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The 1st Grade Level 1 Reading Program features a review of all the short vowels, beginning and ending consonants. Your children will learn words with the S blends, consonant digraphs ch, sh, th, wh and ph. They will also learn the soft C and G sounds.

Printables & Powerpoint

These high quality pdf worksheets are pages from our phonics activity book for preschool. Worksheets are arranged by course progression. Some of the skills the children will learn include:

Videos

You do not need to be a professional teacher to present the skills for this level. Our highly focused phonics video tutorials will easily do the job. Some of the videos include the following:

Games

Kiz Phonics offers a variety of reading games for all kinds of learners. These activities often combine audio, visual and clicking to learn. Each activity is short and focused.

Listening

The listening section of our first grade level 1 phonics program is in sync with the worksheets of this level. Print a worksheet you want to use and choose the audio from the playlist.

Featuring Worksheets for First Grade Level 1

S blends crossword
Learning S blends activity puzzle

Featuring 1st Grade Phonics Games

Featuring 1st Grade Phonics Videos

Kiz Phonics iPad Apps

Preschool Reading - Ages 3-4

Learning to read starts here. From as low as 3 years, your child needs to build the following skills that will prepare him/her for reading. Print Awareness and Phonemic Awareness are the hallmarks of this level. We provide the following types of resources:

Kindergarten Reading 1 - Ages 4-6

The Kindergarten Level 1 Reading Program, is suitable for kids between the ages of 4 to 6. Children will learn short vowels a & e, beginning and ending consonant sounds. The will learn how to read words, sentences and 2 short stories.

Kindergarten Reading 2 - Ages 4-6

The Kindergarten Level 2 Reading Program, is suitable for kids between the ages of 4 to 6. Children will learn short vowels i, o & u, ending and beginning consonants & digraphs. The will learn how to read words, sentences and 2 short stories.

1st Grade Reading 1 - Ages 6-7

The 1 st Grade Level 1 Reading Program features a review of all the short vowels, beginning and ending consonants. Your children will learn words with the S blends, consonant digraphs ch, sh, th, wh and ph. They will also learn the soft C and G sounds.

1st Grade Reading 2 - Ages 6-7

The 1 st Grade Level 2 Phonics Program features the long a & i with the silent e. Kids will learn how the silent e changes the sounds of words. This level also includes vowel digraphs ai & ay, vowel digraphs ee & ea and final y as long e.

2nd Grade Reading 1 - Ages 7-8

The 2 nd Grade Level 1 Phonics Program features the long o & u with the silent e. This level also includes vowel digraphs like oa & ow, ui & ue and final y as long i. Special vowels like aw & ew will be also be learned.

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First Grade Reading Activities, Phonics Worksheets, Videos, Games, Listening

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First Grade Level 1 Reading Activities: You will find Phonics Worksheets, Videos, Games & Listening Materials for Teaching Children to Read through Phonics - Reviewing Short Vowels, Reviewing Beginning and Ending Consonants, S Blends, Consonant Digraphs ch, sh, ph, ck, wh, Soft C, Soft G

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The National Research Council (NRC), a group of experts convened to examine reading research and address the serious national problem of reading failure, concluded in their landmark report Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998) that most reading problems can be prevented by providing effective instruction and intervention in preschool and in the primary grades. The NRC noted that for students to learn to read well they must a) understand how sounds are represented by print and be able to apply this understanding to read and spell words, b) practice reading enough to become fluent readers, c) learn new vocabulary words, and d) learn to self-monitor when reading to make sure what they read makes sense and to correct their own errors. The NRC also found that it was important that teachers provide explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics integrated with many opportunities to read and write meaningful, connected text. (They purposefully used the word integrated rather than balanced. It isn't enough simply to add on components of a fragmented curriculum to balance one with another.) Finally, they noted that effective reading teachers adapt their instruction, making changes designed to meet the needs of different students.

In summary, the evidence to date shows that there are five overriding research-supported characteristics of effective instruction for students with reading difficulties. This article's focus is on identifying and then exploring in more detail each of these components of powerful instruction:

1. Teach essential skills and strategies.
◊ Effective reading teachers teach skills, strategies, and concepts.

2. Provide differentiated instruction based on assessment results and adapt instruction to meet students' needs.
◊ Effective teachers recognize that one size doesn't fit all and are ready to adapt instruction-both content and methods.

3. Provide explicit and systematic instruction with lots of practice-with and without teacher support and feedback, including cumulative practice over time.
◊ Students should not have to infer what they are supposed to learn.

4. Provide opportunities to apply skills and strategies in reading and writing meaningful text with teacher support.
◊ Students need to be taught what to do when they get to a "hard word."

5. Don't just "cover" critical content; be sure students learn it-monitor student progress regularly and reteach as necessary.
◊ Effective teachers adjust their teaching accordingly to try to accelerate student progress.

Teach the Essentials

Shortly after the NRC issued its report on the serious national problem of widespread reading difficulties (Snow et al., 1998), the National Reading Panel (NRP; 2000) conducted a comprehensive analysis of existing reading research that met high standards for quality. The NRP, similarly to the NRC, concluded that reading instruction should address the domains of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Effective classroom reading instruction includes teaching phonemic awareness (in kindergarten and 1st grade, and for older students who need it) and phonics or word study explicitly and directly with opportunities to apply skills in reading and writing connected text (e.g., Ehri, 2003; Rayner, Foorman, Perfetti, Pesetsky, & Seidenberg, 2001; Snow et al., 1998), with integrated instruction in fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension (e.g., Chard, Vaughn, & Tyler, 2002; Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001; Jitendra, Edwards, Sacks, & Jacobson, 2004).

Effective reading teachers teach skills, strategies, and concepts. Skills are things students learn to do. In reading, students must learn skills such as associating letters with their sounds (such as saying the sound of the letter b and blending these sounds to form words [as in sounding out words]). Strategies are routines or plans of action that can be used to accomplish a goal or work through difficulty. Students can be taught strategies to use when they come to a word they don't know, strategies for spelling unknown words, strategies to help them write summaries of paragraphs, and other kinds of strategies. A word-reading strategy is described below. Finally, students must learn concepts, or ideas. They need background knowledge related to reading and to the topics they are reading about.

A fluent reading technique may not work after taking tadalafil as it may affect vision.

Differentiating Instruction: Once Size Doesn't Fit All

Meeting the needs of diverse readers is no small task. In a typical 3rd grade classroom, there may be virtual nonreaders, typically developing readers, and students who read at 5th or 6th grade levels or even higher. Many classrooms in which all instruction is delivered in English include students who are learning to read and speak in English at the same time. A single classroom may include children who speak several different languages at home. Teachers address these various needs by providing differentiated instruction, using the results of diagnostic assessments to help them identify students' strengths and needs, forming small groups of students with similar needs, and then planning instruction to target those needs. Typically, this means that teachers implement reading instruction in small groups as well as in whole class formats.

Although a quality reading curriculum will provide the foundation for effective instruction, teachers will need to adapt their instruction for students who struggle (and for high-achieving students as well). Quality classroom reading instruction can be adapted for students who find it difficult to learn to read by a) teaching the specific skills and strategies that students need to learn, based on assessment data (sometimes called 0); b) making instruction more explicit and systematic; c) increasing opportunities for practice; d) providing appropriate text at students' instructional reading levels (not too easy but not too hard); and e) monitoring students' mastery of key skills and strategies and reteaching when necessary.

Making Instruction More Explicit

Students with learning difficulties benefit from explicit instruction in decoding skills and strategies, fluency (modeling fluent reading, directly teaching how to interpret punctuation marks when reading orally, etc.), vocabulary word meanings and word-learning strategies, and comprehension strategies. When a teacher provides explicit instruction she or he clearly models or demonstrates skills and strategies and provides clear descriptions of new concepts (providing both clear examples and nonexamples). Students don't have to infer what they are supposed to learn. For example, a teacher who is explicitly teaching 1st grade students to sound out words demonstrates this process step by step, then provides opportunities for students to practice the skill with the teacher's feedback and support. If the student is not successful, the teacher models again. The teacher may have the students sound out a few words along with him or her. Eventually, the students apply the skill independently to sound out simple words. Students who are easily confused are more likely to be successful when teachers demonstrate and clearly explain what they need to learn. On the other hand, if confusions are not addressed and foundational skills are not mastered, it is likely that students will become more and more confused, resulting in serious reading problems.

