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Vol. 46, No. 3 PREVENTING SCHOOL FAILURE 101
Preventing Reading
Failure: Phonological
Awareness Assessment
and Instruction
HOLLY B. LANE, PAIGE C. PULLEN, MARY R. EISELE,
and LuANN JORDAN
Abstract. The article addresses translating
phonological awareness research for class-
room reading instruction. It presents a practi-
cal overview of phonological awareness devel-
opment and its relationship to beginning
reading, including a synopsis of findings of
recent research and an explanation of the
development of phonological skills. It presents
methods for formal and informal assessment
of children’s phonological awareness and
describes strategies for classroom-based
instruction in phonological skills with emer-
gent readers.
eading is a foundation skill for school
learning and life learning—the ability
to read is critical for success in modern
society. Learning to read is one of the most
important events in a child’s school career
(Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson,
1985; Lyon, 1999; National Reading
Panel, 2000). Unfortunately, many chil-
dren experience difficulties in the early
stages of learning to read that become bar-
riers to later reading and learning. A pri-
mary focus of recent research in educa-
tion, therefore, has been the prevention of
early reading problems (Adams, 1990;
Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998; Torgesen,
1998). One area of beginning reading
research that has received enormous atten-
tion in the professional literature is phono-
logical awareness. This research has been
called “a scientific success story”
(Stanovich, 1987) because phonological
awareness has been shown to be both a
reliable predictor of reading achievement
and a key to beginning reading acquisition
(Smith, Simmons, & Kame’enui, 1995).
What Is Phonological Awareness?
Phonological awareness can be defined
as conscious sensitivity to the sound
structure of language. Children with
strong phonological awareness can detect,
match, blend, segment, and manipulate
speech sounds. Such facility with the
sounds of spoken language enables chil-
dren to learn more readily how to apply
these skills to decode print. An under-
standing of phonemes, the smallest
detectable unit of sound in spoken lan-
guage, is essential to the understanding of
grapheme-phoneme (letter-sound) rela-
tionships. Numerous studies have demon-
strated the importance of phonological
awareness, particularly at the phoneme
level, as the foundation for skilled decod-
Holly B. Lane is an assistant professor in the Department of Special Education
at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Paige C. Pullen is an assistant pro-
fessor in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education at
the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Mary R. Eisele is a freelance edu-
cation consultant in Naples, Florida. LuAnn Jordan is an assistant professor
in the Department of Counseling and Special Education at the University of
North Carolina-Charlotte.
R
ing and, therefore, for fluent reading
(Blachman, Tangel, Ball, Black, &
McGraw, 1999; Cornwall, 1992; Lenchn-
er, Gerber, & Routh, 1990; Liberman &
Shankweiler, 1985; Pratt & Brady, 1988;
Wagner & Torgesen, 1987).
Phonological awareness tasks have
been shown to be excellent predictors of
reading ability or reading disability. That
is, children who perform well on tasks of
phonological awareness typically are or
will become good readers, but children
who perform poorly on them are or will
become poor readers (Blachman, 1991;
Catts, 1991; Perfetti, 1991; Perfetti, Beck,
Bell, & Hughes, 1987; Snow et al., 1998;
Stanovich, 1986, 1992; Torgesen, Wagner,
& Rashotte, 1997). To benefit from
instruction in decoding and spelling, a
child must have a fundamental level of
phonological awareness (Chard & Dick-
son, 1999; National Reading Panel, 2000).
Many educators confuse the terminol-
ogy related to this research. In particular,
the terms phonological awareness,
phonemic awareness, and phonics are
sometimes used interchangeably. As pre-
viously stated, phonological awareness is
a child’s sensitivity to the sound structure
of language. Phonemic awareness refers
to a child’s ability to manipulate individ-
ual sounds (phonemes) within words.
Phonics is an instructional approach used
to help children make sense of the con-
nection between sounds and letters. Each
is important to early reading instruction.
Phonological Awareness Research
Phonological awareness has gained
considerable attention in educational
research during the last 15 years. The pri-
mary attraction to this relatively new area
of reading research is the repeated positive
results in studies of phonological aware-
ness interventions. Among the numerous
reliable predictors of later reading perfor-
mance (e.g., socioeconomic status, moth-
er’s education) that educational
researchers have identified phonological
awareness is one of the few that educators
are able to influence significantly.
