passage reads: The tall fir tree.

Inserting a word

Passage reads: A dark and stormy night.

Needs prompting (if the student has to be told a word by the person administering the running record)

Passage reads: I wish that people...

4. As the student reads, mark each word on the form by using the symbols above. Place a check mark above the words read correctly.

5. If the student reads a word incorrectly or substitutes a word, record what is said above the actual word.

6. As the student reads, pay attention to his or her behavior. Is the student using context clues (from the sentence or pictures), structure (language sounds correct) and visual cues (using beginning sounds, familiar word chunks, etc.) to read words and gather meaning?

7. Intervene as little as possible when a student is reading.

8. If the student is stuck on a word, wait 5-10 seconds before you tell him or her the word.

9. After the reading, ask the student to tell you about what he or she has just read. Make notes on the following:

Can the student tell you what happened in the story in his or her own words?

Does the student include the different parts of a story (the characters, setting, events, problem and resolution)?

Can the student identify the main idea and supporting details?

Does the student use some of the vocabulary found in the text?

Is the student's retelling minimal, adequate or very complete?

What do I do with the information obtained from this assessment?

The information gathered while completing an oral reading accuracy assessment can be used to determine error, accuracy, and self-correction rates. To calculate a student's reading accuracy rate, divide the total words read correctly by the total words read. For example, if a student read a passage containing 100 words and made 5 errors:

95 (total words read correctly) / 100 (total words read) = 95% word accuracy

Use the accuracy rate along with the information gained in the student's story retelling to determine whether the text the student read was too easy, just right, or too difficult for the reader. Below is a general breakdown to use to help guide you when choosing texts for students:

Oral reading accuracy

What this says about the text

95-100%

Too easy; the text does not present a challenge

90-94%

Just right; the text is challenging but manageable

89% and below

Too difficult; the text is frustrating for the reader

If a student can read a book with 100% word accuracy but can only give a minimal retelling of the story, do not choose a higher leveled book. We read to get meaning; if a child is not getting meaning from a text they must be instructed on comprehension strategies. Word accuracy without comprehension is not acceptable.

What should I be looking for when I give an oral reading accuracy assessment?

Giving an oral reading accuracy assessment and asking a child to retell reveals many things about a child's reading ability. There are other things to be on the look out for and can be taught in the moments following this assessment:

Has the student mastered directionality, letter-sound correspondence, return sweep, etc?

Did the student make "good errors" when phonetically reading a word (i.e., reading island as "is land" instead of "eye land")?

Was there an attempt to self-correct errors?

Did the student attempt to decode an unknown word?

Was the student's reading slow and labored, or fluent?

Did the student use expression while reading?

Reading fluency

What it measures

How many words a child reads correctly in one minute.

Examples of assessment questions

Choose an appropriate passage for the student to read aloud. As the student reads, complete a record for one minute.

Age or grade typically mastered

Students should be expected to master age-appropriate material.

When should it be assessed?

Fluency assessments should be completed throughout the year to help guide instruction.

Word recognition

What it measures

Sight word vocabulary at a given grade level.

Examples of assessment questions

Ask a child to read from a list of words.

Age or grade typically mastered

Students should be expected to master age-appropriate material.

When should it be assessed?

Word recognition should be assessed three times during the year for students in kindergarten through second grade to help guide instruction.

Phonic elements

What it measures

Phonic elements at a given grade level.

Examples of assessment questions

What sound do the letters 's' 'h' make? (Correct response: /sh/)

How can I turn cap into cape? (Correct response: Add an 'e' to the end of the word.

Age or grade typically mastered

Students should be expected to master age-appropriate material.

When should it be assessed?

Phonic elements should be assessed several times throughout the year in grades one through three to help guide instruction.

Portfolios

About this assessment

Portfolios can be used to document students' achievement and progress. Portfolios give an accurate picture of an individual's strengths and weaknesses. Instruction on how to pick a piece of work to place in a portfolio (does it show a concept that was struggled with then understood, does it demonstrate an understanding of a concept? Is it something you are proud of?) is beneficial for students. This type of instruction engages the student to reflect on his or her own work. Portfolios encourage students to take an active role in learning information they feel they have not yet mastered.

Portfolios can help guide instruction. Through looking at a piece of child's work, a teacher can quickly see what lessons are further needed. For example, by looking at a student's writing a teacher may determine lessons in using commas correctly need to be revisited.

Types of portfolios

Collection
The collection may consist of a folder that holds samples of a student's work. The collection should include representative examples of the various types of student work, such as tests, writing samples, and homework assignments.

Display portfolio
A container or box containing a selection of work documenting a student's progress may hold work in this type of portfolio. This type of portfolio may be used to share with parents at conferences. Pieces of work are carefully selected by both teachers and students to show and share with parents/guardians during conferences.

Teacher/student assessment portfolio
A collection of documentation including copies of work in the student's display portfolio, tests, anecdotal notes, conference summaries, contacts made with parents, etc. This portfolio is used by the teacher to aid in discussions with administrators, other teachers, parents, etc about a particular child.

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Types of Informal Classroom-Based Assessment

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Most of the assessments here should be given one-on-one. It is important that you have a non-distracting, comfortable testing environment for students, and that the rest of the class is engaged in a task or assignment and working quietly. It's even better if you can arrange for another teacher to be present while you are performing assessments.

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The objective of this lesson is for students to be able to identify words that suggests feelings or senses. Using the book Owl Moon ask students to fill out columns I see/I hear/I feel/I smell/ I taste.

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Students will be able to identify words and phrases that suggest feelings and appeal to the senses.

Gather students together for the start of lesson.

Show the cover of Owl Moon by Jane Yolen and ask the students to describe what they see. Encourage your students to give specific details by following up with questions such as, "What makes you say that? Tell me more about that."

Write I see/I feel/I hear/I smell/I taste on the board in 5 columns, with space to write beneath each column.

Ask your students to imagine being the child on the cover illustration. Have them close their eyes and think about what they might see/hear/smell/taste/feel if they were in the woods. Ask guiding questions to support their thinking such as, "What might you see and hear in the woods during the day? How about at night? What kinds of smells might be in the woods?"

Invite students to share out and record their thinking on the board.

Explain that today you will be reading a story and noticing the sensory language, which is when we use words to describe things or feelings in a way that reminds us of our different senses. Say, "Some authors work hard to write a story that makes us feel like we are there by using sensory language. Let's read Owl Moon and listen for those details."

