Phonological Awareness in the Primary

Classroom

Julia Mershon
Phonological Awareness in the Primary
Classroom

This presentation addresses California Common Core Standards,

specifically those pertaining to teaching kindergarten and first grade
students the foundational literacy skills of understanding spoken
words, syllables, and phonemes. Additionally, this presentation
focuses on the ISTE Teacher Standard 2.1.c that states that
teachers should stay current in research that supports student
learning. Research on literacy development suggests that teaching
phonological awareness skills to young students makes a positive
and meaningful impact on their success as readers. A bibliography
with research articles that support this position can be found at the
end of this presentation. The next teacher standard addressed is
ISTE Teacher Standard 2.7, which states that teachers should use
data to drive instruction. I am using classroom data to show that
some students are lacking phonological awareness skills. The final
standard I address is the NEA Teacher Leader Domain IV Standard
that suggests that educators are responsible for improvements in
instruction.

Julia Mershon
Phonological Awareness in the Primary
Classroom

Nationwide, too many students aren’t reading proficiently. Students

enter kindergarten without the language skills they need to
successfully learn to read (Council on Early Childhood, 2014). By
the time students are in the 4th grade, 65% are reading at a level
that is considered below basic (National Center for Education
Statistics, 2013). According to Cassar et al., (2005) over 80
percent poor readers demonstrate a deficiency in phonological
awareness. This data tells us that that these students that are
struggling with reading are missing the important fundamental skills
that allow them to become strong readers. Teaching students
phonological awareness skills in the early grades is key to closing
the gap on reading achievement and ensuring that all students
have the chance to be successful readers.

Julia Mershon
Phonological Awareness in the Primary
Classroom

Why should phonological awareness matter to you as an educator?

Phonological awareness is a critical literacy skill that young
students should require in early grades in order to be successful
readers. These skills can be taught in the classroom and will impact
student reading ability. Research shows that most students who
lack reading skills also lack phonological awareness skills (Cassar,
Treiman, Moats, Pollo, & Kessler, 2005). Students with poor
phonological awareness will likely continue to struggle in reading as
they continue through elementary school Good, Simmons, and
Kame'enui, 2001). For these reasons, it is critical that our school
implements a plan for ensuring that all students have the
phonological awareness skills that will allow them to develop into
strong readers and writers.

Julia Mershon
Phonological Awareness in the Primary
Classroom

We know that phonological awareness matters. The next step in

ensuring that our students gain these skills is to understand what
they are, and what they look like in the primary classroom. As a
whole, phonological awareness is the ability for children to
recognize the sounds in spoken language, and eventually, to be
able to manipulate the sounds. These skills develop over time and
the skills build on each other, becoming more complex with each
step. In TK and Kindergarten, students learn to identify rhyming
words, count words in sentences, and count syllables in words. In
higher grades, students begin more complex activities of blending
phonemes, segmenting words into individual sounds, and
deleting/substituting phonemes.

Julia Mershon
Phonological Awareness in the Primary
Classroom

The first, and least complex, level of phonological awareness deals

with rhyming and alliteration. The skills mastered at this level ask
students to first imitate rhymes, recite rhymes, identify rhyming
words, and isolate words in sets that do not rhyme. Initially,
students may not be able to produce rhyme if a teacher asks, “Tell
me a word that rhymes with sea.” Early in this stage, the teacher
may instead ask, “Which two words rhyme? Flea, bee, dog?”
Students that have mastered this skill would be able to identify that
flea and bee are rhyming words. Students that have mastered this
level can also recognize in an alliteration that all the words have the
same beginning sound /b/.

Julia Mershon
Phonological Awareness in the Primary
Classroom

The next level of phonological awareness focuses on students

being able to identify the various words within spoken sentences.
When students are first learning this skill, their teacher might have
them place counters down each time they hear a word and then
count them after the sentence is completed. When teaching this
skill, educators begin with short and simple sentences that use
well-known vocabulary. Over time, the sentences can become
longer and more complex. Students can also practice counting the
words in sentences without counters once they have mastered
counting words with that tool.

Julia Mershon
Phonological Awareness in the Primary
Classroom

Students at this level of phonological awareness are able to hear

the number of syllables in a word. They can use their fingers or
manipulatives to help them track the number of syllables in the
word. At this level of phonemic awareness, students should also be
able to blend syllables that have been segmented by the teacher.

