Chapter 7 Assessing and Teaching Reading: Phonological Awareness, Phonics, and Word Recognition By: Margaret, Marlo, Sarah and Branda

Chapter 7 Assessing and Teaching Reading: Phonological

Awareness, Phonics, and Word Recognition

By: Margaret, Marlo, Sarah and Branda

Teaching Reading

Special Education teachers spend a great deal of time teaching reading. Why is it so important?

Reading is a prerequisite skill for content-area classes such as social studies and science.

Reading is essential for employment. If students do not learn to read by the end of

third grade, their chances of having reading difficulties through adulthood is 50%.

Reading and Reading Instruction

When teaching reading, there are two overarching concepts: Reading is a skilled and strategic process in which learning to

decode and read words accurately and rapidly is essential: Reading requires using the attentional, perceptual, memory, and retrieval processes to automatically identify or decode words. Decoding or word recognition is the process of automatically recognizing words. When a word is unknown, the reader uses syntax and context to help decode.

Students with learning disabilities have a particularly difficult time demonstrating how to blend and segment words. This causes them to focus more on the process of decoding rather than comprehension.

Emergent and Beginning Readers

Emergent Readers: Pretend to read favorite print. Can read what they have

written, even if no one else can.

Recognize some concrete words (i.e. names, environment)

Recognize and generate rhyming words.

Name letters and words that begin with that letter.

Beginning Readers: Identify letters by name Say the common sounds of

letters. Blend the sounds represented

by letters into decodable words.

Read irregular words. Read words, then sentences,

and then longer text.

Reading and Reading Instruction (cont’d)

The second overarching concept is: Reading entails understanding the text and depends on

active engagement and interpretation by the reader: When readers read they make predictions, summarize, question and clarify when concepts are not clear.

Students who have trouble reading do not automatically monitor their comprehension or engage in strategic behavior to restore meaning.

Phonological Awareness, Letter-Sound Correspondence, and Phonics

Phonological Awareness: knowing and demonstrating that spoken language can be broken down into smaller units (words, syllables, phonemes), which can be manipulated within an alphabetic system.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize the smallest sound units of spoken language and how they can be separated, blended and manipulated.

In order to apply these skills to reading, they need to understand phonics (how sound maps to print or knowing how the letter sounds and names relate to each other).

Children who have problems with blending and segmenting have the most difficulty reading.

Development of Phonological Awareness

The primary focus of phonemic awareness with young children is not rhyming, but rather the focus of individual sounds and how each sound can be represented by a letter or group of letters. Skills such as rhyming and alliteration come later.

The most important goal of phonemic awareness is learning to manipulate sounds by blending and segmenting. Linking sounds to print should be the immediate goal.

Developmental sequence is important when teaching reading. For example, teaching segmenting and blending words and syllables before segmenting and blending onset-rimes and phonemes.

Children always develop skills at different times, therefore instruction at phoneme level should never be delayed due to lack of a skill.

Teaching Phonological Awareness and Phonics

The majority students who are at risk for reading difficulties can benefit most from explicit instruction phonological awareness, particularly blending, segmenting, and manipulating sounds.

Teaching phonological awareness includes: Listening for words with the same sound Clapping the number of words in a sentence, syllables in

a words, and phonemes in words Blending and segmenting words by syllables and sounds Segmenting and manipulating sounds and syllables

Elkonin Procedure

The Elkonin Procedure is a technique used to assist in blending and segmenting skills.

This is a phonological task where students listen to a word and push a marker, block, or other small object into a printed square for each sound they hear. As students gain knowledge of the letter-sound relationships they can write letters in the boxes.

When teaching students who are having difficulty, it is important to know the difficulties and focus instruction according to the level of development.

Guidelines for Teaching Phonological Awareness

Consider the students’ levels of development and the tasks that need to be mastered.

MODEL each activity. Use manipulative and movement to make auditory and oral

tasks more visible. Move from easier to more difficult tasks considering level of

development (syllables, onset-rimes, phonemes), phoneme position (initial, final, medial), number of sounds in a word, and phonological features of the words (consonants are easier than stops or clipped sounds).

Provide feedback and opportunities for practice and review. Make learning fun.