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Words That Make Us Feel: A Lesson on Sensory Language | Lesson Plan | Education.com | Lesson plan | Education.com

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Students will be able to identify words and phrases that suggest feelings and appeal to the senses. Gather students together for the start of lesson. Show the cover of Owl Moon by Jane Yolen and ask the students to describe what they see.

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In this lesson the teacher differentiates the lesson based on student's abilities and reading fluency based on DIBEL's. Some techniques for ELL differentiation is partner work, small groups with teacher and co teacher, allowing verbal answers, using songs that the students already know and verbal answers with word tracing.

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This is my favorite song and I play it for my class. I tell the students that this song explains how I feel about them. I love them and one day they will go to another class. Making the lesson relevant and connecting it personally to my class really engages the students. Common Core promotes making lessons real and relevant to the students daily lives. It also builds a strong bond and creates a positive classroom environment.

Common Core also promotes peer collaboration and team work. So, I begin the lesson on the lounge with my students seated in mixed ability groups of two. The ability is based on their oral reading fluency scores on DIBELS. By mixing up the ability one student can explain and teach the other which engages the students in a higher order thinking situation. After the hook, I move the class to the guided practice, then we move to the center tables, and last we close in the lounge. By moving every twenty minutes my students stay engaged and focused on the lesson goal. As they move to each location they chant the lesson goal which refocuses the lesson goal.
Hook
Playing the song makes the class become engaged and I ask them to listen to the song and then tell their partner how the song made them feel. Next I ask them to discuss what words make them feel that way. They are evidencing the song at this point which is a Common Core skill. As the students are activating their thinking I am assessing their prior knowledge to see what I need to do to scaffold instruction.

Students need to know what is going to happen in the lesson and what will be expected by them so I clearly explain that we will be analyzing each line of the poem to determine the meaning and feelings that the words suggest. The students then chant three times and walk to their desks and say I can determine the meaning of words or phrases in a poem.

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This is my favorite song and I play it for my class. I tell the students that this song explains how I feel about them. I love them and one day they will go to another class. Making the lesson relevant and connecting it personally to my class really engages the students.

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Differentiation for students with special needs

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Differentiation for students with special needs

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Using the "You are my Sunshine" lesson, modify the answer sheet for students with special needs. Allow for students to give verbal answers instead of writing, for students that need help writing work with them to write out and have them trace over their answer. Have students circle the words in the song that denote feelings.

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This is my favorite song and I play it for my class. I tell the students that this song explains how I feel about them. I love them and one day they will go to another class. Making the lesson relevant and connecting it personally to my class really engages the students. Common Core promotes making lessons real and relevant to the students daily lives. It also builds a strong bond and creates a positive classroom environment.

Common Core also promotes peer collaboration and team work. So, I begin the lesson on the lounge with my students seated in mixed ability groups of two. The ability is based on their oral reading fluency scores on DIBELS. By mixing up the ability one student can explain and teach the other which engages the students in a higher order thinking situation. After the hook, I move the class to the guided practice, then we move to the center tables, and last we close in the lounge. By moving every twenty minutes my students stay engaged and focused on the lesson goal. As they move to each location they chant the lesson goal which refocuses the lesson goal.
Hook
Playing the song makes the class become engaged and I ask them to listen to the song and then tell their partner how the song made them feel. Next I ask them to discuss what words make them feel that way. They are evidencing the song at this point which is a Common Core skill. As the students are activating their thinking I am assessing their prior knowledge to see what I need to do to scaffold instruction.

Students need to know what is going to happen in the lesson and what will be expected by them so I clearly explain that we will be analyzing each line of the poem to determine the meaning and feelings that the words suggest. The students then chant three times and walk to their desks and say I can determine the meaning of words or phrases in a poem.

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This is my favorite song and I play it for my class. I tell the students that this song explains how I feel about them. I love them and one day they will go to another class. Making the lesson relevant and connecting it personally to my class really engages the students.

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Phonemic Awareness and Teacher Implementation

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Phonemic Awareness and Teacher Implementation

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A strategy outlined in this article for instructing phonemic awareness is the training the teachers underwent to prepare themselves to teach. The teachers worked with a speech therapist to be able to enunciate proper phoneme sounds in order to accurately teach phonemic awareness to their students.

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Remediation Activity for feelings and sensory words

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Remediation Activity for feelings and sensory words

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Students will engage in a lesson that teaches them to associate certain expressions and words with specific feelings. This lessons main focus is to teach students about feeling and sensory words. After going over students previous knowledge, have students make their own graphic organizer with 3 columns text, sense and feeling. This lesson uses many variations to review the objective of the lesson and present their understanding.

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This lesson allows me to use a book to determine meaning. I select certain excerpts for analyzing ahead to of time, because it allows me to make the lesson rigorous and focus on the skill. Using complex text is huge part of Common Core and to get the students to really comprehend the skill specific examples have to be presented from specific text. Certain texts are better for teaching skills.
Lesson Overview
I find that first graders do well with Transitions every twenty minutes, and working with Peanut Butter Jelly Partners (small groups). My groups are mixed ability to allow students to explain things to each other and take part in higher order thinking activities. To make grouping fun and organized I call the group members peanut butter and jelly. One person is the jelly and the other is peanut butter, so I might tell the peanut butter partner to read and the other write. This is a fun way to make the better reader read and model oral reading fluency for the other student.
Hook
At this time I try to activate my students thinking by allowing them to share what they already know about feelings. I listen closely because I am assessing their prior knowledge and hoping they talk about how people show they are happy, sad, or angry. Then I share that we are going to explore how illustrators and authors use text and words to make us have certain feelings.

Next I explain what we are going to be doing in the lesson so the students understand the flow of the lesson which seems to help them know what they are supposed to do. First, we use specific parts of the text for guided practice, and then we use other pages for partner work. To engage the entire class in the lesson goal I ask them to chant it three times as they move to the desks. I can identify the meaning of words or phrases in a story or song.

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This lesson allows me to use a book to determine meaning. I select certain excerpts for analyzing ahead to of time, because it allows me to make the lesson rigorous and focus on the skill. Using complex text is huge part of Common Core and to get the students to really comprehend the skill specific examples have to be presented from specific text.

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This lesson moves beyond single feeling and sensory words to students learning how to decipher phrases. The students access their background knowledge on feeling words and start to examine phrase to identify feelings. Using the book Owl at Home students fill out their read the emotions activity sheet, by first identifying how the owl felt sad, what happened to the owl then filling in the last column how the owl was feeling on their own.

