Reading instruction can only be successful when a teacher incorporates all of the major content strands of the reading process into their lesson plans, phonemic awareness is the starting point of this process. Phonemic awareness is, in its most simple terms, is the conscious awareness of the sounds in words (Hill, 2012, p.137). An example of this would be a child who can recognise the sounds /c/, /a/ and /t/ in the word cat and understand when those sounds are put together they form a word and that this theory can be applied to all words. By using explicit teaching methods, a child will have been well supported in developing their phonemic awareness, this lays the foundation for the further development of their reading skills. These explicit …show more content…
As stated in Ewing and Maher (2014, p.2), there are two types of approaches to teaching phonics: synthetic and analytic. A synthetic phonics approach uses individual letters and their sounds and gradually builds on the number introduced until they can be formed into words. An analytical approach to phonics uses whole words and breaks them down into their phoneomes. It is the analytical approach that appears to be of most benefit to students in relation to developing their reading abilities because it asks students to draw meaning from the printed word. Jim Rose was commissioned by the UK government to investigate the teaching of phonics and literacy (The Rose Report, 2006), the main recommendation from that report was that teachers should use a synthetic approach to teaching phonics. This report garnered much debate as it presented an opinion that was very different from much of the data that had been collected over the previous 30 years of research. Wyse and Styles (2007, p.40) wrote an article debating the merits of the recommendations of the Rose Report and disagreed with them, stating that the Rose Report’s conclusion was not supported by research evidence. Hill (2012, p.260) states that there are many methods to teach phonics and there are continually new methods being created, it is the teachers role to determine a way to incorporate the many options available to suit the style of learning of the students in their
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,
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.
Bobrow discusses the importance of phonemic awareness. Bobrow states that phonemic awareness is important for reading achievement and learning how to read. According to Bobrow, students need to be able to “grasp printed words”(para.3) and know how words “work together”
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
Within the field of education, a continuous debate about the most effective manner in which to provide reading instruction has been on-going since the Johnson Administration’s War on Poverty Report of the 1960s. The primary focus of that debate is whether a skills-based approach or a meaning – based approach was most effective for teaching beginning reading skills (phonemic and phonological awareness), comprehension, and enrichment. (Frey, et.al, 2005) The silks-based or direct instruction approach to reading instruction focuses on explicit and systematic instruction of letter-sound correspondence, phonological and phonemic awareness, and their relationship to reading and comprehension. The meaning- based or balanced
Even though advanced cochlear implant (CI) and hearing aid (HA) technology is making tremendous strides in the DHH community, these hearing devices still cannot completely restore normal hearing or fully represent all aspects of normal speech sounds. Therefore, children within this population are potentially at a higher risk for speech disorders, speech delays, or language difficulties. The acquisition of phonological awareness (PA) and PA abilities is an important developmental step in speech and language. Moreover, PA skills have been shown to significantly affect early literacy abilities in normal hearing children. PA is commonly defined as the conscious ability
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,
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.
The first component of the five areas of reading instruction is phonemic awareness. According to Put
Please revisit and define Phonemic Awareness. Also, please provide a few examples of activities you can use with young children to develop their understanding of phonemic awareness.
To become a strong reader, the students must develop skills in all six components of the reading - phonological awareness, phonics, oral language, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Now, let see how interdependent they are. First, fluency is considered to be bridge recognition and comprehension. Fluency readers have the ability to read at a suitable rate of speed for their grade level. This ability will them to focus on students can focus on the meaning of the words rather than on decoding the words. With the background knowledge, the students have the ability to manipulate sound of the language. This called phonological awareness skills which help the student to make a connection between sounds and the words. Also, learning to make a
There are several different types of phonics but the two main types are implicit and explicit (Ruddell, 2009). The implicit approach, or analytic, is when the teacher teaches the relation between sounds and letters in the context of the word it is found in. This means you are looking at the whole word and not isolating sounds. The explicit approach, or synthetic, approach is the opposite of the analytic approach. Instead of looking at the word as a whole, the teacher looks at each individual sound (Ruddell, 2009). From what I know I believe that both of these need to be brought into the classroom. It is important for the child to know each sound so they are able to sound out unfamiliar words in their readings but it is also important for them to be able to recognize a word in context so they can identify words easily and quicker. In my experience in classrooms I have noticed the different ways these approaches were used. In my kindergarten placement the teacher usually used the explicit approach. Each day we would concentrate on two or three letters and the sounds they made. We would practice the pronunciation and read a poem or sing a song with the letter in it. In my second grade class the teacher had a very different way. She would have the children look at the whole
There are several methods that can be used and have been used to teach phonemic awareness. For example, some whole language teachers feel that using work-sheets and drills is less effective than teaching phonics in meaningful context using real lan-guage. (Griffith & Olsen, 1992; Morrow & Tracey, 1997; Richgels, Poremba, & McGee, 1996). On the other hand some educators differ in their thoughts as they believe that you may leave out some crucial parts of phonics instructions if you are teaching in only natural language settings.One of the more widely used phonics program is Color My World with Phonicsand it is written by Jenny O’Brien and Fran Key. There was also a study conducted to compare the results first grade students who were exposed to this programs explicit phonemic awareness instruction versus those who were instructed using a more traditional reader program. The results con-firmed that students who were exposed to the Color My World with Phonicscurriculum in the first grade achieved higher SAT-9 scores in the second grade than those in the traditional read-er program.The result of this study supports the fact that students who receive reading instruction pro-grams with explicit phonemic awareness instruction tend to be more successful at reading, especially at earlier
The importance of students learning to read is to help them develop the understanding needed to be successful in school and later in life. Learning to read takes place as a result of multiple cognitive and language complexities, that must be developed in order for students to master accurate and fluent reading abilities. Skills that involve language and phonological development when learned early in education formulates reading comprehension in students. However, it is these two concepts that form the controversy that surrounds the idea regarding the best method to develop reading skills in students. Recognizing the importance of instruction techniques, the focus of educators is in determining whether successful reading development is phonetics based or whole language based when developing reading skills (Mahdavi & Tensfeldt, 2013).