• Visual Aids and Manipulatives:

  • Picture cards: Pictures can represent words for students who need the visual support

  • Magnetic Letters: Students can physically manipulate letter sounds to build words with magnet letters

  • Whiteboard: Students can visualise word parts and sound breakdowns and write them on the whiteboard

• Movement:

  • Clapping games: Clapping out syllables in words

  • Rhyming songs and chants: Singing rhyming songs can reinforce sound patterns

    
    

1. Word Awareness (Counting words)

2. Rhyming (Identification & Production)

3. Syllables (Blending and Segmenting)

International Dyslexia Association. (2023). Accommodating students with dyslexia in all classroom settings. Www.readingrockets.org. https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/dyslexia/articles/accommodating-students-dyslexia-all-classroom-settings

Reading Rockets. (2024). Phonological Awareness Assessment | Reading Rockets. Www.readingrockets.org. https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/assessment-and-evaluation/articles/phonological-awareness-assessment

Phonological and Phonemic Awareness: In Practice | Reading Rockets. (n.d.). Www.readingrockets.org. https://www.readingrockets.org/reading-101/reading-101-learning-modules/course-modules/phonological-and-phonemic-awareness/practice

(n.d.). The PAST. https://thepasttest.com

‌

‌

‌

Phonological and Phonemic Awareness: Activities for Your Second Grader. (2025). Reading Rockets. https://www.readingrockets.org/literacy-home/reading-101-guide-parents/your-second-grader/phonological-and-phonemic-awareness?

Reading Rockets. (2024). Phonemic awareness assessment | reading rockets. Www.readingrockets.org. https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/assessment-and-evaluation/articles/phonemic-awareness-assessment

https://shop.heggerty.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/KDG-Baseline-Assessment.June-25-2020.pdf

‌

‌

‌

‌

Typical Reading Development. (2015). Reading Rockets. https://www.readingrockets.org/reading-101/how-children-learn-read/typical-reading-development?

‌

Staake, J. (2021, December 16). 20 Activities to Support Letter Naming Fluency. We Are Teachers. https://www.weareteachers.com/letter-naming-fluency/

Alphabet Matching. (n.d.). https://www.readingrockets.org/classroom/classroom-strategies/alphabet-matching

Children begin applying the alphabetic principle in the initial phases of this stage. Students first spell the sound they perceive in their lips, which is the most obvious sound. This is frequently a word's first sound. However, /v/ can be the most noticeable sound for a term like elevator.

Children start to notice that spelling follows particular rules when they are exposed to standard spellings in books and surrounding print. For example, they learn that long vowels are marked with the final e. They go on to the step of maintained alphabetization.

1. Age 3-4 (Preschool):

   • Recognizes Some Letters

   • Distinguishes Between Letters and Other Symbols

2. Age 4-5 (Pre-Kindergarten):

   • Names Uppercase Letters

   • Matches Some Letters to Their Sounds

3. Age 5-6 (Kindergarten):

   • Names Both Uppercase and Lowercase Letters

   • Provides Corresponding Sounds for Letters

Demonstrating Mastery in Letter Naming:

Mastery of letter naming is demonstrated when a child can:

• Accurately and Fluently Identify All Letters

• Associate Letters with Their Corresponding Sounds

• Recognize Letters in Various Contexts

• Identify Some Letters: Children begin to recognize and name some letters, especially those in their own names.

Age 5 (Kindergarten):

• Recognize Letters and Letter-Sound Matches: By age five, children can identify most letters and understand basic letter-sound correspondences.

End of Kindergarten:

• Recognize All or Nearly All Letters: By the end of kindergarten, children typically recognize all or nearly all uppercase and lowercase letters and can provide corresponding sounds for single letters, especially consonants.

• Recognizing that print carries meaning

• Understanding book handling

• Directionality of text

• Distinguishing between letters, words, and sentences

• Identifying Punctuation

Demonstration of Mastery:

If students can complete the following tasks:

• Book Orientation: ask the child where the front/back cover of the book are, locate the title, point where they begin reading

• Directionality: have the child show you or explain which direction text should be read from and point to where they continue after they have read a line.

• Letter and Word Recognition: have the child point to a letter, a word, and a sentence on a page, have them count the number of words they see within a sentence.

• Punctuation Awareness: ask the child to identify periods. question marks, exclamation points and explain their purposes within the sentences.