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After our successful review, I then further explained to my students how each author chooses his own special words in order to allow the reader of the story to understand how the characters inside it are feeling. I emphasized that these words are very important indeed since they are the very things that make a story feel so real to the person who is doing the reading. These words can even make the reader feel the same emotions that the character is feeling! I further clarified this by telling them that a story without any emotional feeling words, might be very much like a song with no music or a beautiful garden of flowers that didn't have any color. After I said that, I got and immediate sense, from the faces of the children, that I had struck an ever important note of curiosity about all of this. The increased level of attention that I always experience from the children whenever they feel they are about to discover something completely new is always very exciting.

Tto prepare them for their upcoming reading of the short story Tear-Water Tea from the story Owl at Home, I then asked the class to finish the following sentences:

When an author writes in his book that a character is smiling, then we know that the character is probably feeling _________ (my students finished the sentence by saying happy).

If the author writes into the story that a character suddenly has an urge to hide, they are probably feeling ____________ (my students finish the sentence by saying scared).

I then asked my students how they knew the answers to these questions even though I did not actually say the words happy or scared. The children then told me that they knew because people smile when they are happy and that sometime they hide when they are afraid.

When we finished this exercise, I then explained to my students that today that we would be reading a story about an amazing owl who just happened love drinking tea. However, his tea was special and they would have to listen to find out what was so special about the tea.

I then passed out the student copies of the short story Tear-Water Tea from the text Owl at Home and instructed my students to follow along as I read. I emphasized to the children that they should listen very closely for the words and word phrases which told them how Mr. Owl's feelings were changing as the story progressed. I then read the entire story to them, pausing only long enough to emphasize the words and word phrases that were responsible for both the cause and the effect of the changes in Mr. Owl's emotional feelings. I also used tonal inflection to draw my student's attention to the key emotional words and phrases as I read to them. I am consistently amazed at how well that simple technique works in helping my students to remain focused.

After I had completed the reading, I asked my students what was so special about the tea? And if Mr. Owl needed to feel happy or sad whenever he wanted to make Tear-Water Tea? The children responded almost unanimously, "It was made with tears" and "Sad". I then asked the children how did they know Mr. Owl was Sad even though the word Sad was not always used in parts of the text? The most common response was because he was crying. I then asked the students if some of the things that Mr. Owl had to think about in order to make him cry made him sadder than the other things did, and which made him cry even harder and harder. Most of the students agreed that the left over Mashed Potatoes seemed to make him the saddest and also made him cry the most of all. I then told the students that it would make me sad too if nobody ever sang songs again because all the words "have been forgotten" and for them to look at the list on the activity sheet when they were paired up and to think about the things that would also make them sad.

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Move beyond single words and examine word phrases which the author uses to transmit a characters' emotional state to the reader. Students learn that sometimes authors can convey sadness and Plan your 60-minute lesson in English / Language Arts or Reading with helpful tips from Sarah Collins

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In this video it is a demonstration of how to teach phonemic segmentation in the classroom using numbers and then segmenting the sounds out of words such as eight.

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Phonemic and Phonological Awareness What's the Difference?

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Phonemic and Phonological Awareness What's the Difference?

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Phonemic awareness is the highest level of phonological awareness. It is the awareness to recognize the smallest unit of sound.
Phonological awareness is to recognize the basic levels of speech sounds.

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Learn the definitions of phonological awareness and phonemic awareness - and how these pre-reading listening skills relate to phonics.

Letter of completion

After completing this module and successfully answering the post-test questions, you'll be able to download a Letter of Completion.

Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness: what's the difference?

Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of sentences and words. Examples include being able to identify words that rhyme, recognizing alliteration, segmenting a sentence into words, identifying the syllables in a word, and blending and segmenting onset-rimes. The most sophisticated - and last to develop - is called phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. This includes blending sounds into words, segmenting words into sounds, and deleting and playing with the sounds in spoken words.

Phonological awareness (PA) involves a continuum of skills that develop over time and that are crucial for reading and spelling success, because they are central to learning to decode and spell printed words. Phonological awareness is especially important at the earliest stages of reading development - in pre-school, kindergarten, and first grade for typical readers.

Explicit teaching of phonological awareness in these early years can eliminate future reading problems for many students. However, struggling decoders of any age can work on phonological awareness, especially if they evidence problems in blending or segmenting phonemes.

How about phonological awareness and phonics?

Phonological awareness refers to a global awareness of sounds in spoken words, as well as the ability to manipulate those sounds.

Phonics refers to knowledge of letter sounds and the ability to apply that knowledge in decoding unfamiliar printed words.

So, phonological awareness refers to oral language and phonics refers to print. Both of these skills are very important and tend to interact in reading development, but they are distinct skills; children can have weaknesses in one of them but not the other.

For example, a child who knows letter sounds but cannot blend the sounds to form the whole word has a phonological awareness (specifically, a phonemic awareness) problem. Conversely, a child who can orally blend sounds with ease but mixes up vowel letter sounds, reading pit for pet and set for sit, has a phonics problem.

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Learn the definitions of phonological awareness and phonemic awareness - and how these pre-reading listening skills relate to phonics. Letter of completion After completing this module and successfully answering the post-test questions, you'll be able to download a Letter of Completion. Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness: what's the difference?

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Phonological Awareness is critical to students learning to read. The video explains the difference between letters and letters sounds. That words are made of different sounds and linking those sounds at the highest level.

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Susan Landry: Phonological Awareness Instruction

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The Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing Program (LiPS) was explored in a study for the potential of increasing phonemic awareness skills for kindergarten and first grade students that were deemed at risk. The evaluation of the LiPS program showed the progress of at risk students receiving this type of instruction has been effective.

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Phonological Awareness and Vocabulary Intensive Interventions (PAVII)

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Phonological Awareness and Vocabulary Intensive Interventions (PAVII)

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The PAVII was used in kindergarten and first grade classrooms and has shown improvements for reading fluency skills. The method for PAVII focuses on phonologically based decoding skills, the students recieving this intervention were given 5 phonological activities and 1 vocabulary three times a week.

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Evaluation of a Phonological Awareness Intervention for Kindergarten and First Grade Students

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Author(s): Fukuda, Corrie | Advisor(s): Vanderwood, Michael L | Abstract: This study examined the effects of a phonological awareness intervention for at-risk kindergarten and first grade students. The intervention consisted of five phonological awareness activities and one vocabulary activity and occurred three times per week for 30 minutes.

