# data[].attributes.body
Phonological awareness: An awareness of all the sounds in spoken language (Auditory).

Ability to:

Think about and recognize larger chunks in words.

recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of words.

Early Phonological awareness skills:

Counting words in sentences

Syllables

Alliteration

Initial sounds

Onset-Rime

Phonemic awareness

Phonological awareness is a foundation for learning to read and being able to know the individual sounds in a word.

# data[].attributes.body
The science of reading is a body of research that incorporates insights and research from disciplines that includes developmental psychology, educational psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience.

Components that make up the science of reading:

Psychology

Education

Neuroscience

Linguistics

Key elements of science reading instruction:

Comprehension

Fluency

Vocabulary

Phonics

Phonemic awareness

Phonics is the relationship among the letters of the alphabet and the sounds in spoken words, as well as the approach for teaching these relationships.

Phonemic Awareness is the ability to separate words into sounds and blend sounds into words.

Reading comprehension is the product of decoding and linguistic comprehension.

Reading Comprehension formula:

D x LC = RC

D = decoding

LC = Linguistic comprehension

RC = reading comprehension

Scarborough's Reading Rope - Many strands of language comprehension and word recognition are woven together into skilled reading.

Dyslexia is a condition that affects the ease of which a person reads, writes, and spells.

# data[].attributes.headline
Helpful Infographic or Visual Representation 

# data[].attributes.subject
Helpful Infographic or Visual Representation 

# data[].attributes.body
This website offers different resources that teachers can buy to use for the science of reading. It includes a variety of professional books for teachers, box sets, and books for the classroom.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The research behind how students learn to read is complex - but putting it into practice doesn't have to be. By mastering the key concepts and finding the right tools to supplement your core curriculum, you can implement the Science of Reading with confidence and success.

To get you started, here are some of our top Science of Reading resources to enhance your structured literacy plans this year.

As a teacher, it's always a good idea to brush up on your skills. Professional books are a great way to deepen your understanding of Science of Reading concepts and quickly learn effective instructional practices and strategies.

For instance, 7 Mighty Moves is the perfect place to start. In this professional book, Lindsay Kemeney introduces seven simple ways to modify your current literacy instruction to better align with the Science of Reading.

We'd also highly recommend the fourth edition of the Wiley Blevins classic, Phonics: From A to Z. With updated information on the Science of Reading, this best seller is packed with fresh ideas for teaching phonics and phonemic awareness.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Science of Reading Resources | Scholastic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Ignite a lifelong love of reading in your classroom through these science of reading books! Ensure effective literacy instruction with science of reading resources.

# data[].attributes.body
In part one General Knowledge and Concept show how the English language came to be. The Roman alphabet influenced the English alphabet by having 26 letters that represent 44 sounds. Phonics shows the relationship between the letters in the sounds that they make. Teaching phonics is important because it allows students to become better readers and prevents reading problems. The Foundational Standards of Reading help students develop foundational skills and reading informational texts. There are four standards that are used, print concepts, phonological awareness, phonics and word recognition, and fluency.

# data[].attributes.body
Phonemic Awareness: The ability to separate words into sounds and blend sounds into words.

Phoneme: Is the smallest segment of speech.

+Phon= Sound

+eme= Unit of language structure

Uses a language system that can determine word meaning, or can be combined with other speech sounds to make a new word.

Phonemic Awareness Skills:

Isolate - What is the first/middle/last sound in a word.

Categorize - What word has different first/middle/last sounds.

Blending Phoneme - c/a/t = cat

Segmenting Phoneme - Chat = ch/a/t (3)

Adding Phoneme - Jump, add /s/ = jumps

Deleting Phoneme - Sleep with out /s/.

Substituting Phoneme - Chose, change the /ch/ to /th/

Reversing Phoneme - Cat, change the first and last sound = tac (tack)

# data[].attributes.headline
Helpful Infographic or Visual Representation

# data[].attributes.subject
Helpful Infographic or Visual Representation

# data[].attributes.body
This website shows different age level activities for reading.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
From 2004 to 2010, a team of researchers and teachers at FCRR collected ideas and created Student Center Activities for use in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms. The activities are designed for students to practice, demonstrate, and extend their learning of what has already been taught, sometimes with teacher assistance and sometimes independently. Students can complete the activities in small groups, pairs, or individually.

Accompanying these Student Center Activities is a Teacher Resource Guide that offers important insights on differentiated instruction and how to use the Student Center materials.

Component

Name of the reading component: Phonological Awareness (PA), Phonics (P), Fluency (F), Vocabulary (V), or Comprehension (C). Each component is color coded: PA is purple, P is orange, F is red, V is green, C is blue.

Subcomponent

Name of the reading subcomponent, which is a subskill of the component.

Activity Name

Activity Number

The letters correspond with the reading component (PA, P, F, V, or C). The numbers are listed in ascending order within each component. The activities are sequenced from simple to more complex within each component and subcomponent.

Student Icon

The suggested number of students for the activity. One student icon indicates that students may work independently or with a small group. Two student icons indicate that the activity requires students to work in pairs. Two student icons with a plus sign indicate that the activity requires two or more students.

