• Ex. the difference between the words "bat" & "cat" is the phonemes /b/ vs /k/

Phoneme Count: English has 42-44 phonemes, yes there are 26 letters in the alphabet. This is because some letters represent more than one sound. Some sounds are also represented by combinations of letters.

• Ex. "c" in "cat" vs "city"

• Ex. "th" in "thin"

Categories of Phonemes

• Vowel Phonemes (about 18): sounds produced without any significant constriction or blockage of airflow in the vocal tract.

  • Ex. /a/ as in "cat"

• Consonant Phonemes (about 25): sounds produced with some degree of constriction or closure in the vocal tract.

  • Ex. /p/ as in "pat"

  • Parts of Consonant Phonemes

    • Voicing: refers to whether or not the vocal cords vibrate during the production of a constant sound. (Voiced: occurs when the vocal cords vibrate ex. /b/, /d/, /g/)(Voiceless: Occurs when the vocal cords do not vibrate ex. /p/, /t/, /k/)

    • Place of Articulation: refers to the location of the vocal tract where the airflow is constricted to produce a constant sound. Ex. Bilabial: both lips touching, Alveolar: the tongue touches the alveolar ridge, Velar: the back of the tongue touches the soft part of the roof of the mouth.

    • Manner of Articulation: refers to how the airflow is modified as it goes through the vocal tract. Ex. Plosive: complete closure of airflow with a release, Fricative: partial blockage (creates friction), Nasal: airflow is directed through the nose.

Grapheme: letters or letter combinations used to represent spoken sounds

Phonics Instruction involves teaching the relationship between sounds and the spelling used to represent them.

Syllable: a word or part of a word pronounced as a unit.

Onset: The part of the syllable that comes before the vowel.

Rime: The vowel and everything after it.

• Phonograms: a nonlinguistic term sometimes used in place of 'rime'

Morphemes: The smallest units of meaning in language

• Types of Morphemes

  • Free morphemes: can stand alone as words (ex. book, run)

  • Bound Morphemes: cannot stand alone and must be attached to other morphemes (ex. -s in books, un- in undo).

Slide 8: Becoming aware of print video

Slide 9: Concepts of print

• Its is often considered the first step towards reading.

• Print awareness is foundational for reading and writing development.

• It helps children recognize that print represents spoken language and that there is a connection between written and spoken words.

Components of Print Awareness

• Recognizing Print in the Environment:

  • Understanding that print is everywhere (books, signs, labels, and menus)

• Understanding the Functions of Print:

  • Knowing that print has a purpose, such as telling a story, providing information, or giving directions

• Print Directionality

  • Recognizing the left-to-right, top-to-bottom sequence of reading English text

• Understanding Letters and Words

  • Differentiating between letters, words, and sentences

  • Understanding that spaces separate words

Development of Print Awareness

• Stages of Development

  • Infant/Toddlers: Exposure to print through shared reading experiences.

  • Preschoolers: Beginning to notice and ask about letters and words in their environment.

  • Kindergarteners: Developing a more refined understanding of print functions and directionality

• Influencing Factors

  • Home Environment: Availability of books, exposure to reading.

  • Teacher Interaction: Classroom print-rich environment read-aloud.

Strategies for Teaching Print Awareness

• Interactive Read-Aloud

  • Point out print elements during read-aloud sessions (e.g. tracking text with a finger, discussing punctuation)

• Labeling the Classroom

  • Label objects in the classroom (e.g. "door", "window", "bookshelf") to help children connect written words with objects.

• Print-Rich Enviorment

  • Create a classroom environment full of print (posters, charts, word walls) to encourage print recognition.

• Shared Writing

  • Engage in shared writing activities where the teacher models writing and involves students in composing text together.

• Chart on 85

• 86-88

• 26 uppercase letters, 26 lowercase letters

• Relationship between letter shapes and letter names is not straightforward. Students must memorize this information.

• Handwriting can and does reinforce this skill set.

Letter-name Iconicity: when the name of a letter conations the sound that the letter represents

• There are only two totally noniconic letter names: w &h

According to researchers Treiman (2005) and Share (2004), it is easier for students to learn a particular letter-sound correspondence if the letter's sound happens to be in the letter's name.

