1. Reading and Phonemic Awareness Activities PreK-2
September 2012

2. Objectives
Identify sequence of skills for phonemic awareness for your grade level.
Create manipulatives to use in teaching phonemic awareness.
Name activities for teaching phonemic awareness.

3. Agenda Review of Phonemic Awareness
Sequence of Skills for Teaching Phonemic Awareness in Grades K-2
Small Group Activities

4. Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic Awareness is the ability to understand consciously and analytically that words are made up of sound segments that are abstract and can be manipulated.
It depends on installing that system in long term memory and having it available to working memory when deciphering a printed word.
Teaching Our Children to Read: The Role of Skills in a Comprehensive Reading Program-Crowin ,p. 96 William Honig.

6. Phonological Awareness
Rhyming
Words into Syllables
Words into Sounds:
Phonemic Awareness
Sentences into Words
Alliteration

7. Phonemic Awareness Words into Sounds Manipulating Segmenting Blending
Most Critical Phonological Awareness Skills
Words into Sounds
Manipulating
Segmenting
Blending

8. Why is Phonemic Awareness important?
Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to read.
Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to spell.

9. Phonemic awareness skills assessed in kindergarten and first grade serve as a potent predictor of difficulties learning to read…we can predict with approximately 92% accuracy who will have difficulties learning to read.
Reid Lyon, NIH

10. The Research Says…
“Children who fall behind in first grade reading have a one in eight chance of ever catching up to grade level.”(Juel, 1994)
“Phoneme awareness is the single best predictor of reading success between kindergarten and second grade.”(Adams, Stanovich, 1995)
“Phonemic awareness is more highly related to learning to read than are tests of general intelligence, reading readiness, and listening comprehension.” (Stanovich, 1993)

11. Alphabetic Principle This does not come naturally or easily to humans.
Without direct instructional support, phonemic awareness eludes about 25% white middle class first graders and more from less literacy rich homes.
These children show evidence of serious difficulty learning to read.
It is the basis for reading.
Readers must understand that spoken language is made up of sequences of these little sounds.

12. Progression of Difficulty
Words-syllables-individual phonemes
Initial sound-final-medial
Receptive-expressive
Pictures-tokens-eventually graphemes

13. Who is it for?
Preschool
Kindergarten through second grade

14. Skills mastered by … Age 3 Recitation of rhymes Rhyming by pattern
Alliteration
Age 4
Syllable counting (50% of children by age 4)
Age 5
Syllable counting (90% of children by age 5)
Age 6
Initial consonant matching
Blending 2-3 phonemes
Counting phonemes (70% of children by age 6)
Rhyme identification
Onset-rime division
Age 7
Blending 3 phonemes
Segmentation of 3-4 phonemes (blends)
Phonetic spelling
Phoneme deletion
Age 8
Consonant cluster segmentation
Deletion within clusters

15. Developmental Sequence of Phonological Skills
Usually engaged in as preschoolers.
-Rhyme play and nonsense words
-Syllables: Implicity segmenting as in chants and songs, clapping to syllables.
Linda Cummins, 2002
Word
Syllable
Phoneme

16. Areas of instruction Isolation Identify Categorization Blending
Segmentation
Deletion
Addition
Substitution

17. How Much Instructional Time?
“No more than 20 hours over the school year.”
Stanovich, 1993

18. What does instruction look like?
Direct Instruction Model
I Do
We Do
You Do

19. individual sounds in a word.
Phoneme Isolation
Children recognize
individual sounds in a word.
I do:
Teacher: What is the first sound in van?
The first sound in van is /v/.

20. Phoneme Isolation We do: What is the first sound in: Tire Pail You do:
Goat
Clock
Star
Fish
What is the last sound in:

21. Phoneme Isolation
You Do: I spy something in the room that starts like:
Purple
Water
Teacher
Cat

22. Children recognize the same sounds in different words
Phoneme Identity
Children recognize the same sounds in different words
I Do:
Teacher: What sound is the same in
fix, fall, and fun?
The first sound /f/ is the same.

23. Phoneme Identity We do: Which sound is the same in…? sat sister sorry
run rice river
You do:
bike bake birth
mouse mat make

24. Phoneme Categorization
Children recognize the word in a set of three or four words that has the “odd” sound.
I do:
Teacher: Which word doesn’t belong?
bus, bun, rig
Rig does not belong. It doesn’t begin with /b/.