Objective

States the goal of the activity, which is aligned with the subcomponent.

Materials

Materials are located on the pages that follow the Activity Plan. Most materials are non-consumable to be prepared and used repeatedly (e.g., word cards can be laminated). Some materials are consumable and will need to be duplicated for each student doing the activity. Other materials, such as counters, are commonly found in most classrooms.

Activity Statement

One sentence explanation of the purpose of the activity and what students do to complete the activity.

Activity Steps

The first step describes how to setup the center. The second step begins with: The student, Students, Working in pairs, or Taking turns depending on the number of students needed to complete the activity. The second step also starts the series of steps to complete the activity. The next steps explain what the student does to complete the activity. The last step lists one of three accountability methods: Self-check, Peer evaluation, or Teacher evaluation.

Example

A visual of the activity and key materials.

Extensions and Adaptations

Suggestions that extend or provide an adaptation for additional practice on the skill addressed in the activity. Materials for the extensions and adaptations are included after the pages that align to the Activity Plan.

Users may use the FCRR Student Center Activities resources as long as modifications are not made, the resources will only be used for non-profit educational purposes, and the copyright belong jointly to the Florida Department of Education and the Florida Center for Reading Research. These resources may not be used for any commercial purposes. These resources on our site may be linked to but not reposted, reproduced, modified, or copied to other sites. For questions about the use of these resources, please contact The Florida Center for Reading Research at fcrr@fcrr.org.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From 2004 to 2010, a team of researchers and teachers at FCRR collected ideas and created Student Center Activities for use in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms. The activities are designed for students to practice, demonstrate, and extend their learning of what has already been taught, sometimes with teacher assistance and sometimes independently.

# data[].attributes.body
Phonological awareness is being aware of speech sounds and spoken syllables. Having phonemic awareness helps students engage with our written language so that can can easily learn to read and spell. Students who are phonemically aware know that sentences can be broken down into words and that words can be broken down into parts. Letters of the alphabet can be arranged to make words where the order of the sounds of letters matter in order to create words.

# data[].attributes.headline
Helpful Infographic or Visual Representation

# data[].attributes.subject
Helpful Infographic or Visual Representation

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
This website explains what phonological awareness is and how it is related to reading development. It includes a lot of different resources that help learn more about phonological awareness. 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Reading is the act of processing text in order to derive meaning. To learn to read, children must develop both fluent word reading and language comprehension (Gough & Tunmer,1986). Fluent word reading stems from underlying skills: phonological awareness, phonics and decoding, and automatic word recognition.

What is Phonological Awareness?

Phonological awareness is "the recognition that words have constituent sounds. Constituents of a word (e.g., book) may be distinguished in three ways: by syllables (/book/), by onsets and rimes (/b/ and /ook/), or by phonemes (/b/ and /oo/ and /k/)" ( Massachusetts 2017 English Language Arts and Literacy Framework ).

Phonological awareness, or the awareness of and ability to work with sounds in spoken language, sets the stage for decoding, blending, and, ultimately, word reading. Phonological awareness begins developing before the beginning of formal schooling and continues through third grade and beyond.

How Phonological Awareness Contributes to Reading Development

Phonological awareness is essential for reading because written words correspond to spoken words. Readers must have awareness of the speech sounds that letters and letter combinations represent in order to move from a printed word to a spoken word (reading), or a spoken word to a written word (spelling) (Moats, 2010). Awareness of the sounds in spoken language is required to learn letter-sound correspondences; to blend sounds together to decode a word; and to "map" words into long-term sight vocabulary (Kilpatrick, 2015).

Problems with phonological awareness have been identified as a major cause of reading difficulties (Share, 2011). Dyslexia is thought to stem from phonological difficulties that lead to severe problems decoding words (Vellutino et al., 2004).

"Students with good phonological awareness are in a great position to become good readers, while students with poor phonological awareness almost always struggle in reading" (Kilpatrick, 2016).

"What usually happens is that children have to fail to learn to read over a significant period of time before someone pays attention and says, 'this child seems to have a reading difficulty.'... This 'wait to fail' approach really is detrimental to the child's academic outcome, but also for the child's mental health."

Nadine Gaab
Associate Professor of Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education

How Phonological Awareness Develops

Early phonological skills include awareness of syllables and onset-rime segments. Later, children develop the ability to blend and segment individual phonemes. Advanced phonemic awareness includes the ability to manipulate phonemes by substituting, reversing, and deleting phonemes and continues to develop into third grade and beyond.

Promoting Phonological Awareness in the Classroom

The National Reading Panel (2000) found that phonological awareness can be developed through practice activities as part of core instruction. Phonological and phonemic awareness practice activities can be brief, engaging, and woven into whole-group and small-group instruction based upon students' needs.