Numerous studies of phonological
awareness have contributed to the knowl-
edge base in this area. These studies can
and should inform future educational
research and practice. Syntheses of this
research (see, for example, Smith et al.,
102 PREVENTING SCHOOL FAILURE Spring 2002
1995; National Reading Panel, 2000) have
yielded several important generalizations:
1.Phonological awareness is directly
related to reading ability.
2.Although the relationship is recipro-
cal, phonological awareness precedes
skilled decoding.
3.Phonological awareness is a reliable
predictor of later reading ability.
4.Deficits in phonological awareness
are usually associated with deficits in
reading.
5.Early language experiences play an
important role in the development of
phonological awareness.
6.Early intervention can promote the
development of phonological awareness.
7.Improvements in phonological
awareness can and usually do result in
improvements in reading ability.
Phonological Skills and Developmental
Levels
Several skills that are commonly asso-
ciated with beginning reading instruction
help children develop phonological
awareness. Typically, the first phonologi-
cal skill that children master is the ability
to rhyme. Very young children may also
master skills such as phoneme detection
and sound matching with little instruc-
tion. More advanced phonological skills
such as phoneme deletion, blending, and
segmentation pose problems for many
emergent readers. Most instruction
designed to increase phonological aware-
ness emphasizes these difficult skills
(activities designed to enhance these
skills will be described in detail in a sub-
sequent section).
The levels of phonological awareness
development are associated with the dif-
ferent phonological components of spo-
ken language, including words, syllables,
onsets and rimes, and phonemes (Blach-
man, 1991; Smith, 1995). In Figure 1, we
depict phonological awareness as an
umbrella term that includes awareness at
each level of spoken language. Effective
assessment and instruction should
address the various levels of phonological
awareness development. In the following
sections, we describe each of these four
levels of phonological awareness.
Word level. The awareness that the speech
flow is a compilation of individual words
is typically achieved at a very young age.
The linguistic play of young children,
including rhyming and the generation of
nonsense words, provides evidence of
this early level of phonological awareness
(Bradley, 1988). When a child utters a
single word that he has only heard in
combination with other words, he is
demonstrating the word level of phono-
logical awareness.
Syllable level. Syllables are the most eas-
ily distinguishable units within words.
Most children acquire the ability to seg-
ment words into syllables with minimal
instruction (Liberman, Shankweiler, &
Liberman, 1989; Lundberg, 1988).
Activities such as clapping, tapping, and
marching are often used to develop sylla-
ble awareness. This level of phonological
awareness is useful for initial instruction
in detection, segmentation, blending, and
manipulation of phonological compo-
nents of language. The ability to detect,
segment, and count syllables is more
important to reading acquisition than the
ability to manipulate and transpose them
(Adams, 1990).
Onset and rime level. The onset-rime or
intrasyllabic level of phonological aware-
ness is an intermediate and instructionally
useful level of analysis between the sylla-
FIGURE 1. Phonological awareness can
be illustrated as an umbrella term that
comprises four levels. Phonemic
awareness is an understanding of the
sound structure of language at the
phoneme level.
Vol. 46, No. 3 PREVENTING SCHOOL FAILURE 103
ble and the phoneme (Adams, 1990). The
onset is the part of the syllable that pre-
cedes the vowel (e.g., the /k/ in cat, the /br/
in brown). The rime is the rest of the sylla-
ble (e.g., the /og/ in dog, the /ack/ in black).
Because a syllable must contain a vowel,
all syllables must have a rime, but not all
syllables have an onset (e.g., and, out, or).
Treiman (1985) found that children
make more errors with consonants at the
end of words or with consonant blends
than with initial or medial consonants.
This finding suggests that children natu-
rally segment words at neither the sylla-
ble nor the phoneme level, but at the intra-
syllabic level. In addition, most children
spell rimes more accurately than individ-
ual vowel sounds, which illustrates the
level at which they are attending. Onset-
rime segmentation skill is an essential
component of phonological awareness
(Adams, 1990; Goswami & Mead, 1992).
