Developing Phonological Awareness by Focusing on Phonemic Awareness

The fol­low­ing reflec­tion post was for a Pro‑D web-sem­i­nar assigned for UNBC’s EDUC 397, Human­i­ties K‑7 (2022 Spring Inter­s­es­sion Semes­ter) — June 6th, 2022

Devel­op­ing Phono­log­i­cal Aware­ness by Focus­ing on Phone­mic Awareness

            Dur­ing our inten­sive week of stud­ies at UNBC in Prince George, we dis­cussed the 5 Pil­lars of Read­ing Devel­op­ment, which are based on the Report of the Nation­al Read­ing Pan­el: Teach­ing Chil­dren to Read (NICHD and U.S. Dept. of Edu­ca­tion, 2000). The first pil­lar is about sup­port­ing phono­log­i­cal aware­ness.  In the CORE webi­nar, “Rethink­ing Instruc­tion in Phono­log­i­cal Aware­ness: Focus on What Mat­ters!” Dr. Susan Brady breaks down the first phono­log­i­cal aware­ness pil­lar into two cat­e­gories: phono­log­i­cal sen­si­tiv­i­ty and phoneme aware­ness (Brady, 2022).  She sug­gests that ele­men­tary teach­ers focus on devel­op­ing children’s phone­mic aware­ness (PA) instead of pri­or­i­tiz­ing phono­log­i­cal sen­si­tiv­i­ty, as the Read­ing Pan­el meta-research shows that PA is more effec­tive at build­ing literacy.

            It is impor­tant to note that Brady is not ask­ing edu­ca­tors to com­plete­ly ignore build­ing children’s phono­log­i­cal sen­si­tiv­i­ty, but rather she wants us to de-empha­size that part of the phono­log­i­cal aware­ness umbrel­la. These phono­log­i­cal sen­si­tiv­i­ty skills include under­stand­ing onset-rime, syl­lab­ic knowl­edge, rhyme and allit­er­a­tion and are the build­ing blocks for music, poet­ry, (knock-knock) jokes, and word­play games.  Reduc­ing the focus on these skills to bet­ter sup­port lit­er­a­cy might be chal­leng­ing for teach­ers as such activ­i­ties are the least com­plex to do and chil­dren often have fun doing them. Brady recalls how her col­league and the cre­ator of the LiPS Pro­gram (Lin­damood-Bell Learn­ing Process­es, n.d), Pat Lin­damood, lament­ed on doing rhyme activ­i­ties in class because:
             “if the kids don’t have good phono­log­i­cal skills and you teach them rhyme, then
            they just get stuck on rhyme. And you are try­ing to redi­rect them to some­thing
            else, and they just go to their default of com­ing up with a rhyme. (As cit­ed in Brady, 2021)

The Read­ing Pan­el Report men­tions that despite a lack of research con­firm­ing the effects of stu­dent engage­ment and of teacher moti­va­tion when teach­ing PA, it seems “self-evi­dent that teach­ers will be most effec­tive when they are enthu­si­as­tic in their teach­ing and enjoy what they are doing in the class­room” (NICHD and U.S. Dept. of Edu­ca­tion, 2000, p.2–7).  I would agree, and so I chal­lenge myself to find a way to teach PA in a rel­e­vant and play­ful man­ner to ful­ly engage my stu­dents in their learning.

            I pro­pose mak­ing edu­ca­tion­al games and enjoy­able activ­i­ties to sup­port learn­ing PA.  Brady men­tions that teach­ing PA pri­mar­i­ly oral­ly can be unfair and tax­ing on children’s phono­log­i­cal work­ing mem­o­ry.  I think that dig­i­tal games can help alle­vi­ate this while also boost­ing stu­dent engage­ment, as they pro­vide a quick, visu­al and inter­ac­tive way to prac­tice PA.  The Read­ing Pan­el Report rec­om­mends that, “Class­room teach­ers as well as com­put­ers can teach PA effec­tive­ly” (NICHD and U.S. Dept. of Edu­ca­tion, 2000).   I think using tech­nol­o­gy to fos­ter PA is a great idea, as it could be used to let stu­dents prac­tice inde­pen­dent­ly for short bursts of time in dai­ly learn­ing sta­tions, or dur­ing “Dai­ly Five” activ­i­ties. The soft­ware itself could track indi­vid­ual stu­dent progress, and pro­vide addi­tion­al explic­it instruc­tion to stu­dents who need it.  If designed and imple­ment­ed well, such tech­nol­o­gy has the poten­tial to sup­port equi­table learn­ing for stu­dents with spe­cial needs.  Learn­ers new to the Eng­lish lan­guage, stu­dents with ADHD, or stu­dents who are gift­ed, could each have cus­tomized lessons to sup­port dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed instruc­tion.  Stu­dents could even prac­tice PA at home, if the school pro­vides them access to such technology.

            It is under­stand­able to prac­tice all aspects of phono­log­i­cal aware­ness to fos­ter lan­guage com­pre­hen­sion and word recog­ni­tion, as they are a nec­es­sary part of skilled read­ing (Scar­bor­ough, 2001).  How­ev­er, as Brady sug­gests, phoneme aware­ness skills (phone­mic aware­ness, phoneme iso­la­tion, iden­ti­ty, cat­e­go­riza­tion, blend­ing, seg­men­ta­tion, and dele­tion) need to be learned first and pri­or­i­tized over prac­tic­ing phono­log­i­cal sen­si­tiv­i­ty skills.  Edu­ca­tors must endeav­or to make this learn­ing process as engag­ing as pos­si­ble for stu­dents.  Before I grad­u­ate as a cer­ti­fied teacher, I intend to research, design and share with my peers, any edu­ca­tion­al activ­i­ties or games that can aid in build­ing phoneme aware­ness for our students.

 References

Brady, S. (2022). Rethink­ing Instruc­tion in Phono­log­i­cal Aware­ness: Focus on What Mat­ters!      
            CORE Inc. Retrieved from https://www.corelearn.com/resource-posts/webinar-rethinking-instruction-in-phonological-awareness/

Lin­damood-Bell Learn­ing Process­es. (n.d) Lin­damood Phoneme Sequenc­ing® Pro­gram for Read­ing, Spelling, and Speech (LiPS®). 
            Retrieved from https://lindamoodbell.com/program/lindamood-phoneme-sequencing-program

Scar­bor­ough, H. (2001). Scarborough’s read­ing rope.
            Retrieved from https://www.reallygreatreading.com/content/scarboroughs-reading-rope

Nation­al Insti­tute of Child Health and Human Devel­op­ment (NICHD) and U.S. Dept. of Edu­ca­tion. (2000).
            Report of the Nation­al Read­ing Pan­el: Teach­ing Chil­dren to Read.
            Retrieved by https://www.readingrockets.org/sites/default/files/NRP-2000.pdf