Supporting Phonemic Awareness in the

ClassroomFinal Project by Kat Duncan

Final Project DirectionsAs a final project, you will develop plans for teaching phonemic awareness in your classroom, including plans for assessment procedures, analysis, and activities. This final project template will also include one example of a phonemic awareness assessment and analysis on a student.

Your plans should incorporate at least one of the technology tools explored in this course and include details for other types of phonemic awareness strengthening activities.

Complete this template as the course progresses. This template is due to your facilitator at the end of Session Six. At that time, your facilitator will review your final project and provide feedback for you in the Notes section.

Part I: General Information (Session One)

GRADE: 6, self-contained language based learning classroom

LESSON BLOCK LENGTH: 50 minutes

Is Phonemic Awareness currently being addressed in your classroom? If so, how? If you are not currently teaching in a classroom, please fill out this template as if you are teaching in the classroom of your choice.

Yes, Phonemic Awareness is addressed in the classroom. Students are engaged in direct instruction activities such as segmenting and blending word sounds, identifying onsets and rimes. Part of the class time is used to read aloud literature that plays with words and rhymes. Students also create a word families chart for the classroom as well as their own illustrated poems and stories.

Part II: Phonemic Awareness(Session One)

Reflect on one of the readings from this session. Some guiding questions could be: Why is phonemic awareness an important step in learning to read? Do you currently assess student’s phonemic awareness? If not, what are the early indicators that allow you to identify if a student is at risk of reading difficulty?

Reading: Big Ideas in Beginning Reading from the University of Oregon

One important point this article couldn’t emphasize enough is the link between Phonemic Awareness and reading success. PA might even be considered the missing link for many struggling readers. If early education teachers are not fully informed of the subtle but important differences between phonics and phonemic awareness and are not given the opportunity to learn techniques to foster phonemic awareness, many children will continue to struggle to learn to read. Phonemic awareness develops the auditory processing of phonemes and gives children a chance to explore the sounds in words and learn to manipulate them. The ability to recognize the sounds of the more than 40 phonemes is essential to later mapping these sounds onto printed words. Once teachers begin to use phonemic awareness activities in their classrooms they can be alert for children who have difficulty segmenting words into separate sounds, manipulating sounds within words, or grouping words with similar sounds. These children could be exposed to more practice and/or an individualized curriculum with additional PA activities.

Part III: Linguistic Components(Session Two)

From the Yopp article, which activities look promising and intriguing? Which ones might be easiest to incorporate into your current curriculum? Which activities, before assessing your students, do you think would benefit your classroom most?

The activities that look promising from the Yopp article are the rhyming, syllabication, phoneme manipulation and word hunt. Since my ideal classroom would incorporate hands-on activities, these types of activities would be easiest to fit into my regular curriculum. I think my students would benefit from working with rhymes. After reading poems and rhyming stories, they could make up their own poems and rhymes following the models given. Working with syllables, segmenting by syllables and working on puzzles to fit syllables together and say them aloud (with or without clapping) would help them hear how the words are put together. They could also create structured poems with a certain number of syllables for each line. I also liked the idea of phoneme manipulation and might come up with an activity such as changing lyrics to popular songs by substituting phonemes in the lyrics and then trying to sing the songs with the new lyrics. Another activity my students would benefit from would be a word hunt using onsets and rimes. This could be done with small groups of students competing with one another to see how many dictionary words they could come up with as well as how many nonsense words they could come up with. Students would benefit from approaching the PA tasks in a lively and interactive way that would help them to hear, use and manipulate phonemes while at the same time building their writing and spelling skills.

Part IV: Audio Recording Practice(Session Two)

Share your URL to your practice audio recording here:

http://www.cinchcast.com/katduncan/236819

I believe it is possible and necessary to teach all 6 phonemic awareness skills (matching, isolation, substitution, blending, segmentation and deletion) beginning in pre-school. Because phonemic awareness skills do not necessarily involve written letters, these skills can be taught to children who do not yet have the knowledge or grapho-motor skills to form letters. Pre-school student should not be drilled in phonemic awareness activities. Rather, students should be encouraged to play with the language using activities that are primarily oral and aural. Daily practice of 15 to 30 minutes in a playful and engaging environment will increase pre-school students' listening ability and metalinguistic awareness. Beginning in pre-school gives struggling students the additional time and practice with these essential non-writing skills. In addition, such a rich language environment gives teachers a chance to identify students who are at risk and may need additional practice or intervention.

Reflect on this practice. How do you imagine audio recordings will help you teach and your students learn about phonemic awareness? Teaching with audio reccordings could provide students will clear, enunciated practice without distractions (if they listen on headphones). Recordings that are easy to access could also be provided to parents, paraprofessionals and others who can help to reinforce the PA practice. Reviewing audio recordings of student practice can help teachers pinpoint weak areas.

Part V: Student Assessment(Session Three)

Which assessment will you be using on your student?