Learn More About Phonological Awareness

Considerations for Students Learning English

English learners should have equal opportunity to meaningfully participate in all foundational skills instruction. These recommendations and resources will further support English learners to develop phonological awareness. Also, please refer to WIDA Can Dos and WIDA Instructional Supports.
Taking Bilingualism into Account

"Young English learners can acquire age appropriate phonemic awareness skills even when their English proficiency is not fully developed and teachers need to provide students opportunities to develop these skills as early as possible" (Linan-Thompson & Vaughn, 2007).

It can be a challenge for English learners to hear and produce a sound in a new language. Students who cannot hear and work with the phonemes of spoken words will have a difficult time learning how to relate these phonemes to letters when they see them in written words. ELs cannot develop phonological awareness in English until they are familiar with the sounds of English (Bear et al., 2003; Helman, 2004).

Phonological skills are more closely related to word reading ability than is language-minority status (Lesaux et al., 2008).

Phonological awareness developed in one language has been shown in studies to translate into English, enabling children who have developed awareness in their home language to utilize those skills in English as well (International Literacy Association , 2020).

Beginning phonemic awareness practice with the sounds and patterns that the two languages share is supportive. Instruction can then progress to sounds and patterns that exist in English but not the student's home language (Helman, 2004).

Since it takes multiple years for students to become proficient acquiring a second language, English learners are often still developing their understanding of phoneme relationships. To become fluent readers, however, ELs must master advanced phonemic awareness skills. ELs without advanced phonemic awareness will place higher demands on their working memory to decode. Doing so limits access to working memory for comprehension (Bear et al., 2003; Helman, 2004).

Supports for English Learners:

Create extensive experiences with fun and appealing songs, poems, chants, and read-alouds that will allow students to hear and reproduce the sound patterns of English.

"Songs and poems, with their rhythm and repetition, are easily memorized and can be used to teach phonemic awareness and print concepts to English learners. In addition to increased retention due to repetition, rhymes allow English learners to safely play with language. Rhymes exist in every language and teachers can ask students or their parents to share culturally relevant and teachable rhymes with the class and can build phonemic awareness activities around them" (Colorín Colorado **).

Be familiar with the sounds that might be difficult for students of particular language backgrounds to hear or pronounce, and provide extra practice (Helman, 2004).

Practice phonemic awareness in small groups of 4-6 students when possible (Linan-Thompson & Vaughn, 2007).

Phonemic Awareness and English Language Learners, ** from Colorín Colorado

Reading 101 for English Language Learners, ** from Colorín Colorado

Phonemic Inventories and Cultural and Linguistic Information Across Languages, from American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

5 Classroom Elements that Provide Opportunity for Dual Language Learners

5 Practical Strategies for Supporting Dual Language Learners' Language and Literacy Skills

References

Bear, D. R., Templeton, S., Helman, L. A., & Baren, T. (2003). Orthographic development and learning to read in two different languages. In G. G. García (Ed.), English learners: Reaching the highest level of English literacy (pp. 71-95). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, Reading, and Reading Disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7, 6-10.

Helman, L. A. (2004). Building on the sound system of Spanish: Insights from the alphabetic spellings of English-language learners. The Reading Teacher, 57 (5), 452-460

Kilpatrick, D. (2015). Essentials of assessing, preventing, and overcoming reading difficulties (Essentials of psychological assessment). Boston: John Wiley and Sons.

Kilpatrick, D. (2016). Equipped for reading success: A comprehensive, step by step program for developing phonemic awareness and fluent word recognition. Casey & Kirsch Publishers.

Lesaux, N., Geva, E., Koda, K., Siegel, L.S., & Shanahan, T. (2008). Development of literacy in second language learners. In August, D. and Shanahan, T., Eds. Developing Reading and Writing in Second-Language Learners: Lessons from the Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. New York: Routledge.

Linan-Thompson, S. and Vaughn, S. (2007) Research-based Methods of Reading Instruction for English Learners, Grades K-4. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.Moats, L. C. (2010). Speech to print: Language essentials for teachers. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Pub.

Share, D. L. (2011). On the role of phonology in reading acquisition: The self-teaching hypothesis. In S. A. Brady, D. Braze, & C. A. Fowler (Eds.), New directions in communication disorders research. Explaining individual differences in reading: Theory and evidence (p. 45-68). Psychology Press.

Vellutino, F., Fletcher, J., Snowling, M., & Scanlon, D. (2004). Specific reading disability (dyslexia): What have we learned in the past four decades? Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines. 45. 2-40. 10.1046/j.0021-9630.2003.00305.x.
Disclosure Statement: Reference in this website to any specific commercial products, processes, or services, or the use of any trade, firm, or corporation name is for the information and convenience of the public, and does not constitute endorsement or recommendation by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). Our office is not responsible for and does not in any way guarantee the accuracy of information in other sites accessible through links herein. DESE may supplement this list with other services and products that meet the specified criteria. For more information contact: RMB252@mass.gov.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
massachusetts department of elementary and secondary education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The goal of the Massachusetts public K-12 education system is to prepare all students for success after high school. Massachusetts public school students are leading the nation in reading and math and are at the top internationally in reading, science, and math according to the national NAEP and international PISA assessments.