25. Phoneme Categorization
We do:
shake ice shave
milk butter bug
You do:
candle cookie gutter

26. Phoneme Blending
Children listen to a sequence of separately spoken phonemes, and then combine the phonemes to form a word. Then they write and read the word.
We do:
Teacher: What word is /b/ /i/ /g/?
Children: /b/ /i/ /g/ is big.

27. Sound by Sound Blending
Types of Blending
Continuous Blending
Sound by Sound Blending
Vowel-First Blending

28. Types of Blending I do: What word is /_/ /_/ /_/? /h/ /ou/ /s/
/p/ /i/ /t/
/f/ /o/ /k/ /s/

29. Phoneme Segmentation Children break a word into its separate
sounds, saying each sound as they
tap out or count it.
Then they write and read the sounds.
We do:
Teacher: How many sounds are in grab?
Children: /g/ /r/ /a/ /b/. Four sounds.

30. Segmentation Levels Counting words in a sentence
Counting syllables in words
Compound words
Counting phonemes in words

31. Segmentation Levels We Do: How many sounds are in ___? Cake Lock Hen
Flag

32. Phoneme Deletion Children recognize the word that remains
when a phoneme is removed from
another word.
I do:
Teacher: What is smile without the /s/?
Children: Smile without the /s/ is mile.

33. Phoneme Deletion We do: What is ___ without the /_/? Ball without /b/
Fly without /f/
You do:
Rent without /r/
Eight without /t/

34. Children make a new word by adding a phoneme to an existing word.
Phoneme Addition
Children make a new word by adding a phoneme to an existing word.
I do:
Teacher: What word do you have if you add /s/ to the beginning of park?
Spark.

35. Phoneme Addition
I do: What word do you have if you add /_/ to the beginning of ____?
/s/ to the beginning of mile
/c/ to the beginning of law
You do:
/g/ to the beginning of lad
/t/ to the end of pass

36. Children substitute one phoneme for another to make a new word.
Phoneme Substitution
Children substitute one phoneme for another to make a new word.
I do:
Teacher: The word is bug. Change /g/ to /n/. What’s the new word?
Children: Bun.

37. Phoneme Substitution
We do: The word is ___. Change /_/ to /_/. What’s the new word?
Tight /t/ to /m/
Bag /b/ to /w/
You do:
Lid /d/ to /p/
Cot /o/ go /a/

38. May seem like play; however,
Requires explicit teaching
Highly structured practice
Independent practice

39. Which methods have the greatest impact?
Blending and Segmenting
Phoneme Awareness instruction is most
effective when it focuses on only one or
two types of phoneme manipulation, rather
than several types.

40. Developmental Sequence for Remediation
Word, syllable, and sound awareness
Rhyming
Odd one out/alliteration
Blending and segmenting
Manipulation

41. Phonological Awareness Instruction
Use different materials to represent sounds.
Larger materials for larger chunks of sounds
Segmenting sentences into words
Segmenting words into syllables
Smaller materials for smaller chunks of sound
Segmenting words into sounds

42. Syllable Cards Use for Blending Use for Segmenting
“Blend this into a word “bas-ket-ball.” Touch each space as you say each part. Let’s blend together… ‘bas-ket-ball’ What word is it? Yes, it’s basketball.
Use for Segmenting
How many parts? Touch each space as you say each part of the word. Repeat after me- ‘elephant.’ Let’s break it up together…’el-e-phant’
Use for Segmenting Recognition Task
Give students several strips with different #’s of spaces (labels)
Raise up the card with the correct number of parts in this word ‘octopus.’ That’s right! There are three!

43. Syllable vs. Phonemes
Struggling readers often get the concept of phonemes mixed up with the concept of syllables when doing phonological awareness tasks.
Teach syllable awareness and sound awareness in separate lessons until there is sufficient understanding of each.

44. Scaffolding
Why provide scaffolding when developing phonological awareness?
Students needs support as they work towards mastery.
The most helpful scaffolding is taking something abstract and making it concrete. For example, students can touch objects and move them as they say the sounds or syllables in a word. It helps them understand phonological awareness at a deeper level.
Scaffolding is dismantled as students master the concept. A new skill or new level of difficulty requires the scaffolding to be reintroduced.

45. Goal of Phonemic Awareness Instruction
The ultimate goal of taking a student from speech to print is to have the phonological components of a word correspond to orthographical components (the print or spelling patters) so that decoding and encoding can become automatic.

46. Summary Phoneme awareness is necessary, but not sufficient.
Phoneme awareness can be directly taught.
Phoneme awareness does not require extensive teaching time.
Phoneme awareness should be assessed in the early grades.
Focus majority of instruction on blending and segmenting sounds.