Providing Systematic Instruction

Systematic instruction is carefully sequenced, so that easier skills are taught before more difficult skills. Letter-sound correspondences and phonics skills (i.e., sounding out words, applying the "silent e rule") are taught in a predetermined order according to a clear scope and sequence so that there are no gaps in students' learning. The pace of introduction of new material is reasonable to allow struggling learners to master key skills, and much of each lesson consists of practice of previously introduced skills, strategies, and concepts and the integration of these with the newly taught material. Students' learning is monitored, so that teachers can reteach key skills when needed.

Increasing Opportunities for Practice

Published reading programs rarely include enough practice activities for at-risk readers to master skills and strategies. Students with learning difficulties typically need extended guided, independent, and cumulative practice. During guided practice, students practice with teacher feedback. Students need both positive and corrective feedback. Specific positive feedback calls attention to behaviors and processes the student is implementing well. Students also need to know when they have made mistakes. If clear corrective feedback is not provided, students are likely to continue to make the same errors, in effect "practicing their mistakes" (Denton & Hocker, 2006, p. 17) and forming bad habits that are difficult to break. Students also need independent practice, during which they implement skills and strategies without teacher support (but with close teacher monitoring, and with reteaching when necessary). Finally, students at risk for reading difficulties need large amounts of cumulative practice over time to learn to apply skills and strategies automatically when they read, just as skilled readers do. Cumulative practice means practicing newly learned items mixed in with items learned earlier, so that skills are not taught and "dropped." Students with reading problems often need a lot of review.

One effective way to provide extra practice opportunities in the reading classroom is the implementation of peer tutoring routines in which students are paired and taught how to work together to practice skills they have been taught (e.g., Fuchs & Fuchs, 2005; McMaster, Fuchs, & Fuchs, 2006; Saenz, Fuchs, & Fuchs, 2005). There is also preliminary evidence indicating that practice in phonics and word identification may be more effective for 1st grade at-risk readers if it includes hands-on manipulation of items such as magnetic letters or word cards (Pullen, Lane, Lloyd, Nowak, & Ryals, 2005).

Applying Skills and Strategies in Meaningful Text

Clearly, it isn't enough for students to learn to read or spell lists of words. The real purpose of reading is to get meaning from text, and the purpose of writing is to convey meaning with text. It is very important that students have the opportunity to apply word identification and spelling skills as they read and write connected text. This process must be supported by teachers who model for students how to apply what they have learned and give students feedback about their reading and writing. For example, students must be taught what to do when they get to a hard word. The most common characteristic of poor readers of all ages is the tendency to guess words that are difficult, sometimes using just a few letters. Often, students make random guesses that don't make sense-then simply continue reading, apparently unaware of this fact. This quote from a middle school student, taken from a moving article about students in middle school with severe reading problems, describes the situation well:

Sometimes when students in my class read, they might know how to say simple words okay, but they will skip over the big words. They look around to see if anyone is even listening to them. But they don't fix them; they just keep going. They stumble over words, trying to sound them out. Sometimes they don't even know they made a mistake, and when they finally figure out the words, they don't have a clue what it all means. They just keep going. (McCray, Vaughn, & Neal, 2001, p. 22)

As this student observed, it is nearly impossible for students to understand what they are reading-to get meaning from text-when they can't read the words on the page accurately and fluently. Students need explicit instruction, modeling, and practice in vocabulary and reading comprehension, but many students with reading problems continue to need instruction in phonics and word study even when they are in the upper elementary and secondary grades (Fletcher, 2007).

A critical part of effective reading instruction is explicitly teaching students how to use efficient word reading strategies. Simply put, students need to be taught what to do when they get to a hard word. In one research-validated early reading intervention program, young students are taught to use a three-part strategy when they try to read difficult words: "Look for parts you know, sound it out, and check it" (Denton & Hocker, 2006, p. 144). These steps are described in more detail below.

1. Look for parts of the word you know. In the earliest stages of learning to read, students may find a letter or a letter combination (e.g., th, ing) that they know. Later, they may recognize common word endings (e.g., - ot in pot, rot, cot). Still later, they may identify roots or base words, such as the root spect (which means "to see") in the words inspect and spectacles, or common prefixes and suffixes like pre- or - ly.

2. Sound it out. Students should be taught from the earliest lessons to use a sounding-out strategy to read unfamiliar words. They should learn how to blend sounds and larger word parts together to read words and how to apply this strategy when reading real text. Some teachers teach students in kindergarten or 1st grade to identify unknown words by looking at pictures on the page or at one or two letters in a word. These students are being taught to use a guessing strategy, the strategy of choice of struggling readers, as described so well by the middle school student above. If a word is too difficult for a student to sound out, the teacher can model the process of looking for known letters or word parts and sounding out the word, and then simply tell the student the word. Some reading programs include controlled text, sometimes called "decodable text," that contains only words students can read using words and letter sounds they have been previously taught in the program. This kind of text can provide a temporary support for students in the early stages of reading development.

3. Check it. After students sound out the unfamiliar word, the last step of the three-part word reading strategy is to teach students to put the newly solved word back into the sentence and to check it to be sure it makes sense. Thus, the meaning of the word in context is not ignored; it is used as the checking mechanism. Studies of skilled young readers show that this is the main way they use context-not for guessing what words are, but for checking to be sure that their reading is making sense so they can make corrections when it doesn't make sense.

Monitoring Student Progress

In schools with effective classroom reading instruction, students receive regular brief reading assessments so that their reading growth can be monitored. These assessments typically include having students read text for 1-2 minutes and calculating how many words they read correctly during that time (see Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp, & Jenkins, 2001; Hasbrouck & Tindal, 2006). These results can be graphed, so that teachers, parents, and students can readily see progress over time. Classroom reading teachers can adjust their teaching accordingly to try to accelerate student progress.

For some students, quality classroom reading instruction is not enough. When progress-monitoring assessments indicate that students are not making enough progress with quality classroom reading instruction alone, schools can provide extra small-group reading intervention to ensure that all children learn to read in the early grades (see Denton & Mathes, 2003; Fletcher, Denton, Fuchs, & Vaughn, 2005; Vaughn, Wanzek, Woodruff, & Linan-Thompson, 2007).

References

Chard, D. J., Vaughn, S., & Tyler, B. (2002). A synthesis of research on effective interventions for building reading fluency with elementary students with learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 35, 386-406.

Denton, C. A., & Hocker, J. L. (2006). Responsive reading instruction: Flexible intervention for struggling readers in the early grades. Longmont, CO: Sopris West.

Denton, C. A., & Mathes, P. G. (2003). Intervention for struggling readers: Possibilities and challenges. In B. R. Foorman (Ed.), Preventing and remediating reading difficulties: Bringing science to scale (pp. 229-251). Timonium, MD: York Press.

Ehri, L. C. (2003, March). Systematic phonics instruction: Findings of the National Reading Panel. Paper presented to the Standards and Effectiveness Unit, Department for Education and Skills, British Government, London.

Fletcher, J. M. (2007, February). Overview of the Texas Center for Learning Disabilities. Presentation at the Pacific Coast Research Conference, San Diego, CA.

Fletcher, J. M., Denton, C. A., Fuchs, L., & Vaughn, S. R. (2005). Multi-tiered reading instruction: Linking general education and special education. In S. O. Richardson & J. W. Gilger (Eds.), Research-based education and intervention: What we need to know (pp. 21-43). Baltimore: International Dyslexia Association.

Fuchs, D., & Fuchs, L. (2005). Peer-assisted learning strategies: Promoting word recognition, fluency, and reading comprehension in young children. Journal of Special Education, 39, 34-44.

Fuchs, L. S., Fuchs, D., Hosp, M. K., & Jenkins, J. R. (2001). Oral reading fluency as an indicator of reading competence: A theoretical, empirical, and historical analysis. Scientific Studies of Reading, 5, 239-256.

Gersten, R., Fuchs, L., Williams, J., & Baker, S. (2001). Teaching reading comprehension strategies to students with learning disabilities: A review of research. Review of Educational Research, 71, 279-320.

Hasbrouck, J., & Tindal, G. (2006). Oral reading fluency norms: A valuable assessment tool for reading teachers. Reading Teacher, 59, 636-644.

Jitendra, A., Edwards, L., Sacks, G., & Jacobson, L. (2004). What research says about vocabulary instruction for students with learning disabilities. Exceptional Children, 70, 299-311.