(Reading Rockets, n.d. Basics: Print Awareness 2024)

• In terms of EL students who need extra foundational support to their literacy skills, visuals and multi-sensory activities can help influence the most retention. Simple fonts can help for a clear letter visual, this can help students see the curves in the letters to have a clear handwriting influence, additionally, pictures alongside the letters can help with the recognition, pictures that don't include words. Additional Sensory engagement like play-dough, songs, flashcards, and games can make the learning fun and more interactive so the students can connect their learning and letters to something they may remember.

• In terms of students with Dyslexia, beginning with small amounts of letter exposure might help students more to prevent them being overwhelmed. By doing this the teacher is able to begin with small sets of high-utility letters for learners who need slower pace exposure. A lot of the visual comparisons can also help students with dyslexia as well. Small group and one-on-one exposure can help the students get targeted exposure and the support they need, this can help maintain their engagement and motivation.

How the Tool Measures Student Development

The assessment evaluates students' letter recognition and naming abilities by:

1. Presenting uppercase and lowercase letters in random order.

2. Recording student responses as they name the letters.

3. Measuring speed and accuracy, which indicates automaticity.

4. Assessing letter-sound knowledge, which links to phonics and decoding skills.

Identifying Strengths and Areas for Growth

• Strong performance (fluent and accurate naming of all letters) suggests readiness for phonics instruction.

• Slow or inaccurate letter naming indicates a need for additional support, such as multisensory letter-learning strategies.

• Difficulty with letter-sound correspondence signals a gap in foundational literacy skills, requiring targeted phonemic awareness instruction.

Key Features:

• Comprehensive Evaluation: the assessment covers a wide range of print concepts including: book handling, directionality, letter/word recognition, and understanding punctuation.

• Structured Format: it consists of 22 specific items that guide educators in systematically assessing various aspects of print knowledge. This structure helps with identifying specific areas where a child excels or needs extra support.

• Adaptability: the assessment is designed to be administered individually, allowing educators to personalize their approach based on each child's individual needs and responses.

Assessment Focus Areas:

• Book Concepts: identifying the front and back covers, understanding the title, and recognizing the top and bottom of a page.

• Reading Concepts: understanding that print carries meaning and distinguishing the difference between text and images.

• Directionality Concepts: recognizing the correct direction to read (left to right, top to bottom) and knowing where to continue reading at the end of a line.

• Letter and Word Concepts: identifying individual letters and words, understanding the difference between letters and words, and recognizing the first and last letters in a word.

• Punctuation Marks: recognizing common punctuation marks such as periods, question marks, commas, and exclamation points.

Educators can gain insight into the child's print awareness and identify specific strengths and weaknesses the student is demonstrating through the assessment. The detailed nature of the assessment allows for precise identification of the concepts and covers multiple different concepts within one assessment.

• Identify and produce sounds (phonemes) in a spoken word.

• Recognize and produce rhyming words.

• Count, pronounce, blend, and segment syllables in spoken words. Blend and segment onsets and rimes of single-syllable spoken words. Blend spoken phonemes to form one-syllable words (e.g., /m/ /a/ /n/).

• Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel (long and short vowels), and final sounds (phonemes) in three-phoneme words. (*This does not include CVCs (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant) ending with /l/, /r/, or /x/.)

• Add, substitute, and delete individual phonemes in simple, one-syllable words to make new words.

K.RF.3 --> Know and apply phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.

• Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondence by producing the primary or most frequent sound(s) for each consonant and the five major vowels.

• Decode regularly spelled closed-syllable words.

• Read 50 common high-frequency words by sight from a research-based word list. d. Distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ.

K.W.4 --> With guidance and support from adults, produce writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task and purpose. (Gradespecific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above).

• Educators will work with students to explore different parts of a book. They will introduce the book by starting with it held closed and showing the students. They will then begin to identify the parts of the book which demonstrates the print concepts. They will point and name the front cover, back cover, and even the spine. The teacher can discuss what each part of the book does, explaining how the front cover shows the title and author while the back cover shows a summary. They can will open the book and show how to turn pages gently from right to left, putting an emphasis on the correct order. Moving on to pointing out the top and bottom of the page, ensuring students understand that we read from the top to the bottom.

• This strategy explicitly teaches students the physical aspects of book handling, ensuring they can navigate a book correctly, which is fundamental for independent reading.

Print Direction- Directional Tracking

• Teachers will select a book, most likely one with large text and clear spacing. As they read the book aloud, they will use a pointer or finger to track the text, making sure they emphasize the reading happening from left to right and top to bottom. Then they can invite students to take turns pointing or tracking the text, pausing occasionally to discuss the importance of spaces between words, punctuation marks, and the differences between letters and words.