Older Student Pre-assessment Sound Segmentation and Substitution

Insert the URL of your audio-recorded assessment with a student here.

http://www.cinchcast.com/katduncan/237397

Part VI: Analysis(Session Three)

After completing an assessment on a student or small child, you will reflect on their scores using the appropriate worksheet.

What stands out to you most?

The student had some difficulty with segmenting rimes containing the sound /l/. The student also had some difficulty with the pronunciation of r-controlled vowels.

Reflect on the areas of student strength.

The student was very careful in her attempt to segment each word. She put forth concentration and effort, and did the work quickly. She self-corrected a few times. She had little difficulty pronouncing voiced or unvoiced consonants, even though she appended a /u/ sound on many beginning consonants. She had no difficulty with segmenting blends (although she spoke both sounds together without pausing) and did not mistakenly segment digraphs. She seemed able to identify all the phonemes in the words. She scored 64/77 on the segmentation assessment and 3/4 on the substitution test.

Reflect on the areas of student weakness.

The student had some difficulty segmenting rimes with the sound /l/ in them, mispronounced the /ir/ sound once and blended the /ē/ and /r/ sound in a rime. She had difficulty pronouncing the word bane /b/ /ā/ /n/ most likely because it was an unfamiliar word.

Part VII: Strategies(Session Four)

Include strategies you will use in your classroom here.

Products and Performancesrhymes patterned after an examplesyllable-structured poems

Questions relevant to your lessonWill PA skills practice improve my students' reading fluency?Will PA skills practice support my students spelling?

Instructional StrategiesStudents will benefit from approaching the PA tasks in a lively and interactive way that would help them hear, use and manipulate phonemes while at the same time building their writing and spelling skills. Students will manipulate phonemes along with letters to enhance their reading success and improve their reading fluency.

Specific Skills to be developedsegmenting by syllablessubstituting phonemes

Part VII: Strategies, cont.(Session Four)

Activities and proceduresStudents will read a rhyming poem from a written resource such as Jack Prelutsky. Teacher will guide students to identify rhyming words. Students will take a stanza or short section of the poem and following the pattern, create a new stanza using their own rhymes.

Students will practice breaking words apart by syllables. Once they have practice breaking apart two and three syllable words, they will create structured poems such as a Haiku, with a certain number of syllables for each line.

Extensions and modificationsStudents could take the lyrics to popular songs and change the lyrics by substituting phonemes and then trying to sing the lyrics with the new phonemes.

Materials and resources neededRhyming poems such as those found in A Pizza the Size of the Sun by Jack Prelutsky.Practice worksheets with words broken down by syllable.Example Haiku poems.

Websites usedhttp://www.suite101.com/content/syllables-count-poems-lesson-a38414

References (copyright needed?)A Pizza the Size of the Sun by Jack Prelutsky

 

Part VIII: Common Core Standards(Session Four)

Please list all relevant Common Core Standards here, as well as any relevant Massachusetts Proposed Additional Standards.

Reading MA.2. With guidance and support, demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).MA.2.a. With guidance and support, recognize and produce rhyming words (e.g., identify words that rhyme with /cat/ such as /bat/ and /sat/). MA.2.b. With guidance and support, segment words in a simple sentence by clapping and naming the number of words in the sentence.

Writing MA.3.A. Write poems with rhyme and repetition.

Reading Literature MA.8.A. Identify and respond to characteristics of traditional poetry for children: rhyme; regular beats; and repetition of sounds, words, and phrases.

Reading Literature MA.6.R.L.8.a Interpret the meaning and style of a poem, story, or play by analyzing its use of literary devices (e.g., a narrator’s or a character’s point of view, significant aspects of setting, personification, in addition to various kinds of figurative language).

Writing MA.6.W.3.a Write short stories, poems, scripts, or personal reflections that incorporate literary devices (e.g., narrator’s or a character’s point of view, description of significant aspects of setting, personification).

Part IX: Technology(Session Five)

Include technology strategies you will use in your classroom here, noting also your access to computers and other required hardware. You may also consider using your newfound podcasting skills in a creative way to help students with phonemic awareness.

Students may access computers to type up their poems. They may also use cinchcast to record themselves reciting the poems. In addition, if students are musically inclined, they may produce a musical background for their poem that enhances the syllables in the poem.

Required materials: 1-2 computers with internet access and file storage within classroom and/or access to a computer lab

Part X: Reflection(Session Six)

Reflect on your phonemic awareness plans and the process of assessment, instruction, and reassessment of your student. 

The phonemic awareness lesson plans seem easy to implement because they are based on models the students can easily follow. The skills the students will need to complete their poems can be pre-taught and/or reviewed prior to introducing the poem projects. There is plenty of time for classroom discussion along with the ability to informally assess students both before and after the poem projects. In addition, the students will engage in the creation of poems to produce work that is uniquely their own. Assessment of final poem drafts should be supported by providing the students with a scoring rubric that includes a description of the student‘s ability to identify rhymes and syllables in their work. This assessment would provide the teacher with evidence that the direct teaching as well as the creative project were effective teaching tools to use with students at this grade level.

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