Instruction at the onset-rime level is an
important step for many childen
(Treiman,1985, 1991, 1992). Because
tasks that require onset and rime analysis
require the segmentation of syllables, they
are more sophisticated than syllable-level
tasks. Yet these same tasks are easier than
phoneme-level tasks because they do not
require discrimination between individual
phonemes. Onset-rime tasks could, there-
fore, be considered an intermediate step in
the development of phonological aware-
ness. The difficulty that many children
experience when progressing from syllab-
ic analysis to phonemic analysis may arise
because the intermediate step, the intra-
syllabic unit, is often omitted from early
reading instruction. Providing experience
working with onsets and rimes may alle-
viate this difficulty.
Phoneme level. The most sophisticated
level of phonological awareness is the
phoneme level, most commonly referred to
as phonemic awareness. Children with
strong phonemic awareness are able to
manipulate individual phonemes, the
smallest sound units of spoken language.
Phonemic awareness skills include the abil-
ity to detect, segment, and blend phonemes
and to manipulate their position in words
(Adams, 1990; Lenchner et al., 1990).
Because humans coarticulate or overlap
sounds in speech, phonemes are impossi-
ble to segment in a pure sense. In the
speech flow, phonemes are formed and
blended in such a way that one phoneme’s
production is influenced by the surround-
ing phonemes. For example, the /k/ is
formed in slightly different ways in the
words cat and cot due to the influence of
the vowel that follows it. Because phone-
mic analysis requires the reader to detect,
segment, and manipulate individual
phonemes, it is a much more sophisticat-
ed task and, consequently, a much more
difficult task than either syllabic or intra-
syllabic analysis (Treiman, 1991, 1992).
Assessing Phonological Awareness
Educators face the formidable challenge
of determining which children have weak-
nesses in phonological awareness and,
therefore, which children are likely to
develop reading problems. Several ways to
assess phonological awareness have been
developed. Which method to use should be
determined based on the number of chil-
dren to be assessed, the amount of existing
information about the children, and the
amount of time available. The most reli-
able and informative method of assessing
phonological awareness is through, indi-
vidual testing. Other methods have been
developed, however, that are quick and
easy to administer and that have reliability
adequate for most classroom purposes.
Yopp (1988) investigated some of the most
commonly used measures of phonological
awareness and determined that the relia-
bility and validity of measurement tasks
were greatest when a combination of mea-
sures was employed.
Group Assessment
Several methods have been developed
for group screening and assessment of
phonological skills. Tests of invented
spelling can be administered in a group
setting, and the analysis of children’s
attempts to spell words provides the
teacher with information about their abil-
ity to segment phonemes, their knowl-
edge of the alphabet, and their under-
standing of letter-sound correspondences
(Invernizzi, Meier, Swank, & Juel, 1998;
Moats, 2000; Snow et al., 1998). Mann,
Tobin, and Wilson (1987) have advocated
the use of children’s invented spellings as
a tool for screening phonological aware-
ness. They developed a system for scor-
ing an invented spelling that can help
determine if additional assessment is war-
ranted. In this and other similar scoring
methods, points are awarded on the basis
of a spelling’s phonological accuracy. For
example, in an attempt to spell an unfa-
miliar word, a child may produce a scrib-
FIGURE 2 These example spellings for the word pretend begin with a series of scrib-
bles and move to a spelling that is phonologically accurate.
ble, a random letter string, one or two cor-
rectly represented phonemes, or even a
phonologically accurate spelling (Figure
2). Each of these attempts represents sig-
nificant information about that child’s
phonological knowledge. See Table 1 for
a summary of one method for scoring
invented spellings.
The Screening Test of Phonological
Awareness (STOPA) has been demon-
strated to be an effective group assess-
ment tool (Torgesen, Wagner, Bryant, &
Pearson, 1992). The STOPA, designed for
use with kindergarten students, requires
students to identify sounds that are the
same and different. The test is simple to
administer in a group setting, yet sophis-
ticated enough to detect individual differ-
ences in phonological awareness.
Individualized Assessment
To collect the kind of information
about a child’s phonological knowledge
that is necessary to design effective
instructional interventions, individual
assessments are particularly useful. The
assessment method can be informal, cri-
terion-referenced, or norm-referenced.
