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Concepts and Research

Phonemic Awareness (PA) is:

1. the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words and the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds (Yopp, 1992; see References).

2. essential to learning to read in an alphabetic writing system, because letters represent sounds or phonemes. Without phonemic awareness, phonics makes little sense.

3. fundamental to mapping speech to print. If a child cannot hear that "man" and "moon" begin with the same sound or cannot blend the sounds /rrrrrruuuuuunnnnn/ into the word "run", he or she may have great difficulty connecting sounds with their written symbols or blending sounds to make a word.

4. essential to learning to read in an alphabetic writing system.

5. a strong predictor of children who experience early reading success.

An important distinction:

Phonemic awareness is NOT phonics.

Phonemic awareness is AUDITORY and does not involve words in print.

Phonemic Awareness is important ...

It requires readers to notice how letters represent sounds. It primes readers for print.

It gives readers a way to approach sounding out and reading new words.

It helps readers understand the alphabetic principle (that the letters in words are systematically represented by sounds).

...but difficult:

Although there are 26 letters in the English language, there are approximately 40 phonemes, or sound units, in the English language. (NOTE: the number of phonemes varies across sources.)

Sounds are represented in 250 different spellings (e.g., /f/ as in ph, f, gh, ff).

The sound units (phonemes) are not inherently obvious and must be taught. The sounds that make up words are "coarticulated;" that is, they are not distinctly separate from each other.

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Definitions of key PA terminology:

Phoneme: A phoneme is a speech sound. It is the smallest unit of language and has no inherent meaning.

Phonemic Awareness: The ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words, and the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds (Yopp, 1992; see References). Phonemic awareness involves hearing language at the phoneme level.

Phonics: use of the code (sound-symbol relationships to recognize words.

Phonological Awareness: The ability to hear and manipulate the sound structure of language. This is an encompassing term that involves working with the sounds of language at the word, syllable, and phoneme level.

Continuous Sound: A sound that can be prolonged (stretched out) without distortion (e.g., r, s, a, m).

Onset-Rime: The onset is the part of the word before the vowel; not all words have onsets. The rime is the part of the word including the vowel and what follows it.

Segmentation: The separation of words into phonemes.

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Examples of Phonemes

The word "sun" has three phonemes: /s/ /u/ /n/. The table below shows different linguistic units from largest (sentence) to smallest (phoneme).

The word "shut" also has three phonemes: /sh/ /u/ /t/.

Examples of Phonemic Awareness Skills

Blending: What word am I trying to say? Mmmmm...oooooo...p.

Segmentation (first sound isolation): What is the first sound in mop? /m/

Segmentation (last sound isolation): What is the last sound in mop? /p/

Segmentation (complete): What are all the sounds you hear in mop? /m/ /o/ /p/

What Teachers Should Know

What Teachers Should Be Able to Do

Definition of phonemic awareness (PA).

The relation of phonemic awareness to early reading skills.

The developmental continuum of phonemic awareness skills.

Which phonemic awareness skills are more important and when they should be taught.

Features of phonemes and tasks that influence task difficulty.

Terminology (phoneme, PA, continuous sound, onset-rime, segmentation).

Assess PA and diagnose difficulties.

Produce speech sounds accurately.

Use a developmental continuum to select/design PA instruction.

Select examples according to complexity of skills, phonemes, word types, and learner experience.

Model and deliver PA lessons.

Link PA to reading and spelling.

Evaluate the design of instructional materials.

(modified from Moats, 1999; see References)

What Does the Lack of Phonemic Awareness Look Like?

Children lacking phonemic awareness skills cannot:

group words with similar and dissimilar sounds (mat, mug, sun)

blend and split syllables (f oot)

blend sounds into words (m_a_n)

segment a word as a sequence of sounds (e.g., fish is made up of three phonemes, /f/ , /i/, /sh/)

detect and manipulate sounds within words (change r in run to s).

(Kame'enui, et. al., 1997; see References)
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Phonemic Awareness Research Says:

"The best predictor of reading difficulty in kindergarten or first grade is the inability to segment words and syllables into constituent sound units (phonemic awareness)" (Lyon, 1995; see References).

The ability to hear and manipulate phonemes plays a causal role in the acquisition of beginning reading skills (Smith, Simmons, & Kame'enui, 1998; see References).

There is considerable evidence that the primary difference between good and poor readers lies in the good reader's phonological processing ability.

The effects of training phonological awareness and learning to read are mutually supportive. "Reading and phonemic awareness are mutually reinforcing: Phonemic awareness is necessary for reading, and reading, in turn, improves phonemic awareness still further." (Shaywitz, 2003, see References)

Phonological awareness is teachable and promoted by attention to instructional variables (Smith, Simmons, & Kame'enui, 1998; see References).
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University of Oregon Center on Teaching and Learning

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Phonemic Awareness: Concepts and Research

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Concepts and Research the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words and the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds (Yopp, 1992; see References). essential to learning to read in an alphabetic writing system, because letters represent sounds or phonemes.

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Concepts and Research

What is the Alphabetic Principle?

The alphabetic principle is composed of two parts:

Alphabetic Understanding: Words are composed of letters that represent sounds.

Phonological Recoding: Using systematic relationships between letters and phonemes (letter-sound correspondence) to retrieve the pronunciation of an unknown printed string or to spell words. Phonological recoding consists of:

Regular Word Reading

A regular word is a word in which all the letters represent their most common sounds. Regular words are words that can be decoded (phonologically recoded).

Because our language is alphabetic, decoding is an essential and primary means of recognizing words. There are simply too many words in the English language to rely on memorization as a primary word identification strategy (Bay Area Reading Task Force, 1997, see References).

Beginning decoding ("phonological recoding") is the ability to:

read from left to right, simple, unfamiliar regular words.

generate the sounds for all letters.

blend sounds into recognizable words.

Beginning spelling is the ability to:

translate speech to print using phonemic awareness and knowledge of letter-sounds.

Progression of Regular Word Reading

Sounding Out
(saying each individual sound out loud)

Saying the Whole Word
(saying each individual sound and pronouncing the whole word)

Sight Word Reading
(sounding out the word in your head, if necessary, and saying the whole word)

Automatic Word Reading
(reading the word without sounding it out)

Simple Regular Words - Listed According to Difficulty

Word Type

Reason for Relative Ease/Difficulty

Examples

Irregular Word Reading

Although decoding is a highly reliable strategy for a majority of words, some irregular words in the English language do not conform to word-analysis instruction (e.g., the, was, night). Those words are referred to as irregular words.

Irregular Word: A word that cannot be decoded because either (a) the sounds of the letters are unique to that word or a few words, or (b) the student has not yet learned the letter-sound correspondences in the word (Carnine, Silbert & Kame'enui, 1997; see References).

Texas Center for Reading and Language Arts, 1998; see References

In beginning reading there will be passages that contain words that are "decodable" yet the letter sound correspondences in those words may not yet be familiar to students. In this case, we also teach these words as irregular words.

To strengthen students' reliance on the decoding strategy and communicate the utility of that strategy, we recommend not introducing irregular words until students can reliably decode words at a rate of one letter-sound per second. At this point, irregular words may be introduced, but on a limited scale.

The key to irregular word recognition is not how to teach them. The teaching procedure is simple. The critical design considerations are how many to introduce and how many to review.

Advanced Word Analysis

Advanced word analysis involves being skilled at phonological processing (recognizing and producing the speech sounds in words) and having an awareness of letter-sound correspondences in words.

Advanced word analysis skills include:

Knowledge of common letter combinations and the sounds they make

Identification of VCe pattern words and their derivatives

Knolwedge of prefixes, suffixes, and roots, and how to use them to "chunk" word parts within a larger word to gain access to meaning.

Knowledge of advanced word analysis skills is essential if students are to progress in their knowledge of the alphabetic writing system and gain the ability to read fluently and broadly.

Texas Center for Reading and Language Arts, 1998; see References
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Definitions of key Alphabetic Principle terminology:

Alphabetic Awareness: Knowledge of letters of the alphabet coupled with the understanding that the alphabet represents the sounds of spoken language and the correspondence of spoken sounds to written language.

Alphabetic Understanding: Understanding that the left-to-right spellings of printed words represent their phonemes from first to last.

Continuous Sound: A sound that can be prolonged (stretched out) without distortion (e.g., r, s, a, m).

Decodable Text: Text in which the majority of words can be identified using their most common sounds. Reading materials in which a high percentage of words are linked to phonics lessons using letter-sound correspondences children have been taught. Decodable text is an intermediate step between reading words in isolation and authentic literature. These texts are used to help students focus their attention on the sound-symbol relationships they are learning. Effective decodable texts contain some sight words that allow for the development of more interesting stories.

Decoding: The process of using letter-sound correspondences to recognize words.

Grapheme: The individual letter or sequence of written symbols (e.g., a, b, c) and the multiletter units (e.g., ch, sh, th) that are used to represent a single phoneme.

Irregular Word: A word that cannot be decoded because either (a) the sounds of the letters are unique to that word or a few words, or (b) the student has not yet learned the letter-sound correspondences in the word.

Letter Combination: A group of consecutive letters that represents a particular sound(s) in the majority of words in which it appears.

Letter-Sound Correspondence: A phoneme (sound) associated with a letter.

Most Common Sound: The sound a letter most frequently makes in a short, one syllable word, (e.g., red, blast). Click here to see a list of the most common sounds of single letters.

Nonsense or Pseudoword: A word in which the letters make their most common sounds but the word has no commonly recognized meaning (e.g., tist, lof).

Orthography: A system of symbols for spelling.

Phonological Recoding: Translation of letters to sounds to words to gain lexical access to the word.

Regular Word: A word in which all the letters represent their most common sound.

Sight Word Reading: The process of reading words at a regular rate without vocalizing the individual sounds in a word (i.e., reading words the fast way).

Sounding Out: The process of saying each sound that represents a letter in a word without stopping between sounds.

Stop Sound: A sound that cannot be prolonged (stretched out) without distortion. A short, plosive sound (e.g., p, t, k).