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This instructional strategy was came from a first grade teachers investigation in using the process in her classroom and had been able to show growth in her students. The process was to teach one new song accompanied by lyrics to the students each week, followed by readings/singing and activities involving phonemic awareness, phonics and word work.

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Supporting Phonemic Awareness in the Classroom

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Supporting Phonemic Awareness in the Classroom

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Activities in the classroom to support phonemic awareness should focus on on the sound structure of language. Examples of activities that support phoneme manipulation are reading books such as "Cock- a -doodle moo!" by Bernard Most, Find Your Partner (oral activity) and Bag Game (cue activity).

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This explains the instruction of phonemic awareness and the more advanced skills children learn in first grade such as blending, substitution and manipulation of sounds.

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Instruction
Sequencing Phonemic Awareness Skills

Phonemic awareness instruction typically spans two years, kindergarten and first grade. Oral activities in kindergarten focus on simple tasks such as rhyming, matching words with beginning sounds, and blending sounds into words. In first grade, phonemic awareness tasks are more advanced, focusing on blending ("Blend these sounds together "mmmm-aaaa-nnnn), segmentation ("What are the sounds in man?), and the substitution and manipulation of phonemes (e.g., Change the first sound in man to /r/. What word do you have?").

Phonemic Awareness Development Continuum

Examples of Phonemic Awareness Skills

Sound and Word discrimination: What word doesn't belong with the others: "cat", "mat", "bat", "ran"? "ran"

Rhyming: What word rhymes with "cat"? bat

Syllable splitting: The onset of "cat" is /k/, the rime is /at/

Blending: What word is made up of the sounds /k/ /a/ /t/? "cat"

Phonemic segmentation: What are the sounds in "cat"? /k/ /a/ /t/

Phoneme deletion: What is "cat" without the /k/? "at"

Phoneme manipulation: What word would you have if you changed the /t/ in cat to an /n/? "can"

Curriculum Maps

Phonemic awareness skills can be taught in a particular sequence that maximizes student understanding and instructional efficiency. Phonemic awareness is only taught in kindergarten and first grade. By the end of first grade, students should have a firm grasp of phonemic awareness.

Curriculum maps list specific skills that relate to each big idea. Each skill can be taught during at an optimal time during the school year.

Click here for an explanation of how to read curriculum maps.

TIP: Go to the Curriculum Maps page in the Resources section to view and download Curriculum Maps for each Big Idea and grade.

How to read curriculum maps

The numbers in the top row of the curriculum map correspond to the months of the school year. For example, if your school year begins in September, then September would be month 1 on the map. If your school year begins in August, then August would be month one.

The shaded boxes marked with "X" represent the months in which a particular skill should be taught.

The map can be read using either a "horizontal trace" or a "vertical trace". To do a horizontal trace, you select a skill you are interested in, then trace across the row to find the months marked with an "X" for that skill. This will tell you which months a skill should be taught. To perform a vertical trace, select a particular month, then trace down the column to find the shaded boxes. The shaded boxes correspond to the skills that should be taught that month.

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University of Oregon Center on Teaching and Learning

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Instruction Phonemic awareness instruction typically spans two years, kindergarten and first grade. Oral activities in kindergarten focus on simple tasks such as rhyming, matching words with beginning sounds, and blending sounds into words.

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Phonemic Awareness Screening and Monitoring

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Phonemic Awareness Screening and Monitoring

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Students are typically screened in kindergarten and first grade in areas of phonemic awareness. The phoneme segmentation fluency, DIBELS is a measure that is helpful in screening and monitoring progress of a student.

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This article defines phonological awareness and discusses historic and contemporary research findings regarding its relation to early reading. Common misconceptions about phonological awareness are addressed. Research-based guidelines for teaching phonological awareness and phonemic awareness to all children are described. Additional instructional design guidelines are offered for teaching children with learning disabilities who are experiencing difficulties with early reading. Considerations for assessing children's phonological awareness are discussed, and descriptions of available measures are provided.

Row, row, row your boat
gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily;
Life is but a dream

Bow, bow, bow your boat
bently bown the beam.
Berrily, berrily, berrily, berrily;
Bife is but a beam.

Sow, sow, sow your soat
sently sown the seam.
Serrily, serrily, serrily, serrily;
Sife is sut a seam.

Activities like substituting different sounds for the first sound of a familiar song can help children develop phonological awareness, a cognitive substrate to reading acquisition. Becoming phonologically aware prepares children for later reading instruction, including instruction in phonics, word analysis, and spelling (Adams, Foorman, Lundberg, & Beeler, 1998; Chard, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1998). The most common barrier to learning early word reading skills is the inability to process language phonologically (Liberman, Shankweiler, & Liberman, 1989). Moreover, developments in research and understanding have revealed that this weakness in phonological processing most often hinders early reading development for both students with and without disabilities (Fletcher et al., 1994).

No area of reading research has gained as much attention over the past two decades as phonological awareness. Perhaps the most exciting finding emanating from research on phonological awareness is that critical levels of phonological awareness can be developed through carefully planned instruction, and this development has a significant influence on children's reading and spelling achievement (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Bradley & Bryant, 1985; Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1989, 1991; O'Connor, Jenkins, Leicester, & Slocum, 1993). Despite the promising findings, however, many questions remain unanswered, and many misconceptions about phonological awareness persist. For example, researchers are looking for ways to determine how much and what type of instruction is necessary and for whom. Moreover, many people do not understand the difference between phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics. Still others are uncertain about the relationship between phonological awareness and early reading.

The purposes of this article are to (a) clarify some of the salient findings from research on phonological awareness and reading and (b) translate those findings into practical information for teachers of children with learning disabilities or children who are experiencing delays in early reading. To this end, we answer three questions:

1. What is phonological awareness, and why is it important to beginning reading success?

2. What are documented effective principles that should guide phonological awareness instruction?

3. What principles should guide the assessment of phonological awareness?

What is phonological awareness?

Phonological awareness is the understanding of different ways that oral language can be divided into smaller components and manipulated. Spoken language can be broken down in many different ways, including sentences into words and words into syllables (e. g., in the word simple, /sim/ and /ple/), onset and rime (e. g., in the word broom, /br/ and /oom/), and individual phonemes (e.g., in the word hamper, /h/, /a/, /m/, /p/, /er/). Manipulating sounds includes deleting, adding, or substituting syllables or sounds (e.g., say can; say it without the /k/; say can with /m/ instead of /k/). Being phonologically aware means having a general understanding at all of these levels.

