PHONEME AWARENESS INTERVENTIONS

Phonemic Awareness

The ability to hear and manipulate sounds in words.

Phonemic awareness is not phonics.
Phonemic awareness is auditory and does not involve words in print

Teaching Phonemic Awareness:
Critical features of Phonemic Awareness instruction

Tips:

Phonemic Awareness is a critical component of reading instruction but not an entire reading program. It absolutely needs to be taught, but should only be 10-15 minutes per day of your reading instruction.
If you focus on just a few types of phonemic awareness, you get better results. There are a lot of skills in phonemic awareness, but research has found that blending and segmentation are the 2 critical skills that must be taught. Instruction must focus on blending and segmenting words at the phoneme, or sound level. This is an auditory task.
Research has found that you get better results when teaching phonemic awareness to small groups of children rather than an entire class.
Phonemic awareness needs to be taught explicitly. The instructional program must show children what they are expected to do. Teachers must model skills they want children to perform before the children are asked to demonstrate the skill.
Teachers increase effectiveness when the manipulation of letters is added to phonemic awareness tasks. Phonemic awareness is an auditory skill, but once children start to become familiar with the concept, teachers can introduce letter tiles or squares and manipulate them to form sounds and words.

Intervention for Teaching Phonemic Awareness

Teaching Sound Isolation:

Use Conspicuous Strategies

Show children how to do all the steps in the task before asking children to do the task. Example : (Put down 2 pictures that begin with different sounds and say the names of the pictures.) "My turn to say the first sound in man, /mmm/. Mmman begins with /mmm/. Everyone, say the first sound in man, /mmm/." Non-example : "Who can tell me the first sounds in these pictures?"
Use consistent and brief wording.s Example : "The first sound in Mmman is /mmm/. Everyone say the first sound in man, /mmm/." Non-example : " Man starts with the same sound as the first sounds in mountain, mop, and Miranda. Does anyone know other words that begin with the same sound as man?"
Correct errors by telling the answer and having children repeat the correct answer. Example : "The first sound in Man is /mmm/. Say the first sound in mmman with me, /mmm/. /Mmmm/." Non-example : Asking the question again or asking more questions. "Look at the picture again. What is the first sound?"

Teaching Blending

Scaffold Task Difficulty

When children are first learning to blend, use examples with continuous sounds, because the sounds can be stretched and held Example : "Listen, my lion puppet likes to talk in a broken way. When he says /mmm/ - /ooo/ - /mmm/ he means mom." Non-example : "Listen, my lion puppet likes to talk in a broken way. When he says /b/ - /e/ - /d/ he means bed."
When children are first learning the task, use short words in teaching and practice examples. Use pictures when possible. Example : Put down 3 pictures of CVC words and say: "My lion puppet wants one of these pictures. Listen to hear which picture he wants, /sss/ - /uuu/ - /nnn/. Which picture?" Non-example : ".../p/ - /e/ - /n/ - /c/ - /i/ - /l/. Which picture?" (This is a more advanced model that should be used later.)
When children are first learning the task, use materials that reduce memory load and to represent sounds. Example : Use pictures to help children remember the words and to focus their attention. Use a 3-square strip or blocks to represent sounds in a word. Non-example : Provide only verbal activities.
As children become successful during initial learning, remove scaffolds by using progressively more difficult examples. As children become successful with more difficult examples, use fewer scaffolds, such as pictures. Example : Move from syllable or onset-rime blending to blending with all sounds in a word (phoneme blending). Remove scaffolds, such as pictures. "Listen, /s/ - /t/ - /o/ - /p/. Which picture?" "Listen, /s/ - /t/ - /o/ - /p/. What word?" Non-example : Provide instruction and practice at only the easiest levels with all the scaffolds.

Teaching Phoneme Segmentation

Strategically Integrate Familiar and New Information

Recycle instructional and practice examples used for blending. Blending and segmenting are sides of the same coin. The only difference is whether children hear or produce a segmented word. Note: A segmenting response is more difficult for children to reproduce than a blending response.

Example : "Listen, my lion puppet likes to say the sounds in words. The sounds in mom are /mmm/ - /ooo/ - /mmm/. Say the sounds in mom with us. "

Concurrently teach letter-sound correspondences for the sounds children will be segmenting in words.

Example : Letter sound /s/ and words sun and sit. Put down letter cards for familiar letter-sounds. Then, have children place pictures by the letter that begins with the same sound as the picture.

Non-example : Use letter-sounds that have not been taught when teaching first sound in pictures for phoneme isolation activities.

Make the connections between sounds in words and sounds of letters.

Example : After children can segment the first sound, have them use letter tiles to represent the sounds.

