Classroom Reflection

Moat argues that learning to read is in fact not a natural process and students need explicit phonics instruction. Furthermore, the English alphabetic writing system cannot be learned simply from print exposure: students need to be taught how to develop phonological awareness to sound words out to help them learn how to read and without the support of context-based word recognition. Whole language’s legacy is still embedded in educational practices despite being disproven by scholars, thus Moat advocates for updating state language-arts standards, assessments, and textbooks to reflect direct, explicit phonics-based instruction as the best approach in teaching literacy. She also notes that teacher licensing requirements and preparation programs also need to be informed of effective literacy instructions that is supported by

Phonological awareness is being able to distinguish the assembly of isolated sounds that make up words and experiment with adjusting the distinct sounds known as Phonemes to form new words (Emmit, Hornsby & Wilson, 2013). Elements of phonological awareness include practice with separating, manipulating and grouping together sounds of words, in addition to exploring words and sounds in an enjoyable way using rhymes (Matheson, 2005). Phonological awareness provides innovative processes for a broader vocabulary and the ability to sound out new words (University of Oregon, 2009). The decoding process that occurs allows readers the ability to then concentrate on the meaning of what they read and improve their reading development (Reid Lyon, 1998). When teaching phonological awareness to children, teachers should work in small groups that explore only a couple of concepts at a time for instance how the mouth moves when saying a variety of isolated sounds in comparison to these phoneme sounds blended to assemble a word (Learning Point Associates, 2004). In conjunction with the familiarity of phonemes and words in phonological awareness, it is imperative to integrate this fundamental feature of reading development with understanding graphemes, and the link to letters in print to their phonemes sounds with phonics (Fellows & Oatley,

In order to develop a student’s phonological awareness I would use the following skills and activities to focus on: Sentence segmentation, syllable segmentation, followed by tither onset-rime blending as well as segmentation and finally working on phoneme segmentations themselves. The reason I focused on segmentation it that it teaches the student how to break apart words, as well as differentiate between syllables and phonemes.

We chose to assess phonological awareness because it is a crucial component in children’s development of writing, spelling, and reading skills (Paul & Norbury, 2012). Phonological awareness refers to an individual’s awareness of the sound structure or words; it can be characterized by words, syllables, onset/rime, phoneme manipulations, and the ability to rearrange these different levels into various patterns.

To measure children’s phonological awareness, teachers should look at children’s ability with different skills. For example, a child with strong phonological awareness is able to understand and can use, alliteration, the concept of spoken word, rhyme, syllable blending and syllable segmenting. Children start to read by listening others, and then recognizing sound in words, sounding words out for themselves and recognizing familiar words, so it is important for children to learn the phonological awareness because it can help kids to become a successful reader.

Phonological awareness strategies play a vital role in the development of vocabulary and word consciousness. “It is a sound structure of language—that is, that language is made up of words, syllables, rhymes, and sounds (phonemes)” (Phonological Awareness). This awareness of sounds in a spoken language is a strong indicator of future literacy success. Strategies to promote phonological awareness provide opportunities to help students to hear and differentiate and segregate sounds in their oral language. Emergent learns can better discern rhymes and alteration and understand sounds through syllables.

Literacy skills are an essential element of a student’s early learning at primary school and these are of vital importance to developing a foundation of knowledge from which students can further their understanding of reading, writing, speaking and listening. One of the key components which forms a student’s literacy skills is their phonological awareness (PA), this is described as the understanding a student has that speech is made up of words and those words are made up of individual sounds (phonemes) which can be manipulated (Hagans & Good, 2013, p.104). Implementing a PA intervention program to identified students during the early stages of Year 1 should target the right students with the right skills at the right time to

A successful literacy program explicitly teaches phonological awareness and word knowledge for reading fluency and comprehension, within an environment catering for varying literacy levels.

Blachman, B. A. (in press). Early intervention and phonological awareness: A cautionary tale. In B. Blachman (Ed.), Foundations of reading acquisition and dys-lexia: Implications for \Early intervention. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associate

that is assuming students already have some knowledge, and practice on phonic and pronunciation of words beforehand. It is so important that students have plenty of these exercises to help strengthen their phonological understanding as this will have them to make sense of the other language components (Morphology, Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics).

The EFL phonological awareness skills test was submitted to a jury of EFL experts (see appendix C) , they were asked to determine the validity of the instrument in terms of clear instructions , items and the questions' suitability for the pupils' level. They indicated that the tests instructions were clear and the passages were suitable for pupils' levels and background knowledge. Therefore, the test was a valid measure of phonological awareness skills (Face Validity).To ensure the content validity of the test, it was developed in the light of a systematic and accurate of literature and previous studies. This accurate and systematic review determined the general form of the test, its form

Research shows that all proficient readers rely on deep and ready knowledge of spelling-sound correspondence while reading, whether this knowledge was specifically taught or simply inferred by students. Conversely, failure to learn to use spelling/sound correspondences to read and spell words is shown to be the most frequent and debilitating cause of reading difficulty. Many children learn to read without any direct classroom instruction in phonics. But many children, especially children from homes that are not language rich, do need more systematic instruction in word-attack strategies. Well-sequenced phonics instruction early in the first grade has been shown to reduce the incidence of reading difficulty even as it accelerates the growth of the class as a whole. Given this, it is probably better to start all children, most especially in high-poverty areas, with explicit phonics instruction. Such an approach does require continually monitoring children's progress both to allow those who are progressing quickly to move ahead before they become bored and to ensure that those who are having difficulties get the assistance they need.

It is often understood that educators are charged with the responsibility to educate children in a holistic way. As such, educators must have the best interest of their students at heart if their objective is to teach well. They can prevent the students from failure when they recognize that their students are not heading in the path to success. It is greatly recognize that reading is essential in the development of a child as previous mentioned, Davis and Davis (2014) referered to reading as the building block of life. The different studies analyzed on the correlation of phonological awareness and reading exposed that phonological awareness is an important factor in learning to read or improving reading skills in struggling reads. However, there are other skills that a child’s need to master for him/her to become an avid reader.

To enhance my content knowledge on phoneme awareness, I chose to read the article, “Tell me about Fred’s Fat Foot Again: Four Tips for Successful PA Lessons,” from the Reading Teacher journal, written by Bruce A. Murray. In the article, Bruce shares four research-based techniques that have been proven to enhance students’ phoneme awareness. The four techniques are: introducing a limited group of phonemes one at a time, making phonemes memorable and helping them learn the phonemes vocal boundaries, providing phenome-finding practice so that children learn to detect the phoneme in spoken-word contexts and applying phoneme knowledge to partial alphabetic decoding equipping students to read words.

During our Colloquium class, it was very interesting because there, we learned in many ways how us as new teachers will work in the classroom setting. This week we learned how to teach the students to read. Although, my facilitator showed us a video where they explained to us different ways of reading phonetic alphabets, letter sounds, in this video I learned that the English language has 47 sounds. She also recommended a variety of books that we can use in the classroom that will be helpful for the students to accomplished these standards. For some people, they find it very complicated, she said that there are two ways to teach the children. Our instructor recommended us to teach in the phonetic word and to deny to teach in sight words,