• An overall awareness of the sounds in spoken language (auditory)

• Ability to think about and recognize larger chunks in words

• Ability to recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of words

• Includes phonemic awareness (the ability to recognize and manipulate individual sounds)

  • Phoneme: the smallest unit of speech in the language

  • Skills begin in preschool

Early Phonological Awareness Skills

• Early phonological awareness (Pre-k or K)

• Counting words in sentences

• Rhyming:

  • Recognition (lace/race, best/nest, plan/bike)

  • Odd word our (cake, corn, shake)

  • Production (a word that rhymes with man)

• Syllables:

  • Counting (crick-et [2], e-ra-ser [3])

  • Blending (ta+ble= table)

  • Segmenting (football = foot and ball)

  • Adding (pill, add /ō/ = pillow)

  • deletion (cupcake without cup = cake)

Phonological Awareness Information

• Early phonological awareness (Pre-k or K)

• Alliteration:

  • words that begin with the same sounds (lazy Lindsey like Licorice)

• Initial (first) sounds:

  • Isolating first sounds (clap /c/, jump /j/, zipper /z/)

• Onset-Rime: c*ake, w*ave, d*esk, ch*air, fl*at

  • 
    

    • Onset = letter(s) before vowel

    • Rime = the vowel & everything that follows

• blending (l + eaf = leaf, ch + at = chat)

• segmenting (cake = /c/ and /ape/, brick = /br/ and /ick/)

• adding (ake, add /f/ = fake, ash add /fl/ = flash)

• deletion (mice without /m/ = ice, joke without /j/ = oke)

• substitution (d-en change /d/ to /p/ =p-en

Phonological Awareness cont.

• From the National Reading Panel Report

  • Clearly affects students' achievement in phonemic awareness, reading, and spelling

  • Pre-K, K, and 1st graders, as well as older, disabled readers, benefit from phonological instruction

  • 5 to 10 minutes DAILY (more is not better)

  • Instruction should be explicit

• Knowledge of letter names, letter sounds, and letter shapes is essential and supports the development of phonological awareness

• Tailor instruction according to what students know and can do

• Small group instruction provides the most effective instructional environment

• No single best way or program for teaching phonological awareness

Phonemic Awareness

• Phon = sound

  • words:

    • Phoneme

    • Phonics

    • Phonetics

    • Phonogram

    • Phonogram

    • Phonology

    • Phonological

What is a Phoneme?

• Phoneme

  • Phon = sound

  • eme = unit of language structure

• A phoneme is the smallest segment of speech

Phonemic Awareness

• the conscious awareness of individual speech sounds, or phonemes, (consonants and vowels) in spoken syllables (auditory)

• a phoneme is the smallest segment of speech in a language system that can determine word meaning, or that can be combined with other speech sounds to make a new word

  • stop, pots, post

  • rich /r/ /ĩ/ /j/

• Ability to consciously manipulate those sounds

• i=Individual sounds are represented between / / symbols

  • /k/, /sh/, /dge/

• Long vowels /ā/ /ē/ /ī/ /ō/ /ū/ and Short Vowels /ǎ/ /ě/ /ǐ/ /ǒ/ /ǔ/

Example Phonemic Awareness Skills

• Isolate (what is the first/final/medial sound in fish)

• Categorize (which work has a different first/final/medial sound)

• Blending phonemes (/c/ /ã/ /t/ = met)

• Segmenting phonemes (chat= /ch/ /a/ /t/)

  • Counting (each [2] = /ē/ /ch/ ; chop [3] /ch/ /o/ /p/)

• Adding phonemes (jump, add /s/ - jumps; oats, add /c/ to beginning - coats)

• Deleting phonemes (sleep without /s/; couch without the /ch/)

• Substituting phonemes (chose - change /ch/ to /th/)

  • Phoneme chains (lap- map - tap -tack)

• Reversing phonemes (cat - flip flop the first and last sound = tack)

What does this mean for students?

• Someone who is phonemically aware knows that:

  • Sentences can be broken into words

  • Spoken words can be broken into parts

  • Sounds in an alphabetic language can be rearranged for use in a wide variety of words

  • The order of the sounds in words matter (stop means something quite different than spot or pots or tops)

Why spend time on this?

