This document discusses phonemic awareness and provides definitions, instructional strategies, and assessments related to teaching phonemic awareness. It defines phonemic awareness as the ability to identify and manipulate the sounds letters represent. It notes that phonemic awareness can be taught through activities like tapping out syllables, rhyming games, and using flashcards. Assessments mentioned include the Phonological Awareness Skills Test and PALS PreK assessment. The document emphasizes that phonemic awareness instruction is important for preventing reading difficulties.

1. Christina Cimini
Wilmington University
Summer 2013
MRD 6202

2. Definition
Phonemic Awareness is the ability to identify and
manipulate the sounds letters represent, including
blending sounds to make words, creating rhyming
patterns, and counting phonemes (individual sounds)

3. • McEwan (2009) says there are 4 ways children can learn Phonemic
Awareness:
• Be environmentally blessed with parents/caregivers who talk to them
constantly
• Play word games constantly
• Read aloud nursery rhymes and poetry daily
• “Learn it from highly effective teachers using research-based curricula
taught explicitly, systematically, supportively, and intensely”
• Phonemic Awareness is usually taught in Pre-Kindergarten
programs, but if a child hasn‟t learned it by the time s/he enters
Kindergarten, intervention is indicated
• Students who enter kindergarten with low PA skills are at high risk of
reading failure and need immediate and intensive interventions
(McEwan, 2009)

4. • Phonics flash cards from ReadingA-Z
• Picture cards for phonemic awareness
• Letter cards for word building and blending/segmenting
activities
• Word family (phonogram) cards
• Decodable word cards
• High-frequency word cards

5. • Phonemic Awareness Instruction article from
“Reading Rockets.org”
• Gives details and explanation of what phonemic
awareness is
• Discusses the effectiveness of phonemic awareness in
the elementary classroom
• Gave the findings of a research study on the use of
phonemic awareness strategies in the classroom
• Offers educators tips on how to tackle phonemic
awareness in the classroom
• (National institute of child health and human development, 2013)

6. • Tapping and Clapping
• Allows students to “break up” words by clapping or tapping out
their syllables
• . Tapping can be performed with fingers, hands or an object such
as a stick. Adults should model clapping or tapping.
• Once children understand the activity they should be encouraged
to perform it independently on a regular basis. This kinesthetic
connection allows children to become actively engaged with
words.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YzdLA_ZMxQ

7. • „Why not‟ Games
• Help students to distinguish the difference
between rhyming words
• Example: Give the student „bat‟ and „bit‟ and
have child say words and then tell you why
they don‟t rhyme.

8. • Phonological Awareness
Skills Test
• An informal, diagnostic,
individually administered
assessment tool to help
determine the point of
instruction for students and
monitor progress made from
doing the activities selected.
• I found this assessment to be
easy to administer and it
helped me to see a specific
area of phonemic awareness
that my students struggled
with.

9. • PALS – PreK
• A scientifically-based phonological awareness and literacy
screening that measures preschoolers‟ developing knowledge of
important literacy fundamentals and offers guidance to teachers
for tailoring instruction to children‟s specific needs.
• Measures name writing ability, upper-case and lower-case
alphabet recognition, letter sound and beginning sound
production, print and word awareness, rhyme awareness and
nursery rhyme awareness

10. Definition
Phonics is the knowing, and being able to use, the
relationship of letter-sound correspondence, the
alphabetic principal of our language. Phonics
enables students to phonemically decode words
by matching graphemes (letters of the alphabet) to
phonemes (the sounds the letters represent).