McCray, A. D., Vaughn, S., & Neal, L.I. (2001). Not all students learn to read by third grade: Middle school students speak out about their reading disabilities. Journal of Special Education, 35 (1), 17-30.

McMaster, K. L., Fuchs, D., & Fuchs, L. S. (2006). Research on peer-assisted learning strategies: The promise and limitations of peer-mediated instruction. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 22, 5-25.

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

Pullen, P. C., Lane, H. B., Lloyd, J. W., Nowak, R., & Ryals, J. (2005). Effects of explicit instruction on decoding of struggling first grade students: A data-based case study. Education and Treatment of Children, 28, 63-76.

Rayner, K., Foorman, B. R., Perfetti, C. A., Pesetsky, D., & Seidenberg, M. S. (2001). How psychological science informs the teaching of reading. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2, 31-74.

Saenz, L. M., Fuchs, L. S., & Fuchs, D. (2005). Peer-assisted learning strategies for English language learners with learning disabilities. Exceptional Children, 71, 231-247.

Snow, C. E., Burns, M. S., & Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Vaughn, S., Wanzek, J., Woodruff, A. L., & Linan-Thompson, S. (2007). A three-tier model for preventing reading difficulties and early identification of students with reading disabilities. In D. Haager, J. Klingner, & S. Vaughn (Eds.), Evidence-based reading practices for response to intervention (pp. 11-28). Baltimore: Brookes.

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Classroom Reading Instruction That Supports Struggling Readers: Key Components for Effective Teaching

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The National Research Council (NRC), a group of experts convened to examine reading research and address the serious national problem of reading failure, concluded in their landmark report Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998) that most reading problems can be prevented by providing effective instruction and intervention in preschool and in the primary grades.

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In my work as a teacher and reading specialist, I have found time and time again that children who struggle with reading often struggle with phonological awareness, too.

And that makes sense, right? If you have trouble hearing the sounds in words, it's going to be harder to put sounds together when you're decoding. It's also going to be harder to spell words if you can't clearly hear their sounds.

For this reason, I always assess my struggling readers' phonological awareness. Based upon the results, I incorporate quick phonological awareness activities into their intervention routine. I've seen very positive results from doing so!

In today's post, I'll describe the different phonological awareness skills I teach, as well as provide free phonological awareness interventions to help your students improve in each area.

And although today's post is part of my series on supporting struggling decoders, the ideas and materials are appropriate for most students in the primary grades. The vast majority of early readers benefit from phonological awareness instruction.

What Is Phonological Awareness?

Phonological awareness is, simply, the awareness of the sounds that make up spoken language. It doesn't involve alphabet letters (connecting sounds to print is phonics).

An example of a phonological awareness activity would be a teacher saying a word aloud and students saying each individual sound in the word. An example of a phonics activity would be a teacher writing a word on the board and having students say each individual sound in the word while looking at the letters.

It's beneficial (for K-1 teachers) to spend a 10-15 minutes each day teaching phonological awareness by itself (with no letters or print involved).

At the same time, phonological awareness skills can develop through work with actual print. For example, when children segment words and write their sounds, this helps them practice the phonological awareness skill of segmenting (even though it is technically a phonics-based activity).

Furthermore, it's important for us to help students understand the connection between phonological awareness activities and reading/writing. Saying things like, "You know how we practice saying each sound in a word? That helps us figure out how to spell words" can help them see the connection.

To summarize: phonological awareness does not involve print (alphabet letters or words), and beginning readers should have opportunities to practice working with sounds (without connecting them to letters). At the same time, phonological awareness can be developed through activities involving print, and students need to understand the connection between hearing sounds in words, reading, and writing.

One other note: You've probably also heard the term "phonemic awareness." Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness - it describes one set of skills that falls under the larger category of phonological awareness. I'll define phonemic awareness and provide teaching activities later on in this post.

What Phonological Awareness Skills Should Students Learn?

Children's phonological awareness skills typically develop along this continuum (adapted from Chard and Dickson's article "Phonological Awareness: Instructional and Assessment Guidelines"):

See the original image at http://www.ldonline.org/article/6254/

Not all children develop in the same way, of course. But kids are typically going to learn to identify rhymes before, say, they can segment the individual sounds in words.

Assessment can help you determine where students are "at" along this continuum, and what they need to work on. I don't recommend administering lengthy phonemic awareness assessments to all your students multiple times a year. However, if you notice that certain students are struggling with either phonological awareness or decoding, you may want to spend a little time figuring out what they need to work on.

A phonological awareness assessment can be very quick and simple. If you use my phonics program, From Sounds to Spelling, you already have phonological awareness assessments (and lessons) built into the program. If you'd like to learn more about From Sounds to Spelling, you can do so at this link.

Reading Rockets also has some general guidelines for creating your own assessment here. An assessment can be as simple as asking a child to identify pictures of rhyming words, generate a word that rhymes, count the number of words in a sentence, count the number of syllables in a word, say the first sound in a few different words, and/or verbally segment a couple of CVC words.

What Should We Do When Students Struggle with Phonological Awareness?

If our assessment results (and observations) indicate that certain students struggle with phonological awareness, we can take specific steps to help them improve.

First of all, we can plan daily practice activities to develop phonological awareness. Research shows that students who struggle with phonological awareness benefit from practicing these skills in a small group setting. However, that doesn't mean that you have to eliminate whole-class phonological awareness instruction.

During my one-on-one or small group phonological awareness activities, I like to have students close their eyes sometimes. This helps them focus on just listening. We show students so many visuals throughout the day that it can be a bit confusing for them when we just want them to listen!

I've also found that hands-on activities can be helpful for struggling students. These same students sometimes have attention issues and can quickly get bored with activities that involve only listening to or speaking sounds. The rest of this post will focus on specific, mostly hands-on activities that you can use to teach phonological awareness. To receive all of the activities and materials (for free!), sign up here:

Rhyming Activities

Rhyming is one of the most basic components of phonological awareness. Using nursery rhymes, poetry, and songs in the classroom (including in a small group setting) is helpful in helping children hear and identify words that rhyme.

When you work with a nursery rhyme, poem, or song, model how to listen for and find words that rhyme. You can say something like this: "Words that rhyme sound the same at the end, like mug and bug. While I read this poem to you, I'm going to listen for words that rhyme." As you go through the text, stop when you hear words that rhyme and point them out to the children. The kids will soon be able to join in and find words that rhyme!

As children's rhyming abilities improve, you can have them clap or raise their hands when they hear a pair of words that rhyme. You can also begin asking them to generate their own rhyming words ("What rhymes with ___?"). To connect rhyming words to print, use a highlighter to show students how rhyming words often have the same endings (i.e. the words mug and bug in the example above both end with "ug."

For some hands-on rhyming fun, try playing Rhyming Words Memory. First, have students practice making matches with the cards turned face-up. Then, turn them all face-down and mix them up. Students take turns trying to find pairs of pictures that represent rhyming words. Make sure that students name each picture aloud when they turn it over!

Rhyming word picture sorts are another fun activity. Divide a piece of paper into two columns, and draw or place a word at the top of each column (like "dog" and "pen"). Have students sort additional pictures into the columns, depending upon what each word rhymes with. For a challenge, students can also draw their own pictures to add to each column.

All of these activities are appropriate for your entire class, as well as for students who struggle with phonological awareness. Struggling students will benefit most, however, from participating in these activities in a small group setting.

Sentence Segmenting

Sentence segmenting is the next skill shown on the continuum. This is the ability to hear the individual words in sentences. Although sentence segmenting is quite simple for adults, it can be very challenging for children. Becauseinrealitywetalklikethis, not........like.......this. Because our spoken words flow together, it's not easy for little ones to distinguish one word from the next!

I try to integrate sentence segmenting throughout the day, especially when I'm modeling writing. When I want to write a sentence, I say it aloud to students, modeling how I count each word on my fingers. Then, we say the sentence together, and the kids count the words on their fingers. Next, I show them how I draw a line for each word. This drives home the point that sentences are composed of individual words, and we have to listen carefully to hear them.

