Informative Indicator

Next, I observed the standards, differentiated instruction, and the phonemic and phonics lessons in the class. The essential questions and standards are listed in the front of the classroom but are never referred to. I think that differentiation is a big part of this class, especially because of the number of students with individualized education plans. During lessons, the entire class will meet around the rug for instructions and introductions. After the class is given instructions, most students will work independently and there will be one or two groups that work with Ms. Dunlap or her teacher’s aide for guided practice. The majority of the lessons include hands-on activities, such as cutting examples of noun and verbs out of a magazine, using blocks to measure student’s heights, and songs that emphasize parts of speech. While I observed I also saw some phonemic awareness lessons. These are lessons that focus on individual sounds of letters and the structure of the words and letters. I think that this class had a wide variety of reading levels. Some students did very well, but others could not write their names yet. The class met on the rug for phonemic lessons, and Ms. Dunlap would use a book that had tons of activities. The book includes different activities that make students find the sounds in words, substitute sounds to make new words, blend sounds to form words, and to take apart words to find the sounds. Ms. Dunlap

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,

The purpose of this paper is to identify and understand the importance of a supplemental phonics program, such as Fundations by Wilson Language, to ensure that students are making noticeable and trackable changes in reading and understanding. Phonemic awareness is the key skill needed for students to better understand how letters and sounds correlate. Some basal reading programs do not have an

children learning to read and write, as well as being an important predictor of reading in

The contrasting perspectives of the two passages, “CliffsTestPrep” by Jerry Bobrow (2006) and “The Place of Phonics in Learning to Read and Write” by Marie Emmitt (2013), address the issue of the importance of phonemic awareness in reading and writing scores. Bobrow believes that phonemic awareness is important to understand since it affects reading scores. Emmitt however, argues that there is no evidence that phonemic awareness has a major impact on reading achievement.

Three possible instructional implications that Ms. King and/or Mr. Baker could implement to further build Andy’s phonics capabilities to greater heights throughout the school day could be too:

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.

’51. Having considered a wide range of evidence, the review has concluded that the case for systematic phonic work is overwhelming and much strengthened by a systematic approach’ (Rose, 2006, p20). To further his proposal Rose (2006) proclaimed that the teaching of systematic phonics should be enhanced and active by the age of five; It can be evidence through practice that children as young as five can define the terminology for a phoneme and a grapheme, due to the position phonics has within the English curriculum. There is also a world-wide debate on the various ways educational practitioners can most effectively implement phonics in their practice states Dombey (2010). Due to the impact of the Rose Review, it could be suggested that the value of systematic phonics had increased, meaning that primary teachers have to be confident in their ability to teach and support pupils in their reading and spelling through the use of phonological

The four-cueing systems that educators should incorporate within their classroom are phonological (sound), syntactic (structural), semantic (meaning), and pragmatic (social/cultural). According to Tompkins, these systems make it possible for children and adults to read, write, listen, and talk. For beginning readers and writers emphasis should be placed on the phonological system because it applies to phonics skills to decode and spell words (Tompkins, 2014). Ways that educators can apply the phonological system within their lesson is by pointing out rhyming words, decoding words when reading, dividing words into syllables, and pronouncing words. The syntactic system can be used in the classroom by adding inflectional endings to words, creating compound words, and teaching appropriate sentence structure. Educators can teach the semantic system by teaching students the meaning of a word, and studying synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms. The pragmatic system can be taught by varying language to fit a specific purpose, reading and writing dialogue in

Big Ideas Phonological Awareness: Phonological awareness is made up of various skills that help students work with our spoken language by manipulating sounds and oral parts of words. There will be students who pick up on phonological awareness very quickly and others that may need a lot of instruction and time in gaining the understanding of our spoken language. It is a foundational skill needed to be able to read and teachers need to make sure they give students support who struggle with phonological awareness so they have the skills needed to manipulate sounds and oral parts of words to begin reading. Decoding Words: Using the skills gained in phonological awareness, manipulating sounds and spoken parts of words, students can start using their knowledge of letter-sound relationships and the oral parts in words to start reading.

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

Wendy Warman, co-author of Loud and Clear: How to Prepare and Deliver Effective Business and Technical Presentations, gives instructional seminars on how to effectively participate in small talk for big success. Warman discusses the importance of small talk in order to improve communication, boost sales, enhance customer service and increase profits in any organization or industry. These are all very important benefits, which I think everyone could find use for.

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.

An important learning point entails what is phonological awareness, often many confuse phonological and phonemic awareness. Phonological awareness is akin to metalinguistic skills, it allows a child to examine the sound structure of language. Clients have to discern and discriminate sound structure, such as separating words into syllables, producing rhymes, and identifying words with similar initial sounds. So unlike phonemic awareness, phonological awareness primarily entails spoken

Phonemic awareness is defined as the ability to distinguish sounds; a skill that allows you to listen for, count sounds, and identify distinct sounds. Letter naming isn’t included in phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness can be taught explicitly or indirectly through games, manipulatives activities, chanting, reading and sing along songs, or poems. Phonemic awareness is more than just recognizing sounds. It also includes the capability to hold on to those sounds, and blend them effectively into words, and take them apart again. Phonemic awareness is important for reading development because it’s the foundation you must overcome in order to get to the next stage of reading, and writing. Research of the NRP (National Reading Panel) says that during the kindergarten year, 18 hours of total of phonemic instruction- just 30 minutes week, six minutes a day- provided maximum advantage.