Response to Intervention

How do we know if students are responding to instruction? Have students received scientifically based reading instruction

from their classroom teacher? Have students received adequate opportunities to respond,

obtain feedback, and see modeling to scaffold their learning? How does the performance of students with low response

compare to other students in the class? Have the students with low phonemic awareness received

small group opportunities? Is progress monitoring data available to show the scope of the

student’s progress?

Progress Monitoring

Progress monitoring in phonemic awareness assists teachers in identifying students who are at risk for failing to acquire phonemic awareness skills.

These tests and progress-monitoring measures may be useful to make decisions about what methods will accurately measure student progress:

STAR: Early Literacy: computer-adaptive procedure that provides ongoing assessment of early literacy skills.

AIMSweb Systems: Offer progress monitoring tools for letter naming, letter sound, phoneme segmentation, and nonsense word fluency.

YOP-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation- Students segment phonemes and are given credit if they say all the sounds in the word correctly.

Phone-Segmentation Fluency- Students are given 60 seconds to get as many phonemes correct as possible.

Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP)- Assesses phonological awareness, phonological memory, and rapid naming ability.

Teaching Letter-Sound Correspondences: Consonants

The largest division of phonemes is consonants (C) or vowels (V). Voiced and Voiceless consonants can be taught by allowing students to place their fingers

on their larynxes and feeling the vibrations. This method allows them to decode or spell a word.

Important points to remember when teaching consonants: CVC words that begin with continuants(can be blended smoothly with the next sound: f, s,

v, w, z, sh, zh, th) and end with stops(clipped sounds: b, d, g ,j, k, p, t) are generally the easiest for blending the sounds.

In some programs, when blending stops it is suggested to “bounce the stop sounds” , such as /b-b-b-a-t-t-t/ for bat.

Nasal sounds are difficult to hear, sound different in the middle of words, and are often omitted or substituted by emergent readers and writers.

Students may have problems hearing the difference between /wh/ and /w. because many Americans pronounce them in the same manner (witch and which).

The sounds /r/ and /l/ can be difficult for some students because they ate some of the last sounds students learn to articulate and because their pronunciation varies across languages.

When students omit sounds in words it is helpful to have them compare the words in written form to see the letter they have omitted.

Teaching Letter- Sound Correspondences: Vowels

The vowel sounds have different spelling patterns. Sometimes the same spelling pattern has different sounds (‘ea” in beat and bread).

For students with decoding difficulties, it is helpful to teach the frequency of the sounds for a vowel combination so when decoding an unfamiliar word, they can try the various sounds.

Schwa is the vowel sound that is often found in unaccented syllables (suppose, familiar, sofa, mission) and is the most frequently occurring vowel sound.

Students who are learning English as a second language may not have fluency in all English sounds.

Common phonological confusions: /b/ pronounced as /p/, /v/ pronounced as /b/, /ch/ pronounced as

/sh/, /j/ pronounced as /h/, /l/ pronounced as /y/

Guidelines for Teaching Letter- Sound Correspondences

Teaching a core set of frequently used consonants and short vowel sounds that represent clear sounds and nonreversible letter forms (/a/, /i/, /d/, /f/, /g/, /h/, /l/, /n/, /p/, /s/, /t/).

Beginning immediately to blend and segment sounds to read and spell the words and read the words in decodable text.

Separating the introduction of letter sounds with similar auditory or visual features. Using a consistent keyword to assist students in hearing and remembering the sound (a

for apple). Teaching that some letters can represent more than one sound. Teaching that different letters can make the same sound (s and c). Teaching that sound scan be represented by a single letter or combination of letters. Adding a kinesthetic component by having students trace or write the letter as they say the

sound. Having students use mirrors and feel their mouths to see and feel how sounds are

different. Color- coding consonant and vowel so that the two categories of sound are highlighted.

Letter-Sound Correspondences

Knowing letter-sound correspondences is a key element in understanding the alphabetic principle and learning to decode and spell unknown words.

However, if letter-sound relationships are not put to use, they will be ineffective.

Students need to understand the purpose for the relationships and how to apply them to reading and writing activities.

Students must be able to apply knowledge in phonological awareness, letter-sound relationships, and the alphabetic principle to word identification and decoding.