Figure 1. A continuum of complexity of phonological awareness activities

Operationally, skills that represent children's phonological awareness lie on a continuum of complexity (see Figure 1). At the less complex end of the continuum are activities such as initial rhyming and rhyming songs as well as sentence segmentation that demonstrates an awareness that speech can be broken down into individual words. At the center of the continuum are activities related to segmenting words into syllables and blending syllables into words. Next are activities such as segmenting words into onsets and rimes and blending onsets and rimes into words.

Finally, the most sophisticated level of phonological awareness is phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that words are made up of individual sounds or phonemes and the ability to manipulate these phonemes either by segmenting, blending, or changing individual phonemes within words to create new words. The recent National Research Council report on reading distinguishes phonological awareness from phonemic awareness in this way:

The term phonological awareness refers to a general appreciation of the sounds of speech as distinct from their meaning. When that insight includes an understanding that words can he divided into a sequence of phonemes, this finer-grained sensitivity is termed phonemic awareness. (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998, p. 51)

Throughout this article we will use the term phonological awareness to mean an awareness at all levels from basic rhyme to phonemic awareness. Only in some specific instances will we use the term phonemic awareness.

At this point, it is important to note that phonological awareness differs distinctly from phonics. Phonological awareness involves the auditory and oral manipulation of sounds. Phonics is the association of letters and sounds to sound out written symbols (Snider, 1995); it is a system of teaching reading that builds on the alphabetic principle, a system of which a central component is the teaching of correspondences between letters or groups of letters and their pronunciations (Adams, 1990). Phonological awareness and phonics are intimately intertwined, but they are not the same. This relationship will be further described in the following section.

Children generally begin to show initial phonological awareness when they demonstrate an appreciation of rhyme and alliteration. For many children, this begins very early in the course of their language development and is likely facilitated by being read to from books that are based on rhyme or alliteration, such as the B Book by Stanley and Janice Berenstain, 1997, or Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg, 1979, (Bryant, MacLean, Bradley, & Crossland, 1990). As children grow older, however, their basic phonological awareness does not necessarily develop into the more sophisticated phonemic awareness. In fact, developing the more complex phonemic awareness is difficult for most children and very difficult for some children (Adams et al., 1996). However, it is a child's phonemic awareness on entering school that is most closely related to success in learning to read (Adams, 1990; Stanovich, 1986).

Why is phonological awareness so important?

An awareness of phonemes is necessary to grasp the alphabetic principle that underlies our system of written language. Specifically, developing readers must be sensitive to the internal structure of words in order to benefit from formal reading instruction (Adams, 1990; Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, & Carter, 1974). If children understand that words can be divided into individual phonemes and that phonemes can be blended into words, they are able to use letter-sound knowledge to read and build words. As a consequence of this relationship, phonological awareness in kindergarten is a strong predictor of later reading success (Ehri & Wilce, 1980, 1985; Liberman et al., 1974; Perfetti, Beck, Bell, & Hughes, 1987). Researchers have shown that this strong relationship between phonological awareness and reading success persists throughout school (Calfee, Lindamood, & Lindamood, 1973; Shankweiler et al., 1995).

Over the past 2 decades, researchers have focused primarily on the contribution of phonological awareness to reading acquisition. However, the relationship between phonological awareness and reading is not unidirectional but reciprocal in nature (Stanovich, 1986). Early reading is dependent on having some understanding of the internal structure of words, and explicit instruction in phonological awareness skills is very effective in promoting early reading. However, instruction in early reading-specifically, explicit instruction in letter-sound correspondence appears to strengthen phonological awareness, and in particular the more sophisticated phonemic awareness (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).

Many children with learning disabilities demonstrate difficulties with phonological awareness skills (Shaywitz, 1996). However, many other children have such difficulty without displaying other characteristics of learning disabilities. Although a lack of phonemic awareness correlates with difficulty in acquiring reading skills, this lack should not necessarily be misconstrued as a disability (Fletcher et al., 1994). More important, children who lack phonemic awareness can be identified, and many of them improve their phonemic awareness with instruction. Furthermore, although explicit instruction in phonological awareness is likely to improve early reading for children who lack phonemic awareness, most children with or without disabilities are likely to benefit from such instruction (R. E. O'Connor, personal communication, June 2, 1998).

In short, success in early reading depends on achieving a certain level of phonological awareness. Moreover, instruction in phonological awareness is beneficial for most children and seems to be critical for others, but the degree of explicitness and the systematic nature of instruction may need to vary according to the learner's skills (Smith, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1998), especially for students at risk for reading difficulties. With this in mind, we discuss documented approaches to teaching phonological awareness.

Teaching phonological awareness

There is ample evidence that phonological awareness training is beneficial for beginning readers starting as early as age 4 (e.g., Bradley & Bryant, 1985; Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1991). In a review of phonological research, Smith et al. (1998) concluded that phonological awareness can be developed before reading and that it facilitates the subsequent acquisition of reading skills. Documented effective approaches to teaching phonological awareness generally include activities that are age appropriate and highly engaging. Instruction for 4-year-olds involves rhyming activities, whereas kindergarten and first-grade instruction includes blending and segmenting of words into onset and rime, ultimately advancing to blending, segmenting, and deleting phonemes. This pattern of instruction follows the continuum of complexity illustrated in Figure 1. Instruction frequently involves puppets who talk slowly to model word segmenting or magic bridges that are crossed when children say the correct word achieved by synthesizing isolated phonemes. Props such as colored cards or pictures can be used to make abstract sounds more concrete. During the last few years, publishers have produced multiple programs in phonological awareness, some of which are based on research. Two of these programs are Ladders to Literacy (O'Connor, Notari-Syverson, & Vadasy, 1998) and Teaching Phonemic Awareness (Adams et al., 1996). Figures 2 through 4 are illustrations of phonemic awareness lessons that are based on examples from these programs.

Figure 2. Instructional activity that teaches synthesis of phonemes into words.

Guess-the-word game

Objective: Students will be able to blend and identify a word that is stretched out into its component sounds.

Materials Needed: Picture cards of objects that students are likely to recognize such as: sun, bell, fan, flag, snake, tree, book, cup, clock, plane

Activity: Place a small number of picture cards in front of children. Tell them you are going to say a word using "Snail Talk" a slow way of saying words (e.g., /fffffllllaaaag/). They have to look at the pictures and guess the word you are saying. It is important to have the children guess the answer in their head so that everyone gets an opportunity to try it. Alternate between having one child identify the word and having all children say the word aloud in chorus to keep children engaged.

