Phonemic Awareness In A K-3 Balanced Literacy Program

The research is concentrated on the effects of phonemic awareness on early readers and how it impacts reading fluently. The paper gives a definition of phonemic awareness, and phonics along with two Techniques for assessing phonemic awareness. The paper discuss the purpose and description of both phonemic awareness and phonics. Phonemic Awareness in a K-3 Balanced Literacy Program Language is developed at an early age babies are exposed to language in the wound. They are exposed when the mother or other members of the family talk, sing or read stories to them.

Many times babies are familiar with various family members by their voices heard in the wound. There are many factors that occur when children learn to read. Students must have a prior knowledge of letters and sound recognition. Teachers use various strategies and technique to teach children to read. There are two important strategies that teachers use for success. The strategies are Phonemic awareness and phonics. Phonemic awareness relates to the individual sounds of spoken language. One of the most widely used strategies is teaching students phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness is the understanding of words which are made up of sounds that can be assembled in different ways to make different sounds. Phonics is a series of rules that children have to memorize and apply when they are sounding out unfamiliar words. . This method is successful but students must learn letter sounds to an automatic level by recognizing a letter and saying the sound. Phonics shows how sounds (phonemes) and letters (graphemes) work together. Phonemic awareness and phonics both are important strategies to teach children to read.

Phonemic awareness and phonics support for beginner and early readers. The phonemic awareness and Phonics strategies have similar as well as different benefits for students and teachers. (Walsh, Oct 2009) Phonemic awareness is part of phonological awareness, which is part of met linguistic awareness.. Phonemic awareness includes segmenting spoken Phonemic awareness is the ability to detect each phoneme which is smallest unit of speech in words into phonemes and blending phonemes into words. It is a reading skill which is acquired through nursery rhymes and playing sound and word games.(Walsh, Oct 2009)

Only through spoken word play and seeing the written code around them do children learn to separate the word from what it refers to and to treat the word itself as a thing to be playfully manipulated in rhyming and early word games. Phonics is a method for teaching students to read and write language. Phonics teaches pupils how to connect the sounds of speech with letters or groups of letters to form words. Phonics teaches students to blend the sounds of letters together to produce words in which are unfamiliar. Phonics is a popular method of teaching students to read and decode words using sounds.

Children begin learning to read usually around the age of 5 or 6. Teaching children to read with the use of phonics requires students to learn the connections between letter patterns and the sounds they represent. Phonics instruction requires the teacher to provide students with a core body of information about phonics rules, or patterns. Along with phonics rules students are taught to memorize high frequency words, such as it, he, them, and when. Phonics is the connection of phonetic awareness in the understanding of sounds that connect to letters. Phonics is a key element of reading.

Students need to know the relationship between letters and sounds in order to begin to sound out words. Direct phonics instruction needs to be one component of a balanced literacy program. One strategy for phonics is producing consonant vowel consonant words. (Louis Gates, 2011) For each of the basic vowel words, create two to three models (1) one-syllable CVC words—cat, fat, bat; (2) one syllable -VCe words—sane, pane, vane; and (3) one syllable CVVC words—fail, hail, rail. Create another List of basic one-syllable consonant di/trigraph CCVC Words—chill, chin; chip, and CVCC words—catch, Match, patch.

The purpose for Phonemic awareness and phonics in a K-3 balanced literacy program. Phonemic aware purpose in K-3 balanced literacy is teaching beginners to read and pronounce words. Phonics purpose is to learn the phonetic value of letters, letter groups, and especially. Phonics supports cooperative and integrative learning where students and teacher learn together and carry out tasks collaboratively. In 1984, the National Academy of Education reported the status of research and instructional practices in reading education the report includes the finding that phonics instruction improves children’s ability to identify words.

The report concludes that phonics strategies include teaching children the sounds of letters in isolation and in words, and teaching them to blend the sounds of letters together to produce approximate pronunciations of words. It also states that phonics instruction should occur in conjunction with opportunities to identify words in meaningful sentences and stories. Educators need to assess the progress of student’s future and present reading skills. The knowledge of a student’s recognition of letter sounds and the ability to blend begins in the early years of school.

Students are assessed during their early grades of Elementary school such as kindergarten and first grade. Students are assessed through progress monitoring. Progress monitoring is a strategy that helps educators in determining if the students are making adequate progress or if more intervention strategies are needed achieve grade level reading goals. Phonemic Awareness Assessment can be achieved through formal and informal activities. There are two ways phonemic awareness can be assessed by the teacher through student’s recognition of rhyming sounds and having the ability blend phonetically.

Recognizing rhyme assessment is done when a student can recognize or identify a rhyming sound which can be obtained receptively or expressively. Children are given an example of a rhyme. The teacher explains that two words will be read such as ham ram the student is encouraged to answer if the two words sound alike by answering yes, raising hand, or thumbs up.

Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) is an assessment that is given in the beginning of Kindergarten, early first grade, and if need first through third grades. DIBELS focuses on the development of early skills such as letter naming, phoneme identification and phoneme segmentation to help teachers in predicting the lack of future skills that lead to developing proficient readers. In conclusion the purpose of this research is to talk about the importance of Phonemic awareness and how it supports students in education. (2009) Walsh The main argument for the importance of phonemic awareness in early literacy is that children who do not have an awareness of the structure of language cannot attend to the separate sounds in spoken words and are thus unable to establish phonemic awareness at the beginning of school, when in fact they may not.

Phonemic awareness has been used worldwide in assisting with teaching skills. The technique is praised by teachers and Speech language pathologist because it is a technique that can be taught in various ways. The techniques can be taught with materials that are handy in the classroom such as stories, poems, and rhymes. Phonics instruction occurs in conjunction with opportunities to identify words in meaningful sentences and stories.

Assessments in phonemic assessment and phonics are to ensure that teacher’s make educational decisions and improve their instructional decisions. The balanced literacy approach refers to phonological awareness and explicit instruction in alphabetic principle. It relates written and spoken language forms and uses. Phonics teaches decoding, fluency and comprehends. Overall phonics and phonemic awareness focus on the goal of improving language and communication. The approaches support strong reading skills that foster fluency, and strong decoding skills.