# data[].attributes.body
Phonological awareness is the foundation for students to read. There are many skills that fall under phonological awareness including phonemic awareness. Teacher need to help students work on all of the skills of phonological awareness in order to help them recognize words including the different parts of words spoken and the chunks that make them up. Phonological awareness starts at an early age like preschool or kindergarten.

# data[].attributes.body
Phonics:

The system of phoneme - grapheme correspondences that are the the basic structure of an alphabetic orthography.

A strategy necessary for decoding new words and for storing those words in orthographic memory.

An essential component of effective reading instruction one of the five big ideas or pillars that should be addressed by effective reading programs.

Decoding: The ability to translate a word from print to speech. Reading.

Phoneme: Smallest unit of speech sound.

Grapheme: Represents a phoneme.

Orthography: A writing system for representing language.

English orthography has many patterns and constraints that help speed up the decoding process.

/K/ : Kiss or Click

The letter x is never doubled

English words do not end in the letter v

Consonant Blends: 2 or 3 graphemes, each one representing a phoneme and maintaining their own sounds (before or after the vowel sounds in a syllable)

The graphemes C-L represents the sounds /c/ /l/ or /cl/ (clean)

Graphemes S-T-R = phonemes /s/ /t/ /r/ or /str/ (stream)

Consonant Digraphs: One grapheme comprised of 2 letters that together represents one phoneme (before or after the vowel sound in a syllable)

Digraphs can make a unique sound such as /sh/ or be another spelling for a single consonant such as a ph for f.

The grapheme ch represents the phoneme /ch/

The grapheme sh = phoneme /sh/ (shut)

Consonant Trigraphs: One grapheme comprised of three letters that together represents one phoneme. (after a short vowel sound at the end of a syllable)

The grapheme tch represents the phoneme /ch/

The grapheme dge = phoneme /j/ (pledge)

Orthographic Mapping: A mental process of rapid recognition of all relevant layers of word structures.

Parts of speech:

To read the word unkind

Syllable: un-kind (2)

Morphemes: un-kind (2)

Graphemes: u-n-k-i-n-d (6)

Phonemes: /u/ /n/ /k/ /i/ /n/ /d/ (6)

Synthetic approach: Code based, systematic, or explicit phonics

suggested approach

follows a bottom-up model

typical sequence

1. Letter names taught

2. Sound letters stand for taught and reviewed (some rules or generalizations might be discussed)

3. Principle of blending sounds to form words is taught.

4. Opportunities to blend unknown words in context are provided (decoding text)

Analytic approach: meaning-based, indirect or implicit phonics.

Referred to as the "discovery method" (does not follow science of reading

Meaning emphasis programs

Students begin with words and are asked to deduce the sound - spelling relationship that is the focus of the lesson.

Typical sequence:

1. list of words with common phonic element

2. asked to examine the words and discover what they have in common (focus on similar sounds)

3. when common sound is discovered, the spelling for that sound might be discussed

4. Verbalize a generalization about the sound and spelling (example: letter s stands for /s/ sound)

The "Big Five" blocks of reading:

Phonemic awareness

Phonics

Fluency

Vocabulary

Comprehension

# data[].attributes.headline
Helpful Infographic or Visual Representation

# data[].attributes.subject
Helpful Infographic or Visual Representation

# data[].attributes.body
This website provides different games to use to help students learn and better understand phonics.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Young readers benefit from learning through play, and teachers can introduce familiar games to help support students' literacy growth.

Anastassiya Bezhekeneva / iStock

"You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." This maxim applies 100-fold to getting beginning readers in kindergarten through second grade to practice new phonics patterns. Vinegar: asking students to read aloud a list of 10 words with the short- a sound. Honey: asking students to play bingo with cards that all have words with the short- a sound.

Along the way, game playing also offers opportunities to teach critical educational lessons-learning rules, following them and asking questions for clarification-and the social skills of turn taking, waiting, and being a good winner as well as a good loser. These can't be practiced too often.

Use a Variety of Fun Games With Small Groups

At a time when phonics is being welcomed back into many classrooms as a proven strategy for developing young students' literacy skills, game playing is a useful tool. Keep in mind, though, that games enhance teaching; they don't replace it. They provide the rote practice that most students need to solidify their recognition of phonics patterns and that some need to an even greater degree.

As a result, most of these games work best in small groups, so that there is plenty of playtime and expert oversight. There could even be several different games going at once in a reading group, to keep the numbers even smaller and the focus even tighter.

Although there are many commercial sources of games, and even free ones to download, often simple-to-make familiar games-card games, format games, and board games-work best. These require little explanation and can be aligned directly to the day's lesson. All you need are index cards and a few formats, including a game board.

For game cards, cut 3½-by-5-inch index cards in half. On one side, write short-vowel words, blends, silent- e words, r-controlled words, or whatever phonics element your students need to practice. Save these decks and make more challenging ones as the students progress. You can create your own templates or the use samples I've created for the format and board games described below.

Incorporate Familiar Card Games

These are best for up to five players, depending on age. The player with the most cards at the end wins. Play time will vary with the size and skill of the group and the number of cards you use.

