Phonological Awareness in the Primary

Classroom

Standards Addressed

Phonological Awareness in 01 California Content Standards

the Primary Classroom CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.2 and
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.1.2:
Demonstrate understanding of spoken
words, syllables, and sounds
(phonemes).
Heights Charter School
Primary Team Meeting
April 20th, 2022 03 ISTE Teacher
Standard 2.7
Julia Mershon Educators understand and use data to
drive their instruction and support
students in achieving their learning
goals.
02 ISTE Teacher Standard
2.1.c
Educators stay current with
research that supports improved
student learning outcomes,
including findings from the learning
sciences.
04 NEA Teacher Leader,
Domain IV:
Facilitating improvements in
instruction and student learning.

The Problem
Why Phonological Awareness?
34% of children
starting kindergarten lack ● Phonological awareness is one of the greatest predictors of success in
the language learning to read (Melby-Lervåg et al., 2012).
skills necessary to ● Phonological awareness skills in early grades can predict if a student will be
learn to read a good reader or poor reader in third grade (Good, Simmons, and
65% of 4th graders Kame'enui, 2001).
read below a basic ● Over 80 percent poor readers demonstrate a deficiency in phonological
level awareness (Cassar, Treiman, Moats, Pollo, & Kessler, 2005).
Over 80% of poor
● Below average phonological decoding and phonological awareness are
readers demonstrate associated with below average spelling skills (Shaywitz & Shaywitz 2005).
a deficiency in
phonological
awareness

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What is Level One:

Phonological Awareness?
● Phonological Awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the sounds in spoken words.
Rhyming and Alliteration
● Examples of this skill include identifying rhyming words, repeating alliterations, counting words in
sentences, and clapping out syllables. Student skills mastered at this level:
● The most complex activities include blending sounds, segmenting sounds, and ● Students can imitate rhymes
deleting/substituting sounds in words.
○ day, way, bay

● Students can recite alliterations

○ “Baby brown bear buys big books”

● Rhyme recognition
○ "Which two words rhyme? “tree, bee, took?”

Source: https://www.readingrockets.org/teaching/reading-basics/phonemic

Level Two: Level Three:

Sentence Segmentation
Student skills mastered at this level:
● Students can identify and count words in short sentences.
○ Using counters, students can place a chip for each word they hear in a
sentence.
○ Teacher states: “My cat is brown.” Student places down 4 counters.
● Sentences should be short and should use simple words that students
understand.
Syllables
Student skills mastered at this level:
● Students can clap syllables in spoken words
○ A student claps one time for truck, two times for napkin
● Students can count the number of syllables in a word
○ Students can use a chip for each syllable in a word or track with their
fingers

● Students can blend syllables to make a word

○ A teacher asks a student to blend spi and der to make the word spider

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Phonological Awareness in the Primary
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Level Four: Level Five:

Onsets and Rimes Phonemic Awareness
Student skills mastered at this level: Student skills mastered at this level:

● Students can blend an onset and rime to make a word. ● Students can identify the first, middle, and last sounds in words.
○ d-og is dog, b-ug is bug, l-eaf is leaf ○ “Point to the word that begins with /w/.”
○ “Find the word that ends with /t/.”
● Students can say the first sound in a word
○ “What’s the first sound in bird?” /b/ ● Students can segment the first, middle, and last sound in words.
○ “What is the final sound in boat?”
● Students can produce a rhyming word that has the same rime as the word given. ○ “Which vowel do you hear in cat?”
○ “Give me a word that rhymes with boat”
● Students can add, delete, and substitute sounds in words.
○ “What is the word bird if add /s/ to the end?”
○ “Say bird without /b/.”
○ “Say the word bird if I change /b/ to /l/.”

How do we Checking In
teach these skills?
In TK through first grade, these skills can be taught in a whole group setting.
A kindergartener at the beginning of school year is able to recognize that two words
The data table below shows the priority for teaching each phonological awareness skill.
rhyme. When asked “do dog and log rhyme?” the student accurately states that they
are rhyming words. However, the student is unable to produce their own rhyming
words when asked to give an example of two words that rhyme. Should this student
receive one-on-one or small group intervention support to help her produce rhyming
words?