In addition to this daily practice, struggling students also benefit from sentence segmenting practice in a one-on-one or small group setting. Practice can be simple - just say a sentence aloud and have students count each word on their fingers. You can also use counters and a grid to have students push one counter into a square for each word they hear:

As with all of the materials pictured in this post, you can get this resource by signing up here (you only need to sign up once to receive all of these materials in one download):

Sentence segmenting helps with key emergent reading and writing skills, like pointing one-to-one and spacing between words. Explicitly point out the connection between any sentence segmenting activities you do and the literacy activities that they support.

Syllable Blending and Segmenting

Next up is syllable blending and segmenting! I always start with blending, or having students put together syllables to form a complete word, because I feel that it's a bit easier for students to master. To practice blending, say the syllables in a word aloud (cat...er...pil...lar) and then have students pronounce the complete word correctly. You can mix things up by showing students a picture, saying the syllables aloud to name something in the picture ("Do you see the el...e...phant?"), and then having students say the word and point it out in the picture.

To practice segmenting (breaking words up into their syllables), students can jump, clap, or tap for each syllable they hear in a word you say aloud.

You can also try a syllable picture sort. Have students each picture aloud, count the number of syllables in the word, and then sort the picture:

Helping children understand that a word can have multiple syllables is vital in getting students to point one-to-one when reading. You might see some students pointing multiple times when they are "reading" a multisyllabic word, because they think that 1 syllable = 1 printed word. Help them see the connection between the syllable segmentation activities and their pointing during reading ("Do you remember that we found out that some words have a couple of syllables? Even if a word has several syllables, like computer, we only point to that word once because it's still just one word.")

Onset-Rime Blending and Segmenting

Onset-rime blending involves being able to say the complete word when the first chunk (onset) and the vowel + the rest of the word (rime) are broken apart. For example, if you say "r-oad" and the child can say "road," that child can blend an onset and rime.

To practice onset-rime blending, have students practice this skill for just a minute or so per day - it's a great way to transition to activities.

You can also gather struggling students in a small group, show them a picture, and ask them to find certain objects ("Can you find a c-up?"or "Can you find the th-umb?").

Onset-rime segmenting is the opposite: students are the ones who have to break up a word into its onset and rime (taking gum and turning it into g-um, for example). After you've practiced this skill as a class, you can have students break up into pairs (or work with you in a small group) to play my Onset & Rime Mystery Word Game (included in your download).

To play the game, give pairs of students a stack of picture cards. They should keep the picture cards between them, face-down. One student takes the top card, secretly looks at the picture, and says the onset and rime. The second student has to say what the complete word is. Students then reverse roles for the next picture.

Again, you can sign up to receive all these materials here:

Phoneme Blending and Segmenting

Next on the continuum is phoneme blending and segmenting! Phonemes are the smallest sounds in spoken language, like the sound /t/ or /ch/. Phonemic awareness is the awareness of those individual sounds.

Phoneme blending is the ability to put together individual sounds to make a word (knowing that /s/ /i/ /t/ makes the word "sit").

You can play "guess the word" for a minute or two each day by breaking up a word into its individual sounds and then having the children say the complete word. Check out this not-fancy video of me demonstrating two different possible ways to incorporate movement into phoneme blending (they can also be used for working on phoneme segmentation):

To have students practice phoneme blending in a small group, print out a variety of pictures and spread them out on the table. Say the sounds in one of the words, and then have students all point to the picture. (This is best done in a very small group of 2-3 students to avoid some students simply following the lead of the others.)

Phoneme segmenting is a bit trickier. It requires students to be able to break apart a word into its individual sounds (i.e. turning "top" into /t/ /o/ /p/.

In addition to daily oral practice, Elkonin boxes are another great way to practice phoneme segmenting. Give students a small grid with 3 or 4 boxes (depending upon what type of words you are working on). Have them touch one box or push a counter into a box for each sound that they hear in a word.

I recommend using Elkonin boxes in a one-on-one or small group setting so you can closely monitor how students are doing.

Phoneme Identification and Manipulation

Last but not least, we have phoneme identification and manipulation! When I say "phoneme identification," I mean the ability to identify whether a sound in a word comes first, in the middle, or last. This skill is helpful in teaching students to write words phonetically. You can have students practice with the Elkonin boxes featured above ("Say each sound in the word hop. Now touch the box that shows where the sound /p/ comes.")

Phoneme manipulation is the ability to add, remove, and substitute phonemes in words. Here are some examples (say the words out loud if you are confused by any of these!):

Phoneme Addition: "If I add /t/ to the end of go, what do I get?" (goat)

Phoneme Deletion: "If I take away the /c/ sound in cat, what word do I have?" (at)

Phoneme Substitution: "Say the word hop. If I say /t/ instead of /p/, what do I get?" (hot)

Phoneme manipulation can be fun, playful, and helpful in getting kids more skilled in working with words. It may also be difficult at first, but research shows that it can further develop as kids learn to read.

Conclusions

To best support your struggling readers with phonological awareness skills, remember the following:

Many, but not all, struggling readers have poor phonological awareness

Instruction should be brief - the majority of your instructional time should be spent on phonics

Phonological awareness skills will develop over time and may take lots of practice for some children

What Causes Decoding Difficulties in Beginning Readers, and What Can Teachers Do About It? How To Analyze Running Records (And Get a Ton of Valuable Information About Your Beginning Readers!) How to Teach Decoding Strategies to Struggling Readers Phonics Interventions for Struggling Readers in K-2 How To Give Struggling Readers More Practice Time Through Volume Reading Chard, D. J., & Dickson, S. V. (1999). Phonological awareness instructional and assessment guidelines. Intervention in School and Clinic, 34(5), 261-270. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. 2000. Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction: Reports of the Subgroups. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, NIH Pub. No 00-4754. *The authors of these texts are in no way affiliated with this blog - I am referencing their work as a means of explaining and supporting the ideas I set forth in this post.*

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Phonological Awareness Interventions for Struggling Readers - Learning at the Primary Pond

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In today's post, I'll describe the different phonological awareness skills I teach, as well as provide free phonological awareness interventions to help your students improve in each area.

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Ashley Seehorn has been writing professionally since 2009. Her work has been featured on a variety of websites including: eHow, Answerbag and Opposing Views Cultures. She has been a teacher for 20 years and has taught all ages from preschool through college. She is currently working as a Special Education Teacher.

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What Are Remediation Activities? | Synonym

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Ashley Seehorn has been writing professionally since 2009. Her work has been featured on a variety of websites including: eHow, Answerbag and Opposing Views Cultures. She has been a teacher for 20 years and has taught all ages from preschool through college. She is currently working as a Special Education Teacher.

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Five engaging videos to teach syllables and phonemic awareness

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Five engaging videos to teach syllables and phonemic awareness

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Last updated on October 27, 2020

Videos are a such a fun and engaging way to teach and reinforce phonics rules that require a ton of repetition and practice to master. I rounded up the best videos on syllables so that you don't have to!

We know that phonemic awareness skills are important for new readers to understand but it can be so challenging to give them a variety of ways to practice them.

I like to teach syllables in as many ways as possible to give all of my kids their best chance for comprehension as well as a ton of repetition. Videos are an engaging and pressure-free way to give your new readers lots of practice with syllables.

The Best Videos to Teach Syllables to New Readers

Learning Videos for the Classroom

While I personally believe these videos are appropriate for preschool, kindergarten and first grade classrooms, remember that there can often be inappropriate ads before and after YouTube videos. Also, I always recommend previewing the full video before showing it to your class.

If you plan to show YouTube videos in your classroom, I highly recommend that you read this blog post by Catherine, the Brown Bag Teacher. She shares three ways to eliminate YouTube video ads so that you can safely play these learning videos in your classroom.

5 Fun and Instructional Videos to Teach Syllables

This is HANDS DOWN my favorite video to teach syllables. (As in, we did it almost weekly, sometimes more 😂😬)

The chorus explains what a syllable is and how to CLAP ? IT ? OUT ?Each verse is a silly story with a set number of syllables (the first verse has one syllable words, the second verse has two syllable words, etc).

Bonus: We have so much fun moving while we sing that it makes for a great brain break, too. 💃🏼🕺

This is an older Jack Hartmann video with a lot of examples of 1, 2 and 3 syllable words. I like variety of words offered and that they are all mixed up.

Jack sings the word and then does a different action to count the syllables afterward. This gives students the opportunity to listen to the word, then say it as they do the action.

Note: I recommend starting the video around 45 seconds to skip the long intro. Then I have my students dance/wiggle during each chorus!

This is an actual lesson to introduce syllables. It starts by giving the definition of syllables then shows how to clap them out.