Go Fish: Make 13 four-card sets or 26 two-card sets. You might not use them all for the youngest students or the smallest groups. Players can "fish" for four words with common phonics elements (e.g., the same short vowel, vowel digraph, silent- e, or r-controlled vowel patterns). They could also fish for contrasting pairs (e.g., matching closed and silent- e syllables, as in "I have cap. Do you have cape?").

Memory: Make 24 pairs of matching words or words with matching pictures. Shuffle as many pairs as you think your students can manage comfortably, and lay them out as a grid. One by one, each player turns two cards faceup. If they match, the player keeps them. If not, they return to their spots facedown. In either case, it's the next player's turn.

Uh-Oh! (with special cards from Uno): Make a deck of 50 cards with words on them; all of which follow the same phonics pattern. Add in 15 special action cards and label them "Uh-Oh!" Five should say "Reverse" (the direction of play reverses), five of them should say "Skip" (play passes to the next player), and five should say "Draw 2" (the player draws two cards; then play passes). Each player, in turn, picks and reads cards until an action card appears.

Offer Format Games

These are usually quick games. Tic-Tac-Toe can take as little as one minute; Bingo can take less than five, though often need to learn how to search for words efficiently. Rockets and Submarines can take five minutes with two players, but play time increases with more.

Tic-Tac-Toe: A game for two players. The goal is to be the first to make a line of three (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal). Write target words in each square of the grid. Taking turns, students read and mark with their initials the words on the squares they choose. If you add lines for writing in the squares, this can also be a whole-class dictation exercise, sweetened by playing the game afterward in pairs.

Fill the boxes on as many boards as there are players with words that have your targeted phonics pattern. The words should be in different places on each board. A rotating caller picks from a stack of cards with those words written on them. Students cross out the words that are called, with the goal of being first to fill a column, row, or diagonal. When the phonics pattern is short vowels, silent- e patterns, vowel- r patterns, or a set of five-vowel digraphs, you can sort them into labeled columns. This reinforces pattern recognition and reduces searching time.

Rockets and Submarines (aka Chutes and Ladders): Students will need tokens and one die to progress from "Go" to "Stop." Fill the spaces with practice words to read aloud when a token lands there. Players shoot up with the rockets and dive down with the subs when they land on the tail squares of each. The first to reach "Stop" (or the one in the lead when time is up) wins.

Create Your Own Board Games

Board games are my personal favorite because they can be tailored by theme as well as phonics concept, and students can participate in the design. The goal is to get from start to end first. Students roll a die to move along the board and then read the word on the space where they land.

I encourage them to add special features as well as bridges back and forth. I added this one: "Read the next three words and move ahead one." A student added: "Do three jumping jacks and move ahead two." Combine game board templates in different ways to create unique-looking games. Mount them on stiff paper or in a file folder. Because the timing of board games is often unpredictable, you can announce in advance when you need to stop and declare the winner then, or mark everyone's place for when you take up the game again later.

Board games can even include aspects of comprehension if they are based on a book or social studies topic. Did you just read about the sled dog Balto, who helped carry the diphtheria vaccine across Alaska in 1925? Instead of "start" and "end," use Anchorage and Nome. Encourage students to add drawings or names of important incidents in the story for traps and shortcuts and to make their own tokens based on the characters.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Using Games to Help Improve Students' Phonics Skills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Young readers benefit from learning through play, and teachers can introduce familiar games to help support students' literacy growth. Anastassiya Bezhekeneva / iStock "You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." This maxim applies 100-fold to getting beginning readers in kindergarten through second grade to practice new phonics patterns.

# data[].attributes.body
Phonics has many different aspects to it including single letter consonants. Consonants can make different sounds whether it is a soft or hard sound or the same sound as another consonant. Phonemes are represented by single consonants, consonant digraphs and trigraphs. Decoding allows for students to read words from print and translate them into spoken words and this is because of phonics. There are two different ways to help teach phonics, the synthetic approach and the analytic approach.

# data[].attributes.body
Digraph: A two-letter combination that represents a single phoneme.

ch, sh, th, th, wh, zh, ng

Clusters (blends): Is composed of two or more consonants that blend together when sounded to form a consonant blend.

Onset: The consonants letters that precedes the vowel in a syllable.

"beginning or commencement"

Rime: The vowel and the consonant(s) that follows the vowel at the end of the syllable.

Word Family: Consists of words that are spelled with the same rime.

Rhyme: The agreement among the ending vowel and consonant phonemes in spoken words.

# data[].attributes.headline
Helpful Infographic or Visual Representation

# data[].attributes.subject
Helpful Infographic or Visual Representation

# data[].attributes.body
26 letters in the alphabet

44 phonemes

5 vowels

21 consonant letters

25 consonant sounds

3 letters with no distinctive phonemes

18 single letter consonant graphemes

7 two letter graphemes (digraphs)

The seven digraphs are ch, sh, th, th, wh, zh, ng. The digraph zh never appears is a word it is only sounded.

There are letters that represent more than one sound, c, g, s, t, w, x, y.