VCe Pattern Word: Word pattern in which a single vowel is followed by a consonant, which, in turn, is followed by a final e (i.e., lake, stripe, and smile).

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Alphabetic Principle Skills

To develop the alphabetic principle across grades K-3, students need to learn two essential skills:

Letter-sound correspondences: comprised initially of individual letter sounds and progresses to more complex letter combinations.

Word reading: comprised initially of reading simple CVC words and progresses to compound words, multisyllabic words, and sight words.

Kindergarten Skills

Letter-sound correspondence: identifies and produces the most common sound associated with individual letters.

Decoding: blends the sounds of individual letters to read one-syllable words.
When presented with the word fan the student will say "/fffaaannn/, fan."

Sight word reading: Recognizes and reads words by sight (e.g., I, was, the, of).

First Grade Skills

Letter-sound and letter-combination knowledge: produces the sounds of the most common letter sounds and combinations (e.g., th, sh, ch, ing).

Decoding: sounds out and reads words with increasing automaticity, including words with consonant blends (e.g., mask, slip, play), letter combinations (e.g., fish, chin, bath), monosyllabic words, and common word parts (e.g., ing, all, ike).

Sight words: Reads the most common sight words automatically (e.g., very, some, even, there).

2nd and 3rd Grade Skills

Letter-Sound Knowledge: produces the sounds that correspond to frequently used vowel diphthongs (e.g., ou, oy, ie) and digraphs (e.g., sh, th, ea).

Decoding and Word Recognition:

applies advanced phonic elements (digraphs and diphthongs), special vowel spellings, and word endings to read words.

Reads compound words, contractions, possessives, and words with inflectional word endings.

Uses word context and order to confirm or correct word reading efforts (e.g., does it make sense?).

Reads multisyllabic words using syllabication and word structure (e.g. base/root word, prefixes, and suffixes) in word reading.

Sight word reading: increasing number of words read accurately and automatically.

What Teachers Should Know

What Teachers Should Be Able to Do

Components and definition of alphabetic principle.

The relation of phonemic awareness & decoding.

The critical stages in learning to decode words.

Features that influence the difficulty of word recognition.

Critical differences between regular and irregular words.

Terminology (alphabetic principle, orthography, grapheme, phonological recoding)

Sequence letter-sound correspondences to enhance word recognition.

Assess & diagnose decoding skills.

Select examples according to complexity of word type and letter sounds.

Explicitly teach letter sounds, blending, sight word, and connected text reading.

Give corrective feedback.

Evaluate design of materials.

(modified from Moats, 1999; see References)

What Does the Lack of Alphabetic Understanding Look Like?

Children who lack alphabetic understanding cannot:

Understand that words are composed of letters.

Associate an alphabetic character (i.e., letter) with its corresponding phoneme or sound.

Identify a word based on a sequence of letter-sound correspondences (e.g., that "mat" is made up of three letter-sound correspondences /m/ /a/ /t/).

Blend letter-sound correspondences to identify decodable words.

Use knowledge of letter-sound correspondences to identify words in which letters represent their most common sound.

Identify and manipulate letter-sound correspondences within words.

Read pseudowords (e.g., "tup", with reasonable speed).

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Alphabetic Principle Research Says:

Letter-sound knowledge is prerequisite to effective word identification. A primary difference between good and poor readers is the ability to use letter-sound correspondence to identify words (Juel, 1991; see References).

Students who acquire and apply the alphabetic principle early in their reading careers reap long-term benefits (Stanovich, 1986; see References).

Teaching students to phonologically recode words is a difficult, demanding, yet achievable goal with long-lasting effects (Liberman & Liberman, 1990; see References).

The combination of instruction in phonological awareness and letter-sounds appears to be the most favorable for successful early reading (Haskell, Foorman, & Swank, 1992; see References).

Good readers must have a strategy to phonologically recode words (Ehri, 1991; NRP, 2000; see References).

During the alphabetic phase, reading must have lots of practice phonologically recoding the same words to become familiar with spelling patterns (Ehri, 1991; see References).

Awareness of the relation between sounds and the alphabet can be taught (Liberman & Liberman, 1990; see References).

Because our language is alphabetic, decoding is an essential and primary means of recognizing words. There are simply too many words in the English language to rely on memorization as a primary word identification strategy (Bay Area Reading Task Force, 1996; see References).

The table below illustrates the important correlation between the ability to decode words and reading comprehension.
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University of Oregon Center on Teaching and Learning

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Alphabetic Principle: Concepts and Research

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Concepts and Research The alphabetic principle is composed of two parts: Alphabetic Understanding: Words are composed of letters that represent sounds. Phonological Recoding: Using systematic relationships between letters and phonemes (letter-sound correspondence) to retrieve the pronunciation of an unknown printed string or to spell words.

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University of Oregon UO Home -College of Education

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The National Reading Panel recommends systematic and explicit phonics instruction. Children progress through a sequence of phonics skills as they learn to read.

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A video is available on the website.  The first 5-6 minutes are recommended.

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Phonics instruction is central to kindergarten and first grade instruction - beginning by learning the letters of the alphabet, their shape, and then the sounds of the letters.

Next, children learn additional sounds and the letters that represent them. In 2nd and 3rd grades, children review learned sound-symbol correspondences and learn multi-syllabic decoding. Future elementary phonics instruction will focus on word analysis and strengthening and securing all prior phonics learning.

Before jumping in to learning about Phonics, test your knowledge by taking this pre-test.

Phonics is defined as the relationship between the sounds of oral language and the letters or spellings that represent those sounds when written. Children use phonics skills when they apply their knowledge of sounds and spelling patterns to their reading and writing of words. This overview of the what, how, and why of phonics instruction:

Values phonics as a foundational skill for learning to read that must be taught systematically and explicitly

Takes a culturally relevant-sustaining approach to the teaching of phonics, which considers how the languages, cultures, identities, and interests of children are relevant to and integrated into our teaching of phonics

Recognizes that the teaching of phonics skills is one aspect of literacy that must be taught alongside of other areas such as comprehension, vocabulary, knowledge development, and criticality

WHY Phonics is Critical to Reading Development

Phonics underlies children's ability to read and spell words. When children understand that oral language is written as print and how the spelling of words is related to speech sounds, they can decode (break apart and blend) words to read, and they can encode (segment) words to spell. A lack of phonics skills in the early years can lead to children relying primarily on other, less reliable strategies like meaning to figure out words. It can also lead to an inability to decode/chunk longer multisyllabic words that children encounter later on in reading.

Phonics is connected to the other areas of literacy instruction. Phonemic awareness is the process by which readers start understanding how sounds make up words, and phonics is the understanding of how letters and sounds are connected. Early literacy skills like these lead directly into the process of decoding. The more skilled a reader is with decoding, the more fluent they become. The impact of phonics learning is far-reaching. As phonics increases, so too does the reader's ability to comprehend what they are reading. And, once children can spell words, they can write with more fluency and meaning. The big idea is that phonics instruction, the knowledge of letter-sound patterns applied to reading and writing, is a means to becoming a reader and writer. It is only one part of the journey. Becoming the readers and writers our children are capable of becoming requires not just acquiring the skills, but participating in instruction that is meaningful to them, and aligned to their identities, languages, cultures, and interests.

WHAT is Phonics

Foundational Skills that Underlie Phonics

Phonemic awareness: the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds-called phonemes-in spoken words

Print concepts: the understanding that what we say can be represented in print. And that in print, letters make up words and words make up phrases and sentences that collectively represent meaning

Alphabetic knowledge: the ability to identify each specific letter, know the difference between them, and begin to write them

If we consider our English language to have three layers, phonics represents a firm understanding of the first two layers and it significantly influences the third:

1. The alphabetic layer, in which basic letter-sound correspondences are learned

2. The pattern layer, where children examine consonant-vowel patterns

3. The meaning and morphological layer, where children learn new vocabulary and make generalizations about the meaning structures of affixes, prefixes, and suffixes on words

HOW Do We Teach Phonics

Explicitly and Systematically

Explicit and systematic instruction, as defined by the ILA, is critical to teaching phonics effectively:

" Explicit means that the initial introduction of a letter-sound relationship, or phonics skill, is directly stated to students. For example, we tell students that the /s/ sound is represented by the letter s. This is more effective than the discovery method because it does not rely on prerequisite skills that some students might not have. Being explicit, however, does not mean that students cannot play with letters and sounds during the instructional cycle. In fact, word awareness activities like word building and word sorts allow students to become flexible in their knowledge of sound-spellings and solidifies that learning.

"Being systematic means that we follow a continuum from easy to more complex skills, slowly introducing each new skill. Systematic instruction includes a review and repetition cycle to achieve mastery and goes from the known to the new in a way that makes the new learning more obvious and easier for students to grasp. For example, after students learn to read simple short-vowel CVC words like run, cat, and hop, they are often introduced to the skill final-e as in the words hate and hope."

While a teacher's knowledge of how phonics typically develops will help them to fill gaps in children's development, we need to recognize that all children develop differently and will need different intensities of phonics instruction. Instruction should start with an assessment to determine what skills children need, and how often they need them

In Service of Reading and Writing

Phonics should be taught in service of reading and writing, not in place of other instruction needed to learn, read, and write well. The goal of phonics instruction is to decode and encode words to read, write, and spell (as opposed to the goal being to learn a set of skills in isolation. Knowing what "r-controlled vowel" means, for example, is only useful as it helps you to decode and encode). Spelling and writing are critical components of phonics instruction. Learning to decode and encode are connected, simultaneous processes that require the same set of skills (phonics knowledge: the knowledge of letters and sounds and how words work).

With Multiple Approaches

Traditionally, there have been two basic approaches for teaching phonics:

Analytic instruction, where we compare words to identify patterns or examine similarities in word families, like the -at word family, and then apply this knowledge to new words.

Synthetic phonics, which focuses on individual sounds and teaches children to blend individual letter sounds together to form words (e.g., c-a-t/cat).