Clearly, the most direct informal
method of measuring a child’s phonolog-
ical awareness is repeated observation by
a knowledgeable teacher of the child’s
ability to perform tasks that require the
use of phonological skills. Such observa-
tion provides a teacher with an authentic
measure of what a child can or cannot do
(Valencia, 1997). A variety of skill areas
may be examined to measure phonologi-
cal awareness; these include rhyme detec-
tion and production, sound matching,
phonemic oddity detection, deletion,
segmentation, and blending. Sample
questions for informal assessment of a
child’s phonological awareness appear
in Table 2. Several formal measures of
phonological awareness have been
developed, as well. Descriptions of
some of the most widely used appear in
Table 3.
Developing Phonological Awareness
Just as assessing phonological aware-
ness is best accomplished by observing
students as they perform tasks that
demonstrate phonological skills, devel-
oping phonological awareness requires
practicing phonological skills. Most skill
instruction can be easily embedded
within the context of meaningful reading
or writing (Wadlington, 2000; Yopp,
1992). Some children, however, require
more extensive practice with skills. Stu-
dents who have very low levels of read-
ing ability benefit most from explicit
instruction in phonological skills paired
with explicit instruction in how to apply
those skills in a meaningful context
(Cunningham, 1990; Lane, 1994). As
these children develop sensitivity to the
sound structure of language, instruction
in phoneme segmentation and blending
should be coupled with instruction using
letters (Pullen, 2000).
Instruction in phonological skills can
be conducted as formal, structured
lessons, as an integrated part of ongoing
reading instruction, or as fun activities
throughout the school day. Instruction
may be individualized, small-group, or
whole-class. For students who have signif-
icant weaknesses in phonological aware-
ness, 10–20 minutes of individual or
small-group instruction each day may be
necessary to promote adequate growth. Of
course, student needs should dictate the
form and amount of instruction provided.
Commerically Available Instructional
Programs
As educators have become aware of the
research on phonological awareness, pub-
lishers have recognized the demand for
classroom materials. Numerous commer-
cial programs are currently available.
Several of these programs have under-
gone field testing and evaluation. We pro-
vide a list and brief description of
research-based materials for teachers in
Table 4. In addition to these classroom
materials, several programs for computer-
assisted instruction have become avail-
able. A listing of these software programs
is provided in Table 5.
Informal Methods of Instruction
Most activities in commercial pro-
grams such as those described can be
incorporated informally within existing
reading instruction. The following tasks
are useful for practicing and developing
phonological skills. The tasks are
sequenced in an order that approximates
the developmental sequence. However,
the sequence and rate of skill develop-
ment vary from child to child, and skills
overlap during development. We also
wish to stress that these activities are
auditory and interactive in nature; chil-
dren do not develop phonological skills
by doing independent written work.
Tapping words. Children can be taught to
tap with a rhythm stick or finger for each
word in a sentence or phrase. Most chil-
dren acquire this skill with minimal
instruction. Teacher modeling and guid-
ance are useful for those children who
have difficulty with this task. Children
who struggle with this activity typically
confuse words and syllables. Care should
be taken to make this distinction explicit.
Counting and tallying words. Tallying the
number of words in a sentence requires a
greater degree of cognitive engagement
than tapping words and is considered a
104 PREVENTING SCHOOL FAILURE Spring 2002
TABLE 1
Method for Scoring Invented Spelling
Characteristics of spelling Example spellings Score
One phoneme accurately represented other than t 1/2
initial phoneme
Initial phoneme accurately represented f 1
fesry
Initial phoneme and one other phoneme accurately ft 2
represented
Initial phoneme and two or more other phonemes fot 3
accurately represented flt
Word is phonologically accurate flot 4
flote
Vol. 46, No. 3 PREVENTING SCHOOL FAILURE 105
more sophisticated task. Another method
of word counting involves moving a
marker to indicate the number of words in
a sentence.
Tapping syllables. Children may be
taught to tap out the number of syllables
in a word. This task requires auditory
attention. The teacher should provide
extensive modeling and guided practice
to help children understand the concept of
syllable. Starting with long but familiar
multisyllable words (e.g., refrigerator,
motorcycle) makes the acquisition of this
skill easy for most children.
Segmenting syllables. Teaching students to
segment multisyllable words into individ-
ual syllables can begin in kindergarten.