C = /s/ or /k/

G = /g/ or /j/

S = /s/ or /z/

T = /ch/ or /sh/

W = can be a consonant or a vowel and can be part of a digraph

X = /ks/ or /gz/ or /z/

Y = can be a consonant or a vowel

Key words can be found in the letters g (goat), s (sun), t (table), w (wagon), y (yo-yo) even though they can have more than one sound.

The word gem is not a key word for the letter G because it does not represent the phoneme we associate with the key symbol G it makes the sound we associate with the J.

A blend differs from a digraph because a digraph uses consonants to create a new sound and a blend uses consonants that already have sounds and pushes those sounds together.

# data[].attributes.body
Leveled questions: Questions that are designed to promote higher level thinking and inquiry.

Level one: Gathering information from the text.

Define, name, list, rewrite, identify.

Found in one spot in the text.

Level 2: Processing information in the text.

Found in multiple places in the text.

Compare, analyze, combine, organize, infer.

Lever three: Applying thinking from experiences to the text.

Not found in the text.

Evaluate, predict, create, construct, imagine.

Synthetic Approach: A method that follows a bottom-up model of learning to read. Also known as direct or explicit phonics.

Sequence:

1. The letter names are taught.

2. The sound that each letter stands for is taught and reviewed. Some rules or generalizations might be discussed.

3. The principle of blending sounds to form words is taught.

4. Opportunities to blend unknown words in contexts are provided.

Analytic Approach: Children begin with words and are asked to deduce the sound-spelling relationships that is the focus of the current lesson. Also known as indirect or implicit phonics, "discovery method".

Sequence:

1. A list of words with common phonic elements is shown.

2. Children are asked to examine the words and discover what they have in common, focusing on finding a similar sound.

3. When the common sound is discovered, the spelling that stands for the sound might be discussed.

4. Children are asked to verbalize a generalization about the sound and spelling.

Characteristics of strong phonics instruction:

Readiness skills.

Scope and sequence.

Blending.

Dictation.

Word awareness.

High-frequency words.

Reading connected texts.

Spelling Development: 3 Layers

Alphabetic - Represents letter and sound correspondences.

Pattern - Looks beyond letter-sound relationships and focuses on patterns that guide the grouping of letters such as vowel categories. Understanding letter patters helps students develop fluency in oral reading and writing.

Meaning Layers - Relies on groups of letters (prefixes, suffixes, Greek and Latin stems) to provide meaning.

Vowels - A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes W and Y.

Breve ^ : A diacritical mark used to indicate the short vowel sound.

Accented Syllable: A multisyllable word that receives greater stress than other syllables.

Macron - : A diacritical mark used to indicate the long vowel sound.

Schwa (upside down e): A diacritical mark used to indicate the soft sound found un unaccented syllables.

Diphthong: A syllable-vowel phoneme, represented by two letters, resembling a slide from one sound to another.

Vowel Digraph: A two letter grapheme that represents one vowel phoneme.

# data[].attributes.headline
Helpful Infographic or Visual Representation

# data[].attributes.subject
Helpful Infographic or Visual Representation

# data[].attributes.body
Vowels are the graphemes a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y and w. These vowels represent multiple phonemes including short and long sounds. There are 19 vowel phonemes.

The most common vowel-consonant pattern is VC or CVC and the vowel represents a short sound. When a one-syllable word has two vowels one of which is a e, the e is silent and the first vowel usually represents its long sound (CVCe). A single vowel in an open accented syllable often represents its long sound. The vowel-consonant pattern for an open syllable is CV. When two vowels appear together in an accented syllable, the first usually represents its long sound and the second is silent. CVVC.

# data[].attributes.body
Structured Literacy:

Is phonics-based, systematic, explicit, and highly structured with multisensory elements to help learners retain the concepts that eluded them.

Can be used in the general education classroom not just for students who are struggling.

Teachers work on phonemic awareness, decoding skills, encoding skills, sight words and reading fluency while following the scope and sequence, covering one syllable at a time until all 6 syllable types are taught.

There are many names for structured literacy like Orton-Gillingham, phonics-based reading instruction, systematic reading, and many other names.

Syllable Types:

~ Our Language can be decomposed into smallest sound units (Phonemes) and the larger sound units (syllables).

~ There are 6/7 syllable types in our language.

Closed Syllables:

Make up about 53% of all English syllables.

Contain one vowel letter that represents a short vowel sound.

End in one or more consonants.

Ex: Est-ab-lish

Open Syllables:

Contain one vowel letter that represents a long vowel.

Ends with the vowel letter. (vowel=open sound)

Ex: go, pi-lot

VCE Syllables:

Generally represent long vowel sounds.

English orthography - words in English Language does not end in the letter v so the letter e is added.

Ends in a silent e (Sneaky e).

Ex: Give, have, love

Vowel Team Syllables:

Contains 2 or more letters that represent long or short vowels, variant vowels or diphthongs.

Ends with the vowel sound or a consonant.

Vowel teams: 2 vowels together, 1 long vowel sound, plEAd, plAY, snOW.