Figure 3. An Instructional activity that teaches segmentation at multiple phonological levels.

Segmentation activities

Objectives: Students will be able to segment various parts of oral language.

Activity:

1. Early in phonological awareness instruction, teach children to segment sentences into individual words. Identify familiar short poems such as "I scream you scream we all scream for ice cream!" Have children clap their hands with each word.

2. As children advance in their ability to manipulate oral language, teach them to segment words into syllables or onsets and rimes. For example, have children segment their names into syllables: e.g., Ra-chel, Al-ex-an-der, and Rod-ney.

3. When children have learned to remove the first phoneme (sound) of a word, teach them to segment short words into individual phonemes: e.g., s-u-n, p-a-t, s-t-o-p.

Figure 4. An instructional activity that teaches phoneme deletion and substitution.

Change-a-name game

Objective: Students will be able to recognize words when the teacher says the word with the first sound removed.

Activity: Have students sit in a circle on the floor. Secretly select one child and change their name by removing the first sound of the name. For example, change Jennifer to Ennifer or change William to Illiam. As you change the name, the children have to identify who you are talking about.

Extension Ideas: As children become better at identifying the child's name without the first sound, encourage them to try removing the beginning sounds of words and pronounce the words on their own.

After children learn how to remove sounds, teach them to substitute the beginning sound in their name with a new sound. The teacher can model this, beginning with easier sounds (common sounds of consonant s, e.g., /m/, /t/, /p/) and advancing to more complex sounds and sound blends (e.g., /ch/, /st/).

Most early phonological awareness activities are taught in the absence of print, but there is increasing evidence that early writing activities, including spelling words as they sound (i.e., invented or temporary spelling), appear to promote more refined phonemic awareness (Ehri, 1998; Treiman, 1993). It may be that during spelling and writing activities children begin to combine their phonological sensitivity and print knowledge and apply them to building words. Even if children are unable to hold and use a pen or pencil, they can use letter tiles or word processing programs to practice their spelling.

Instruction in phonological awareness can be fun, engaging, and age appropriate, but the picture is not as simple as it seems. First, evidence suggests that instruction in the less complex phonological skills such as rhyming or onset and rime may facilitate instruction in more complex skills (Snider, 1995) without directly benefiting reading acquisition (Gough, 1998). Rather, integrated instruction in segmenting and blending seems to provide the greatest benefit to reading acquisition (e.g., Snider, 1995). Second, although most children appear to benefit from instruction in phonological awareness, in some studies there are students who respond poorly to this instruction or fail to respond at all. For example, in one training study that provided 8 weeks of instruction in phonemic awareness, the majority of children demonstrated significant growth, whereas 30% of the at-risk students demonstrated no measurable growth in phonological awareness (Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1994). Similarly, in a 12-week training in blending and segmenting for small groups (3-4 children) in 2-minute sessions four times a week, about 30% of the children still obtained very low scores on the segmenting posttest and 10 % showed only small improvements on the blending measures (Torgesen et al., 1994).

Torgesen et al. (1994) concluded that training for at-risk children must be more explicit or more intense than what is typically described in the research literature if it is to have a substantial impact on the phonological awareness of many children with severe reading disabilities. Therefore, we recommend two tiers of instruction. The first tier of instruction is the highly engaging, age-appropriate instruction that we introduced earlier. The second tier of instruction includes more intensive and strategic instruction in segmenting and blending at the phoneme level (e.g., Snider, 1995).

Beside content, another issue that requires attention in phonological awareness instruction is curriculum design. From research, we are able to deduce principles for effectively designing phonological awareness instruction. These design principles apply for all students but are particularly important for students who respond poorly to instruction. In the design of phonological awareness instruction, the following general principles increase students' success (Chard & Osborn, 1998):

Start with continuous sounds such as /s/, /m/, and /f/ that are easier to pronounce than stop sounds such as /p/, /b/, and /k/;

Carefully model each activity as it is first introduced;

Move from larger units (words, onset-rime) to smaller units (individual phonemes);

Move from easier tasks (e.g., rhyming) to more complex tasks (e.g., blending and segmenting); and,

Consider using additional strategies to help struggling early readers manipulate sounds. These strategies may include using concrete objects (e.g., blocks, bingo chips) to represent sounds.

Research suggests that by the end of kindergarten children should be able to demonstrate phonemic blending and segmentation and to make progress in using sounds to spell simple words. Achieving these goals requires that teachers be knowledgeable about effective instructional approaches to teaching phonological awareness and be aware of the ongoing progress for each of their students. In the next section, we describe effective ways to assess phonological skills and monitor progress in phonological awareness.

Assessing phonological awareness

Assessment in phonological awareness serves essentially two purposes: to initially identify students who appear to be at risk for difficulty in acquiring beginning reading skills and to regularly monitor the progress of students who are receiving instruction in phonological awareness. The measures used to identify at-risk students must be strongly predictive of future reading ability and separate low and high performers. Measures used for monitoring progress must be sensitive to change and have alternate forms (Kaminski & Good, 1996). In this section, we discuss only measures that have been demonstrated to be valid and reliable. We report the technical adequacy of the measures in the Appendix, rather than in the narrative description of the measure.

As stated earlier, screening measures must be strongly predictive of future reading ability and must separate high from low performers. Measures of automatized color, object, number, or letter naming meet these criteria (Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte, Burgess, & Hecht, 1997; Wolf, 1991). Segmentation is a second skill that is highly predictive of future reading ability (e.g., Nation & Hulme, 1997; Torgesen et al., 1994; Vellutino & Scanlon, 1987; Yopp, 1988). Unlike rapid naming, segmentation is a skill that can be taught, and the instruction of segmentation benefits reading acquisition.

Screening measures must also separate high from low performers. This means that they must address skills that are developmentally appropriate. Phonological awareness skills seem to develop along a continuum from rhyme to segmenting. Typically, students develop the ability to segment words into onset and rime during kindergarten and to segment words into separate phonemes between kindergarten and first grade. Therefore, most first-grade students perform well on an onset-rime measure, whereas most kindergarten students do poorly on a measure of segmenting into individual sounds. In either case it is difficult to separate low and high performers. Although we know a great deal about identifying students at risk for reading difficulties, many questions remain unanswered. We recommend that teachers use a variety of screening measures, including one that measures automatized rapid naming and one that measures phonemic awareness sensitivity or segmenting.