Next it talks about robot voice (which I love 😍) and using your hand under your chin to count each syllable. At the end it tells you not to guess how many syllables there are because there are patterns that you can follow to figure it out. I really appreciate this reminder for my kids!

I think this is a great lesson and would actually recommend teachers watch it to get ideas, too!

This video is SILLY and will probably make the kids laugh a lot (which could be good or not so good depending on your mood ?). It explains what syllables are, how many syllables can be in a word, and the "beat."

The video goes through words one at a time. When it gets to the word "apple" (at 2 minutes), it explains how the word is split into two parts, shows that, says each part and then claps the word several times until it is put back together.

This video is like a 2 for 1! It is a fun and engaging song to practice syllables and months of the year at one time! #winning

Jack Hartman goes through the months of the year and syllables at the same time. Each month is shown split into it's syllables. The first time they go through the months kids clap. The next time they stomp.

This is not a video I watch with my students BUT it has fun ideas for how to practicing syllables with kids in different ways than just clapping.

I especially love the "hum" method because I hadn't heard of that one before this video. It's genius! I tell every teacher I know about it (so of course I had to tell you too! ☺️).

These videos have been a staple for getting all of that syllable practice in in my classroom. Did I miss any of your favorite videos to teach syllables? Or do you have any other fun methods to practice that I should share? Let me know below! 👇

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The Best Videos to Teach Syllables to New Readers - A Teachable Teacher

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Don't waste time searching for videos on YouTube! I've compiled a list of my favorite engaging videos to teach syllables!

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Common Accommodations for Special Needs Students

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Common Accommodations for Special Needs Students

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Common Classroom Accommodations and Modifications | Understood

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Refer to this checklist of common modifications and accommodations to get to know options for struggling students.

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Phonological Awareness for Special Education

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Phonological Awareness for Special Education

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By: ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation

Learning to read begins well before the first day of school. When Ron and Donna tell nursery rhymes to their baby, Mia, they are beginning to teach Mia to read. They are helping her to hear the similarities and differences in the sounds of words. She will begin to manipulate and understand sounds in spoken language, and she will practice this understanding by making up rhymes and new words of her own. She will learn the names of the letters and she will learn the different sounds each letter represents. As she gets a little older, Ron and Donna will teach her to write letters and numbers that she will already recognize by their shapes. Finally, she will associate the letters of the alphabet with the sounds of the words she uses when she speaks. At this point, she is on her way to learning to read!

When she tries to read books with her parents, at school, and on her own, Mia will learn how to learn new words by sounding them out. With more practice, she will begin to recognize familiar words easily and quickly, and she will know the patterns of spelling that appear in words and the patterns of words as they appear in sentences. She will be able to pay attention not just to the letters and words, but to the meanings they represent. Ultimately, Mia will be able to think about the meaning of the text as she reads.

Where does phonological awareness fit into this process?

Key to the process of learning to read is Mia's ability to identify the different sounds that make words and to associate these sounds with written words. In order to learn to read, Mia must be aware of phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest functional unit of sound. For example, the word cat contains three distinctly different sounds. There are 44 phonemes in the English language, including letter combinations such as /th/.

In addition to identifying these sounds, Mia must also be able to manipulate them. Word play involving segmenting words into their constituent sounds, rhyming words, and blending sounds to make words is also essential to the reading process. The ability to identify and manipulate the sounds of language is called phonological awareness.

Adams (1990) described five levels of phonological awareness ranging from an awareness of rhyme to being able to switch or substitute the components in a word. While phonological awareness affects early reading ability, the ability to read also increases phonological awareness (Smith, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1995).

Many children with learning disabilities have deficiencies in their ability to process phonological information. Thus, they do not readily learn how to relate letters of the alphabet to the sounds of language (Lyon, 1995). For all students, the processes of phonological awareness, including phonemic awareness, must be explicitly taught.

Children from culturally diverse backgrounds may have particular difficulties with phonological awareness. Exposure to language at home, exposure to reading at an early age, and dialect all affect the ability of children to understand the phonological distinctions on which the English language is built. Teachers must apply sensitive effort and use a variety of techniques to help children learn these skills when standard English is not spoken at home (Lyon, 1994).

How is phonological awareness taught?

To teach phonological awareness, begin by demonstrating the relationships of parts to wholes. Then model and demonstrate how to segment short sentences into individual words, showing how the sentence is made up of words. Use chips or other manipulatives to represent the number of words in the sentence. Once the students understand part-whole relationships at the sentence level, move on to the word level, introducing multisyllable words for segmentation into syllables. Finally, move to phoneme tasks by modeling a specific sound and asking the students to produce that sound both in isolation and in a variety of words and syllables.

It is best to begin with easier words and then move on to more difficult ones. Five characteristics make a word easier or more difficult (Kameenui, 1995):

1. The size of the phonological unit (e.g., it is easier to break sentences into words and words into syllables than to break syllables into phonemes).

2. The number of phonemes in the word (e.g., it is easier to break phonemically short words such as no, see and cap than snort, sleep or scrap).

3. Phoneme position in words (e.g., initial consonants are easier than final consonants and middle consonants are most difficult).

4. Phonological properties of words (e.g., continuant such as /s/ and /m/ are easier than very brief sounds such as /t/).

5. Phonological awareness challenges. (e.g., rhyming and initial phoneme identification are easier than blending and segmenting.)

Examples of phonological awareness tasks include phoneme deletion ("What word would be left if the /k/ sound were taken away from cat?"); Word to word matching ("Do pen and pipe begin with the same sound?"); Blending ("What word would we have if we blended these sounds together: /m/ /o/ /p/?"); phoneme segmentation ("What sounds do you hear in the word hot?"); phoneme counting ("How many sounds do you hear in the word cake?"); and rhyming ("Tell me all of the words that you know that rhyme with the word cat?") (Stanovich, 1994).

Beginning readers require more direct instructional support from teachers in the early stages of teaching. This is illustrated in the following example: The teacher models the sound or the strategy for making the sound, and has the children use the strategy to produce the sound. It is very important that the teacher model the correct sounds. This is done using several examples for each dimension and level of difficulty. The children are prompted to use the strategy during guided practice and more difficult examples are introduced. A sequence and schedule of opportunities for children to apply and develop facility with sounds should be tailored to each child's needs, and should be given top priority. Opportunities to engage in phonological awareness activities should be plentiful, frequent, and fun (Kameenui, 1995).
References
References

Adams, M.J. (1990) Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kameenui, E.J. (Winter, 1996). Shakespeare and beginning reading: The readiness is all. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 27 (2).

Lyon, G. R. (1995). Toward a definition of dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia, 45, 3-27.

Lyon, G.R. (1994). Research In Learning Disabilities at the NICHD. Technical document. Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.

Smith, S.B., Simmons, D.C., & Kameenui, E.J. (February, 1995). Synthesis of research on phonological awareness: Principles and implications for reading acquisition. (Technical Report no. 21, National Center to Improve the Tools of Education). Eugene: University of Oregon.

Stanovich, K.E. (1994). Romance and reality. The Reading Teacher, 47, 280-291.

A companion digest, #E539, and a companion ERIC minibibliography are available on request. ERIC Digests are in the public domain and may be freely reproduced and disseminated. This publication was prepared with funding from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under contract no. RR93002005. The opinions expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of OERI or the Department of Education.

The ERIC Clearinghouse on Disabilities and Gifted Education, The Council for Exceptional Children, 1920 Association Drive Reston, VA 22091

ERIC Digest #E540 December 1995

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Beginning Reading and Phonological Awareness for Students with Learning Disabilities

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LD OnLine is the leading website on learning disabilities, learning disorders and differences. Parents and teachers of learning disabled children will find authoritative guidance on attention deficit disorder, ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, dysnomia, reading difficulties, speech and related disorders.

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Teaching phonemic awareness for ELL students

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Teaching phonemic awareness for ELL students

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As a classroom teacher, I was largely ignorant of, and definitely suspicious of, research. I believed that researchers could make their studies come out any way they wanted them to, and that a good teacher who reflected on her own teaching knew much more about how to be effective with her students than any researcher did. Later, as a university professor, I learned how important good research can be, and how difficult it is to do really good experimental research in a field such as education, where it is impossible to control all the variables.