11. • There are basically four ways to read words:
a) Contextual guessing – guessing based on the context of the selection, usually using picture
cues
b) Letter-Sound Decoding – connecting the letter seen to the sound, or phoneme
c) Analogy – reading a word by drawing an analogy to another known word in the student‟s
memory
d) Sight – the ultimate goal of reading is to be able to read the word on sight within a split
second
e) Phonemic Awareness is usually taught in Pre-Kindergarten programs, but if a child hasn‟t
learned it by the time s/he enters Kindergarten, intervention is indicated
• Phonics instruction can begin in kindergarten if students are ready;
however, first grade is traditionally where the most intensive
phonics instruction takes place.
• The code that is most important to students who do not know how
to read is the English alphabetic code. If nonreaders are to
experience the thrill of deciphering the indecipherable and figuring
out what those mysterious squiggles on the page mean, they need
to acquire an accurate knowledge of the code.

12. • Words Their Way: Word
Study for Phonics, Vocabulary,
and Spelling Instruction
• Instructional approach is a
phenomenon in word study, providing a
practical way to study words with
students.
• Easy to use
• Offers a variety of resources that can
be used with every grade level
• I use it in my classroom specifically for
spelling but I have used it before for
phonics as well.

13. • Phonics Instruction by the National Reading
Panel on Reading Rockets.org
• Explains the types of phonics instructional
methods and approaches
• Analogy phonics
• Analytic phonics
• Embedded phonics
• Phonics through spelling
• Synthetic phonics

14. • Differentiation through flexible grouping
• Groups based on skill level as identified by
assessment
• Within or outside the classroom, ensuring that
all teachers deliver same instruction to each
group, strict devotion to time with routines to
reduce transition time
• Within grade or outside of the grade level

15. • Word Hunts
• The goal of a word hunt is for students to apply what they
are learning in isolation by finding additional examples of
target phonics features in connected text.
• Students return to texts they have previously read to hunt for
words that follow the same target features examined during
their teacher-directed lessons. These words are then
recorded in the appropriate categories.
• For example, after reading the
words make, shape, ate, take, game in the category a_e
as in cake, you would discuss that each of these words‟
ends include a long a sound and has the spelling pattern
a_e.

16. • Reading A-Z Phonics Assessment
• Determine students‟ understanding of
sound/symbol relationships with two types of
phonics assessment.
• The first type assesses a child's ability to
associate a sound with a given symbol
• The second type assesses a child's ability to
decode nonsense words.
• See http://www.readinga-
z.com/assess/phonics.html to view the
assessments

17. • Informal Phonics Inventory
• Scholastic Phonics Inventory™ is computer-based assessment
that measure decoding and sight-word reading fluency in fewer
than 10 minutes.
• Scholastic Phonics Inventory is a:
• Universal screener
• Placement test
• Progress monitor
• Computer to the right is an
example of the sight word
recognition portion of the test

18. Definition
Fluency is the ability to read so effortlessly and
automatically that working memory is available for the
ultimate purpose of reading – extracting and constructing
meaning from the text. Fluency can be observed in
accurate, automatic, and expressive oral reading and
makes possible, silent reading comprehension (Harris &
Hodges, 1995, p. 85; Pikulski & Chard, 2005, p. 510)

19. • McEwan suggests that Fluency cannot be taught, but
rather, facilitated in the following ways:
a) Making text accessible
b) Scaffolding instruction with explicit phonics instruction
c) Providing lots of time for structured, oral repeated reading of
accessible text
• Fluency serves as the “bridge between word identification
and comprehension”
• The major fluency objective in most classrooms today is
increasing students rate and accuracy in oral reading.
Increasing the number of words correct per minute that
students can read orally is the bottom line.

20. • Fry‟s Instant Sight Word List
• The list was compiled by Dr. Edward B. Fry in 1996. His research
found that just 25 words make up approximately 1/3 of all
published text. He noted that 100 words make up about
1/2, and 300 words make up 65% of all written material.