This process can be made into a game in
which children separate their names or the
names of familiar objects into syllables.
Instruction may begin with segmentation
of compound words (e.g., football, out-
side, sidewalk). Children may also be
taught to count the number of syllables in
other long but familiar words. These tasks
require auditory attention and memory.
Rhyme recognition. Children can be
taught to determine if two one-syllable
words rhyme. Some children have an
inherent understanding of rhymes based
on extensive experiences with language
and print. Other children who have not
developed this understanding may need
explicit instruction about what a rhyme is
(i.e., words rhyme when they sound the
same in the middle and at the end). This
instruction should be accompanied by
numerous examples and nonexamples of
rhymes. Rhyme recognition simply
requires the student to indicate whether or
not a pair of spoken words rhymes.
Instead of simply providing a pair of
words, to promote rhyme recognition, the
teacher might say, “Cat and sat both have
an at. Does hat have an at?”
Rhyme generation. Generating a word or
list of words that rhyme with a given word
is more difficult than determining if two
given words rhyme. The additional cog-
nitive and language requirements of
TABLE 2
Sample Assessment Questions
Assessment Directions Sample
Word level
Tapping words Teacher reads sentence aloud. Child taps for each word The little frog is jumping.
in the sentence.
Deleting words Teacher reads a compound word, the child deletes one word. Teacher says, “Say cowboy.” Child
repeats. “Now say cowboy, with-
out saying cow.”
Syllable level
Blending syllables Teacher reads word one syllable at a time. The child listens, What word do these sounds make?
then blends the sounds together to make the whole word. tea-cher.
Tapping syllables Teacher reads word aloud. Child taps for each syllable in the alligator
word.
Deleting syllables Teacher reads child a multisyllable word and the child deletes Teacher says, “Say wonder.” Child
a specific syllable. repeats. “Now say wonder with-
out saying der.
Onset-rime level
Matching rhymes Teacher gives child a word pair, the child decides whether Do these two words rhyme?
or not the pair rhymes. sack/black
Do these two words rhyme?
beat/bean
Blending onsets and rimes The teacher segments the word orally between the onset and What word do these sounds make?
rime. The child listens, then blends the sounds together n-ote.
to make the whole word.
Generating rhymes The teacher gives child a target word and the child must Tell me a word that rhymes with sat.
provide a word that rhymes with the target word.
Phoneme level
Blending phonemes Teacher segments a word into phonemes and the child is What word do these sounds make?
asked to blend the sounds to make the whole word. b-o-th.
Segmenting phonemes Teacher reads child a whole word and the child is asked to I will say a word, then you say it
produce the word sound-by-sound. sound by sound. mat.
rhyme generation make it quite challeng-
ing for some children. The ability to gen-
erate rhymes, however, is an excellent
indicator of a child’s ability to apply
phonological knowledge. Many children
engage in spontaneous word games that
employ rhyming skills. This fun way to
practice skills should be encouraged.
Using nonsense words in such games
reinforces the child’s attention to sounds.
Rhyme oddity detection. This task
requires children to indicate which in a
list of three or four words does not rhyme
with the other words in the list. The famil-
iar song from the television show Sesame
Street does this well: “Which of these
words is not like the others? Which of
these words just doesn’t belong?”
Rhyme matching. Given a list of three or
four words, students indicate which one
from the list rhymes with a target word.
For example, the teacher might say,
“Which word rhymes with stamp:map,
lip, or lamp?”
Sound detection. Given a target phoneme,
students determine which words on a list
106 PREVENTING SCHOOL FAILURE Spring 2002
begin or end with that sound. This activi-
ty can be used during story or passage
reading, as well. While reading connect-
ed text, students find all words in the
selection that include the target phoneme.
As students become comfortable with
beginning and ending sounds, activities
that include detection of a target medial
sound should be added.
Sound matching. To match sounds, stu-
dents must determine which in a selection
of words begins or ends with the same
sound as a given word. For example, the
teacher may ask students, “Which word
begins with the same sound as dog:can,
must, or dish?
As students master this skill, the activ-
ity should be modified to request ending
or middle sound-matching, and more
words may be added to the list.