Typically, kindergarten students are screened for risk factors in acquiring beginning reading skills in the second semester of kindergarten. Appropriate screening measures for the second semester of kindergarten include measures that are strong predictors of a student's successful response to explicit phonemic awareness instruction or beginning reading acquisition. Such predictors of successful response to segmenting and blending instruction are the Test of Phonological Awareness-Kindergarten (TOPA-K; Torgesen & Bryant, 1993), a Nonword Spelling measure (Torgesen & Davis, 1996), and the Digit Naming Rate (Torgesen & Davis, 1996). Predictors of the successful acquisition of beginning reading skills include automatized naming of colors, objects, numbers, or letters (e.g., Wolf, 1991) and segmenting ability (e.g., Nation & Hulme, 1997; Torgesen et al., 1994; Vellutino & Scanlon, 1987; Yopp, 1988). Other measures used during the second semester of kindergarten to identify students at risk for not acquiring beginning reading skills include measures of phoneme deletion.

The measures appropriate for identifying first-grade students at risk for not acquiring reading skills overlap those used in kindergarten. The TOPA-K and onset-rime are no longer appropriate, as students should have developed these skills by the end of kindergarten, whereas segmenting is still an emerging skill. However, tasks such as automatized naming of colors, objects, numbers, or letters remain predictors for students at risk for not acquiring beginning reading skills, as do measures to determine whether students lag behind their peers in phonological awareness, such as measures of segmenting.

When using screening measures, the teacher must establish decision rules for identifying students requiring phonological awareness instruction. The decision rules vary. The TOPA-K has normed scores and provides information to help a teacher decide whether to provide phonemic awareness instruction to students who score one or two standard deviations below the mean. However, there is little research evidence to guide decision making about which children should receive the more intensive phonological awareness instruction.

A second use of measures is to monitor students' progress. Unlike the screening measures, progress-monitoring measures must be sensitive to growth and require multiple forms. The Dynamic Indicators of Early Literacy (Kaminski & Good, 1996) fit this requirement and are appropriate for kindergarten and first grade. After the first semester of first grade, teachers may also be interested in monitoring their students' progress in generalizing phonemic awareness to reading and spelling. Two other measures of reading that are sensitive to growth and have alternative forms are oral reading fluency (tasks) and nonsense word reading fluency (Tindal & Marston, 1990).

As with screening measures, teachers must establish decision rules about how to gauge the progress of their students. One way is to establish a baseline by graphing three measurement points before the start of instruction, adding each subsequent data point to the graph, and checking the slope of students' progress. If many students are making slower progress than necessary to reach the level of their average-achieving peers, the teacher can modify the instruction by increasing one or more of the elements in the instructional guidelines. For example, if students are not acquiring segmenting, the teacher may decide to add more scaffolds, such as cards that the students can move as they segment words, thereby making segmenting instruction more explicit, or provide students with more guided practice. If most students successfully respond to instruction but a few respond poorly or not at all, the teacher may decide to place these students in a flexible group to receive more intense instruction. The teacher could also choose to provide some individuals with more intense instruction throughout the day to keep them up with their peers. If the progress-monitoring measures indicate that the first-grade students receiving instruction in phonological awareness lag behind their peers in reading or spelling, the teacher may choose to increase the integrated instruction in letter- sound correspondence and to make stronger the links between segmenting and blending skills and reading. Brief descriptions of the screening and monitoring measures that have demonstrated validity and reliability through research follow. For each measure, we indicate the grade and purpose for which the measure is appropriate. Note that some measures are appropriate for more than one grade level and for both screening and monitoring progress.

Test of phonological awareness- kindergarten

(Second Half of Kindergarten; Screen). This measure of phonemic sensitivity strongly predicts which students will demonstrate high segmenting ability following small-group instruction in phonemic awareness (Torgesen & Davis, 1996). The measure consists of one form with 10 items requiring students to indicate which of three words (represented by pictures) have the same first sound as a target word and 10 items that require students to indicate which of four words (represented by pictures) begins with a different first sound than the other three. The measure is administered to small groups of 6 to 10 children and is untimed. Students receive raw scores that are normed.

Nonword spelling

(Second Half of Kindergarten; Screen). This measure strongly predicts which kindergarten students will demonstrate growth in blending and segmenting after small-group phonological awareness instruction. Five nonwords (feg, rit, mub, gof, pid) comprise the measure. Students receive one point for each phoneme that they represent correctly in the spelling.

Digit naming rate

(Second Half of Kindergarten; Screen). This measure strongly predicts which kindergarten students are likely to demonstrate growth in blending after small-group phonological awareness instruction. The measure consists of six rows with five single digits per row on an 8 " x 11 " card. The students are timed as they name the digits as fast as they can, beginning at the top and continuing to the bottom. Students complete two trials using cards with differently arranged numbers. The score is based on the average time for the two series.

Yopp-SingerTest of phoneme segmentation

(Second Half of Kindergarten, First Grade; Screen). This test (Yopp, 1995) consists of 22 items and requires students to separately articulate each phoneme in the presented words. The student receives credit only if all sounds in a word are presented correctly. The student does not receive partial credit for saying /c/ or /c/ /at/ for cat. One feature that differentiates this screening measure from others is that students receive feedback after each response. If the child's response is correct, the test administrator says, "That's right." If the student gives an incorrect response, the examiner tells the student the correct response. Moreover, if the student gives an incorrect response, the examiner writes the error. Recording the errors helps the teacher decide what remediation the student requires. The student's score is the number of items correctly segmented into individual phonemes. The test is administered individually and requires about 5 to 10 minutes per child.

Bruce test of phoneme deletion

(Second Half of Kindergarten; Screen). The Bruce (1964) test assesses phoneme deletion, a more difficult and compound skill than segmenting (Yopp, 1995). The measure consists of 30 one- to three-syllable words drawn from words familiar to children between the ages of 5 and 61/2. The examiner asks students to delete one phoneme from the beginning, middle, or end of a word and to say the word that remains. The positions of deleted phonemes are randomly ordered throughout the test. The test is individually administered and requires 10 minutes to administer.

Auditory analysis test

(Second Half of Kindergarten; Screen). This measure (Rosner & Simon, 1971, cited in MacDonald & Cornwall, 1995) consists of 40 items arranged in order of difficulty from deletion of syllables in compound words to deletion of syllables in multisyllabic words to deletion of phonemes in beginning, middle, and end positions. The teacher asks the student to delete a syllable or phoneme and say the word that is left. The measure is administered individually.

