Assessment

Issues related to Phonemic awareness assessment  Is it a conceptual understanding about language or is it a skill?

Phonemic awareness  Involves a more or less explicit understanding that words are composed of segments of sound smaller than a syllable, as well as knowledge, or awareness, of the distinctive features of individual phonemes themselves.  The latter continues to increase after an initial understanding of phonemic structure of words is acquired

 Phonological awareness is a more general level of awareness than phonemic awareness  Phonological awareness entails –Syllable structure knowledge –Rhyme awareness (c-at) onset and rime

Importance of phonemic awareness in learning to read  Helps children understand alphabetical principle  Helps children notice the regular ways that letters represent sounds in words –Reinforces sound-letter correspondence –Helps forms mental representation  Makes it possible to generate possibilities for words in context that are only partially “sounded out” –Search the mental lexicon for words that begin with a certain sound – words are categorized by meaning but also by sounds in all positions

Roles in learning to read  Use in sound-letter correspondences to decode words  Support overall reading growth –Particularly growth of rich vocabulary of sight words

Purposes for Assessment of Phonemic Awareness  Identify children at risk  Describe level of phonological impairment in children being diagnosed with Reading Disorders  Some issues on usefulness, may not always be reliable  May be useful 2, 3 grade, but mildly

Procedures  Over 22 tasks being used  Categories –Phoneme segmentation (counting, pronouncing, deleting, adding or reversing the individual phonemes in words) –Phoneme synthesis (sound blending) –Sound comparison (discrimination)

Measures  Rosner Test of Auditory Analysis  Lindamood Auditory Conceptualization Test  Test of Invented Spelling  Test of Phonological Awareness  Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation  The phonological Awareness Test  The Comprehension Test of Phonological Processes in Reading

Instruction  Methods that integrate instruction in sound-letter correspondences in a way that directly links newly acquired phonemic awareness to reading and spelling produce stronger effects on reading than those that do not.  Phonemic awareness skills must be applied to reading and writing  Progression of oral to written language activities

Instruction  We still don’t know the conditions necessary for all children to acquire phonemic awareness of sufficient strength to facilitate acquisition of normal phonetic reading abilities

Programs and Materials  Sounds Abound – LinguiSystems  DaisyQuest and Daisy’s Castle – PRO-ED  Phonemic Awareness in Young Children: A Classroom Curriculum – Brooks Pub.  The Phonological Awareness Kit – LinguiSystems  The Waterford Early Reading Program: Level 1 – Waterford Institute  Phonological Awareness Training for Reading – PRO-ED  Auditory Discrimination in Depth – PRO-Ed

Sequence of Instruction  Begin with –Exposure to rhyming songs, books, and activities in preschool and early kindergarten –Once children understand the concept of rhyme, they can begin with sound comparison involving sounds in different positions in words. –Manipulations, blending and segmentation come next (use immediately prior to or in conjunction with instruction in sound-letter correspondences and phonemic reading and writing.

Word Recognition  Assessment more complex than phonemic awareness because readers can identify words in five different ways

Ways of identifying words  Identifying and blending together individual phonemes in words  Noticing and blending together familiar spelling patterns, which is a more advanced form of decoding  Recognizing words as whole units or reading them “by sight”  Making analogies to other words that are already known  Using clues from the context to guess a word’s identity

Methods and Growth 1. Early stages – phonetic decoding 2. More experienced – Spelling patterns (processing letters in larger chunks) 3. Sight words – orthographic processes (integrated visual representation) 4. Analogy to known words 5. Guessing their identity from the context 1.Skilled readers do not rely on context a lot 2.Poor readers actually rely on context more than good readers 3.Context is not very accurate

Assessment  The word recognition processes most impaired in children with reading disabilities are those that involve identifying words from the visual information in the text (1-4 in anterior slide)  Children are most impaired in –Ability to apply alphabetic strategies in reading new words (phonetic decoding) –Ability to retrieve sight words from memory (orthographic processing) –May have other special difficulties

Issues  These types of assessment are different from authentic assessments used by reading specialists  These assessment do not guide instruction, but for diagnosis

Measurement strategies  Should include –Out-of context measures of word recognition abilities –Phonetic decoding ability (nonwords) –Word recognition fluency  These become more important by the 2 nd - 3 rd grades, after children acquire word recognition skills

Measurement strategies  Sight-Word Reading Ability –Word Identification Subtest in Woodcock Reading Mastery Test-Revised –Reading subtest in the Wide Range Achievement Test -3  Phonetic Decoding Ability –Word Attach subtest in the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test-Revised

Measurement strategies  Word Recognition Fluency (rate of reading connected text) –Gray Oral Reading Test – 3 rd Ed. –Measures of Word Reading Efficiency and Nonword Reading Efficiency by Torgesen and Wagner

Instruction  Instruction must impact phonetic reading skills for it to have long- lasting effect  Are we teaching to their strengths or to their weaknesses?  Some say we should work on sight words or visually based approaches

Programs  Auditory Discrimination In-Depth Program – Lindamood  Embedded Phonics (EP)

Necessary conditions  Instruction that is –More explicit  makes fewer assumptions about pre-existing skills or children’s abilities to make inferences about sound-letter regularities on their own  Direct instructions of correspondences and strategies to decode –More intensive  More teacher-student interaction  Reinforced learning trials  More time –More supportive  Emotional support  scaffolding Than what is offered in schools