Sound oddity detection. The procedures
for this activity are very similar to those
for rhyme oddity detection. The differ-
ence, however, is that students are asked
to determine which in a list of words
begins or ends with a sound different
from a given word. For example, the
teacher may ask, “Which of these words
does not have the same ending sound as
cat:mutt, lift, cake, or bite?”Again, work
with medial sounds should start when stu-
dents become skilled with beginning and
ending sounds.
Rhyme and sound matching using pic-
tures. For these activities, children are
asked to look at pictures and generate the
sounds themselves by naming the word
the picture represents. Students match
pictures illustrating words that share a
common rime or a common initial, medi-
al, or final phoneme. This activity is
somewhat more advanced than activities
that begin with the teacher generating the
sounds, because some students find it
more difficult to detect individual
phonemes when they do not hear some-
one else say the word.
Oddity detection using pictures. As in
the previous activity, the student is
expected to generate the name of the
word the pictures represents. The student
then determines which in a set of pic-
TABLE 3
Assessments of Phonological Awareness
Assessment Author/publisher Description
Lindamood Auditory Lindamood and Lindamood/ The LAC is a comprehensive, individually administered
Conceptualization Test Pro-Ed assessment for both children and adults. It is effective for a
(LAC) wide range of ages, however, it is difficult for very young
children (kindergarten).
Comprehensive Test of Wagner, Toregesen and The CTOPP is an individually-administered assessment that
Phonological Processing Rashotte/Pro-Ed measures (a) phonological awareness (e.g., sound matching,
(CTOPP) blending, elision); (b) phonological memory (memory of dig-
its, nonword repetition); and (c) rapid serial naming (rapid
naming of objects, numbers, and letters).
Test of Phonological Toregesen and Bryant/ TOPA is a measure of young children’s ability to isolate indi-
Awareness (TOPA) Pro-Ed vidual phonemes in spoken words. It can be administered to
groups of children and is available in Kindergarten and Early
Elementary versions.
Phonological Awareness Invernizzi, Meier, Swank PALS measures the child’s rhyming abilities and sound aware-
Literacy Screening and Juel/University of ness. In addition to these phonological skills, alphabet knowl-
(PALS) Virginia edge, letter sound knowledge, concept of word, and word
recognition are also assessed.
The Developmental Spelling Ganske/Guilford Press This assessment includes a screening inventory for determining
Analysis in Word Journey a child’s stage of spelling development and two parallel feature
inventories for high lighting strengths and weaknesses in a
child’s knowledge of specific spelling features.
Vol. 46, No. 3 PREVENTING SCHOOL FAILURE 107
tures illustrating words does not share a
common rime or a common initial,
medial, or final phoneme.
Counting phonemes. Elkonin (1963)
introduced a method of developing
phonemic segmentation skills that has
become quite popular in recent years.
This method involves the use of Elkonin
boxes—picture cards with boxes under
each picture representing the number of
phonemes in the word (see Figure 3).
While saying the word slowly, sound by
sound, the student moves a marker into
each box to represent each sound in the
word. This activity may be modified to
allow the teacher and student to practice
the skill orally. The teacher demonstrates
using fingers to count phonemes, raising
one finger as each phoneme is pro-
nounced. With teacher guidance, the stu-
dent should be able to learn how to count
phonemes independently.
Phoneme deletion. Phoneme deletion
activities require students to detect and
manipulate sounds in a word. Students
are asked to delete a specified sound from
a target word. For example, the teacher
may say, “Say seat. Now say seat without
saying the /t/ sound.”Again, practice with
this activity should begin with initial
sounds and progress to final and, eventu-
ally, medial sounds.
Blending and segmenting. Blending and
segmenting phonemes are the most sophis-
ticated skills associated with phonological
awareness and the most important for
application to decoding. Blending and seg-
menting may be taught in a variety of
ways. One of the most useful methods for
helping young children to understand the
concepts of phonemic blending and seg-
mentation is teaching them to “converse”
with a puppet or toy robot in a secret lan-
guage. Torgesen and Bryant (1994) used
this approach in Phonological Awareness
Training for Reading, but the method is
easy to adapt to informal instruction. In
this approach, the puppet or robot can only
TABLE 4
Commercially Available Instructional Programs
Program Author/publisher Description
Lindamood Phoneme Lindamood/ProEd LiPS is designed to provide intensive remedial instruction for
Sequencing Program students struggling to develop phonological awareness.
for Reading, Spelling, Sounds are represented with objects and descriptive names to
and Speech (LiPS) develop students’concrete understanding of distinct sounds
by drawing a child’s attention to the motoric features of
phoneme articulation through individual or small group
instruction. Students learn how to position their mouths to
produce sounds and how to distinguish among various types
of sounds.