21. • Developing Fluent Readers by Jan Hasbrouck on
the ReadingRockets.org website
• Discusses what fluency is and why it is important
• Gives tips for how to teach beginning readers to
become fluent
• Gives tips for how to maintain reading fluency for on-
level readers
• Gives suggestions for intervention for struggling
readers

22. • Echo Reading
• A parent, tutor, older student, or
teacher orally reads the first line
of the text, and the student then
reads the same line, modeling
the tutor‟s example.
• The tutor and student read in
echo fashion for the entire
passage, gradually increasing
the amount of text that either
the tutor or the student reads at
one time.
• The tutor should gradually
increase the reading speed to
push the student to identify
words more quickly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=CLpEkMUqZJg

23. • Taped Reading
• In this version of repeated oral reading, students
read aloud once or twice short passages of text at
their independent reading levels and then record
the passage via a tape recorder.
• The tapes are then replayed and students follow
along with the text and monitor their oral reading.
• Students then record the passage again and listen
for improvement.
• Students continue to read, record, and monitor
their recording as often as needed to reach their
goals.

24. • Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills
(DIBELS)
• A set of assessments used for universal screening and progress
monitoring in grades K-6
• They are standardized, efficient and extensively researched.
• They help educators identify students who may need additional
literacy instruction in order to become proficient readers. DIBELS
can be an integral part of most RTI programs.
• We use the DIBELs program at our school to track which
students need interventions in fluency. It is part of our
RTI program and gives a good glimpse of word accuracy
and reading speed.

25. • Read Naturally
• Progress monitoring tool that includes an assessment of student
growth and is a repeated reading technique.
• We use this tool as a form of progress monitoring and intervention
for our struggling readers. It gives students a sense of ownership
because they want to improve their cold read scores.
http://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=5ZEdvy3WYIs

26. Definition
Vocabulary is knowing the meanings of words, knowing
about the relationships between words (word schema), and
having linguistic knowledge about words.

27. • McKeown, Beck, Omanson, and Pople (1985) suggest that
even as many as four teaching encounters with a word do not
give learners enough knowledge to improve their reading
comprehension in text containing that word. It may take as
many as 12 experiences.
• Word knowledge (vocabulary) includes the five linguistic facets
of word study: phonological awareness, orthographic
knowledge, morphological awareness, semantic
knowledge, and mental orthographic images.
• By the end of first grade, the word knowledge differences
between linguistically rich and linguistically poor students
amount to about 15,000 words. Unless we provide ongoing
language development through direct and systematic
instruction of word and world knowledge, the durability of
linguistically poor student achievement is suspect.

28. • Building Academic Vocabulary: A
Teacher’s Manual by Robert J.
Marzano and Debra J. Pickering
• Gives teachers a practical way to help
students master academic vocabulary.
• A method to help teachers, schools, and
districts determine which academic
vocabulary terms are most essential for
their needs
• A six-step process for direct instruction in
subject area vocabulary.
• Using the teacher s manual and
vocabulary notebooks, educators can
guide students in using tools and
activities that will help them deepen their
own understanding of critical academic
vocabulary--the building blocks for
achievement in each discipline.

29. • The vocabulary rich classroom: modeling sophisticated
word use to promote word consciousness and vocabulary
growth by Holly Lane and Stephanie Allen on
ReadingRockets.org
• By modeling the use of sophisticated words, teachers can promote
students' vocabulary growth and word consciousness.
• In this article, the research support for this approach is
explained, suggestions are provided for how teachers might
accomplish this goal, and examples are shared from teachers who
have done it successfully.
• Examples: The Weather Watcher, Affable Annie
• Gives tips to being a word-conscious teacher

30. • Making Students Word Wizards
• In this article, the research support for this approach is
explained, suggestions are provided for how teachers
might accomplish this goal, and examples are shared
from teachers who have done it successfully.
• Students were awarded points for noticing words in
their environment that were first introduced in school.
• Points are awarded to students who are caught being a
Word Wizard (using the word in writing or conversation
in the classroom).

31. • Semantic Maps
• A Semantic Map is one type of
graphic organizer.
• It helps students visually
organize and graphically show
the relationship between one
piece of information and
another.
• As a post-reading activity,
words, categories, and new
concepts can be added to the
original maps to enhance
understanding.