Both approaches to phonics, analytic and synthetic, should be used when teaching phonics, and can be done explicitly and systematically. A contemporary, holistic approach to phonics instruction that takes both approaches into account is "word study." Word study is an instructional methodology to teach the alphabetic and pattern layers of the writing system.

By Utilizing a Child's Home Language

A child who is already decoding in their home language can capitalize on that strength by understanding the similarities and differences inherent in decoding in their home language and English (Genesee, 2012). An educators' awareness of the sound spellings in English that do and do not occur in a child's home language (for example, sounds like d, p, t are the same in English and Spanish) will help them devote more instructional time to the sound spellings that are not as likely to transfer between the child's home language and English (such as short vowels or the sound of j). Instruction of these sounds to English learners is best aided by visual clues and by clear demonstrations of the articulation of sounds.

Because children learning English may develop an understanding of the alphabet and letter-sound correspondence in English before fully developing phonemic awareness in English, educators can regard phonics as a pathway to phonemic awareness, and be willing to work on phonemic awareness as they work on phonics (Barone and Xu, 2008), as opposed to waiting to teach phonics until phonological awareness is mastered.

When assessing English learners on their knowledge of sounds in English (school English is white mainstream English, which is the language of instruction), educators must keep in mind that children with different home languages may be aware of sound-symbol connections and are just pronouncing them differently. It is particularly important to be aware of these aspects of pronunciation when assessing letter sounds, so that the assessment provides accurate depiction of what children know (Barone and Xu, 2008).

In addition to utilizing knowledge of a child's home language in the instruction and assessment of school English, multilanguage learners also benefit from the integration of vocabulary and phonics instruction. A first grade emergent English learner working to decode the short vowel patterns in bag, rag, wag, nag, tag, and sag, must also understand the meaning of these words.

With a Gradual Release Approach

An approach to teaching phonics that includes a brief whole class mini-lesson that names the concept or skill of focus is important. Instruction within balanced literacy practices will then help show children HOW to use the skills in reading and writing. Pointing out how we use skills and using clear, consistent language related to what skills are and how to use them-through modeling, guiding, and independent practice-will help children to transfer skills.

It is especially critical that in the early years (K/1) we are modeling, getting children to watch us read and write, while explicitly naming behaviors we are using to read and write. This begins with modeling concepts of print. Adding in word study to small group reading instruction is particularly beneficial because instruction can be differentiated for the small group and practiced in the context of instructional level text, providing the appropriate amount of challenge.

Across a Range of Texts

Children should have access to a diverse set of texts in which to practice phonics skills. Practice in decodable texts early on can be useful, but not sufficient. In other words, these texts should not be the only type of text they have access to. Quality texts (that are not considered "decodable") will give children a chance to apply their knowledge of phonics skills to decode words while also comprehending; decodable texts often lack story line and depth.

We know what does work, and research tells us what does not work:

Phonics worksheets

Spelling lists to memorize

Teaching only phonics "rules"

"Drill and kill" type teaching of phonics through only flash cards and memorization

Inappropriate alphabet key words

Focus on phonics above all other areas of reading development

Focus on the teaching of reading skills, including phonics

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Phonics instruction is central to kindergarten and first grade instruction - beginning by learning the letters of the alphabet, their shape, and then the sounds of the letters. Next, children learn additional sounds and the letters that represent them. In 2nd and 3rd grades, children review learned sound-symbol correspondences and learn multi-syllabic decoding.

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These strategies can help students who are able to decode well but have difficulty understanding what they read-and they're beneficial for all students.

monkeybusinessimages / iStock

When we think of reading issues, we often imagine children who struggle to decode the letters in text and turn them into spoken language. This type of struggling reader has a very difficult time figuring out what many of the words are and has poor phonological (speech-sound) skills. However, there are also many students who sound like they're reading beautifully but have difficulty with understanding vocabulary and figurative language, inferencing, verbal reasoning, grammatical development, and oral expression.

As children get older, if they are decoding text well we assume they are reading well. Once a person learns to decode, reading comprehension becomes more about language comprehension and focus. At this transition, starting around third grade, teachers may begin to notice some students who decode text fluently but are not understanding.

Since this type of struggling reader is less noticeable than ones who have difficulty decoding, they often slip under the radar until they begin to fail standardized state comprehension tests. Even then, their issues may go undetected for a long time, resulting in middle and high school students who sound like they're reading but understand nothing that they have read.

These struggling readers should be targeted for remediation-the earlier the better. However, remediation consisting of practice passages and questions may be ineffective as it focuses too narrowly on text-based skills.

Supporting Students Who Struggle With Comprehension

Here are five strategies to try out with students who read fluently but struggle to comprehend what they're reading.

1. Target overall comprehension of language: Recent research reveals that reading comprehension difficulties may stem from an underlying oral language weakness that exists from early childhood, before reading is even taught. It turns out that students who have poor reading comprehension also often understand fewer spoken words and less of what they hear, and have worse spoken grammar. So, to address reading comprehension deficits effectively, educators may have to use an approach that teaches vocabulary, thinking skills, and comprehension first in spoken language and then in reading and written language.

2. Teach vocabulary: Because students with poor comprehension often have poor vocabulary skills and understand less of what they hear, it's helpful to teach the meanings of new words through the use of multisensory strategies like graphic organizers, pictures, and mnemonics. Improving their overall language skills increases the likelihood that they will understand the words they encounter in written text. Since it is impossible to know every word one might encounter, students should be taught about the different types of context clues and how to use them to determine the meaning of unknown words.

Discussing or activating prior knowledge,

Developing questions while reading,

Connecting what they are reading to another text, something they have seen, or something they have experienced,

Visualizing or picturing what they are reading,

Making predictions about what will come next in the text,

Looking back for keywords and rereading in order to clarify or answer questions, and

Thinking aloud to model the strategies and thought processes needed for comprehension.

3. Teach thinking strategies: Once students have the vocabulary to be able to make it through a text, they often struggle with the complex thinking or sustained attention required to keep up with all of the important details and to access information that is implied but not directly stated. Teachers can instruct students on cognitive strategies they can use. Many common text reading strategies-such as annotation, SQ3R, and the KWL chart -make use of these thinking strategies, including:

Students can learn and then use the strategies that work best for them depending on the text they're reading. Pulling deeper meaning out of text through the use of thinking strategies can be beneficial not just to reading comprehension but also to writing.

Questioner, who poses questions about parts of the lesson, discussion, or text that are unclear or confusing, or to help make connections with previously learned material.

Summarizer, who sums up each important point or detail from the lesson, discussion, or text.

Clarifier, who tries to address the Questioner's issues and make sure that parts they found confusing are clear to others.

Predictor, who makes a prediction about what will happen next based on what was presented, discussed, or read,

4. Have students practice reciprocal teaching: Once taught, cognitive strategies can be consistently practiced and implemented through the use of reciprocal teaching, which encourages students to take a leadership role in their learning and begin to think about their thought process while listening or reading. Teachers can use reciprocal teaching during class discussions, with text that is read aloud, and later with text that is read in groups. The students should rotate between the following roles:

5. Directly teach comprehension skills: Students should be directly taught comprehension skills such as sequencing, story structure using the plot mountain, how to make an inference and draw a conclusion, and the different types of figurative language. Students should have the opportunity to first use the skills with text that they hear the teacher read aloud, and then later with text that they read independently at their own level.

The comprehension skills and strategies listed above can be used with the whole class, as they closely align with reading and language arts standards for elementary and middle school students. Teachers can help students select reading material with vocabulary that matches their current ability levels so that within a classroom, students are reading text and working on vocabulary at levels that are accessible for each of them.

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5 Ways to Support Students Who Struggle With Reading Comprehension

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These strategies can help students who are able to decode well but have difficulty understanding what they read-and they're beneficial for all students.

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Fluency (automaticity) is reading words with no noticeable cognitive or mental effort. It is having mastered word recognition skills to the point of overlearning. Fundamental skills are so "automatic" that they do not require conscious attention.

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Learning, as a language based activity, is fundamentally and profoundly dependent on vocabulary knowledge. Learners must have access to the meanings of words that teachers, or their surrogates (e.g., other adults, books, films, etc.), use to guide them into contemplating known concepts in novel ways (i.e. to learn something new).

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Scroll to the bottom for the video tutorial. You may skip through as needed by clicking "Next".

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This toolkit helps teachers and families understand what the alphabetic principle and phonics are and how to support a child's development of these important reading skills.

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by Marilee Sprenger

One of the key indicators of students' success in school, on standardized tests, and indeed, in life, is their vocabulary. The reason for this is simply that the knowledge anyone has about a topic is based on the vocabulary of that information (Marzano & Pickering, 2005). For instance, as you read the following sentence, see if you are able to determine what is being discussed.

A duct-less split can produce the exact amount of energy needed to temper an envelope.

When I first read this sentence, my mind started to try to make connections to envelopes and wondered if tempering had something to do with getting or keeping the glue on the flap. If you are an engineer, you probably know that the sentence above refers to equipment and its capability of cooling a room. As with any topic, the more you know about heating and cooling, the easier it is to learn and understand information about it.

There are a variety of factors that affect student achievement, including the effectiveness of the teacher, the student's own personal interest in the content matter, and the amount of information students already possess about the content. "Prior knowledge" is a term with which most educators are familiar. In neuroscience terms, we are talking about long-term memory. And, yes, prior knowledge, also known as background knowledge, consists of networks in the brain that have been placed in permanent memory. In this chapter we will consider how students obtain knowledge about subject matter and how vocabulary supports this knowledge.

The Background on Background Knowledge

According to Marzano (2004), background knowledge is acquired through the interaction of two factors: the ability of the student to process and store information (which will be covered in Chapter 2), and the regularity with which a student has academically oriented experiences. Professional educators know that the amount of background knowledge our students have may rely a great deal on their cultural differences and their economic status (Tileston & Darling, 2008).

Not only does background knowledge grow in the brains of our students through their experiences, but the vocabulary words that are stored as a result of such experiences provide avenues to comprehend the curriculum from the text, as well as lecture and discussion. We can look at the work of Piaget (1970), who concluded that we organize information in our brains in the form of a schema, a representation of concepts, ideas, and actions that are related.