Non-example : Letters in mastered phonologic activities are not used. Explicit connections between alphabetic and phonologic activities are not made.

Use phonologic skills to teach more advanced reading skills, such as blending letter-sounds to read words.

Example : (Give children a 3-square strip and the letter tiles for s, u, n.) Have children do familiar tasks and blending to teach stretched blending with letters.

References:

Adams, M. J., Foorman, B. R., Lundberg, I., & Beeler, T. (1998). The elusive phoneme: Why phonemic awareness is so important and how to help children develop it. American Educator, 22(1-2), 18-29.

Felton, R. H., & Pepper, P. P. (1995). Early identification and intervention of phonological deficits in kindergarten and early elementary children at risk for reading disability. School Psychology Review, 24, 405-414.

Website: http://reading.uoregon.edu/index.php

Sample Intervention Activities for Developing Skills in Each of the Levels of Phonemic Awareness as described in

Hall, Susan L. 2006. I’ve DIBEL’ed now what? Designing interventions with DIBELS data. Longmont, CO. Sopris West.

Phonemic Awareness Level: Identity

Sound Dominoes – Helps students identify initial sounds in words. Students use picture cards taped to each end of a craft stick to connect initial sounds of words.

Phonemic Awareness Level: Categorization

Picture Card Sort – Helps students sort cards by initial sounds in words. Students sort 6-8 picture cards per sound for two beginning sounds. Sounds should be easily distinguished from one another.

Phonemic Awareness Level: Blending

Tap and Sweep – Helps students to tap each sound in word then blend the sounds together in a sweeping motion. Students tap the separate sounds on the desktop and then sweep their fist back over the sounds as they blend them together.

Phonemic Awareness Level: Segmentation

Head, Waist, and Toes – Helps students to segment sounds in simple words using body movement for each sound. Student places hands on head for first sound of word, hands on waist for second sound of word and hands on toes for last sound in word. Student sys each sound as he/she moves to each body location.

Phonemic Awareness Level: Deletion

Take Away a Sound – Helps students to delete a sound in a word by removing a block representing a sound in word. For example, student looks at 3 blocks representing the sounds in the word ‘hat’. Student removes the first block and blends the new sounds to make the new word, ‘at’.

Phonemic Awareness Level: Addition

Make a new word – Student listen to a word stated by the teacher then adds a new letter to identify a new word. For example, teacher says, ‘top’ and requests student to add ‘s’ to the beginning of the word. Student verbally identifies new word as ‘stop’.

Phonemic Awareness Level: Substitution

Change the word – Student is asked to say a word/name and then say it again with a different sound in one position. For example, students name is ‘Dan’. Student is asked to change the /D/ to /Z/ to create a new nonsense name ‘Zan’.

Letter-Naming

Interventions for Acquisition and Fluency

Bingo

A fun way to teach letter-names, but was originally meant to teach letter-sounds.

Materials:

One (1) bingo card per child

Several bingo chips per child

Directions:

Make copies of the bingo cards and the picture and letter squares (Found in Interventions for Reading Problems, pages 67-71)
Give each student his or her own bingo card.
Place the picture and letter squares in a box or bag.
Draw out one square at a time and show it to the students. If a picture square is drawn, the students should name the picture and give the first letter of the name. Any student who has that letter on his or her card should place a bingo chip on it. If a letter square is drawn, without showing the students the card, read the letter-name to the student. Any student who has that letter on their card should place a bingo chip on it.
The teacher should decide in advance whether the students need to cover a single row or the entire card to get “bingo.”
(For letter-sound bingo directions, please see directions on page 66 of Interventions for Reading Problems)

Post Office

Materials:

Picture Cards (see page 67-71 of Interventions for Reading Problems for examples)

Envelopes or pouches, each labeled with a different letter of the alphabet and able to fit the picture cards.

Directions:

Place the envelopes in front of the child. Or, if targeting a few, specific letters, only place those envelopes in front of the child.
Place the picture cards in front of the child. If only targeting a few letters, only place the relevant picture cards in front of the child.
Ask the child to name each picture.
Ask the child to name the first letter of the picture’s name.
Then, the child “mails” the picture card in the appropriately marked envelope.
The child picks a new picture card and the process is repeated until all picture cards are placed in their appropriate envelopes.

**This process can also be used for letter sounding. Just add letter-cards to the picture cards and ask the child to name the first sound of the picture card. Then, when success is experienced, ask the student to give the sound for each letter card.

References:

Blachman, B.A., Ball, E.W., Black, R.S., & Tangel, D.M. (2000). Road to the code: A phonological awareness program for young children. Baltimore: Brookes.

Daly, Edward J., Chafouleas, Sandra, & Skinner, Christopher, H. (2005). Interventions for Reading Problems. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.