Word Identification, Decoding, and Word Study

By: Sarah

What’s a Sight Word?

A word a student can read quickly and automatically with little delay

Accessed from memory

Decoding Strategies for Identifying Words

Phonics Analysis Onset-Rime Synthetic and Analytic Phonics Structure Analysis Syllabication Automatic Word Recognition Syntax and Semantic

Phonic Analysis

Identify and Blend Letter-Sound Correspondence into Words

– Converting letters in to sounds

– Blending sounds to form a word

– Searching memory to find a known word that resembles those blended sounds.

Ways to Teach Phonics

Cue the student to say each sound and then have them say it fast.

Demonstrate and have the student point to each letter as they say the sound and then have the student sweep their hand under the word when saying it.

Place letters apart when saying the sounds, and then push the letters together when you say it fast.

Begin with a simple VC and CVC words then move to more complex sound patterns

Onset-Rime

Use common spelling patterns to decode words by blending.

Also know as word families

Synthetic and Analytic Phonics

Teaching sound by sound ( /p/ /a/ /n/) = pan

Structure Analysis

Use knowledge of word structures such as compound words, root words, suffixes, prefixes, endings to decode words and assist with meaning

Syllabication

Use common types of syllables

When teaching emphasize that each syllable has one vowel sound

Game time

Automatic Word Recognition

Automatically recognize high frequency words and less phonetically frequent words

Look around the room

Syntax and Semantics

Word Order (syntax) Context (semantics)

Ask the student:– “Does that make

sense?”– “Does that sound

right?”

Decoding Steps1. Phonics2. Structural Analysis3. Syllabication4. Then cross check

from comprehension (syntax/semantics)

Explicit Code Instruction

Marlo

How can the use of explicit and implicit code instruction be compared?

Jamal:– Third Grader– Lowest reading level in his class (1st

grade)– Not making progress– Teacher helps him pronounce 30% of

words– Cannot remember previously know words– Knows fewer than 30 sight words– Applies inconsistent strategies– Has difficulty with letter-sound

relationships (cannot sound-out)– Has difficulty blending– Generally gets the meaning of a text– Good oral skills– Good life references– Math skills are third grade

Lupita:– Third Grader– Reading at a 1st grade level– Sight vocabulary of 40 words in Spanish

and 25 in English– Is in a bilingual program that initially

taught reading in Spanish and then transitioned to more English last year

– Reading is slow and laborious – Has difficulty remembering words– Decoding strategies rely on sounding out

words– Does not know many of the letter-sound

relationships– Has problems blending– Oral language in both languages is low– Shy about responding in class– Basic math is understood but not word

problems

Tips for the Beginning

In the beginning… – Determine student’s current strategies as well as what has

been used in the past Instructional strategies, techniques, approaches How consistently, for how long and with what success

– If school has RTI… Data about past reading experiences may be available

Explicit vs. Implicit

“Beginning reading approaches that emphasize explicit, direct teaching of phonological

awareness and word identification strategies that rely on using phonics, onset-rime, and structural

analysis result in greater gains in word recognition and comprehension than

approaches in which phonological awareness and phonics are more implicitly taught (National

Reading Panel, 2000).”

Explicit vs. Implicit

Explicit– Synthetic phonics– Builds from part to whole– Begins with instruction of

letters with their associated sounds

– Then teaches blending and building (blending sounds into syllables and then into words)

Implicit– Analytical phonics– Moves from whole o the

smallest part– Phonemes are not pronounced

in isolation– Analyze a set of words for

commonalities– Use comparison and

identification to deduce what to read

– Blending and building are not taught

– Use shape, beginning and ending words and context clues


Emphasizes three instructional features:– Systematic instruction of letter-sound

correspondence– Scaffolded instruction– Multiple opportunities for practice and review

Reading materials for these approaches are controlled aka decodable text.


Linguistic Approach: Onset-Rime and Word Families– Uses controlled text and word families (-at, -ight, and –ent) to

teach word recognition. Particularly useful for students with reading problems.