Schemata (the plural of schema) are formed in our brains through repeated and varied experiences related to a topic. As a neuroeducator, one who teaches students and teachers based on current brain research, I like to refer to schemata as those networks in the brain that we form, store, re-form, and restore through our interactions in the world through both experience and environment. It is the brain's ability to change known as neuroplasticity that allows us to learn and form lasting memories. (Doidge, 2007). Yet, as new evidence presents itself, the brain can change to accommodate the new information.

Often long-term memory is compared to files in our brains. Just as you store files on your computer or tablet, the brain stores information in ways that allow it to retrieve concepts, ideas, and actions in an orderly and expeditious manner. Consider, if you will, the file you have stored for "school." As an educator, you may have stored in that file what you liked or loved about school that brought you to the classroom and perhaps beyond. In that file you may also have memories of your own school days, beginning with preschool and going through the university degrees you may have. Certain teachers who are role models for you are stored in this file, as are teachers you would not want to emulate. If you have been in education for a while, there are many "buzzwords" that have been used throughout the years that were considered best practices in teaching. Today you have probably added terms like differentiation, Response-to-Intervention, and Common Core State Standards. All of this, and much more, refers to your background knowledge of "school."

All of our students have a school file (or schema) in their brains as well. Their files are likely very unique to their experiences with schools and teachers, their cultures, their parents views of education, and their personal success in school.

It is no easy task to build background knowledge in students who enter our classrooms with few academic experiences from other classrooms or from real-world involvement. Background knowledge is a reflection of who they are; it is the lens through which they see the world. Those students from low-income families see school in a different light. School may be a place to be safe when home is not. School may be inconsequential to those who believe their "street smarts" will get them farther in life than school smarts. School may feel dangerous to some students whose parents identify school as a place where they felt stupid or unappreciated. Many students from impoverished backgrounds enter school with little knowledge of a world outside the streets where they live. If their poverty was pervasive throughout their short lives, factors such as lack of nutrition or exposure to toxins may have stunted the growth of their brains, which affects their cognitive abilities (Perry, 2001).

According to educational research by Hart and Risley (1995), children enter school with "meaningful differences." The differences that did not appear to be meaningful were things like race, ethnicity, birth order, or gender. What made a big difference among students was economics. In their book, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young American Children (1995), Hart and Risley state, "by age 3 the children in professional families would have heard more than 30 million words, the children in working class families 20 million, and the children in welfare families 10 million" (p. 132). Interestingly, although the number of words spoken was different, the topics and the style of speech were similar. The parents who spoke to their children more began to ask questions, vary their vocabulary, and in general offered the kids a rich language experience. In addition to counting the number of words that were spoken to the children, Hart and Risley also examined the types of reinforcement the children received. The number of affirmative statements as opposed to prohibitory statements was tallied for each socioeconomic group. The professional parents offered affirmative feedback much more often (every other minute) than the other groups. The welfare parents gave their children more than twice as many prohibitions as the professional parents. Some children in professional families heard 450 different words and 210 questions in the three hours the parent spoke most. Another child from a low-income family heard fewer than 200 different words and 38 questions in that same amount of time. The results of the study lead all to believe that the single-most important component of child care is the amount of talking occurring between child and caregiver.

Consider these facts:

Vocabulary is a strong indicator of student success (Baker, Simmons, & Kame'enui, 1997).

The number of words students learn varies greatly:
2 vs. 8 words per day
750 vs. 3,000 per year

Printed school English, as represented by materials in grades 3 to 9, contains 88,533 distinct word families (Nagy & Anderson, 1984).

88,533 word families result in total volumes of nearly 500,000 graphically distinct word types, including proper names. Roughly half of 500,000 words occur once or less in a billion words of text (Nagy & Anderson, 1984).

In grades 3 through 12, an average student is likely to learn approximately 3,000 new vocabulary words each year, if he or she reads between 500,000 and a million running words of text a school year (Nagy & Anderson, 1984).

Between grades 1 and 3, it is expected that economically disadvantaged students' vocabularies increase by about 3,000 words per year, while middle-class students' vocabularies increase by about 5,000 words per year.

Children's vocabulary size approximately doubles between grades 3 and 7.

More recent research added pertinent information to vocabulary development. Dr. Catherine Tamis-LeMonda of New York University and Dr. Marc Borstein of the National Institutes of Health approached the topic of vocabulary development in a different way. They compared maternal responsiveness in children who all came from professional families, with interesting results. (Remember that the children from professional families heard 30 million words by age 3.) The study found that the average child spoke his or her first words by 13 months and by 18 months had a vocabulary of about 50 words. Mothers who were considered high responders-that is, they responded to their child's speech quickly and often-had children who were clearly 6 months ahead of the children whose mothers were low responders. These toddlers spoke their first words at 10 months and had high vocabularies and the ability to speak in short sentences by 14 months (Bronson & Merryman, 2009).

Poverty, the Brain, and Vocabulary

Students from low-income families are part of the at-risk population who have heard fewer words and may have brains that are not as cognitively efficient for some of the work ahead of them in school and in life. Research supports the need for these students to have some extra resources. The remarkable ability of the brain to change has been seen in students with many different kinds of deficits. Poverty can cause physical differences in the brain as well as behavioral differences (Jensen, 2009). According to Harris (2006), three areas drive school behavior:

1. A desire for reliable relationships. Much research looks at the teacher-student relationship as a driving force for motivation, socialization, and academic performance.

2. A desire for social acceptance by peers. In order for students to seek academic achievement, it must be socially acceptable to achieve it. Your school must create a culture that supports and encourages good academic behavior.

3. A desire for social status. Students want to feel special. The emotional brain contains an affective filter that will allow information to go to higher levels of thinking under the right conditions. Negative feelings, lack of social status, and low peer acceptance will keep the brain focused on these and prevent cognitive function.

How Are the Brains of Poor Kids Different?

Several areas of the brain are different in low-income and middle-income students. Using the work of Farah, Noble, and Hurt (2005), we can examine five systems that are responsible for overall school functioning:

The executive system, which engages the prefrontal cortex of the brain. This structure is crucial to working memory, future planning, delaying gratification, and decision making.

The language system, which involves the temporal and frontal lobes of the left hemisphere. This system is our reading system and contains the structures that allow students to decode, pronounce, and comprehend.

The memory system, which allows students to process semantic learning (text, lecture, pictures, etc.) and then store it. This system is responsible for one-trial learning and the ability to retain a representation of a stimulus after a single exposure to it. Our emotional center and our memory center are next to each other, which explains why emotions influence our memories.

The cognitive system, which includes our visual spatial abilities and our problem-solving capabilities of the parietal lobe. This system is vital to sequencing, organizing, and visualizing.

The visual cognitive system, which allows students to recognize patterns, remember images, and abstract information.

The results of testing these systems in several studies remained fairly constant. The lower the socioeconomic status, the more difficulty the students had performing tasks involving these systems. Most noticeable were the memory system issues and the language system issues. The group tested middle school students and primary students with the same results. These issues affect not only school performance, but life performance as well.

As researchers continue to study the effects of poverty on academic performance, they know there are a myriad of possible causes of these issues. It is not the purpose of this book to delve into those causes. I will suggest that most research examines prenatal toxins, maternal stress, lack of proper nutrition, living in toxic areas, maternal education, and the amount of language and literacy in the home.

Improving the Systems

Because the brain is malleable and these systems can change, researchers have made several suggestions to improve the brain systems of low-SES children.

Gazzaniga, Asbury, and Rich (2008) suggest the arts can improve cognitive skills, processing, attention, and sequencing.

Pereira and colleagues (2007) suggest physical activity as an avenue to produce new brain cells, which has been associated with increasing learning and memory.

Computer instruction in which students identify, count, and remember objects by holding them in working memory can increase working memory within a matter of weeks, according to Klingberg and colleagues (2005).

Training in music can improve the brain's operating systems as it enhances focused attention, which will assist in memory (Jonides, 2008).

The arts, movement, computer use, and music are some of the strategies that will be helpful in teaching all of our students the vocabulary of the standards. Understanding and being aware of some of the challenges that our at-risk students face will help us to focus our vocabulary teaching in a way that will improve the minds and memories of our students.

The Three Tiers

In 1985, Beck and McKeown suggested that every literate person has a vocabulary consisting of three levels (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002). Tier 1 words consist of basic words. These words usually do not have multiple meanings and do not require explicit instruction. Sight words, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and early reading words occur at this level. Examples of Tier 1 words are book, girl, sad, clock, baby, dog, and orange. There are about 8,000 word families in English included in Tier 1. Tier 2 contains high-frequency words that occur across a variety of domains. These words play a large role in the vocabulary of mature language users. As a result, Tier 2 words may have a large impact in the everyday functioning of language. Because of their lack of redundancy in oral language, Tier 2 words present challenges to students who primarily meet them in print. Tier 2 words consist of such words as coincidence, masterpiece, absurd, industrious, and benevolent. Because Tier 2 words play an important role in direct instruction, there are certain characteristics that these words have:

Usually have multiple meanings

Used in a variety of subject areas

Necessary for reading comprehension

Characteristic of a mature language user

Descriptive words that add detail

Tier 3 consists of words whose practical use and frequency is low. These words are domain-specific and are used for brief periods of time when we are studying particular content. Tier 3 words are central to building knowledge and conceptual understanding within the various academic domains and should be integral to instruction of content. Medical, legal, biology and mathematics terms are all examples of these words. Although useful while covering specific topics, these are too specific to be included in the most useful tier for vocabulary building, Tier 2.

The CCSS stress that learning and using vocabulary is an essential component to college and career readiness, and references to it appear throughout the grade-level standards.

How do students add words to their mental lexicon? It begins with listening to the conversations in the early environment. Then vocabulary would be enhanced through listening to adults read aloud. Because stories contain vocabulary words not used in daily conversation, this is an excellent way to expand vocabulary. Students who come to our schools from a literacy-rich home are clearly in a better position to meet the CCSS. But the neuroplasticity of the brain teaches us that all students can learn, enhance their vocabulary, and change their brains (Sprenger, 2005).

