SUCCESSFUL PHONEMIC AWARENESS IN A KINDERGARTEN CLASSROOM

What are the best practices to teach phonemic awareness in a Kindergarten classroom?

Focus Question

I am teaching Kindergarten this upcoming school year for the first time. As I found in our readings for Module 2 about how critical phonemic awareness is in learning how to read, I came up with this valid research question that will aid in my student’s learning this upcoming year.

Explanation

After review and analysis, the National Reading Panel found out “Teaching phonemic awareness to children significantly improves their reading more than instruction that lacks any attention to phonemic awareness” (National Reading Panel, p. 7).

I want to become an effective teacher in reading. With a variety of research stating that students need phonemic awareness to become great readers, I hoped to discover effective strategies to teach phonemic awareness in my classroom next year.

I first thought that the best shape for my project would be completing three different lesson plans. I wanted to try it out with a summer school focus student. Unfortunately my summer school schedule did not allow time for this. I decided that a PowerPoint presentation would be best while also showing three lessons that I would have loved to teach on phonemic awareness.

Tentative Shape and Questions

The questions I had for this project were:-What research on effective phonemic awareness (besides what I have listed) could you offer to guide me during this project?-Would you recommend choosing a focus student who is an at risk reader or an at benchmark reader in Kindergarten?

Research #1 Increasing Phonemic Awareness Among Primary Students To Improve Reading Skills, Saunders, Dara, Gierke, Terri, 1999, p. 1-75.

This online article stated that “phonemic awareness can be a part of any classroom by providing rich language experiences that encourage active exploration and manipulation of sounds. Most children will acquire phonemic awareness from these activities.”

Research #2 An investigation into teaching phonemic awareness through shared reading and writing, Ukrainetz, Cooney, Dyer, Kysar, Harris, 2000, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA.

-The type of phonemic awareness considered critical for reading and writing is awareness of phonemes or speech sounds. -Skills such as phonemic segmentation (say the sounds in cat) or phoneme deletion (cat without the/k/sound is?) have generally been considered to develop through the reading and writing experiences of the first grade classroom or through explicit instruction in phonemic awareness prior to or alongside reading instruction.

Research #2, cont’d -The most beneficial type of phonemic awareness instruction is taught through storybook reading and writing. -Even children with lower levels of literacy can learn phonemic awareness in this complex, meaningful text situation. -Several phonemic awareness tasks can be targeted within a single instruction session, with levels of scaffolding tailored to task difficulty and individual child performance. -This approach provides a fertile learning environment within which other aspects of language and literacy, and individual child interests can be pursued.

Research #3

This online article stated that “phonemic awareness is important in the development of early reading because it allows children to associate sounds with letters, a skill needed for decoding (Foorman et al., 2003; Torgesen et al., 2005). When children understand that words consist of smaller sound segments, they can be instructed to match auditory sounds in words to printed letters, which enables a "sounding out" process for written words” (Torgesen et al., 2005).

Phonemic Awarness: When and How Much to Teach?, Reading, Suzanne, Van Deuren, Dana, 2007 Vol. 46 Issue 3, p. 267-285,

Research #4National Reading Panel Report, Teaching Children To Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and its Implications for Reading Instruction, p. 1-33.-Studies have identified phonemic awareness and letter knowledge as the two best school-entry predictors of how well children will learn to read during the first 2 years of instruction.-Overall, the findings showed that teaching children to manipulate phonemes in words was highly effective under a variety of conditions with a variety of learners across a range of grade and age levels.

Lesson #1

Lesson #2

Lesson #3

ReportAfter finding research, data, and creating lesson plans, I have found that phonemic awareness can be taught more effectively in a Kindergarten classroom while it is embedded in storybook reading and writing lessons. While doing a read aloud or a writing lesson, multiple phonemic awareness tasks can be targeted within one individual instructional session.

I have learned how imperative phonemic awareness instruction is and it is also a fantastic distinguishing factor for students’ future reading ability. Because of its importance, phonemic awareness should be integrated in any lesson possible. For students to see the importance in a variety of ways and truly understand that sounds make up a word, etc. they will benefit far more from this knowledge of great phonemic awareness instruction.

Phonemic awareness is needed to decode, which is needed to read and comprehend. It is also needed to sound out and write words. What an important component to a child’s education!

It is significant to have discussions with students about words and the sounds in a word while reading and writing. Constantly reviewing and reflecting on aspects of phonemic awareness is crucial. As a teacher, we should be encouraging active exploration and manipulation of sounds within a word in a variety of ways.

*Keep in mind that phonemic awareness does not equal an entire reading program. All aspects of reading instruction are important!

Report, cont’d

References

Saunders, Dara, Gierke, Terri (1999). Increasing Phonemic Awareness Among Primary Students To Improve Reading Skills (p. 1-75).Ukrainetz, Cooney, Dyer, Kysar, Harris (2000). An investigation into teaching phonemic awareness through shared reading and writing. University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA.

Reading, Suzanne, Van Deuren, Dana (2007). Phonemic Awarness: When and How Much to Teach? Vol. 46 Issue 3 (p. 267-285).

National Reading Panel Report, Teaching Children To Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and its Implications for Reading Instruction (p. 1-33).