Julia Mershon
Phonological Awareness in the Primary
Classroom

This level of phonological awareness requires that students can

isolate the onset (first sound) and rime (string of letters at the end
of a word). Students can identify the first sound in words and they
can blend onsets and rimes to make a word. It is also at this point
in phonological awareness that students can produce rhyming
words when given a rime. This step is much more complex than
simply recognizing or repeating rhyming words, which is why it falls
in the fourth level of phonological awareness.

Julia Mershon
Phonological Awareness in the Primary
Classroom

The final level of phonological awareness is the most well-known

level: Phonemic Awareness. It is at this stage that students truly
begin to manipulate each of the sounds (phonemes) within words.
This is the most complex level because it asks students to add,
subtract, and substitute individual phonemes within words.
Students that have mastered this stage are able to change
phonemes in the beginning, middle, or end of words. They may be
asked to add a phoneme to a word, take out a phoneme from a
word, or substitute one phoneme for another. Students at this stage
have to be able to successfully segment words into all of their
phonemes before they can manipulate the phonemes within a
word. A student that can’t segment the word trap into /t/ /r/ /a/ /p/
can’t successfully substitute the second phoneme with /l/ to make a
nonsense word tlap. Students that have mastered this level can
isolate the phonemes in words with allows them to manipulate
them.

Julia Mershon
Phonological Awareness in the Primary
Classroom

Teachers in TK-1st should plan for daily instruction and practice of

phonological awareness skills. The numbers on the top of the
graph refer to month of the school year. The X shows which month
the skill should be taught.

Julia Mershon
Phonological Awareness in the Primary
Classroom

Teachers in TK-1st should plan for daily instruction and practice of

phonological awareness skills. Assessments should be used
throughout the year to monitor student growth in phonological
awareness skills. If students are not making progress in those
skills, teachers should consider small group or one-on-one
interventions to help students master those skills.

Julia Mershon
Phonological Awareness in the Primary
Classroom

Students in kindergarten should be informally assessed frequently

to ensure progress is made. Additionally, students should be
screened using the three tests mentioned on this slide. These
screeners should be used midway through the year and identify
students that ma need additional small group instruction, in addition
to daily practice. These tests can also be used by older students
that may be in need of additional support in phonological
awareness skills.

Julia Mershon
Phonological Awareness in the Primary
Classroom

The tests on this slide can be used as screeners for first grade
students to see which skills students are in need of additional
instruction in. And as we know that the majority of struggling
readers have low phonemic awareness skills, students in higher
grades that are struggling with reading can be assessed using
these measures as well. The first assessment is the Bruce
Phoneme Deletion Test (Bruce, 1964), which measures student
ability to delete single phonemes inside of recognizable words. The
deletions occur in the beginning, middle, or end of the words. This
skill is a more complex skill than segmenting, thus making this
assessment more of a challenge to young students. The next
assessment is the Auditory Analysis Test (Rosner & Simon, 1971),
which assess a student’s ability to delete both phonemes and
syllables and repeat words without the deleted phoneme or
syllable. The third assessment that should be used in this inventory
is the Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, DIBELS (Kaminski &
Good, 1996), which is similar to the Yopp-Singer test, but also
looks at the rate, or fluency, of the skill. Because of this additional

Julia Mershon
measure, this assessment can be used as an assessment for
monitoring growth over time as well.

14
Phonological Awareness in the Primary
Classroom

Teachers should consider that some struggling readers have gaps

in their phonological awareness. As such, it is important that they
assess their struggling readers to see where these gaps may be.
Informal assessments can be used to get an idea of where to start
assessing. Once the assessments have been completed, the
teacher should be able to identify which stage of phonological
awareness their student needs support in. The teacher should
provide instructional activities that allow the child to practice the
skills until they have mastered them. Progress monitoring should
be completed to ensure that the child has mastered that stage
before they move onto the next level.

Julia Mershon
Phonological Awareness in the Primary
Classroom

Julia Mershon
Phonological Awareness in the Primary
Classroom

Julia Mershon
Phonological Awareness in the Primary
Classroom

Julia Mershon