The "How" of Teaching Vocabulary

In Building Academic Vocabulary: Teacher's Manual by Marzano and Pickering (2005), the following steps are recommended:

1. Begin with a story or explanation of the term. Modeling how you use the word in your life or in conversation may be helpful to students.

2. Have students put information into their own words. This process, which I call "recoding," is necessary to make sure students understand the word. This is a vital step in the memory process. Skipping this step can be disastrous as students may have a misconception that will be placed in long-term memory through incorrect rehearsals (Sprenger, 2005).

3. Ask students to draw a picture or a graphic representation of the word. According to Ruby Payne (2009), if students cannot draw it, they really don't know it.

4. Provide several engagements with the term and have students write them in a notebook. Research suggests that writing is good for the brain and memory, so using those notebooks or some other platform for writing is important (Snowdon, 2001).

5. Informal rehearsals are just as important as formal ones. Engage students casually in conversation using the term. Putting them in pairs and letting them discuss their definitions is a good way to see if all students are storing the same information.

6. Play games with the words. Games are a brain-compatible strategy for reinforcing learning. Actively processing vocabulary words in multiple ways allows the brain to store information in multiple memory systems, thus making access to that information easier with multiple triggers or cues (Sprenger, 2010).

Why Worry About the Critical Words?

According to the neuroscientific research, my suggestion that it is "now or never" doesn't make much sense. But as a classroom teacher, I can tell you-and indeed, you can tell me-how important it is to get kids up to speed as quickly and efficiently as possible. Sure, anyone can learn the 55 or so words I consider critical to test taking, academics, and to life. But we should teach these words sooner rather than later to help our students increase test scores, build confidence, and put the words into daily use. Vocabulary has long been ignored or thought a burden in our classrooms. It is time to give it the time it deserves. Teaching vocabulary in fun and interesting ways will make learning new words something for all of us to look forward to.

KEYWORDS

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What Does the Research Say About Vocabulary?

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by Marilee Sprenger One of the key indicators of students' success in school, on standardized tests, and indeed, in life, is their vocabulary. The reason for this is simply that the knowledge anyone has about a topic is based on the vocabulary of that information (Marzano & Pickering, 2005).

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Choose your own adventure:  This site includes links to several studies.  For most articles, you will only be able to read abstracts.  If you find one of interest, use your online college library database to search for the full article (i.e. Ebsco, ERIC, SAGE).

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In the U.S., there are numerous ongoing efforts to remedy the word gap: massive differences in heard vocabulary for poor versus advantaged children during the first 5 years of life. One potentially important resource for vocabulary exposure is children's book reading sessions, which are more lexically diverse than standard caregiver-child conversations and have demonstrated significant correlational and causal influences on children's vocabulary development.

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Explicit Vocabulary Teaching Strategies (VIDEO)

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Explicit Vocabulary Teaching Strategies (VIDEO)

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by Karen Tankersley

Teaching children to manipulate the sounds in language helps all types of readers learn to read. Phonemic awareness and letter knowledge have been identified in several research studies (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkerson, 1985; Adams, 1990; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998) as the two key indicators of how well children will master beginning reading skills during the first two years in school. Because it plays such a vital role in forming the foundation of reading development, phonemic awareness is the first thread in the tapestry of reading. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate phonemes, which are the smallest part of a spoken language. Phonemes are the element of language that allows discrimination and make a difference in the meaning of a specific word. In the English language, it is generally accepted that there are anywhere from 41 to 51 phonemes in spoken speech. While there are words with only one phoneme such as I or a, most words have more than one phoneme. More than one letter (such as in the phonemes "bl" or "ch") can also represent phonemes. Phonemes with more than one letter are usually referred to as blends, diphthongs, or digraphs depending on their composition.

Instruction in phonemic awareness involves helping children examine and manipulate phonemes in spoken syllables and words. The ability to recognize that words are made up of discrete sounds and that these sounds can be changed is essential to success in learning to read (Lundberg, Frost, & Petersen, 1988; Hoffman, Cunningham, Cunningham, & Yopp, 1998). Beginning readers must also be able to make the connection that words are made up of sounds and that sounds are made up of letters and letter combinations (Gunning, 1996). This understanding is the foundation on which to build solid reading skills.

One of the major components that determines a child's readiness to learn to read is his or her understanding of how the sounds work together. Children learn that words are made up of individual phonemes that help to make one word distinguishable from another word. For example, the words cat, sat, and rat have the same phoneme sound "at" at the end of the word but because of the initial phoneme difference, a listener interprets very different meanings for each word. Phonemic awareness is this ability to take words apart, to put them back together again, and to change them to something else. It is a foundational skill around which the rest of the threads of reading are woven.

In addition to understanding sounds, a child also needs to understand the concept of a word, how the position of a word (first word or last word) makes a difference in a sentence, and that words consist of individual letters. Children must also understand that letters have positions in words (first letter, middle letters, or last letter) and that some of these letters form syllables.

Some ways to help students develop their phonemic awareness abilities are through various activities that identify phonemes and syllables, sort and classify phonemes, blend phonemes to make words, break apart words into their various components, and interchange phonemes to make new words.

Why Is Phonemic Awareness Important?

According to the National Reading Panel Report (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000), the level of phonemic awareness that children possess when first beginning reading instruction and their knowledge of letters are the two best predictors of how well they will learn to read during the first two years of formal reading instruction. Researchers Adams, Foorman, Lundberg, & Beeler (1998) tell us that before children learn to read, they must understand that the sounds that are paired with the letters are the same as the sounds of speech they hear. They state, "For those of us who already know how to read and write, this realization seems very basic, almost transparent. Nevertheless, research shows that the very notion that spoken language is made up of sequences of these little sounds does not come naturally or easily to human beings" (p. 1). A strong understanding of phonemic concepts must be solidly in place prior to formal instruction in reading. It is critical that a child make the association that words on the page are simply "talk written down."

Children form concepts about literacy by observing adults in their environment and by interacting with print during their own early attempts at reading and writing (Sulzby & Teale, 1991). The first signs of phonemic awareness usually appear in children between the age of two and three years old when they begin making rhymes out of words that they know. For example, children may sing, recite rhymes, or make a game out of saying words like "sat, fat, cat, rat, bat, at." An extensive exposure to alliterative texts and rich oral environments during these early years helps ensure that this connection develops.

Young children start out believing that the "story" in a book is in the pictures. As they mature, they develop the understanding that while they cannot read the words, it is the words and not the pictures that carry the important meaning of the book (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). This is an important developmental milestone. Four- and five-year-old children can be observed to "read" books that adults have frequently read to them with increasing intonation and phrasing even though they are in reality only "pretend reading" a memorized book. Children frequently use certain patterns that they have learned from listening to children's books such as "once upon a time" or "the end" while pretend-reading their own books. In their early stages of writing development, these are also the styles that children will mimic in their own attempts at story writing.

Young children also develop some understanding of letters as they "write" on paper. At the age of two or three, many children have observed adults writing-so they make their own attempts at writing by making squiggles on paper. Often children can even "read" the message to anyone who asks for a "translation." In later stages of development, the squiggles the child makes may even become recognizable letters or letter strings. This development should be encouraged and supported in the preschool classroom and in the family. It is foundational development in the understanding of the link between writing and word messages.

Because they often hear stories being read aloud, young children may believe that "reading" only occurs when words are being spoken. When watching an adult read silently, the child may insist that something must be spoken for reading to be taking place (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982). Five year olds who have observed adults read silently will often engage in intense scrutiny of the pictures page by page as if reading silently before "reading" the page to another person. As children make more intense connections between the print and the "message" of the book, they will begin to attend more to the print on the page and less and less to the pictures. This transition seems to mark a period of time when children are assimilating knowledge about how print and speech are linked. This too is a developmental milestone on the road to fluent reading.

As children listen to adults read, they begin to develop the understanding that the adults are interpreting the message on the page through symbols. At quite a young age, children grasp the notion that an object or symbol can stand for a concept (Marzolf & De Loache, 1994). For example, children recognize that the "golden arches" stands for McDonald's restaurants long before they can read the name on the building. The interpretation of the child's own written symbols indicates that the child has made a connection between "talk" and the letter symbols on the page. This signals an emergence of sound-symbol awareness in the young child's mind.

Many children come from print-rich, literate homes and can have more than a thousand hours of exposure to reading and literacy-building activities before they enter formal school. In these homes, reading is a priority and parents have spent many hours reading to their children or playing language-building games such as singing, reciting rhymes, or playing word and letter games. Electronic letter identification technology, letter flash cards, and word games also abound in these homes. Writing is also encouraged and children have many opportunities to try a hand at scribbling, coloring, or working with magnetic letters. These children often "pretend read" a memorized book to their proud parents and "write" a love note to mommy or grandma. Their phonemic awareness skills are firmly in place by the time they enter formal schooling and they are ready to move into more formal reading activities.

What Happens When Phonemic Awareness Is Missing or Underdeveloped?

While phonemic awareness is easily taught to children in the early years, the absence of strong oral language, reading, and word play in the home can lead to reading difficulties and a failure to progress in reading development (Hammill & McNutt, 1980; Scarborough, 1998). The level of phonemic awareness that a child possesses accounts for as much as 50 percent of the variance in reading proficiency by the end of 1st grade (Blachman, 1991; Juel, 1991; Stanovich, 1986; Wagner, Torgeson, & Roshotte, 1994). The degree of phonemic awareness that the child has developed upon entry into school is widely held to be the strongest single determinant of the child's reading success (Adams, 1990; Stanovich, 1986; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).