For that reason, I was pleased in 1997 when Congress funded the National Reading Panel (NRP) to evaluate research about teaching children to read. The panel's charge was to review existing studies, choose those that were well designed and well implemented, and synthesize their findings. The results were published in 2000 (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000), and became the basis of the Reading First grant program included in the No Child Left Behind legislation of 2001. Although there was initially a good deal of controversy about the findings of the report, all U.S. elementary school teachers were soon very aware of the five "essential elements" of reading instruction (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension).

Teachers of English language learners (ELLs), however, were left to wonder if and how the findings of the NRP applied to their students. How do you teach phonemic awareness and phonics in English to students who can't yet hear and distinguish the sounds? How do you teach fluency to students whose control of the structures of the English language is still limited? How do you teach them grade-level vocabulary when their vocabulary knowledge starts so far behind that of their English-speaking peers? How do you teach reading comprehension in English when they don't yet comprehend the English language?

Now there appears to be help. In 2002, the U.S. Department of Education funded the National Literacy Panel on Language Minority and Youth to survey, select, and synthesize research on teaching language-minority students to read and write. Their report was published recently (August & Shanahan, 2006).

How much help will this report provide for teachers of ELLs? A preliminary review of the Executive Summary (August, 2006) and the section of the full report on "Educating Language Minority Students" reveals these four potentially important general recommendations:

Literacy in the native language is an advantage.

We already knew this (see, for example, Collier & Thomas, 1997), and it doesn't help teachers working in situations where literacy instruction in the native language is not possible.

Substantial coverage of the five essential elements of reading instruction helps.

However, this finding is based on only 14 studies that looked at instruction of the essential elements of reading with ELLs. Because of the small number of studies, this recommendation is based on the fact that there is nothing in these 14 studies that contradicts the findings of the numerous studies of native speakers that were reviewed by the National Reading Panel. Also because of the small number of studies, no specific practices could be advocated for teaching the essential elements of reading to ELLs.

Reading programs for ELLs should include intensive language development as well as instruction in literacy strategies and skills.

This recommendation is not based specifically on the research, because there were no studies that addressed the inclusion of intensive language development in reading instruction for ELLs. It is instead a hypothesis drawn from several other findings: (1) native speakers benefit more from instruction in the essential elements than do ELLs; (2) ELLs with greater language proficiency benefit more from instruction in the essential elements than do those with less proficiency; and (3) instruction in the essential elements with ELLs has a greater effect on decoding and fluency than on comprehension.

Instruction needs to be adjusted to meet the needs of ELLs.

The report, however, states that there is not enough research to be able to identify specifically how those adjustments should be made. I could find only seven specific suggestions that would be useful to teachers of reading classes that include ELLs:

Provide additional work on English phonemes that are not present in the students' native language.

If students are literate in their native language, focus on differences between that language and English, with less attention given to elements that will transfer.

Provide extra practice in reading words, sentences, and stories.

Use cognate words in the native language as synonyms when teaching vocabulary.

Identify and clarify difficult words and passages.

Consolidate knowledge of the text through the use of summaries.

Find appropriate ways to use the native language.

These seven findings do not constitute a reading program for ELLs. We obviously need much more research. However, given the fact that teachers cannot wait until research catches up with their needs in order to implement effective practices with their ELL students, I think it is important to look not only at the research that is available, but also at what experienced, reflective teachers of ELLs (and observers of those teachers) consider to be best practices. The rest of this article will discuss the implications of available research on instructional practices in the teaching of the five essential elements of reading to ELLs, based on the findings of the National Literacy Panel as much as possible, but also drawing on information from reliable sources such as The Knowledge Loom: Spotlight on Elementary Literacy (The Education Alliance at Brown University, n.d.), as well as my own experience.

Phonemic awareness

Phonemic awareness is difficult for ELLs because they may not yet have enough experience with English to be able to distinguish sounds that differ from those of their native language. There are three aspects of phonological awareness when learning to read in a second language that are important for teachers of ELLs to remember and incorporate into their instruction:

ELLs cannot develop phonological awareness in English until they are familiar with the sounds of English.

This means that before explicit instruction in phonological awareness begins, children should have extensive experiences with fun and appealing songs, poems, chants, and read-alouds that will allow them to hear and reproduce the sound patterns of English.

Once explicit instruction has begun, modifications must be made to allow for more practice with sounds that can potentially cause confusion.

These are sounds that either don't exist in the native language (most of the short vowel sounds of English don't exist in Spanish, for example), or sounds that are perceived as different in English but the same in the native language (such as /r/ and /l/ for speakers of Japanese, or /b/ and /v/ for speakers of Spanish). Because these differences vary from one language to another, teachers will have to become familiar with which sounds of English will need extra practice, depending on the language backgrounds of their students.

Once phonological awareness has developed in any language, it transfers to other languages that are learned.

Therefore, students who are literate in their native language will not need to develop this skill again in English; they will only need to become familiar with the sounds of English and to learn to discriminate sounds that are different between their native language and English.

Phonics

Phonics can be problematic because ELLs often have difficulty discriminating between similar sounds, and because the English language does not have a regular system of correspondence between letters and sounds. Here are some issues related to phonics instruction for ELLs, with discussion of their implications:

Systematic phonics instruction can be very effective in helping ELLs, even those at fairly low levels of language proficiency, learn to decode words.

However, this skill does not facilitate reading comprehension if students' oral language proficiency is not developed to the level of the texts they are expected to read. For this reason, reading instruction should be combined with intensive development of the oral language needed to understand the text.

The most effective reading programs for ELLs combine systematic phonics instruction with a print-rich environment that provides exposure to appealing reading materials in varied genres.

Skills practice that is embedded in meaningful texts helps ensure that decoding skills don't progress beyond students' ability to comprehend the text.

Many of the components of phonics instruction need to be modified to meet the particular needs of ELLs.

For example:

Before phonics instruction begins, students must have the phonemic awareness skills they need in order to perceive individual sounds in words. This is particularly important for sounds that are problematic because of the native language.

Teachers must be aware of whether a students' native language uses a non-Roman alphabet or is non-alphabetic. Even if ELLs have had no instruction in reading in the native language, environmental exposure to a different writing system can negatively affect the ease with which they learn to recognize the letters of the English alphabet.

ELLs must be able to hear and reproduce English sounds with a degree of accuracy commensurate with their pronunciation abilities, before they are taught to make associations between those sounds and particular letters.

It is helpful to explicitly point out different letter combinations that have the same sound, and provide extra practice with them. Multiple spellings of the same sound can be very confusing for ELLs, particularly if they have had some reading instruction in a language such as Spanish, which has almost completely regular sound-symbol correspondences.

Teachers must pay attention to the meanings of the words used to teach phonics skills. Teaching students to decode words they don't know only reinforces the idea that "reading" is pronouncing sounds out loud rather than creating meaning.

Automatic recognition of frequent words is very important for ELLs, whether the words follow phonics rules or not. Although ELLs may develop good decoding skills, their lack of total proficiency in the English language will always slow them down somewhat. Automatic recognition of words can help mitigate this difficulty.

Most ELLs will need additional time to master phonics. Given the need for extra practice to learn to hear and produce the sounds of English, to learn the meanings of the words used in phonics instruction, to learn the multiple combinations of letters that make the same sound, and to learn many more sight words than English speakers need, additional time for phonics instruction should be built into reading programs for ELLs.

Fluency

Fluency is difficult for ELLs because their lack of proficiency in English slows down their ability to decode words and hinders their ability to understand the meanings of the words and how the words combine to produce meaningful sentences and discourse. These suggestions will help teachers adapt fluency instruction for ELLs:

ELLs cannot achieve fluency in oral reading before they have achieved fluency in speaking.

Repeated readings of texts that contain unfamiliar vocabulary and sentence structures will not increase fluency. When working on developing fluency, be sure that students are reading texts that they are familiar with and can understand. Students' own language experience stories are a very good choice, as are read-alouds that students have heard several times and discussed.

ELLs' normal self-consciousness about accents and errors can affect their reading fluency, especially if they are asked to read aloud in front of the entire class.

This effect will be magnified if students are openly corrected or criticized. Fluency practice for ELLs can be facilitated by having them read along with the teacher, or by reading chorally with a group. If individual oral reading is necessary, provide an authentic purpose for the reading (such as a theatrical performance, or delivering information that the rest of the class needs), and let students practice first with a partner.

Decoding skills, fluency in oral reading, and reading comprehension interact in various ways.