A category: CVC words B category: CVCe words C category: long-vowels and vowel pairs D category: r-controlled vowels


Linguistic Approach: Onset-Rime and Word Families (Evidence-Based Practice)

– Procedures: Built on onset-rime In teaching onset-rime, words are segmented and blended at

the onset-rime level and taught in related groups or “Word Families”

Readers such as 7-13 give extensive practice with word families

When a student can’t identify a word family word…– Synthetic decoding – Analogy


Linguistic Approach: Onset-Rime and Word Families (Evidence-Based Practice)

– Comments and Cautions: Some students will benefit from onset-rime and phoneme level

decoding (c-a-t vs c-at) Texts provide limited opportunities for development of

comprehension Some words introduced in a family may represent unfamiliar

concepts such as “the fog in the bog.”


Reading Mastery and Corrective Reading– Highly structured, systematic reading programs use direct

instruction model for teaching – Directly teach individual sound-symbol relationships,

blending of sounds, and how to build– Decoding and comprehension

Reading Mastery: elementary level Corrective Reading: grades 4 through 12 Taught in small to medium sized groups


Reading Mastery and Corrective Reading (Evidence-Based Practice)

– Procedures: Built on Principles of direct instruction Some include:

– Rely on strategies– Introduction, guided practice, independent practice, review– One skill at a time– Prerequisite skills taught first– Patterns taught before exceptions (gave and made before have)– Easy skills taught before more difficult ones– Monitor– Reinforce

Teachers are given specific procedures and scripted lessons Corrective Reading: Standard Print/ Reading Mastery: Modified Print at

Beginning


Reading Mastery and Corrective Reading (Evidence-Based Practice)

– Comments and Cautions: Effective for improving reading skills of students with reading

difficulties and students with disadvantaged backgrounds Also good for students with behavior problems Heavy on oral presentation and responses Highly scripted, modifications are difficult Non-standard print used in Reading Mastery makes access more

difficult


Phonic Remedial Reading Lessons– Developed in 1930’s for students with mild mental

retardation– Direct instruction

Minimal change One response to one symbol Progress form easy to hard Frequent review and over-learning Corrective feedback Verbal mediation Multisensory learning

– Intensive- to be used with no more than 2 – 3 students


Phonic Remedial Reading Lessons (Evidence-Based Practice)– Procedures:

Developing readiness (learning sound-symbol associations) Each lesson sound out each word in a line, one letter at a time, then

give complete word Barely any change from lesson to lesson (maybe just the first

consonant) Progress to slowly change more and more of the words (first

consonant, last consonant, both, space between letters)


Phonic Remedial Reading Lessons (Evidence-Based Practice)– Comments and Cautions:

Systematic and intense Places little emphasis on comprehension Suggest using other books to give opportunities for other identification

and comprehension


English-Language Learners and Reading Difficulties– To What extent are the practices identified for phonological awareness and

phonics appropriate for students who are ELL’s? – If they are appropriate, how can teachers facilitate their acquisition of these

skills in English? We know much more about teaching students with reading difficulties who are

English speaking than those who are ELL’s. Is a growing base of information

– Given direct early instruction in reading benefited – Bilingual students with significant reading problems who participated in 22 tutoring

sessions (explicit approach) significantly improved compared to controls– More structured, systematic approach resulted in better outcomes than approaches

that didn’t include these tactics– Young students taught to read in English made many gains and sustained them,

outperforming comparison students Balance is Key


Multisensory Structured Language Instruction– Systematic, explicit, using alphabetic principal, phonics and

structural analysis, decoding and incorporate visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile modalities

– Developed in 1930’s – Build associations between modalities

Tracing words with finger Spelling through writing

– Designed for students with dyslexia or who are experiencing difficulties learning to read


Multisensory Structured Language Instruction– Instructional Features

Multisensory presentation Moves from easy to difficult and provides review Explicit teaching of all concepts, skills and strategies Systematic practice of decoding and spelling skills (word, sentence

and text levels) Diagnostic teaching (more individual) Synthetic methods (parts to whole & whole broken down to parts)


Multisensory Structured Language Instruction (Evidence-Based Practice)

– Comments and Cautions: Designed and used as remedial programs for students who have not

learned to read successfully in another program Clinical case studies show their benefit when teaching older students

with reading disabilities (make substantial gains) Best employed by teachers who have been trained in multisensory

procedures In general, programs emphasize decoding skills an do not build

comprehension skills (combine)


Word Study: Making Words, Word Building and Word Walls– Stressed as a way of learning relationships between speech

sounds and print, of building word recognition and spelling skills, and of developing vocabulary

– Learning and behavior problems: opportunities to construct words using magnetic letters, letter tiles or laminated letters provides experience in manipulating sounds to find out how the words are affected.