Poorly developed phonemic awareness skills distinguish low socioeconomic preschoolers from their more advantaged peers (Liberman, Rubin, Duques, & Carlisle, 1985). According to researchers Snow, Burns, & Griffin (1998), "Cognitive studies of reading have identified phonological processing as crucial to successful reading and so it seems logical to suspect that poor readers may have phonological processing problems." Between 40 and 75 percent of preschoolers with early language impairments develop reading difficulties and other academic problems as they enter formal schooling (Aram & Hall, 1989; Brashir & Scavuzzo, 1992). Other factors besides an impoverished oral environment in the preschool years, such as attention deficit disorder or hyperactivity disorders, can also impair early success in reading development.

As many as 31 percent of the children who enter kindergarten with attention deficit or hyperactivity disorders will have difficulty learning to read. Initial problems in reading usually do not go away without intensive intervention and individualized tutoring. By 9th grade, over 50 percent of students with attention deficit or hyperactivity disorders will have developed moderate to severe reading delays or other reading problems (Shaywitz, Fletcher, & Shaywitz, 1994; 1995). Early monitoring and early support for these students is critical if they are to progress with their age peers.

One sometimes overlooked problem that makes it difficult for some children to learn distinguishing characteristics of words is the dialect of adult speakers who instruct them. Adult speakers often enunciate sounds differently based on their dialectic patterns and personal speech habits. This can make it difficult for a struggling child to clearly hear the word that the adult is trying to say. When an adult uses a different dialect than the child, special care must be taken to enunciate the phonemes clearly and distinctly.

Another reason that some children can be delayed in phonemic awareness skills is due to poor or slowly developing oral language skills. Sometimes children are not able to enunciate all of the phonemes they may be exposed to in oral language. Children who have had many ear infections or tubes in their ears as an infant, sometimes cannot discriminate all of the phoneme sounds in the English language. In addition to not being able to hear these sounds, children sometimes are not able to orally form some of them. Speech articulation is tied to developmental stages so children are not able to form all sounds by the same age. If there are concerns about a student's ability to discriminate or enunciate certain sounds, a speech pathologist should be consulted. In most cases, all sounds should be fully developed and present in a child's speech pattern by the age of eight or nine at the very latest. Failure to note these difficulties and seek advice could contribute to delays in the development of solid phonemic awareness skills in young readers.

Letter-Sound Identification

Once a child has a strong sense of phonemics, the learning of the letter names and their corresponding sounds can begin to take root. Learning letter sounds by associating the sound with something concrete such as an animal name or other concrete object is the quickest and most long-lasting method for learning the letters and their corresponding sounds. Teaching the letter names and letter sounds themselves is the beginning stage of phonics instruction.

The development of solid phonemic awareness skills should be the main goal of the preschool and kindergarten years. Early instruction in phonemic awareness should be primarily oral with the exception of some beginning attempts to write the letters themselves. There is a hierarchy of understandings that must be mastered at the foundational level (Treiman & Zukowski, 1991). The first understanding is the concept of a "word" followed by the concept of rhyme and how to make rhymes. After mastering these concepts, students must learn to segment syllables, hear the onset and rime in a word, and then learn to segment and blend sounds into words. Each child must be able to identify individual sounds within a word, recognize the same sounds in different words, and be able to distinguish between the same or different sounds in words. Children must also be able to combine sounds to form various words and to isolate separate sounds in words. Manipulating letters, sounds, and phonemes is the heart of learning to read.

An easy test to determine a child's readiness for beginning reading instruction is the letter identification test. Asking students to name letters and sounds given in random order is as good a predictor of reading readiness as is giving an entire reading readiness battery to the student (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Developing phonological awareness consists of helping students understand the rhythm, pattern, and beauty of the language. Solid readiness skills consist of several factors. First, children must understand the concept of directionality. This understanding includes the concepts of left to right; front to back; and top to bottom. Second, they must learn to see and recognize patterns and develop an interest in the rhythm of language. According to Adams (1990), "Reading depends on a system of skills whose components must mesh properly." Understanding how print works and that it has predictable patterns help children learn to embrace print as enjoyable and helpful.

Children come to formal schooling with a wide range of background experiences and developmental milestones. Children should be taken from where they are and advanced in their reading development process. If kindergarten children already possess sound phonemic awareness skills when they come to school, then they are ready for more challenging work and more formal reading instruction. If they do not have this background, then we must provide this background knowledge and support before continuing with more advanced reading instruction.

Students who are extremely delayed or who come from severely impoverished homes may need additional tutoring or individual support to become proficient in letter-sound relationships. If children are having difficulty learning the letter names, we should teach the letters in unlike pairs such as x and o or n and p. Once the children have mastered the unlike letters, then they can advance to finer discriminations such as c and o, r and n, m and n, b and d, or p and q.

The phonemic awareness and extensiveness of the vocabulary that a kindergartner brings to school are two of the strongest predictors of future reading achievement (Juel, 1991; Scarborough, 1989; Stanovich, 1986; Wagner, Torgeson, & Roshotte, 1994). There is also a high correlation between letter identification skills and success in beginning reading (Scanlon & Vellutino, 1996). One of the main goals of the preschool and kindergarten years should be to have every child develop strong phonemic awareness skills and to master letter-sound identification. Beginning instruction in phonics prior to when the child has acquired phonemic awareness and letter identification skills is ineffective. Ensuring that these two foundational understandings were in place by the end of the kindergarten year would go a long way toward helping 1st graders develop solid beginning reading skills. Some activities to help students develop letter identification and letter-sound identification skills, are the following:

Letter Sort

Give students magnetic letters, lettercards, or letter tiles. Ask students to sort the letters by various categories such as letters with curves, letters with circles, long letters, tall letters, short letters, upper case, lower case, vowels, consonants, letters with short sticks, letters with long sticks, and so forth. This activity will help students visually identify the characteristics of the various letters and will reinforce the concept of sorting based on specific attributes.

Forming Letters

Ask students to form letters using various manipulative materials. Substances that can be used are clay, dough, sand, salt, or shaving cream. Grocery store meat trays work well as individual "drawing boards" for letter experimentation. Many grocery stores will give unused styrofoam meat packing trays to teachers free of charge or at a very minimal cost if you ask the store manager. Place alphabet stamps with blank paper in another center for student experimentation with letters. Cookie cutters to make letters from clay or play dough can also be available for making words in another classroom center.

Ordering Letters

Use a pointer often to help young children learn left-to-right tracking and sweep. Sing the alphabet song while pointing to the letters with the pointer. When lining up to leave the classroom, hand each child an alphabet letter. Sing the alphabet song with children and invite children to line up when the class sings their letter. After the children have lined up, double check that they are in ABC order by again singing the song and pointing to each child. If students are not in the correct place, ask them to determine what is wrong and how to fix it. Give them the opportunity to think through the process and to repair the problem.

Class Murals and Books

Create a class alphabet mural with each letter illustrated with a picture of an object that goes with each letter. Create class versions of alphabet books around themes such as holidays, animals, or circus items. Laminate the books and place them in centers for students to read and examine often.

Name Displays

Take a picture of each child in the class. Place the names of each student on a large word card and display the pictures and the name cards in alphabetical order on a bulletin board. Place letters that do not have student names associated with them on cards and place these in the proper order as "placeholders" in the alphabetic sequence. Spend time going over the various initial and interior sounds of the student names with the class until students have a good understanding of the components of each name. When students can't remember how to write or pronounce a particular letter, have them refer to the wall chart. For example, you could say, "That letter is written like the "b" in Bobby's name. Can you find his name on our wall alphabet chart?"

Word Transformations

Older struggling students can also work with manipulative words to get a better sense of letter relationships and patterns. Using a set of individual letters (magnetic, paper, or letter tiles), have small groups of students experiment with the letters to make lists of words that can be made into other words by either adding or subtracting one letter. Some examples would be trip to rip; blend to lend; and light to flight. See which group of students can find the longest list of words. A more advanced game would be to add two letters to the root word to create a different word. Letters can be added as either initial sounds, final sounds, or as a combination of both initial and final sounds.

Teaching Students to Recognize Syllables

Once students understand what words are, they are then ready to move to understanding that words are made up of syllables. When students understand that words contain one or more syllables, they can then master the concept of rhyme. Helping students examine small parts of words as individual syllables will help students make the link between being able to hear and manipulate phonemes. This skill forms the backbone of phonemic awareness in children. Some strategies to teach the syllable concept are:

Word Comparisons

To increase student awareness of the number of syllables in a word and how this affects the number of letters it will contain, show students two words of various lengths that they cannot yet read. Pronounce the two words and ask students to predict which word belongs to which spoken word. For example, show the written words "pen" and "pencil" to students, asking students to identify which word they think would be pencil. When students guess, model sounding out the phonemes so that the students can verify their prediction.

Counting Syllables

Show students various pictures of objects that they recognize. Help them to categorize the pictures by the number of "claps" (syllables) they hear when they speak this word. Words can easily be displayed in a pocket chart for all students to see or students can sort the words with word cards at their desks or in a center.

Getting the Beat

Have students listen for syllables in words by beating on a drum for each syllable or using some other percussion instrument such as a xylophone or even maracas. Older students can be asked to simply make a slight chopping motion in the air to indicate the end of each syllable as they repeat the word. Have students clap, snap, pat, rap, stomp, or tap while saying the syllables in a word. Students can also be asked to put their hands below their chins to see how many times the chin drops while saying a given word. Students can test the syllables in words they are learning as well as in their own first and last names.

Segmenting and Blending Words

Good readers parse letter strings to extract the meaning. Unlike a poor reader, the good reader does not say, "cuh-a-tuh" as separate phoneme sounds, but instead pronounces the entire one syllable of cat as one parsed sound. Although word recognition per se is not the goal of reading, comprehension does depend on having ready recognition of words so that short-term memory can extract meaning. Information the reader obtains from the print interacts at every level with stored knowledge to form the basis of comprehension. Unless children have a strong awareness of the phonemic structure of the English language firmly in place, asking the child the first letter or sounds of a word is to no avail. For this reason, the wise teacher begins with oral word play and word games rather than worksheets that ask students to "ring the sound" they hear.