No. It is common for students in the first level of phonological awareness to be unable to
produce a rhyming word. This is a much more complex skill than being able to repeat
rhyming words or identify which words rhyme in a short series. Daily whole group practice
with rhyming and alliterations should help this child continue to develop the first level of
phonological awareness.

Source: http://reading.uoregon.edu/resources/maps.php#1_pa

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How is Phonological More Complex Assessments

Awareness assessed? These assessments should be used as screeners in first grade.
Teachers can assess phonological awareness skills using informal assessments.
Struggling readers in higher grades can be assessed using the following assessments
However, students should also be screened in kindergarten using the following assessments. that focus more on the complex stages of phonological awareness.

Test of Phonological Nonword Spelling Yopp-Singer Test of The Phoneme

Awareness
(Torgesen & Bryant, 1993)
Students are assessed in small
groups, asked to find words
with same first sound and
different first sound, using
pictures.
(Torgesen & Davis, 1996)
Students are given five
nonwords to spell and then
given a point for each
phoneme that they accurately
spell.
Phoneme Segmentation
(Yopp, 1995)
Asks students to segment (or
break up) the sounds in a
word. Dog becomes /d/
/o/ /g/.
Bruce Phoneme Deletion Test
(Bruce, 1964)
Measures student
ability to delete single
phonemes at the
beginning, middle, or
end of the words.
Auditory Analysis Test
(Rosner & Simon, 1971)
Measures the ability to
delete phones or syllables
and repeat the word
without the missing
phoneme/syllable.
Segmentation Fluency,
DIBELS (Kaminski &
Good, 1996)
Similar to the Yopp-Singer
test, but also looks at the
rate, or fluency, of the skill.

Intervention Strategies Now you try!

Blake is a student in second grade. He is reading below grade level and you suspect that he has gaps
In second and third grade, the focus on phonological awareness deals with closing gaps for students missing
in his phonological awareness skills. What would you do?
these skills. Phonological skills would need to be assessed for struggling readers, then using that data,
students would receive small group or individualized instruction.

● Assess the student using the

● Assess to identify gaps 01 Assess suggested assessments

● Refer to levels of phonological awareness, start at the least complex skill ● Identify in which stage of
02 Focus instruction phonological awareness there are
gaps
● Daily practice of skills (small group), monitor progress
● Practice the skills in the identified
● Move on to next skill as each step is mastered, assess for mastery 03 Daily practice level until mastery

Assess and ● Assess and monitor progress

04 move on ● Move to next level after mastery

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Moving Forward
Works Cited
1. Identify a student in your class that you think may be struggling with phonological awareness. Council on Early Childhood. (2014). Literacy promotion: An essential component of primary care pediatric practice.
Make a plan for what your next steps are. Share your plan with a colleague. Pediatrics, 134(2): 404–409.

a) Which assessments will you use? Friend, A., & Olson, R. K. (2010). Phonological Spelling and Reading Deficits in Children with Spelling Disabilities. Scientific
studies of reading : the official journal of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, 12(1), 90–105.
b) Will you meet with them in a one-one setting, small group, etc.? https://doi.org/10.1080/10888430701773876
c) How will you track their progress?
Good, R. H. III, Simmons, D. C., & Kame'enui, E. J. (2001). The importance and decision-making utility of a continuum of
2. Have a colleague share with you their plan for assessment. What feedback do you have for their fluency-based indicators of foundational reading skills for third-grade high-stakes outcomes. Scientific Studies of
plan? Reading, 5(3), 257–288. https://doi.org/10.1207/S1532799XSSR0503_4

National Center for Education Statistics. The Nation’s Report Card: A First Look: 2013 Mathematics and Reading.
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/main2013/pdf/2014451.pdf

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research on
Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction. Reports of the Subgroups. Author. 2.1-2.8

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