EX: Start with letters /s/, /t/, /r/, /n/, and /a/. Ask what two words make the word “at?” Ask students to add a letter sound to the beginning to make “sat.” Progress to using all of the magnetic

letters to create different words.


Word Study: Making Words, Word Building and Word Walls (Evidence-Based Practice)

– Procedures: Many activities – word sorts, building words, word walls

– Making words: specific set of letters, make series of words starting with easiest number of letters and moving to harder ones until the “mystery” word (Scratch) is made.

– Step 1 Give students bag of required letters and have them identify them. Teacher

writes a numeral on the board for the number of letters the students are to put in their word. Usually start with two such as “at.” Then moving to three “cat” or “art.” Eventually use all letters.

– Step 2 Word Sorting: Put up all the words on a sentence strip and ask students how

they are alike. Have them sort by spelling patterns. Find all the “c” words or “art” words so that students can see patterns.

– Step 3 Making Words Quickly: Making Words Log – Have students write as many

words as they can in 2 minutes using that day’s letters


Word Study: Making Words, Word Building and Word Walls (Evidence-Based Practice)

– Comments and Cautions: Effective and efficient way to organize word identification

instruction Students report they enjoy the activity May be important to develop other activities that will teach

word families to less able readers

Implicit Code Instruction

Branda

Implicit Code Instruction

Places more emphasis on context clues (pictures, clues, etc.)

Teaches initial site words Emphasis on Sentence level not phoneme

level (“I see dog” or “I see cat” vs. The fat cat sat on a mat)

Implicit Code Instruction Approaches

Modified Language Experience Approach– This approach is used for students who have difficulty reading– It can be used individually or in groups – The teacher uses a story the students writes, about events,

persons, or things of their choice; Language experience story– The students should have experience with the topic they choose– This approach is to be used over several days– This approach provides a method for teaching children initial

skills in reading by utilizing the students memory, oral language, and background experiences (recognition of sight words)

Implicit Code Instruction continued

Fernald Method (VAKT)– This technique has 4 stages through which students progress

as they learn to identify unknown words more effectively.– Stage one students choose words they do not know and trace

these word until they are able to write each word from memory– Stage two: Student does not need to trace the word to learn it.

The teacher writes the word. Then the student says the word as they write it, and writes the word without looking at the word

– Stage three: Student is able to learn word directly from the printed word.

– Stage four: Student is able to recognize new words from their similarity to words the student has already learned.

This approach works, but it is very time consuming. Only use if other attempts have failed.

Techniques for Building Sight Words

Sigh word association Procedure– This technique uses corrective feedback, drill, and

practice to assist students in associating spoken words to written form.

– This technique is useful for students who are learning to identify words across various context or texts, or students who need more help identify new words then their current reading group offers.

– When using this strategy remember three important cautions, Stress reading text and other decoding strategies, make sure students understand the meaning of the words, and give students ample chances to read these words in context.

Techniques for Building Sight Word(continued)

Picture Association Technique– This technique uses key pictures to help students

associate a spoken word with its written form.– This technique allows students to form a visual

image of the word to facilitate their identification of words.

– This should be used as a supplemental technique, and the students should be given opportunities to read the word in text.

Techniques for Building Sight Words(continued)

Sentence-Word Association Technique– This technique allows students to associate

unknown words with familiar spoken words, phrase, or sentence.

Other Helpful Techniques to learn unknown words

Vowel Match– Provides students with practice in decoding words that have

various vowel sounds. Sight Word Bingo

– This techniques help students to practice recognizing words Compound Concentration

– Gives students practice in identifying compound words, and helps them to understand how to form compound words.

Go Fish for Rimes– Gives students practice in reading and identifying words

with rimes.

Any Questions?

Documents

Chapter 7 Assessing and Teaching Reading: Phonological Awareness, Phonics, and Word Recognition By: Margaret, Marlo, Sarah and Branda