Vowel diphthong: 2 vowels together, 1 brand new vowel sound, OWl,OUch, fAIl.

R-Controlled Syllables:

When a vowel is followed by r, the letter affects the sound of the vowel.

Bossy R

Consonant +le Syllables:

When -le appears at the end of the word and is proceeded by a consonant, the consonant -le form the final syllable.

There is a limited number of consonant -le syllables.

-ble , -cle , -dle , -fle , -gle , -tle , -ple , -zle , -kle

Always makes the schwa sound.

Keep the consonant +le together when dividing syllables.

Syllables and Accent Patterns

In multisyllabic words, at least one syllable receives more emphasis, or greater stress, than the other syllables.

In multisyllabic words, more than one syllable can be stressed.

The vowel phoneme is the most prominent part of the syllable. Vowels behave differently in accented and unaccented syllables.

•Your con’ duct is exemplary.

•She will con duct’ the orchestra tonight.

We identify the accented syllable by placing an accent mark (‘) after the syllable

Affixes (prefixes and suffixes) typically form separate syllables. The accent usually falls on or within the root.

•un like’ ly,   cold’ est,   un bend’ able,   move’ ment

In compound words, the primary accent usually falls on or within the first word.

•snow’ man,   some’ thing,   cow’ boy

The placement of the accent will differ in homographs (spelled the same) that are a noun or a verb. The accent usually falls on the first syllable of a noun.

•What is this object? (noun) = ob’ ject

•Do you object? (verb) = ob ject’

If a word contains a double consonant (VCCV), the accent usually falls on the syllable that closes with the first letter of the double consonant.

•bet’ ter,   thun’ der,   trum’ pet

Most multisyllabic words ending with the suffix -tion, -sion, or -ic, the primary accent will fall on the syllable preceding the suffix

•ex ten’ sion,   mag net’ ic,   men’ tion

If the last syllable contains a vowel team followed by a consonant, the syllable is most often accented.

•main tain’,  con ceal’,  com plain’

•When there is no other clue, the accent will usually fall on the first syllable of a two syllable word.

•fin’ ish

# data[].attributes.headline
Helpful Infographic or Visual Representation

# data[].attributes.subject
Helpful Infographic or Visual Representation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A research-based method of instruction that helps struggling readers is appropriate to use with all students.

The first time I met my adult student Mary, she was skeptical but desperate. She was a treasured bus driver for the local school district and had recently received word that the route she had driven for 20 years was about to change. She would have to navigate a new route filled with unfamiliar street signs. Mary had come to the literacy council where I worked to confront the secret she had kept for decades from coworkers, friends, and family: She couldn't read.

At first, she doubted I could help, and I have to admit, so did I. I had to imagine other, more qualified teachers had tried and failed before.

Although this was my first formal teaching position, I wasn't totally lacking in experience. The prior summer I had prepared for teaching at the literacy council by taking a workshop in the Wilson Reading System, a literacy program based on the Orton-Gillingham method. I practiced the method with students at the Children's Dyslexia Center in New Jersey and found that the approach, when followed with fidelity, effectively taught reading to children in even the most difficult cases. Nothing had seemed to work for Mary before, but maybe no one had given this method a try.

To our amazement, in a few short sessions the concepts that had eluded Mary for decades began to stick, until she was reading and spelling on her own for the first time in her life.

More than once we ended sessions with tears welling, touched by her newfound access to print. But equally palpable was the realization that she could have learned to read all along but hadn't been exposed to the right approach.

What Is Structured Literacy?

Structured Literacy is a term coined in 2016 by the International Dyslexia Association to unify the many names for this research-based approach. Also known as Orton-Gillingham, phonics-based reading instruction, systematic reading instruction, and synthetic phonics (among others), this method has been around for nearly a century.

In the late 1920s, physician Samuel T. Orton partnered with Teacher's College educator Anna Gillingham to create a method of reading instruction that would better support the needs of his patients with reading difficulties. He believed that these difficulties were brain-based and not supported by the popular rote memorization method used to teach reading at the time.

The method Orton and Gillingham devised was phonics-based, systematic, explicit, and highly structured, with multisensory elements to help learners retain the concepts that eluded them. This is the same method we call Structured Literacy today.

Because Structured Literacy was originally devised to support students who struggle with reading, many educators assume that the approach is only for remedial instruction. But Structured Literacy is appropriate for the general education classroom because it supports the reading acquisition of all students.

When a Structured Literacy program is taught in general ed classrooms, teachers may find that 5 to 10 percent of students will still struggle to master the concepts and need to be referred to intervention to intensify instruction. A unified Structured Literacy approach within a school's Response-to-Intervention (RTI) framework allows teachers in each tier to use the same curriculum to scaffold the learning and intensify the instruction as needed, with extra repetition, smaller group sizes, and/or increased instructional time.

How It Works

In Structured Literacy instruction, teachers guide students through systematic mastery of the smallest units of sounds (phonemes) and build upon that knowledge by introducing new, more complex material (morphemes and lexemes) in a structured and cumulative way. Structured Literacy teachers are explicit about the ways English is predictable and unpredictable by teaching the linguistic rules behind spelling and the exceptions to those rules.