32. • The Vocabulary Knowledge Scale
• A self-report assessment that is consistent with Dale's (1965) incremental
stages of word learning.
• The VKS is not designed to tap sophisticated knowledge or lexical
nuances of a word in multiple contexts. It combines students' self-reported
knowledge of a word in combination with a constructed response
demonstrating knowledge of each target word.
• Students identify their level of knowledge about each teacher-selected
word.
• The VKS format and scoring guide fall into the following five categories:
1. I don't remember having seen this word before. (1 point)
2. I have seen this word before, but I don't think I know what it means. (2 points)
3. I have seen this word before, and I think it means __________. (Synonym or translation;
3 points)
4. I know this word. It means _______. (Synonym or translation; 4 points)
5. I can use this word in a sentence: ___________. (If you do this section, please also do
category 4; 5 points).
•

33. • Expressive Vocabulary Test
• Measures expressive vocabulary and word retrieval in Standard
American English. Provides 5 levels of diagnostic analyses and is
co-normed with the PPVT-4.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ5T5s-NAIE

34. Definition
The extraction or construction of meaning from text using
the seven cognitive strategies of highly skilled readers as
appropriate. It is the understanding of what one reads.

35. • Comprehension doesn‟t always require coming up with one
correct answer, although that is the way most teachers and
tests assess it.
• Students can only become skilled comprehenders by
engaging in the silent reading of a lot of different kinds of texts,
learning lots of new words, listening to skilled readers think
aloud about how they are making sense of the text, thinking
aloud for others, and receiving explicit and direct instruction in
how to the use the seven strategies.
• Each of the strategies is multifaceted; using them involves
multiple thoughts and behaviors that depend on the reader‟s
purpose for reading as well as the degree of success the
reader has in constructing meaning from the text.

36. • Strategies That Work: Teaching
Comprehension for Understanding and
Engagement by Harvey and Goudvis
• Part I highlights what comprehension is and how
to teach it, including the principles that guide
practice, a review of recent research, and a new
section on assessment.
• Part II contains lessons and practices for
teaching comprehension.
• Part III includes chapters on social studies and
science reading, topic study research, textbook
reading and the genre of test reading.
• Part IV shows that kids need books they can
sink their teeth into and the updated appendix
section recommends a rich diet of fiction and
nonfiction, short text, kid's magazines, websites
and journals that will assist teachers as they
plan and design comprehension instruction

37. • Comprehension Instructional Sequence

38. • Modeling
• Modeling cognitive strategy usage for students requires
thinking aloud by teachers – “showing students exactly
how a good reader would apply a particular strategy”.
• The purpose of thinking aloud/modeling is to show
students how you personally process and respond to
what you read.
• In so doing, you become the master reader and your
students serve as cognitive apprentices

39. • Marzano‟s Instructional Strategies for Comprehension
• Example: Summarizing
• Summarizing is restating the essence of text or an experience in as few
words as possible in a new, yet concise form.
• Summarizing and note taking requires the ability to synthesize
information.
• Students must be able to analyze information and organize it in a way
that captures the main ideas and supporting details that is stated in
their own words.
• Students can summarize information in different ways, including
deleting information that isn't important to the overall meaning of the
text, substituting some information, and keeping some information.
• As students practice these strategies, it enhances their ability to
understand specific content for learning.

40. • Standard Diagnostic Reading Test
• Provides group administered diagnostic assessment of
the essential components of reading in order to
determine students' strengths and needs.
• Includes detailed coverage of reading skills, including
many easy questions, so teachers can better assess
students struggling with reading and plan instruction
appropriately.
• Makes it possible to assess emerging literacy skills of
students in Kindergarten and grade 1.