• This strategy provides students with a clear visual and physical demonstration of print directionality, helping them internalize the flow of text, which is crucial for reading fluency.

(Michigans Mission, 2024)

1. Phoneme Isolation: Recognizing individual sounds in words.

2. Phoneme Identity: Recognizing the common sound in different words.

3. Phoneme Categorization: Identifying the word that doesn't belong in a set.

4. Phoneme Blending: Combining individual sounds to form a word.

5. Phoneme Segmentation: Breaking a word into its individual sounds.

6. Phoneme Deletion: Recognizing what word remains when a specific sound is removed.

7. Phoneme Addition: Creating a new word by adding a sound.

8. Phoneme Substitution: Changing one sound in a word to create a new word.

When you see a child demonstrate mastery it can look like this:

when a child can effortlessly and accurately perform tasks involving the manipulation of phonemes.

• blending sounds to form words

• segmenting words into sounds

• addition, deletion, substitution

• Recognize and produce rhyming words

• Recognize that spoken words are made up of sounds.

• Begin identifying syllables in words by clapping

Ages 4-5 (Pre-K - Early Kindergarten)

• Identify the first sound in a word

• Blend two or three phonemes into a word

• Segment words into onset and rime

Ages 5-6 (Kindergarten - Early 1st Grade)

• Segment words into individual sounds

• Blend three or more phonemes into words

• Delete initial or final sounds in a word to make a new one

• Begin substituting sounds

Ages 6-7 (1st Grade - Early 2nd Grade)

• Manipulate phonemes by adding, deleting, or substituting sounds in words

• Fluently segment and blend words with multiple syllables and phonemes.

• Use phonemic awareness skills to aid in spelling and decoding unfamiliar words.

(Reading Rockets. n.d. Phonemic Awareness Assessment 2025)

• For students that have a learning disability such as dyslexia, teachers can focus on multi-sensory learning. This can incorporate visual, tactile, and auditory aids.

• Tactile Learning Ideas: textured materials with letters or words that students can point to. ex. sand or play-dough

• Visual Learning Ideas: color coding different parts of a sentence to help students identify the individual parts.

• Auditory Learning Ideas: read texts aloud to students while also verbally announcing the different parts of the book you are showing them.

• Some key strategies are utilizing books with large print, bold font, and contrasting colors to better distinguish the letters on the page.

(Kean, n.d.)

Student Development

It includes the following tasks:

1. Rhyming Identification and Production

2. Onset Fluency

3. Blending Phonemes

4. Segmenting Phonemes

5. Phoneme Deletion

6. Phoneme Substitution

(Reading Rockets. n.d. Phonological and Phonemic Awareness: Activities for Your Second Grader 2025)

“Basics: Print Awareness.” Reading Rockets, 2025, www.readingrockets.org/reading-101/reading-and-writing-basics/print-awareness?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

Gunning, Thomas G. Creating Literacy Instruction for All Students. 10th ed., Hoboken, NJ, Pearson Education, Inc, 2020.

Kean, Rae. “Concept of Print Activities for Kindergarten - a Guide.” Phonics in Motion, 22 July 2022, phonicsinmotion.com/concept-of-print-activities-for-kindergarten/.

Michigan's Mission: Literacy. “Concepts of Print: Ideas for Teachers | Reading Rockets.” Www.readingrockets.org, 2024, www.readingrockets.org/topics/print-awareness/articles/concepts-print-ideas-teachers.

Reading Rockets. “Basics: Informal Classroom-Based Assessment | Reading Rockets.” Www.readingrockets.org, www.readingrockets.org/reading-101/reading-and-writing-basics/informal-classroom-based-assessment.

---. “Concepts of Print Assessment | Reading Rockets.” Www.readingrockets.org, www.readingrockets.org/topics/assessment-and-evaluation/articles/concepts-print-assessment.

1. use of multi-sensory approaches

2. small group or one-on-one instruction

3. differential pacing

For El students benefit from visual for example, have students clap their hands for each sound they hear in a word or trace letters in sand to connect the physical motion with sounds.

For Dyslexia students small group or pacing will benefit break lessons down into smaller chunks and repeat activities to reinforce concepts. Use pacing that aligns with individual students’ learning speed. (Reading Rockets. Phonological and Phonemic Awareness, 2024).