Road to the Code: A Program Blachman, Ball, Black, and Road to the Code includes activities to move students from
of Early Literacy Activities Tangel/Brookes phonological awareness to letter knowledge. The program
to Develop Phonological gradually moves into activities that encourage the application
Awareness of these skills in writing and spelling.
Phonological Awareness Torgesen and Bryant/ProEd This program includes games and activities to help children
Training for Reading develop sound segmenting and blending, reading and
spelling. An audiotape guide for sound pronunciation is
included.
Phonemic Awareness in Adams, Foorman, Lundberg, This curriculum provides a basis for assessment and instruc-
Young Children and Beeler/Brookes tion in phonological awareness. The book includes a variety
of language games, listening games, rhyming activities, and
activities for developing students’understanding of sounds in
words. Several instruments for assessing phonological aware-
ness are also included.
Ladders to Literacy O’Connor, Notari-Syverson, These preschool and kindergarten activity books provide
and Vadasy/Brookes early literacy activities in phonological awareness, vocabulary
development, and letter names and sounds. The program is
designed to emphasize the provision of appropriate levels of
instructional support for developing students.
Sounds Abound Catts and Vartiainen/ Sounds Abound is for children in grades PreK–3. It targets
LinguiSystems listening and rhyming skills as students work toward match-
ing sounds with letters. Five sections include fun activities in
(1) speech sound awareness, (2) rhyming, (3) beginning and
ending sounds, (4) segmenting and blending sounds, and (5)
putting sounds together with words.
say words and can only understand words
when they are said one sound at a time.
Young children seem to accept and under-
stand this explanation quite readily and are
eager to try communicating in this unusu-
al fashion.
When teaching or assessing blending
and segmentation skills, the teacher
should be careful to completely segment
phonemes before blending them. Many
teachers have the tendency simply to say
a word slowly, drawing out the
phonemes. The teacher should be certain
to include a brief but discernible pause
between segmented sounds. When chil-
dren learn to decode, it is necessary for
them to identify the sounds of separate
letters and then to blend those letter
sounds together. Previous oral blending
practice is helpful for students when they
are ready to become more fluent with
decoding skills.
Another important caution for teachers
is that individual phonemes must be pro-
nounced in a manner that will make them
blendable. In other words, teachers
108 PREVENTING SCHOOL FAILURE Spring 2002
should be very careful to model correct
letter sound pronunciation. Many teach-
ers, in an effort to make short or “stop”
consonant sounds more audible, add a
vowel sound to the consonant. This addi-
tional sound, usually a schwa or short u
sound, distorts the consonant sound, mak-
ing it very difficult to blend with other
phonemes. For example, a b may be
incorrectly pronounced “buh,” and a t
may be incorrectly pronounced “tuh.”
Blending the letters b, a, and tthen pro-
duces “buh-a-tuh,” and many children
have serious difficulty identifying the
word. It is important to pronounce these
stop consonants as quickly as possible,
without the confusing “uh.” Because it is
impossible to pronounce a voiced stop
consonant such as bor din isolation with
no vowel sound attached, the teacher
should model saying the sound with an
extremely brief short isound following it.
The place in the vocal anatomy where the
short iis produced is closer to the loca-
tion of more of the other vowel sounds
than the short u. Teaching children to use
this strategy may help them blend stop
consonants more readily.
Another way to alleviate this problem
is to begin instruction in blending and
segmenting using only words with con-
tinuous consonant sounds (e.g., /s/, /v/,
/z/, /f/, /m/, /n/) at the beginning posi-
tion. These sounds are much easier to
blend than the stop consonants, and their
use in early instruction makes the skill of
blending more accessible for children.