The ability to decode words easily is obviously necessary for fluency, and it also facilitates comprehension by allowing the reader to pay more attention to meaning. Comprehension, in turn, facilitates fluency by making it easier to recognize new words. Effective instruction for ELLs integrates these three elements of reading (plus vocabulary learning) into the same lessons using the same text, as each element helps build and reinforce the others, producing a multiplier effect.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary is difficult for ELLs; even for quite proficient learners, the extent of their knowledge of vocabulary is only a fraction of what it is for native speakers of English, and the failure to understand even a few words of a text can have negative effects on comprehension. There are many things teachers can do to help ELLs improve their reading vocabulary, including the following:

ELLs need more vocabulary instruction than their native-speaking peers.

If a native-speaking child enters kindergarten knowing about 5,000 English words, and an ELL with no previous exposure to English enters the same class knowing no English words, it's obvious that the same instruction for each of them will not produce the same results. Everything a teacher of ELLs does should revolve around vocabulary acquisition-explaining, demonstrating, drawing, repeating, reading, writing, and playing with words throughout every aspect of instruction.

ELLs need instruction in different vocabulary words than their native-speaking peers.

ELLs lack many of the basic words that native speakers know, so just teaching the vocabulary words that are suggested in the reading materials you are using will not be sufficient. Here are some of the many types of words that need to be explicitly taught:

words that are crucial for understanding a text;

words that are encountered in a wide variety of contexts;

frequently used words that contain word parts (roots, prefixes, suffixes) that can help students analyze other unknown words;

words with multiple meanings, whether spelled differently (homophones such as to, two, and too) or spelled the same (such as a dining room table and a multiplication table);

figurative language and idiomatic expressions;

academic words that indicate relationships among other words (such as because, therefore, and since to indicate cause and effect).

ELLs need different vocabulary teaching techniques and strategies than their native-speaking peers.

Handing out a list of definitions or asking students to put the words into sentences won't help ELLs learn the meanings of the words. Here are some things to keep in mind:

ELLs who are literate in a language that has many words that are similar in meaning and form to English words should be taught to recognize these cognates and use them to create meaning.

The meanings of words are acquired through multiple opportunities to hear, say, read, and write the words in slightly different meaningful contexts. Teachers will have to create these contexts in the classroom, since incidental learning of vocabulary cannot be relied on for ELLs.

Explicit explanations of unknown words should include contextual support through real objects, pictures or drawings, gestures, examples, demonstrations, or experiments that accompany the verbal explanations.

The use of context clues to infer meaning is not always successful with ELLs because they may not understand the context well enough to infer an accurate meaning.

Having to explain what a word means to other students helps develop comprehension of the full meaning of the word.

Comprehension

Reading comprehension is more difficult for ELLs than for native speakers for various reasons. Three of the most important reasons are discussed here:

ELLs are more likely than native speakers to lack the background knowledge necessary for understanding texts.

ELLs' prior educational experiences may have been substandard or interrupted, so reading texts that assume certain prior knowledge becomes difficult. Even for students with good educational backgrounds, cultural differences and culturally based assumptions can result in a lack of background knowledge and thus loss of comprehension. Whatever the reasons for a lack of necessary background knowledge, before asking ELLs to read a particular text, teachers must identify information that is prerequisite for understanding the text, evaluate students' prior knowledge of these prerequisites, and fill any gaps that are found. The best kinds of activities for building background knowledge are those that get students involved in manipulating language and concepts, rather than just receiving information from the teacher. These include experiential activities such as science experiments, classification activities, role playing, previewing a reading and generating questions about it, and sharing predictions about the answers to those questions.

The language level of the text to be read, compared with ELLs' language proficiency, is a major factor in how much they will understand of the text.

Even advanced ELLs and those who have been redesignated as fluent in English will experience difficulty with unusual vocabulary, figurative language, very complex sentence structures, or unfamiliar styles and genres (just as many native speakers of English do). For this reason, the integration of intensive language development with reading instruction is highly recommended for ELLs at all levels of language proficiency.

Reading comprehension instruction for ELLs needs to be modified to address their needs.

Asking ELLs to read the same texts and do the same activities as everybody else will only result in frustration for teachers and failure for students. This is not a matter of "dumbing down" the curriculum or applying different standards. It is a matter of implementing the curriculum at a language level that makes it accessible to ELLs, while at the same time working to develop their oral language so they will be able to comprehend texts at higher levels. Here are some general principles for modifying reading instruction for ELLs:

Provide as much nonverbal support for reading comprehension as possible, including pictures, diagrams, real objects, gestures, acting, and graphic organizers. The support can be used both for helping students understand a reading passage and for assessment, so students can show what they have understood in ways that are not entirely dependent on verbal ability.

Explicitly teach comprehension strategies, such as reader-generated questions, summarizing, and monitoring comprehension. Remember, however, that teaching strategies is not enough; students must practice them with texts that are accessible at their level of language proficiency. If students don't experience successful application of the strategies, they won't even try to use them with other texts.

Plan interactive activities around reading and interpreting texts. Sharing ideas, comparing perspectives, and coming to agreement (or agreeing to disagree) are all ways that students use the language of the text in meaningful ways, and thus progress to higher levels of language proficiency and reading comprehension.

Conclusion

The original intention of this article was to provide specific suggestions for modifying reading programs to meet the needs of English language learners, based on the findings of the National Literacy Panel. Because of the paucity of appropriate research studies, however, the recommendations made in the NLP report are not extensive enough to help teachers build appropriate reading programs for ELLs. I therefore looked beyond the NLP findings and included theory and experience as well as research.

I hope that readers will take this synthesis of research, theory, and experience and integrate it into their ongoing examination of what they do in their classrooms, what happens as a result of what they do, and why it happens. Research can tell us which kinds of practices are effective in general, but ultimately only individual teachers can determine what is most effective for them and the particular group of students they are teaching at the moment.

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What Does Research Tell Us About Teaching Reading to English Language Learners?

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As a classroom teacher, I was largely ignorant of, and definitely suspicious of, research. I believed that researchers could make their studies come out any way they wanted them to, and that a good teacher who reflected on her own teaching knew much more about how to be effective with her students than any researcher did.

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Phonemic Awareness Ideas for ELL Students

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Phonemic Awareness Ideas for ELL Students

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A student's level of phonemic awareness when they enter kindergarten is a strong predictor of how easy it will be for them to learn how to read. All students in preschool and many in the primary grades are learning phonemic awareness skills. Teaching phonemic awareness skills to young ELLs is similar to their native English peers. Older ELLs may also benefit from short and targeted instruction and practice with the sounds of English.

What is Phonemic Awareness?

Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to identify and manipulate phonemes in spoken words. It is also the understanding that the sounds of spoken language work together to make words ( Reading Rockets.) Phonemic awareness activities are done without letters so that the focus is on sounds.

Components of Phonemic Awareness

Isolation

What is the beginning, middle, ending sound in cat?

Identification

Which word had the same beginning sound as cat? Dog, bug, cut (cut)

Categorization

Which word does not start with the same beginning sound, it does not belong? blue, black, red (red)

Blending

Put the sounds together to make a word. /c/ /a/ /t/ is cat. If a student struggle with blending each sound give them the initial sound (onset) and the rest of the sounds (rime) /c/ /at/.

A simple activity is to play a guessing game with students. Segment a word /t/ /r/ /e/. Students say the word and then look around and try and find it. This helps ELLs build their vocabulary as they are practicing sounds.

Segmenting

Say the sounds you hear in the word cat /c/ /a/ /t/. One way to help students with this task is to give blocks for them to move with each sound or tap their finger for each sound.

Deletion

Have students remove a sound to create a new word. Say blog. Now say blog without the /b/ log.

Addition

Have students add a sound to create a new word. Say at. Now say at and add /s/ to the beginning sat.

Substitution

Say mat. Change the /m/ to /r/. What is the new word? (rat)

Exposure to the Sounds of English

You can help ELLs strengthen their knowledge of the sounds of the English language through read alouds, songs, poems, and other word games. Choral reading is also helpful as it gives students practice pronouncing English words without the stress of people hearing if they mispronounce a word.