41. • Qualitative Reading Inventory-4
• Contains narrative and expository
passages at each pre-primer
through high school level.
• Provides graded word lists and
numerous passages designed to
assess the oral reading, silent
reading, or listening comprehension
of a student as well as questions to
assess prior knowledge.
• Instructors can measure
comprehension by retelling
passages, implicit and explicit
questions, and other devices.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
uRxIjCJm1xk

42. • McEwan, E. K. (2009). Teach them all to read: Catching kids
before they fall through the cracks. (2 ed.). Corwin A Sage
company.
• Phonemic Awareness
• Brummitt-Yale, J. (2008). Effectiv e Strategies for Teaching Phonemic Awareness Retrieved
from http://www.k12reader.com/effective-strategies-for-teaching-phonemic-awareness/
• Cambiam Learning. Phonological Awareness and Phonics Overview. Retrieved from
http://www.readinga-z.com/phonics/
• National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (2013). Phonemic Awareness
Instruction. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/255/
• Phonological awareness skills test. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.specialconnections.ku.edu/~specconn/page/instruction/ra/case/caseb/pdf/caseb
_scene1_2.pdf
• The Rector. , & The Board of Visitors (2007). Pals pre-k assessment. Retrieved from
http://pals.virginia.edu/tools-prek.html
• Yopp, H. K., & Yopp, R. H. (2000). Supporting phonemic awareness development in the
classroom. The Reading Teacher, 54(2), 130-143. Retrieved from
http://www.icyte.com/saved/teacherweb.com/659936?key=d7a5704e16c0ec1a79751d8c46
130e469f77911a

43. • Phonics
• Learning A-Z. (2013). Phonics assessment. Retrieved from
http://www.readinga-z.com/assess/phonics.html
• MES English. (2005). Phonics worksheets. Retrieved from
http://www.mes-english.com/phonics.php
• Moats, L. (1998). Teaching decoding. AMERICAN
EDUCATOR/AMERICAN FEDERATION OF
TEACHERS, Retrieved from
http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/springsummer1998/moat
s.pdf
• National Reading Panel (2013). Phonics Instruction. Retrieved
from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/254/
• Scholastic. (2013). Scholastic phonics inventory. Retrieved from
http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/readingassessment_spi/

44. • Fluency
• Fry, D. E. B. (1996). Sight word list : fr'ys 1000 instant words (1-
300). Retrieved from http://www.spelling-words-well.com/sight-
word-list.html
• Hasbrouck, J. (2013) Developing Fluent Readers. Retrieved from
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/27176/
• Read Naturally, Inc. (2013). Read naturally. Retrieved from
http://www.readnaturally.com/index.htm
• University of Oregon. (2013). Dibels data system. Retrieved from
https://dibels.uoregon.edu/

45. • Vocabulary
• ASHA. (2012). Expressive Vocabulary Test. Retrieved from
http://www.asha.org/SLP/assessment/Expressive-Vocabulary-Test-Second-
Edition-(EVT-2).htm
• Gunning, T. G. (2004). Creating literacy instruction for all children. Boston:
Allyn & Bacon.
• Heimlich, J. E., & Pittelman, S. V. (1986). Semantic mapping: Classroom
Applications. Newark, DE: International Reading Association
teaching. Forum, 33(3), 6-9.
• Lane, H. & Allen, S. (2013). The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom: Modeling
Sophisticated Word Use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary
Growth. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/40991/
• Marzano, R. J., & Pickering, D. J. (2005). Building academic
vocabulary, teacher's manual. Alexandria, Virginia: Assn for
Supervision & Curriculum.

46. • Comprehension
• Harvey, S., & Goudvis, A. (2007). Strategies that work, teaching
comprehension for understanding and engagement. (2nd ed ed.).
Chicago: Stenhouse Pub.
• Karlsen, B., & Gardner, E. F. (1995). Stanford diagnostic reading test,
fourth edition (sdrt 4). Pearson. Retrieved from
• Leslie, L., & Caldwell, J. S. (2006). Qualitative reading inventory. Allyn &
Bacon.
• Marzono, R. (2008). Classroom Instruction that Works. Retrieved from
http://www.tltguide.ccsd.k12.co.us/instructional_tools/Strategies/Strategi
es.html
• North East Florida Educational Consortium. (2013).Comprehension
instructional sequence. Retrieved from
http://www.nefec.org/reading/page-377/