The two most crucial skills for building solid phonemic awareness are the ability to segment words into their phonemic parts and to blend the parts into whole words (Yopp, 1988). Knowledge of segmenting words is also a predictor of success in reading (Gillet & Temple, 1990). Concentrating on developing segmenting and blending skills is more effective than a multi-skilled approach to phonemic instruction (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). Some activities to help students learn to segment and blend phonemes include the following:

Secret Word

Students will love to play a game called "Secret Word" with other members of the class. The game can be played with partners or in small groups. Each student is given a group of cards from a deck of picture cards. The first student looks at the picture on the card in private and makes an identification of the picture. He or she then pronounces the name of the picture by stretching out the word, phoneme by phoneme, for the other students playing the game. The other students listen and try to put the sounds together fast to identify the "secret word." Students alternate turns giving the "secret word" for others in the group to guess. In a whole-class version, have students stand in a circle. Slowly pronounce the words. Everyone is instructed to think about what the "secret word" might be. At a signal from you, the child who guessed the last word correctly gently tosses a beanbag or beach ball to another person in the circle. After the receiving person catches the tossed object, she has to "snap" the word together and tell the word as it is normally pronounced. Longer words such as television or November are good for this game.

I'm Thinking Of . . .

Play the "I'm thinking of" game by saying a word such as an animal name very slowly, sounding out each part. Students are asked to guess what you are thinking of. As students become more sophisticated with the game, have them look into a box or bag in which you have placed a special object. The student stretches out the object's name so that other students guess the identity of the mystery object.

Alphabet Wheel

Show students ending phonemes and demonstrate that changing the initial consonant can change the entire meaning of the word. Construct and demonstrate how to use an alphabet wheel with the letters from A to Z to "match" new initial consonants to the given phonemes to see if a new word they recognize can be made. For example: bat, cat, mat, fat, hat, rat or ox, fox, box or day, hay, may, pay, ray, say, way, etc. In a more advanced version of the game, ask students to identify words with blended phonemes to develop their skills: "br" as in break, breakfast, bridge, brother, etc. Students can later take similar words and make books about the words such as "I went for a walk and I saw something funny. I thought it was a . . . but it was a . . . ."

Creating New Words

Write a phoneme grouping such as "at" on an index card. Give the student individual letter pieces to place at the beginning of the word to create new words such as bat, cat, sat, and so forth. The same technique can also be used with initial phonemes such as "th" or "br" with students adding the endings to the words. Be sure to point out beginning, middle, and end sound positions to students as the various components are manipulated.

Identifying Beginning, Medial, and Ending Sounds

Because it is easier to distinguish beginning sounds than medial or final sounds, we should begin instruction with the beginning sounds and introduce the medial and final sounds after the child has mastered the beginning sounds. To teach the sound, select words that are one syllable in length that isolate the initial letter so that children can clearly hear the individual sound being made. Good words to use would be words similar to cat or pat, because each phoneme sound can be clearly and distinctly heard. As the word is spoken, draw out the sound of the letter being introduced so students can clearly hear the sound as it is being enunciated. Emphasis should be placed on how the phonemes feel in the mouth as they are formed. Continually draw students' attention to the position of the lips, tongue, and teeth while they are saying the sound. Students should then be asked to compare letters with very different mouth formations so that they clearly see the differences in articulation and mouth formation. Good comparison letters would be "m" and "o," for example, since the mouth is in very different positions for the formation of each letter. We should always model our own thinking aloud and ask students to frequently verbalize what they are doing so that others can also hear this information. For students who are having difficulty, provide mirrors so the students can self-monitor as they say certain words. Putting a hand in front of the lips as the word is spoken is also a helpful suggestion for students. Another strategy is to ask students to lightly touch their larynx as they pronounce different sounds so they can feel the sound that is being made. Students who lack phonemic awareness skills often try to memorize the visual aspects of a whole word. This is often what is happening when a child laboriously sounds out a word correctly but then guesses a word that is totally unrelated to the sounds that have been produced. While visual identification works for some children, for most children it is not a foundational strategy on which to build solid reading skills. Children should therefore be encouraged to continue to self-monitor their speech formations and patterns whenever possible. To help students identify beginning, medial, and ending sounds, try the following activities:

Matching Sounds

Ask students to find something in the classroom that begins with the same sound as their own name. The students say the sound that their own names begin with and then name the corresponding item that matches their initial sound. This is a good dismissal activity as students return to their seats from circle time. A more advanced version of this game is to have children match verbs with their names. An example is "Mary can march," or "Tommy can tumble."

Real or Not?

Show students a specific rime pattern such as "ing." Place individual consonant letters adjacent to the rime pattern and ask students to determine whether the newly constructed word is a real word or not. For example, placing the letter s with the rime pattern would produce sing while placing the letter f would produce fing. Emphasis should be placed on helping students understand the importance of initial sounds in making sense out of the words we hear. This is especially important for second-language learners.

Sorting Sounds

Give students a set of pictures that have two initial consonant sounds such as "c" and "r." Ask students to group the picture cards into the appropriate stack according to the initial consonant sound. Picture cards can also be sorted by medial or final sounds.

Alliterative Stories

Read alliterative stories to students stressing the alliterative sounds the author has provided. Ask students to develop sentences built around the initial sound of their own names. For example, a student named Dan might write, "Dandy Dan dallies daily during dinner." Have class challenges to see who can develop the longest, alliterative sentence. Older students can be challenged to develop whole alliterative stories.

Beginning, Middle, or End?

Give children a special snack such as crackers, gummy bears, or raisins, and two paper cups of different colors. Have students line up the cups with one color placed on the left for when they hear the sound at the beginning of the word and the other on the right for when the sound is at the end of the word. Give a word and ask children to listen for a specific sound in the word such as the sound of the letter d. When the "d" sound is heard at the beginning, the children place a treat in the cup on their left. If the children place the treat in the correct cup, they are allowed to eat the treat. Words that have both a beginning and ending "d" sound such as the word dad are even more fun as both cups get a treat at the same time. Cleanup is never a problem with this activity since children are happy to help eat the manipulatives. The game can also be played with buttons or other markers if you do not wish to use snack items during the activity.

Name Game

Sing the "Name Game" song as a line up song. As a student comes up to join the line, a rhyme is made with the "banana fana. . ." endings as in the song. Another version, called "Listen for the Sounds," asks students to line up if their name includes a sound. For example, if the sound given were "t", then Tim, Betty, and Brent could all line up because their names contain the sound.

Birthday Wish

Have students sit in a circle and give one student a beanbag. The student with the beanbag starts the game by saying "For my birthday, I want a _____." The other students should be listening to the final sound of the word given and thinking of an object that starts with that sound. For example, one student might say, "For my birthday, I want a bear." The student would then toss the beanbag to another student in the circle. The next student who receives the object might then say, "For my birthday, I want a radio."

Match Game

Purchase or make sets of picture cards with common objects that the students will recognize. Have students sort the picture cards into piles by the same initial or final consonant sounds. Students can also play a matching game with a matched deck of picture cards. Have students begin with a partner by laying all of the cards face down and then selecting two cards in a "match game" format. If the two cards have the same initial sound, then a "match" is made and the student gets to hold the card set. Play continues until all matches that can be made have been made.

Who Has the Card?

Pass out pictures of common objects. Play the game "Who Has the Card?" Say, "Who has the card that begins with the "d" sound and ends with the "g" sound?" The child who has the "dog" card should produce the card when it is identified. Children at higher stages of development can later be given word cards instead of picture cards and asked to play the same game by looking at the words they are holding.

Sound of the Day

For some special fun with primary students, the students or you can select a "sound of the day" to use during the day. For example, on the "t" day, students would start all of their noun words with a "t" sound instead of the letter that the word would normally start with. For example, say "took" instead of book or "tarry" instead of "Mary." Students will have fun trying to match the special sound of the day to the nouns they use around the classroom that day.

Listen, Listen

Help students look at words and isolate the sounds or phonemes that they hear in various parts of a word. For example, "Listen for words that start with the sound of "m." Have students raise their hands as they hear the "m" sound in a story that you read to the class. Waxed pipe cleaner strands can also be used to ring the special letters on the big book page as the class listens to the material. The same strategy can also be used for medial or final sounds or any other special features you want to point out to students.

Word Boundaries

As students write sentences, ask them to use a different color crayon to write each word on their paper. This will help them think about the boundaries for each word as they are writing the word.

What's My Label?

Labels around the room help students link objects with the concept of a word. Point to the labels and help students read the word labels and identify the object that matches the label.

One to One

Draw horizontal dash lines on a paper or on the overhead to represent the sounds that students hear in a word. Push pennies, buttons, or paper clips into the line spaces as each sound is said so that students see a representation of the sound as it is made. After students have mastered the basic level of this activity, they can move to more complex forms where they are asked to compare the lengths of two words as they push their manipulatives into the line spaces. An even more advanced version of this activity can also be done. Ask students to use their manipulatives to signal syllables for longer words in a given sentence. This is a good activity to practice after students have grasped the concept of phonemes in words.

Developing the Concept of Words

One of the crucial understandings that beginning readers need to develop is the concept of a "word" as a collection of sounds that together provide meaning. Students need to understand that while a few words consist of a single phoneme, most words contain more than one phoneme. They also need to learn that words come in various lengths and that they can be organized into sentences that together give a message. When young students first begin to write, they often do not understand the idea that spaces separate words, so they run all of their words together on the page. Teachers often offer the suggestion that children place a finger on the paper before writing the next word to help them understand that words have space boundaries. The more students are exposed to playing with words, the sooner they will develop understandings around words. Some ideas to help students examine words follow:

Counting Words

Give students a sentence and have them match counters with the number of words they see in the short sentence. Counters can be either nonedible such as buttons or plastic chips or edible such as raisins, grapes, or crackers. The children can place beans or buttons into a cup as the words in the sentences are indicated.

Building Sentences

Display several sentences in a pocket chart with a blank pocket above each sentence. Make duplicates of the sentences and cut them up into their individual words. Give each group of students one set of words that makes up one of the sentences in the pocket chart. Students must put the individual words into the proper order and then place them correctly above the sentence that corresponds to the sentence they are reconstructing. This activity can also be a good one for children to do as a center activity on their own.

