Inclusion Of Phonological Intervention Process

Although for awhile, phonics had lost some of its popularity, research has proven its usefulness when teaching children to read. Without explicit instructions in phonemic awareness and phonics a student is in danger of learning issues. The Headsprout Reading Basics program can prevent these issues from occurring through explicit instruction in phonemic awareness,

1. ELL students need to be familiar with the sounds of English before they can develop phonological awareness. 2. Instruction needs to be explicit, modifications made, and practice needs to be given when needed. 3. Once phonological awareness has developed in any language, then it can be transferred to other languages that are learned.  4. Teachers should frequently model the production of sounds. 5. Beginning readers should get help to learn to identify sounds in short words.

There are plenty of fun activities to do with children when trying to enhance their phonological awareness. Activities that involve using rhyming words, jingles, poems, and syllabus in particular can be very helpful when helping children enhance their phonological awareness.

Phonemic awareness is a vital role in literacy instruction. Many schools and districts adopt a commercially published basal reading program and it becomes the cornerstone of their instruction ( (David Chard, n.d.). We also know that through investigation and research it has shown us that word-recognition instruction and instruction in oral language skills related to word recognition were inadequately represented. (David Chard, n.d.) The same researchers have found that the reading passages that students are reading didn’t relate to the words they were learning. In order for students to read at grade level or above a supplemental program should be implemented. I have found that at my school we are lacking a phonics program that will reach different students abilities and make them successful in reading. My goal for this paper is to show my district that using a supplemental phonics program aside from our basal phonics program will prove beneficial to strategic readers who fall below grade level.

Designing an individual intervention to increase reading fluency requires completion of assessments that will determine the child’s reading strengths and weaknesses. An inaccurate reader needs direct instruction on improving word recognition, which may include sight words and decodable words (which rules is the student not applying) at their instructional level. Once the goals have been established, in this case fluency, the intervention will begin with an introduction on fluency and word recognition.

In the article, “Teaching rimes with shared reading” written by Sharon Gill, she states that daily practice of shared reading can lead to successful and enjoyable reading experiences for our youngest learners (p. 191). Shared reading is a wonderful vehicle to help young readers with basic skills such as one-to-one correspondence, fluency, and vocabulary. Researcher Richard Allington also concluded the importance of shared reading experiences for our students whose second language is English (p. 191). Gill believes “Teaching onsets and rimes is a better approach to phonics than teaching individual sounds because onsets and rimes are much more consistent than single letters.” (p. 191-192) In the article, “Ways teachers can help children develop phonics knowledge” written by Constance Weaver, she notes the importance of “discussing interesting patterns of onsets and rimes, in the context of shared reading experiences” (p. 3) Unlike Gill, Weaver does not go as far to say that onsets and rimes should be taught first rather than individual sounds.

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.

Researchers have shown that lack of preparation in the teaching of phonological awareness hinders the way teachers present phonological awareness when teaching their studnets reading. Researchers suggest interference due to the teacher's perspective, lack of training, values, and background may exist an be detrimental in properly teaching phonological awareness. Flesh’s 1955 publication of Why Johnny can’t Read and What You Can Do About it was influential in exposing the ineffective way how teachers teach their students literacy and reevaluation of reading programs in education and their deficiencies (Smith, 2002). Flesh’s book ignited educators and non-educators to look seriously at this literacy deficiency. A renewed interest

With exceptional children, often many of them have auditory processing problems which means that something is preventing them from hearing the information they are receiving. Phonological processing is having the ability to detect the different phonemes or speech sounds as stated by Chard, D.J. & Dickson, S.V. (2018). This is a problem that many of the children in the exceptional children’s department have which makes teaching reading all the more

When phonological awareness is worked on skills of attention, perception and visual amplitude are developed that allow to acquire greater fluency for reading.

The study was conducted for four years and consisted of about one hundred students per grade level, as well as twenty teachers from both general and special education. All three tiers of intervention were used throughout this study. Tier 1 was used mainly for professional development for teachers of reading in order to prepare them to properly monitor and administer the interventions to their students. There were multiple sessions throughout the year so the teachers could implement their knowledge from professional development to improve their reading instruction. Tier 2 consisted of small group intervention with two to three students that met three times per week for about 10-15 minutes. The students selected for Tier 2 intervention represented the lower third of each kindergarten class. The main focus of Tier 2 was alphabet letters and sounds, one-syllable spoken words, and selecting letters to represent sounds in shortened words. First graders that received Tier 2 intervention met for 20-25 minutes three times per week and consisted of small groups. This was an addition to their classroom reading instructional time. Tier 2 for first graders focused on more intense things than in kindergarten, such as decoding words with taught letter

The analysis determined that difficulties in reading are strongly related to the lack of phonemic awareness. Instruction, when given explicitly and direct one on one focus in one skill area of phonemic awareness were greater than instructions that focused on three or more skill areas. In addition, the NRP continued to state that children taught in small group settings showed larger improvement gains than students taught in large groups or individually. The panel concluded that it could be taught under a variation of conditions, for a diverse range of learners. Furthermore, it stated that instruction of phonemic awareness was more effective through the use of letters, explicitly focused on only one or two areas of awareness, lesson and activities were tailored toward small group development levels, and program ranged from 5 to 18 hours – remaining under 20 hours of instruction based on 25 minute instruction

“Phonological disorders in children can result from physical or organic causes or may be functional in nature ("Phonological disorders in," 2013)”. Children with a phonological disorder may experience a higher risk for reading and writing disabilities. “If left unresolved, phonological disorders have long-term consequences that may interfere with an individual's future social, academic, and vocational well-being, largely resulting from persistent, reduced intelligibility of speech ("Phonological disorders in," 2013).”

Research by the National Reading Panel (NRP) (2006) showed that the explicit phonetic approach was “highly effective” throughout a diverse set of age levels and abilities and that phonemic awareness drastically improved children’s reading and spelling ability. In addition, the results concluded that the inclusion of phonics teaching was extremely valuable. It showed that phonics teaching benefits younger students that were struggling to read. It also stated that phonetic approaches benefited low achieving students and children from economically challenged backgrounds (p, 4-5).

1 Treatment approaches are considered motor-based (traditional) or pattern-based, which are linguistically based and have to do with phonology and distinctive features. Both approaches use behavioral techniques in treatment as the traditional approach treats articulatory motor behaviors and the pattern-based approach helps treat language behaviors as well as misarticulation patterns displayed through use of phonological processes. Rules of phonology and rules of distinctive features cannot be taught as rules. Rather, children learn such rules subconsciously. Differences in treatment approaches are found in case-specific targets of treatment and before and after analysis, not in the actual treatment procedures.