Focus on Sounds that are Different

Especially for older Ells, it is helpful to focus on the sounds that are different between English and their native language. Phonological awareness skills transfer from one language to another. If a student is literate in their native language then they only require instruction in sounds that are different.
English and Spanish similarities and differences
Use Pictures

ELLs need to understand the vocabulary words that are being used for a phonemic awareness lesson. Using pictures is a simple way to help students both learn new sounds and vocabulary.

Older Students

For older ELLs photographs are one way to keep instruction age-appropriate. Students can work on completing a picture alphabet book. Use magazines, teacher provided pictures and student drawings that connect to the content that students are learning. Students can sort the pictures based on the beginning sounds.

Resources

Phonemic Awareness Bundle - This set includes print and digital phonemic awareness games with pictures and rhyming puzzles.

A Fresh Look at Phonics
https://www.readnaturally.com/research/5-components-of-reading/phonological-awareness

The Big Five: Phonological and Phonemic Awareness Part 2

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Phonemic Awareness with ELLs - A World of Language Learners

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Learn ideas for teaching phonemic awareness skills to English Langauge Learners. For ELLs it is important to give instruction...

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Syllable games

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As students progress in their literacy understanding, they move from reading and writing single syllable words (often with consonant-vowel-consonant constructions) to reading and writing multisyllabic words. Instruction focused on teaching students about syllables often focuses on teaching different…

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Example of a teacher demonstrating a phonemic awareness lesson

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Phonemic Awareness Lesson | For Teachers: Lesson Ideas, Class Activities | Preschool & Kindergarten

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One of the key skills children must develop before they learn how to read is phonemic awareness- being able to hear and manipulate the sounds that make up words.

Phonemes are the smallest units of sounds that can change meaning -- if you switch the middle vowel sound in hat, everything shifts from definition to part of speech and usage.

A child with phonemic awareness knows that sat is made up of three distinct sounds. They may also realize that sat and bat end in a similar sound and that hat and heart start with the same sound.

It is the recognition that language is made up of these sounds that is so important in reading.

Developing language and sounds

Just as written language is composed of letters of the alphabet, phonemes are the building blocks of oral language.

A child begins learning the phonemes of his or her mother tongue from birth. In fact, babies are born with the ability to hear all of the sounds that make up the 6,000+ spoken world languages.

However, by the time they are 1-year-old monolingual children have tuned their ears to the sounds around them.

Babbling prepares them for speaking; they practice making sounds until they are ready to string them together into words and coherent utterances. As their vocabulary grows, kids begin to develop phonological awareness - of which phonemic awareness is a part, at home.

Nursery school and kindergarten help them hone their skills, including the ability to rhyme, count syllables and segment words into beginning, middle and end sounds.

Phonemic awareness

Children acquire phonemic awareness through learning nursery rhymes, singing songs that contain phoneme strings like E-I-E-I-O in "Old McDonald Had a Farm" and being read stories that use alliteration or nonsense words for proper nouns.

Dr. Seuss books are a great example of books that play with phonemes by substituting sounds in and out in order to create long strings of similar sounding language such as "HE, ME, He is after me. HIM, JIM, Jim is after him," from Hop on Pop.

Clapping hands and banging on drums supports counting the syllables in words and tasks such as providing a starter word and having kids come up with words that rhyme are commonly used to test for phonological awareness.
TIP: Did you know Dr. Seuss books also commonly contain vocabulary from the Dolch List? The Dolch List is a set of high frequency terms that are found in printed material for children. Building familiarity with these words can help children recognize them by sight, which reduces the cognitive load for beginner readers. Learn more in teaching Sight Words.
Understanding how spoken language works helps children prepare for learning the alphabet and developing strong phonics skills, so they can map sounds to letters in order to decode words in reading. It also supports early spelling skills.

It's not surprising then that researchers have identified phonemic awareness as the single most important factor in the success of a child who is learning how to read. It also explains why some individuals, including children with dyslexia, struggle when it comes to reading.

Additional pre-literacy skills

In addition to manipulating phonemes, there are six pre-literacy skills that can support early reading efforts in children. It's important to foster a love of reading and familiarity with how books work.

Parents can do this by reading to children from the day they are born - learn more about motivating kids to read. It's also crucial to help children expand their oral vocabulary, as it is easier to read a word you already know. Ensuring a child is exposed to examples of print, teaching them the alphabet, and practicing narrative through sequential storytelling also prepares children for reading.

Learning to read

Reading instruction starts by teaching kids to sound out one word at a time. Repeat exposure to this word will eventually help the child recognize it by sight. The more vocabulary children recognize, the less cognitively demanding reading becomes, as they only need to decode unfamiliar terms.

Children acquire most of their vocabulary through reading when they take a guess at the meaning of an unknown word using contextual clues. As their vocabulary grows and they recognize more words, they become faster and more adept at understanding meaning, including the gist, main ideas and specific details of a text.

Learn more about teaching children to read.

Phonological dyslexia

While there are many types of dyslexia, more than 70% of dyslexic individuals have phonological dyslexia. This affects their ability to break words down into component sounds.

When phonemic awareness is complicated by a specific learning difficulty, it is important to reinforce phonics skills through targeted training.

The Touch-type Read and Spell program teaches touch-typing in a dyslexia friendly way by presenting individual letters on the screen, playing the corresponding sound or word aloud, and showing users how to type the correct key(s).

Multi-sensory learning reinforces sound-letter mapping and the course includes Dolch Words to build familiarity with common vocabulary. It's also possible for kids to repeat modules until they are comfortable with the material covered and ready to move on. This process enhances spelling skills and facilitates sight reading at the same time.
Do you have any tips on teaching phonemic awareness? Join the discussion in the comments!

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One of the key skills children must develop before they learn how to read is phonemic awareness- being able to hear and manipulate the sounds that make up words. Phonemes are the smallest units of sounds that can change meaning -- if you switch the middle vowel sound in hat, everything shifts from definition to part of speech and usage.

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We have four more days until spring break here in Mass. and it is CRUNCH time!

You may remember I blogged all about my Quick-Check Common Core Assessments last July [click HERE to get a refresher]. These were great at the beginning of the year, but my oh my, I don't think I realized how helpful these would be when I came back from my maternity leave! After being out for 5 full months, there was no way I was going to sit down and re-give every large, long assessment we had, but I did NEED to know my kids better. It was really frustrating to not be able to speak to every.little.thing each of my students could do so far into the school year.

So, voila! I pulled out my quick check assessments since they take about a minute to complete and I got a quick snapshot of where my kids were! I was able to identify my struggling students pretty quickly and we started RTI (response to intervention) immediately.

Now that it is nearing the end of the year (9 more weeks!), I wanted to re-assess my intervention group and see how my struggling students were progressing:

This little one is clearly still mixing up ch and sh!

In February, this little lady had gotten EVERY middle vowel wrong... Progress!!

This little guy got these all right this time!

and now the fun part... going through and making notes. This student has progressed in almost every phonics standard we tested back in February. All except the consonant blends... which means we will be working on that!

I find that these quick checks are great to make small groups and keep me focused through the end of the year! As I mentioned in my July post, I have made a quick check assessments for all the Common Core RF standards and every single math standard! Just click the image above or head here: Common Core Quick Checks for First Grade

Pin it:

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Common Core Phonics Assessments - 1st Grade! - Susan Jones

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We have four more days until spring break here in Mass. and it is CRUNCH time! You may remember I blogged all about my Quick-Check Common Core Assessments last July [click HERE to get a refresher]. These were great at the beginning of the year, but my oh my, I don't think I realized ...

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Phonological Awareness Assessments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is phonological awareness?

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

Figure 1. A continuum of complexity of phonological awareness activities

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why is phonological awareness so important?

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

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

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

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

Teaching phonological awareness

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

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

Guess-the-word game

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

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

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

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

Segmentation activities

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

Activity:

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

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

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

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

Change-a-name game

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carefully model each activity as it is first introduced;

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

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

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

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

Assessing phonological awareness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Test of phonological awareness- kindergarten

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

Nonword spelling

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

Digit naming rate

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

Yopp-SingerTest of phoneme segmentation

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

Bruce test of phoneme deletion

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

Auditory analysis test

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

Rapid letter naming, dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills

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

Phoneme segmentation fluency, DIBELS

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

About the authors

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

Appendix

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

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CCSS.ELA.LITERACY.RF.1.2
Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables and sounds (phonemes).

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Students will be able to identify and understand sounds and syllables when a word is spoken

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English Language Arts Standards " Reading: Foundational Skills " Grade 1 " 2

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).