Same or Different?

Show students two words with one written above the other. Ask students to compare the letters in each word and to decide if the words are the same or different. Example: Compare mouse with house. Compare run with run. Compare want with went. Ask students to describe what is different about the words if they think they are different. Ask, "How do you know?"

Word Thoughts

Play a game with students called "I'm thinking of a word." Give students clues to help them identify the word. For example, "I am thinking of a word that ends in 'ice' and are small, furry animals that like cheese." Picture cards can also be used to show students that their guesses are correct or incorrect. A variation of this game is to give the entire word by the elongated phoneme components (such as /m/i/suh for the word mice) and then ask students to consolidate the phonemes and guess the word. Students can also play "What's in my birthday package?" by listening to elongated words to guess the mystery item. This game can also be played with a box by asking, "What do I have in the box?"

What Doesn't Belong?

Students can play "What doesn't belong?" by being shown three picture cards with the same phoneme components. One word should be different from the featured phonemes so students can identify the word that doesn't belong. After each word, ask the student to explain why it does not belong with the other two words in the group.

Developing the Concepts of Print

During the early stages of phonemic awareness, it is also desirable to help students begin to understand the concepts of print. Students need to understand that print conveys meaning. They also need to understand how print is processed, how we interpret the symbols on the page, and how a book is read by the reader. To help students develop these associations, point out and model the various components for the students as they listen to a book being read. According to Marie Clay (1993), some understandings that we would want students to develop at this stage include the following:

Readers begin reading at the left of the line of print and progress across the page to the right.

A return sweep of the eyes is made to the next line of print at the left side of the page.

Readers begin reading at the top of the page and work downward on the page.

Readers begin at the front of the book and read to the back of the book.

The following activities will help students develop an understanding of the concepts of print.

Special Student of the Day

Place all of the children's names in a hat and draw one name out each day. This child becomes the "Kindergartner of the Day" or "1st Grader of the Day." As a result, the child gets to do special things all throughout his or her "special day," such as sit in a special chair, be the line leader, or be the messenger. Write a class poem or story about the student of the day. Students can help you create each sentence by suggesting where to start, what letter to start with, what letter comes next, and so forth. After the message is written, ask students to help you analyze the sounds and letters in the message. Have the "student of the day" point to the words with a pointer as the class reads back the story. Leave the writing on the chart stand during the day so that other students have an opportunity to come up and use the pointer to read the story themselves. At the end of the day, the special student takes the poem or story home. The stories about each child can also be typed and placed into a book. A digital picture of each child can complete the page. The book should be laminated, spiral bound, and placed in the student reading center for all to enjoy.

Featured Books

Using a big book version of a story that all students can see, lead a discussion with students on the title, cover art, and illustrations of the book. Invite students to predict the storyline, and then read the story to the students, stopping at key points to ask for predictions. On a subsequent lesson, ask students to retell the story from looking at the pictures. Use the same book to highlight different word structures or patterns. Cover word parts with sticky notes and ask students to predict what word is under the sticky note. Have children join in the rereading either chorally or in small groups. After several books have been used in this way, ask students to choose which book will be "featured" for the day. If possible, have smaller versions of the big books available in the free reading areas for children to reread on their own during the remainder of the day.

Building Books

Construct alphabet books by asking students to draw pictures for each letter using themes such as space, hobbies and games, or animals. Students will enjoy looking at the books over and over again. This is also a great way to build a collection of inexpensive big books that children will love to read and reread.

Finding Patterns

Find books, songs, and poems that have rhyme, alliteration, or assonance. Point out the unique patterns that the material contains as the text is read. Even when children cannot yet read the words themselves, use a pointer with big books to "follow along" with the words as they are being read from the book. Ask children to complete pages for a book with a simple sentence and an illustration that matches the sentence. Some books that might be made are alphabet books, or books on topics such as "things in the room," "things I like to eat," "people who are important to us," and "animals we like."

Parents and early primary teachers must help students discover the richness of language by surrounding children early in life with as much language and oral richness as possible. As children see print and hear adults make associations between the spoken word and symbols on the page, children will begin to recognize that there is a relationship between the symbols they see on the page and the spoken sounds they hear. By listening to a large number of stories where words are used in creative ways and by "playing with words" through rhymes, poems, riddles, songs, finger plays, and games, children can fine tune their phonemic awareness skills. With a solid foundation of phonemic awareness, children will be able to build a tight weave with the other threads of reading.

Developing a Sense of Rhythm and Rhyme

Another way to foster a child's fascination with print is by extensive reading of books that have a strong sense of rhythm, pattern, and predictability. Developing a sense of rhythm is beneficial to learning to read. Researchers from the University College in London. (Goswami, et al., 2002) found that children who read very well for their age had a strong ability to spot rhythms and beats. Children with dyslexia had difficulty identifying the rime in words such as fit and fat. Researchers concluded that an awareness of beat and rhythm could influence the way children process speech patterns. This in turn, can affect their reading and writing skills. Training in rhyme and beat can help develop this distinction in young children as their reading skills emerge.

Nursery rhymes, chants, songs, poetry, and predictable print books all have the types of patterns necessary for building strong talk-print linkages. Teachers in grades K-1 should often use books that contain either predictable pictures or predictable word patterns. Use "sticky notes" to cover a predictable word and ask students to guess the hidden word. This strategy will help students develop strong decoding and prediction skills. Dr. Seuss books, ABC books, or repetitive books such as Bill Martin's Brown Bear, Brown Bear (1970) or Margaret Weis Brown's Goodnight Moon (1947) are also helpful for teaching a sense of rhythm and pattern. More complex books should also be read so that children continue to expand their vocabulary and sense of language development.

Phonemic awareness activities should be short, fast paced, varied, and, above all, fun for the children. We should choose books that are well written and clearly illustrated. At the beginning, the books should not have too much print so that students can learn to "read along with" the reader as the story is read to them. Strong repetitive patterns that stress rhyming words, such as Dr. Seuss' There's a Wocket in My Pocket(1996) are good choices to use at this level. Another strategy is to take "picture walks" through the book prior to reading the book for the first time. Ask children to make predictions based on the pictures about what might happen in the story. After reading for enjoyment, have children play with the language and even act out portions of the story. Try the following techniques to help children develop a sense of rhythm and rhyme:

Rhymes and Rhythms

Use a big book, such as Mrs. Wishy-Washy (1987) by Joy Cowley, with a specific rhyme pattern featured throughout the book. Have students listen to the rhymes and identify the rhyming word sounds. Students can also be asked to make predictions about what words might be used in each sentence. Stop to recap and highlight rhymes with students on a frequent basis. The more it is put in an enjoyable, game-like context, the more students will enjoy finding rhymes and rhythms.

Rotating Rhymes

Help students develop a strong sense of rhyme and pattern by reading repetitive or predictable stories chorally. For example, students in half of the class would read with you, "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe" and the second half of the class would then read, "She had so many children she didn't know what to do." Rotation continues throughout the story with the class switching parts. The children will love being active participants in the reading of the story.

What's Different?

Read familiar nursery rhymes or short stories to the children but change something about the sentences as they are read. For example, "the moon jumped over the cow" (reverse words); "little boy green" (substitute words); "Mary had a little ram" (change the consonants); "little Miss Tuffet sat on a muffet" (change the sequence or order of events in the story). Children should be listening attentively to spot the problems. When they identify a problem, they should be asked to explain why it is incorrect and what the correct response should be. This game sharpens student's awareness of phonology, words, syntax, semantics, and listening attentiveness.

Writing Helps Establish Strong Phonemic Awareness Connections

Writing is important to developing strong phonemic awareness skills. Inventive spelling provides us with much insight into the development of a child's phonemic understanding. Morris and Perney (1984) have identified four stages of spelling development in children: pre-phonemic, phonemic, transitional, and correct spelling. Children begin their writing attempts as pre-phonemic spellers. In this stage, spellers perceive and represent initial and final consonants by one-syllable words, often using letter names to represent phonemes. For example, the child might write j, js, or jc for the word dress. Children who advance to the phonemic stage begin to use short vowels as phonologically appropriate substitutions. For example, the child might write sek for sink or fet for feet. Spellers in the transitional stage begin to represent short vowels correctly, but the vowel markers may be incorrectly placed such as sied for side. Correct spelling is when the child nearly always spells the words in the conventional manner when writing.

As children become more proficient writers, they often go through a period of time when they reject inventive spelling and insist on writing a word the "right way" (Sulzby, 1996). This too is a characteristic of children who are about to move from the transitional stage to the correct spelling stage.

We can also help develop the link between oral and written language by creating shared writings around a common theme. An example is to make a chart or an illustrated student-authored big book using the starters "I can ..." or "I like ..." or a similar sentence stem. Students add their own ending and the class chorally reads and practices the writing. Students can be asked to reflect on what they "notice" in the writing that they are reading. Writing as much as possible, even when students are still at the "scribble" stage, helps build a strong sense of phonemic awareness.

Weaving the Thread of Phonemic Awareness

When children have phonemic awareness they understand that the sounds of spoken language fit together to make words and that those words convey meaning. Beginning readers must learn that reading is the process of acquiring meaning from text. There are many skills that children must learn as they begin to make sense of the various symbols and arrangements of words and letters. They need to understand the connection between the sounds that they hear in everyday language and the letters that they see on a page. They also need to understand how sounds fit together to form words and they must be able to manipulate the various parts of words and syllables to create new words. They need to understand how print is processed and that books and writing can be wonderful sources of knowledge and entertainment in their lives. With solid phonemic awareness skills, students are then ready to begin formal instruction in phonics.

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by Karen Tankersley Teaching children to manipulate the sounds in language helps all types of readers learn to read. Phonemic awareness and letter knowledge have been identified in several research studies (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkerson, 1985; Adams, 1990; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998) as the two key indicators of how well children will master beginning reading skills during the first two years in school.

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This toolkit helps teachers and families understand what fluency is and how to support a child's development of fluency with text.