As children are introduced to blending
skills, stop consonants may be used at
the end of words. In the final position,
stop consonants are easier to pronounce
quickly and with little distortion. When
students become competent with pro-
nunciation, the introduction of stops at
the initial position becomes less trouble-
some.
Including Phonological Awareness
Instruction in an Existing Reading
Program
Many of the activities we have
described can be integrated into any read-
TABLE 5
Instructional Software Programs
Program Author/publisher Description
Earobics Wasowicz/Cognitive Concepts Earobics is a software program designed to develop phonemic
awareness and letter-sound knowledge through engaging
games.
Daisy Quest and Daisy’s Erikson, Foster, Foster, and Daisy Quest and Daisy’s Castle are computer programs for the
Castle Torgesen/ProEd Macintosh. The games are motivating for children while pro-
viding opportunities to develop phonological awareness at each
level. Research studies have found these software programs to
be an effective way to stimulate phonological awareness in
young children.
The Waterford Early The Waterford Institute/ The Waterford Early Reading Program is a comprehensive
Reading Program Electronic Education computer program for Kindergarten. It provides activities in
phonological awareness, concepts of print, letter names, and
letter sounds.
Read, Write, and Type! Herron and Grimm/ This computer software program merges the teaching of phon-
Learning System Talking Fingers ics skills with an introduction to typing. Children move
through a progressively challenging sequence games that
begins with single letters, advances to whole words, and con-
cludes with complete sentences, including capitalization and
punctuation.
Fast ForWord Merzenich, Tallal, Jenkins, Fast ForWord is an interactive program that stimulates child-
and Miller/Scientific ren’s phonological skills using acoustically modified speech
Learning sounds. This acoustic training is provided in five 20-minute
sessions each day. Requires teacher training.
Vol. 46, No. 3 PREVENTING SCHOOL FAILURE 109
ing activity or used as games during
instruction or during noninstructional
time. For example, singing and play
activities offer many opportunities for
kindergarten teachers to incorporate
phonological skill development. Stories
or poems that include rhyming words
may be used as a tool to introduce and
develop concepts and skills in rhyming. A
teacher of older students could ask them
to count the number of syllables or
phonemes in the names of story charac-
ters or in new vocabulary words. If a
teacher encourages the use of carefully
invented spellings, students learn to seg-
ment words and represent the correct
number of phonemes. Modeling how to
sound out a word to invent a spelling can
help students develop these skills. As stu-
dents learn about decoding, numerous
other opportunities for instruction in
blending and segmentation arise.
The teacher could make a simple
whole-class game out of rhyme or
phoneme matching (e.g., “Line up for
lunch if your name rhymes with
___________,” or “if your name has a /t/
at the end”). Teachers can challenge stu-
dents to think of words that have a partic-
ular number of syllables or phonemes.
Finding many fun and innovative ways to
include such sound play in the school day
will address the instructional needs of
many students. Additional practice in
specific skills will certainly be required
for some students who have difficulty
acquiring phonological skills, but such
informal opportunities to practice
throughout the day will help these stu-
dents, as well.
Combining informal sound play and
formal phonological awareness instruc-
tion during typical reading and writing
activities for all students with explicit
skill instruction for students who need
additional practice should address the
diverse needs in most elementary class-
rooms. The most important thing for
teachers to do is to make the sound struc-
ture of language conspicuous to students
who do not develop phonological aware-
ness independently.
The activities presented here are
designed to develop phonological aware-
ness. Applying these auditory skills to
reading requires students to have a work-
ing knowledge of sound-symbol relation-
ships, which is typically acquired through
phonics instruction. Despite popular mis-
conceptions, phonological awareness
instruction is not the same as phonics
instruction; instead, phonological aware-
ness instruction prepares students to be
able to benefit from instruction in phonics.
Conclusion
Reading research has clearly demon-
strated the significance of phonological
awareness in the development of early
reading skills, and a variety of effective
methods for assessment and instruction of
phonological skills has been developed.
Teachers in remedial and special educa-
tion programs now have another tool for
addressing students’ reading problems.
Teachers of young children must recog-
nize the importance of incorporating
phonological awareness into programs
designed to promote emergent literacy,
because these teachers now have a tool
for preventing reading problems.
Key words: phonological awareness, phone-
mic awareness, phonics, beginning reading,
early intervention
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