develops graphomotor (hand movement) and orthographic (letter recognition) skills

Learners must

• recognize the direction of line production (up down, clockwise, etc)

• Remember a precise motor sequence for forming each letter that can be automatized or recalled without conscious effort (automatically)

• The strokes used to form letters are stored as linguistic symbols (letters represent speech sounds, syllables, and words)

• Effective teaching involves verbal descriptions and coaching students practice and showing model letters with numbered arrows indicating the sequence of strokes to be practiced

improves students memory of letters

Results in better spelling

Leads to longer, higher quality compositions

Leads to faster reading

Is needed in everyday situations

prealphbetic: writing lacks letter-sound connection, includes scribbles, mock letters, and random letter strings

Early alphabetic: beginning awareness of the connection between letters and speech sounds

Later alphabetic:

teach lowercase before uppercase

3 lined paper

Check posture, use tripod grip, paper position

Green lean/ go, red line/ stop

Beams each letter and verbally describe each stroke

Give students a modeled letter with numbered arrows

Imitate the motion with their arms or fingers

Trace letters before writing them

Write a letter several times and circle the one that looks best

literacy is essential for full participation in today’s world

Many young citizens struggle with reading, affecting their ability to function and expand their knowledge

63% of 4th graders and 64% of 8th graders scored at or below the basic reading level

despite the focus of reading, scores have not improved significantly

Issue: ineffective teaching methods and strategies lacking research evidence hinder student progress

Effective reading instruction must be systematic and explicit

phonological awareness: awareness of the larger and the smaller parts of spoken language

Phonics: teaches the relationship between letters and sounds and how to use this relationship to read and spell

Fluency: the ability to read text accurately, quickly and with proper expression

Vocabulary: knowledge of words and their meaning

Comprehension: process of extracting and contrasting

Which English consonant letter names begin with the sound that the letter frequently stand for?

B, D, J, K, P, T, V, Z

Which English consonant letter names end with the sound that the letter frequently stands for?

F, L M, N, R, S, X

Similarity of appearance of a letter to other letters

Number of phonemes a letter name shares with other letters

What the letter looks like: the more similar the appearance is, the more confusing it is for students

Phonological similarity example: the letter name p shares a phoneme with the letter name b

Letters that are both phonologically and visually similar causes students to often interchange them: example; B and D but not h and n even though they look similar

Letter-name correspondence: a letters whose name contains its relevant phoneme is learned easier than letters sound correspondence for a letter whose name does not contain its relevant phoneme.

Emergent readers should be able to accurately identify the letter of the alphabet but must also be able to do so in and out of order.

The speed and accuracy in which students are able to identify letters not only measures whether they can identify letters, but also how thoroughly students have learned them

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 (Pre-K or K)

Counting words in sentences

Rhyming:

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

• odd word out (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 /o/ = pillow)

• deletion (cupcake without cup = cake

-Early Phonological Awareness (Pre-K or K)

Alliteration:

• words that begin with the same sound (lazy Lindsey likes 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 the vowel

• Rime = the vowel and everything that follows

  • blending

  • segmenting

  • adding

  • deletion

  • substitution

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

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 to make a new word

Ability to consciously manipulate those sounds

Individual sounds are represented between / / symbols

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

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

Blending phonemes

Segmenting phonemes

Adding phonemes

Deleting phonemes

Substituting phonemes

Reversing phonemes

Someone who is phonemically aware knows that:

• sentencing can be broken into words

• spoken words can be spoken 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 matters

English has 44 phonemes but only 26 letters

Whole class instruction including phonemic awareness training is one of the best antidotes for future reading failure; however, instruction must be linked to explicit phonics instruction to benefit young readers

Having phonemic awareness helps students engage with our written language so they can more easily

• learn to read

• spell

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

• How is this best achieved?

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

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

  • NRP suggested 20 hours' time during the school year (a few minutes per day/ several days per week

The ability to translate a word from print to speech using sound-symbol correspondences

Can be in or out of context

Phoneme: smallest unit of speech sound

Grapheme: represents a phoneme

Orthography: a writing system for representing language

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

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

Consonant Blends: two or three graphemes, each one representing a phoneme and maintaining their own sounds

Consonant Digraphs: one grapheme comprised of two letters that together represent one phoneme

• digraphs can make a unique sound

Consonant Trigraphs: one grapheme comprised of three letters that together represent one phoneme

Proficient word reading requires rapid recognition of all relevant layers of word structure in a mental process called orthographic mapping

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

To accurately and automatically read words, the brain will need to recognize:

• Syllables

• Morphemes

• Graphemes

• Phonemes

Synthetic Approach:

• suggested approach based on numerous studies

• Follows a bottom-up model

• Typical Sequence

  • Letter names taught

  • sound letters stand for taught and reviewed

  • principle of blending sounds to form words is taught

  • opportunities to blend unknown words in context are provided

Analytic Approach:

• Referred to as the "discovery method"

• Meaning-emphasis programs

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

  • Typical Sequence:

    • list of words with common phonic element

    • Asked to examine the words and discover what they have in common

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

    • verbalize a generalization about the sound and spelling

Phonemic awareness

Phonics

Fluency

Vocabulary

Comprehension

Systematic, explicit phonics instruction = more significant in children's growth in reading than programs with unsystematic or no phonics instruction

No one best program was found

Phonics instruction was found to be most effective when started in K or 1st

Approximately 2 years of phonics instruction is usually sufficient for most students

Programs which focus too much on teaching letter-sound relationship in isolation and little/no time or opportunity to apply them are unlikely to be effective

Phonics instruction is just one part of a comprehensive reading instruction program

Make up approximately 53% of all English syllables

Contain one vowel letter that represents a short vowel sound

End in one or more consonants

Many academic words are just a series of closed syllables

Contain one vowel letter that represents a long vowel

Ends with the vowel letter

Generally represent long vowel sounds

End with a silent e

Contain two or more letters that represent long or short vowels, variant vowels, or diphthongs (vowel digraphs)

Ends with the vowel sounds or a consonant

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

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

Limited number of consonant -le syllables

Always make the schwa sound

Keep the consonant -le together when dividing syllables

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

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

Affixes typically form separate syllables. The accent usually falls on or within the root

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

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

If a word contains a double consonant, the accent usually falls on the syllable closes with the first letter of the double consonant

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

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

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