In Structured Literacy lessons, teachers work on phonemic awareness, decoding skills (blending phonemes to make words), encoding skills (segmenting words into phonemes or morphemes), sight words, and reading fluency. Teachers follow the scope and sequence, covering one syllable at a time until all six syllable types are taught (closed, open, vowel-consonant- e, r-controlled, vowel pair/diphthong, and consonant- le).

Teachers cover these key components of reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonological awareness, reading (decoding), spelling (encoding), sight words, reading fluency, and comprehension.

Why It Works

In Structured Literacy instruction, teachers review previously taught concepts in each lesson and introduce new material to keep the student stimulated and engaged. Built into this design is the understanding that while a student who doesn't struggle with reading difficulties can master a concept in one to five exposures, a student who struggles with reading difficulties may take upward of 25 exposures to master a concept.

Structured Literacy teachers are also diagnostic, evaluating concept mastery both informally in each lesson (through reading observation and written dictation) and formally at the end of each step in the scope and sequence. Teachers respond to student progress or lack thereof by moving at a pace led by student progress, not the curriculum.

There are many published programs that make implementing Structured Literacy in your classroom easier by providing lesson plan maps, scope and sequence, and detailed explanations of the spelling rules that you'll need to explicitly teach to your students. Some of the programs popular with districts, schools, and teachers are:

I stopped working with Mary after a year due to a cross-country move. I helped her new tutor get training and left my materials with him so Mary could continue the program. A few years ago, I received an email written by Mary herself: "Dear Jessica, the seed you planted all those years ago is still growing. Just thought you'd like to know."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Powerful Approach to Reading Instruction

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A research-based method of instruction that helps struggling readers is appropriate to use with all students.

# data[].attributes.body
The syllable is a unit of pronunciation. In each unit of pronunciation there is one vowel phoneme. In multisyllable words there is one syllable that receives more emphasis or greater stress than the other syllables. This is a stressed or accented syllable. Prefixes and suffixes generally form separate syllables and the accent usually falls on the root word. In a compound word the primary accent usually falls on the first "word". When the vowel phoneme in the last and closed syllable of a word is composed of two vowel letters, that syllable is generally accented. If the first vowel is a two syllable word is followed by a single consonant, that consonant often begins the second syllable.

# data[].attributes.body
Morphemes: The smallest unit of meaningful parts in our language.

Example: Cats = 2 morphemes, cat + s.

Morphology: The study of meaningful units of language and how they are combined in word formation.

Is more than word parts.

Can be categorized by both language of origin and grammatical role.

Free Morphemes: A morpheme that can stand alone.

Example: Tree

Bound Morpheme: A morpheme that must be attached to another morpheme in order to have meaning.

Example: Prefixes (re), Suffixes (ful), Plurals (s, es)

Word Types:

Simple: One free morpheme

Ex: Chair Boat.

Compound: 2 free morphemes

Ex: Teacup, Houseboat

Complex: One free morpheme and at least one bound.

Ex: Tables, Undone

Compound - Complex: 2 free morphemes and one or more bound.

Ex: Bookkeepers, Unforgettable

Morphophonological:

Phonological: We spell sound by sound.

Morphological: We also spell by morphemes.

Ex: Past tense of spill, sounds like spilld, spelled like spilled.

Morphological Awareness: Is explicitly thinking about the smallest units of meaning in language, which are called morphemes, and how they come together to provide meaning about the words we hear and read.

Includes: prefixes, suffixes, root words, and bound roots.

The simple view of reading:

Word recognition + Language comprehension = Reading comprehension

Benefits of teaching morphology:

Decoding

Spelling

Vocabulary

Fluency

Comprehension

Phonology (Pronunciation)

Affix: Refers to a prefix and suffix.

Inflectional Suffix: Changes number, affects verb tense, indicates comparison, or denotates possession.

Derivational Suffix: Affects meaning and may change the part of speech.

Comparative Suffix: -er compares two things.

Superlative Suffix: -est denotes a comparison of 3 or more things.

Contraction: A shortened form of two or more words.

# data[].attributes.headline
Helpful Infographic or Visual Representation

# data[].attributes.subject
Helpful Infographic or Visual Representation

# data[].attributes.body
English is a morphophonological language. Where structural analysis is a word identification skill that involves the use of prefixes, suffixes, root words, the "words" in compound words, and the apostrophes in contractions to discover word meaning.

When writing words with suffixes they can change the spelling of words or keep the spelling the same. Add -es to words that end in a Y preceded by a consonant and to words that end in an S, Sh, Ch, X, or Z. Add just an S to most other words. Change the final Y to I when a consonant proceeds the Y. Do not change the final Y to I when a vowel precedes the Y. Do not change the final Y to I when adding a suffix that begins with an I to a word that ends in a Y preceded by a consonant. Drop the final silent E before adding a suffix that begins with a vowel. Keep the final silent E when adding a suffix that begins with a consonant.