• English has 44 phonemes but only 26 letters

• Whole class instruction including phonemic awareness training is one of the best antidotes for futures reading failure; however, instruction must be linked to explicit phonics instruction (letter-sound correspondences) to benefit young readers

• Having phonemic awareness helps students engage without written language so they can more easily:

  • Learn to read (sound-symbol; decoding)

  • Spell (phonetic or invented spelling; encoding)

• PA is the aspect of phonological awareness that is most closely related to reading and spelling

  • Learn to read (sound-symbol; decoding)

  • Spell (phonetic or invented spelling; encoding)

Developing this skill

• Research studies have found that phonemic awareness can be taught & developed in young children

• How is this best achieved?

  • using activities that are child-appropriate, deliberate, and purposeful

  • phonemic awareness should be PART of a fuller literacy program - should not be the only thing done

  • National reading panel (NRP) suggested 20 hours during the school year (a few minutes per day, several days per week)

YouTube video: Elkonin Boxes

• the system of phoneme-grapheme (sound-symbol) correspondences that are the basic structure of an alphabetic orthography;

• a strategy necessary for decoding new words and for storing those words in orthographic memory; or

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

Decoding

• The ability to translate a word from print to speech using sound-symbol (phoneme-grapheme) correspondences

• Can be in or out of context

• Phoneme: the smallest unit of speech sound

• Grapheme: represents a phoneme

• Orthography: a writing system for representing language

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

    • /k/: kiss or click

    • The letter x is never doubled

    • English words do not end in the letter v

Graphemes (consonants)

• a grapheme is the letter(s) that represent a single phoneme (sound)

• the grapheme (or letter) k represents the phoneme (or sound) /k/

  • grapheme m = phoneme /m/

  • grapheme t = phoneme /t/

  • grapheme l = phoneme /l/

• consonant blend: two or three graphemes, each one representing a phoneme and maintaining their own sounds (before OR after the vowel sound in a syllable)

• the graphemes (or letters) c-l represent the sound /c/ /l/ or /cl/ (clean)

  • grapheme s-t-r = phonemes /s/ /t/ /r/ or /str/ (stream)

  • grapheme l-k = phonemes /l/ /k/ or /lk/ (milk)

• consonant diagraphs: one grapheme comprised of two letters that together represent one phoneme (before Or after the vowel sound in a syllable)

• Note: digraphs can make a unique sound such as /sh/ or be another spelling for a single-consonant letter such as ph or f)

• the grapheme (or letters) ch represents the phoneme (or sound) /ch/

  • grapheme sh = phoneme /sh/ (shut)

  • grapheme th = phoneme /th/ (throw) OR phoneme /th/ (that)

  • grapheme ck = phoneme /k/ (pick)

  • grapheme gh = phoneme /g/ (rough)

• consonant trigraphs: one grapheme comprised of three letters that together represent one phoneme (after a short vowel sound at the end of the syllable)

• the grapheme (or letters) tch represents the phoneme (or sound) /ch.

• grapheme dge = phoneme /j/ (pledge)

Orthographic Mapping

• proficient word reading requires rapid recognition of all relevant layers of word structure in a mental process called orthographic mapping (Kilpatrick, 2015)

• the more students learn about the structure of words, the better they will be able to read them independently, the more readily they will process their meanings, and the more they will understand and remember about spelling (Moats, 2019)

• to accurately and automatically read the word unkind, the brain will need to recognize:

  • syllables: un-kind [2]

  • morphemes: un-kind [2]

  • graphemes: u-n-k-i-n-d [6]

  • phonemes: /u/ /n/ /k/ /i/ /n/ /d/ [6]

  • parts of speech: adjective [describe the noun]

Phoneme: the smallest unit of speech sound (can be combined with other phonemes in a language to make words, represented between / /)

Grapheme: a letter or letter combination that spells a phoneme (can be one, two, three, or four letters in English)

Two approaches to phonics Instruction

• synthetic approach (aka code-based, direct, systematic, or explicit phonics)

• follow a bottom-up model

• typical sequence

  • letter name taught

  • sound-letter stands for taught & received (some rules or generalizations might be discussed)

  • Principle of blending sounds to form words is taught

  • Opportunities to blend unknown words in context are provided (decodable texts)

Two approaches go phonics instructions cont.

• referred to as the "discovery method" (does not follow Science of Reading)

• Meaning-emphasis programs

• students begin with words & are asked to deduct the sound-spelling relationship that is the focus of the lesson

• typical sequence:

  • List of words with common phonic elements (focus on similar sounds)

  • asked to examine the words & discover what they have in common (focus on similar sound)

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

  • verbalize a generalization about the sound and spelling (e.g. letter s stands for /s/ sound

Phonics cont.