Rapid letter naming, dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills

(Second Half of Kindergarten, First Grade; Screen). The Rapid Letter Naming, DIBELS (Kaminski & Good, 1996) is another of many measures used to assess the rapid letter-naming ability of students. The measure has 18 alternate forms and consists of 104 randomly selected upper- and lowercase letters presented on one page. The measure is given individually, and students have 1 minute to name as many letters as possible in the order that they appear on the page.

Phoneme segmentation fluency, DIBELS

(End of Kindergarten, First Grade; Screen, Monitor Progress). The Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, DIBELS (Kaminski & Good, 1996) is one of many segmenting measures. The measure has 18 alternate forms. Each form consists of 10 words, each with two or three phonemes, randomly selected from words in the pre-primer and primer levels of the Scribner basal reading series. The measure is administered individually and is timed. Unlike the Yopp-Singer Test, students do not receive feedback on their responses but do receive scores for partially correct answers. In other words, for cat, a student receives a score of 1 for saying /c/, a score of 2 for saying /c/ /at/, or a score of 3 for saying /c/ /a/ /t/. Because this measure assesses the number of correct phonemes per minute, it is sensitive to growth and is, therefore, appropriate for both screening and monitoring progress.

Conclusion

As we noted at the outset of this article, efforts to understand the role of phonological awareness have far exceeded the efforts to relate research findings to classroom practice regarding phonological awareness. This article is an attempt to pull together the valuable information available on the role that phonological awareness plays in early reading development, the research-based teaching strategies that address the needs of all children, the instructional design principles that address the needs of children experiencing delays in early reading development, and the validated instruments available for screening and monitoring students' progress in phonological awareness.

Our description of the role that phonological awareness plays in reading development conspicuously fails to address the connection of phonological awareness and spelling. This failure is not an oversight, nor should it be perceived as a statement of our beliefs regarding the importance of spelling. We firmly believe that findings from spelling research (e.g., Ehri, 1998; Templeton, 1995; Treiman, 1993) represent such a significant part of our knowledge base about reading that they would go far beyond the length and scope of this article.

Recent research on phonological awareness and phonemic awareness, including how to teach and assess them, has made an extremely valuable contribution to our understanding of how to teach reading to children with learning disabilities or delays in early reading. It is not, however, a cure for reading disabilities, but a significant advance in preventing and correcting reading difficulties so that more children are prepared to learn how to read in our alphabetic writing system.

About the authors

David J. Chard, PhD, is an assistant professor of special education at The University of Texas at Austin. His current interests include research in professional developmental in early reading and analysis of children's discourse in mathematics classrooms. Shirley V Dickson, PhD, is an assistant professor of special education at Northern Illinois University. Her interests are in research on phonological awareness and reading instruction and collaboration models in special education. Address: David J. Chard, University of Texas at Austin, Dept. of Special Education, SZB 408, Austin, TX 78712.

Appendix

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This article defines phonological awareness and discusses historic and contemporary research findings regarding its relation to early reading. Common misconceptions about phonological awareness are addressed. Research-based guidelines for teaching phonological awareness and phonemic awareness to all children are described. Additional instructional design guidelines are offered for teaching children with learning disabilities who are experiencing difficulties with early reading.

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Phonemic Awareness activity that is used to strengthen decoding skills by saying letter- sounds and blending them together. This activity has adaptations that offers supports for ESL students , LD/ Reading difficulty students and modified instruction options. Example, to adapt blending letter sounds for ESL students choose concrete words they have in their vocabulary and review letter-sound correspondence with them.

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Activity Description

Preparation:

1. Gather toy cars for each student

2. Plan words that would be appropriate to practice with students
For example, for early blending you might use CVC words such as mop, cup, sit, and hat

3. Write the first word that you will be using to model the activity on the whiteboard
Write the letters in a triangle formation with the vowel at the top of the triangle and the consonants as the bottom corners of the triangle

Implementation:

1. Explain to students that they will be driving through words to practice blending

1. First they will drive through slowly and say each letter-sound

2. Then they will drive faster to say the word smoothly

2. Drive through the word and sound out the letters

3. Drive through the word again while encouraging students to sound out the letters

4. Drive through the word faster with the students and blend the word

5. Practice Drive Through Blending with another word

6. Hand out whiteboards to students and instruct them to write each letter on their board the same way you do

7. Write the next word on the whiteboard
Use the same triangle formation

8. Ask students to write the letters on their own whiteboard

9. Drive through the word slowly with the students and then drive faster to blend the word

10. Repeat steps 7 and 8 for the remaining words

Adaptations For

English Language Learners/ESL:

- Review letter-sound correspondences prior to activity
- Provide opportunities to practice words from the activity in the context of reading (for example, assign a book that also has practiced words)
- Try to choose concrete words that students have in their vocabularies

LD/Reading & Writing Difficulties:

- Review letter-sound correspondences prior to activity
- Model several words with whole class
- Model the activity one-on-one
- Monitor students closely and assist if the student is having difficulty

Cultural Appropriateness & Diversity:

- Select and practice with words from around the world

Differentiated Instruction:

- Practice the activity with student one-on-one
- Allow student to work with a peer while blending

Related References

Evidence:
Manyak, P.C. (2008). Phonemes in use: Multiple activities for a critical process. Reading Teacher, 61, 659-662.

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BALANCEDLITERACYDIET :: index :: Balanced Literacy Diet

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Gather toy cars for each student Plan words that would be appropriate to practice with students For example, for early blending you might use CVC words such as mop, cup, sit, and hat Write the first word that you will be using to model the activity on the whiteboard Write

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Peer Assisted Learning Strategies as a Tool for Instruction 

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Peer Assisted Learning Strategies as a Tool for Instruction 

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In this article teachers used Peer Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) in first grade classrooms as a tool to support and meet the needs of diverse learners. The PALS implemented consisted of two routines sounds and words activities following direct instruction and partner read aloud. The students in the class were assigned a partner as well as being placed in one of 2 groups in the class for points.

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Blending and Segmentation in Isolation Activities

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Blending and Segmentation in Isolation Activities

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Teaching skills of blending and segmenting should start at the sentence level and progress to individual phonemes to help with reading development. Activities that provide significant amounts of practice at each level of blending and segmenting is beneficial these include "Pound and Sound", guess the word games and segmenting cheer activities.

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Blending and Segmenting Games | Classroom Strategy | Reading Rockets

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Children who can segment and blend sounds easily are able to use this knowledge when reading and spelling. Segmenting and blending individual sounds can be difficult at the beginning. Our recommendation is to begin with segmenting and blending syllables. Once familiar with that, students will be prepared for instruction and practice with individual sounds.