• report of National Reading Panel (2000)

• Congressional mandate to identify key skills central to reading achievement

• reviewed 100,000 studies using strict criteria of evidence (scientifically based review)

• Identified the "big five" blocks of reading

  • Phonemic awareness

  • phonics

  • fluency

  • vocabulary

  • comprehension

"Not all words are regular or can be read by sounding them out. An irregular word contains one or more sounds/spelling correspondence that a student does not know and therefore cannot decode the word. Because students can't sound out irregular words by applying their phonics knowledge, they have to learn to identify these words as a whole, or automatically by sight. Many of the most common (i.e. high frequency) words in English are irregular"

"Temporarily irregular words may be irregular at one point in a beginning reading program but may eventually become regular after all the sound/spellings in the word have been taught. In other words, as students learn more sound/spelling, some of the irregular words that they learned by sight become wholly decodable words.

"The more difficult an irregular word, the more practice is necessary. There are two factors that determine the difficulty of an irregular word: (1) the number of irregularities in the pronunciation of its sound/spelling correspondences and (2) whether or not the word is in a student's oral vocabulary."

Sequence of Introduction

"Word frequency: introduce high-frequency irregular words before low-frequency irregular words. If too many irregular words appear in an upcoming story, prioritize by teaching only the words that are more likely to appear in future reading"

"Word Similarity: some pairs of irregular words are frequently confused by students, such as of-off, their-there, and were-where. These pairs of words should not be introduced too close to each other. Introducing the second potentially confusing word at a later time allows students to master the first irregular word."

"Word Relationship: Some pairs of irregular words belong to the same word family; they contain similar letter patterns or phonograms. Irregular words that have a phonogram in common, such as could, should, and would, should be introduced in sets."

"Decoding is a highly reliable strategy for identifying regular words, but irregular words do not always conform to what is taught in phonics instruction.

"When to Teach: Irregular words need to be systematically introduced in a reasonable order, practiced, and then cumulatively reviewed."

There are basically three different research-based approaches to teaching students how to decode longer multisyllabic words.

1) using syllable types and division principles

2) identifying affixes or word parts

3) using flexible syllabication strategies

Common types of syllables

Closed: a syllable ending in one or more consonants and having a short vowel sound spelling with one vowel sound. VC, CVC< CCVC,CVCC

Open: a syllable ending with a long vowel sound spelled with one vowel letter. CV, CCV

Vowel Combination: a syllable with a short vowel, long vowel, or diphthong sound spelled with a vowel combination, such as ai, ea, ee, oi, or oo. CVVC, CCVVC, CVVCC

R- Controlled: A syllable containing a letter combination made up of a vowel followed by the letter r, such as ar, ir, or, and ur. The vowel-r combination is one welded sound that cannot be segmented.

Vowel-consonant e: a syllable with a long vowel sound spelled with one vowel letter followed by one consonant and a silent e. VCe, CVCe, CCVCe

Consonant-le: a final, separate syllable containing a consonant followed by the letters le.

Open and closed syllables make up almost 75% of syllables in English words. For this reason, Shefelbineing and Newman (2004) refer to these two types as "the basic building blocks of polysyllabic decoding".

Other syllable division principles

• divide two-syllable compound words between the two smaller words (e.g., in.side, pan.cake)

• inflectional endings such as -ing, -er, -es, -ed, and -est often from separate syllables

• never separate the letters in a consonant or vowel digraph, vowel diphthong, or r-controlled vowel across syllable division

• one of the syllables in a multisyllabic word usually receives more stress or emphasis. In two-syllable words, the stress usually falls on the first syllable (e.g., mo'ment, fa'mous). In the unstressed syllable, the vowel sound often is "reduced" to a schwa (e.g., we'gon, cac'tus)

Syllable divisions often occur between morphemic units of meaning-word parts. Word parts include root words, Greek and Latin roots, and affixes.

Morphemes: the meaningful parts or words

Suffixes: affixes that follow root words

Affixes: prefixes and suffixes

Prefixes: affixes that come before root words

Root words: (base word) a single word that cannot be broken into smaller meaningful words or parts

The syllable segmentation strategy involves breaking words into spoken syllables, matching the spoken syllables to their spellings, and then blending the segments to form a recognizable word.