🔎 Phonemic Awareness Part 1: The Science of Reading
In Focus 🔎 Phonemic Awareness
What is Phonemic Awareness?
Definition and Major Finding
Phonemic Awareness (PA) is an understanding that spoken words consist of individual sounds, or phonemes, and that these sounds can be manipulated.
“The ability to recognize that words are made up of discrete sounds and that these sounds can be changed is essential to success in learning to read.” (Hoffman, Cunningham, Cunningham, & Yopp, 1998)
“Phonemic awareness is what allows us to anchor the sounds in a word to the written sequence of letters that represent those sounds.” (Kilpatrick, 2015)
In this post, we’ll take a closer look at the research behind phonemic awareness and explore how these findings are built into every layer of instruction at CR Success Learning.
Why Invest in Phonemic Awareness?
💬 The Science Says:
Researchers recognize that everyone must have good phonemic awareness in order to read English or any other alphabetic language. This awareness allows us to understand and use the alphabetic principle.
🟨 Our Approach:
CRSL closely follows research guidelines. Phonemic Awareness is taught systematically and sequentially during all levels of the CRSL Literacy program.
Instruction focuses on those skills that directly relate to reading, spelling, and writing:
Identifying phonemes
Blending phonemes
Segmenting phonemes, and,
Manipulating phonemes
How Do You Teach Phonemes?
💬 The Science Says:
“When students learn to focus on articulatory features of sounds, they improve their ability to recognize and work with the individual sound units, or phonemes, within words.” (Castiglioni-Spalten & Ehri, 2003; Boyer & Ehri, 2011)
🟨 Our Approach:
At CRSL, we build on this insight by teaching students to observe how sounds are formed. Students use mirrors or watch the teacher to study mouth movements, gaining a visual and kinesthetic understanding of each sound. Instruction also includes key articulatory features such as whether a sound is continuous (like /m/, /s/) or not (like /b/, d/), and whether it is voiced (like /b/, /v/) or not (like /p/, /f/).
What Skills Should We Emphasize? And what About Rhyming?
💬 The Science Says:
“Although phonological sensitivity skills can be taught to young children as part of an extensive phonological awareness program that culminates in phoneme awareness, it is not clear that doing so improves acquisition of phoneme awareness or is necessary.” (Brady, 2020)
🟨 Our Approach:
Many programs emphasize a continuum of phonological skills: segmenting syllables into words, rhyming, alliteration, syllable-awareness, onset-rime awareness, and finally, phonemic awareness. However, recent research, such as Brady’s, shows that this may be based on the mistaken assumption that one must have these earlier phonological skills to reach the final skill of phonemic awareness.
Certainly, these phonological activities are appropriate for our youngest students, and they also provide ways to scaffold instruction for students who are having difficulty developing phonemic awareness. However, since phonemic awareness is the crucial skill needed for proficient reading, PA itself should receive the necessary instructional time in kindergarten and first grade.
CRSL recognizes that instruction in rhyming, for example, develops sound awareness and is important in word play. However, it is not recommended to delay phonemic awareness instruction because a student cannot rhyme.
As Shanahan wrote on his blog (2015):
“Given that there are no studies showing that teaching rhyming improves reading achievement (or even makes kids more amenable to and successful with phonemic awareness instruction), I wouldn’t want to spend much time teaching it.”
Should I Teach in Small Groups or Large Groups?
💬 The Science Says:
“The effects associated with small- and large-group instruction (on phonemic awareness) are also continued good news for educators, with the present results confirming that both can be very effective.” (Rehfeld 2022)
🟨 Our Approach:
Studies have often emphasized small-group instruction for phonemic awareness because it provides more targeted practice and frequent feedback. CRSL provides both small- and large-group instruction. One of the benefits of the CRSL lesson is that the teacher can conduct large-group teaching and still provide engaging lessons that allow each student to fully participate in multiple opportunities to practice and receive feedback.
Should I Use Letters in Phonemic Awareness?
💬 The Science Says:
“SLPs [Speech Language Pathologists] should incorporate graphemes into phonemic awareness instruction when working on segmentation and blending skills especially, as this facilitates orthographic mapping and direct opportunities to practice decoding in a meaningful context.” (Schuele & Boudreau, 2008)
🟨 Our Approach:
In Jump Start and First Steps, after an initial instruction of oral-only phonemic awareness, while also teaching letter-sound correspondences, CRSL incorporates letter tiles into phonemic awareness activities.
Here is an example of blending using letters from Jump Start.
Final Thoughts: The importance of phonemic awareness in the reading process has long been recognized. Continued research during the past twenty years has revealed both what PA skills are important to teach and how to teach these skills successfully. CRSL has used these valuable and practical findings to design its instruction.
Next up: What are the important considerations for phonemic awareness instruction in real classrooms? In part 2, company president Cheryl Rose Campbell talks with teachers about some pitfalls and mistaken assumptions and gives five recommendations for PA lessons. Let’s get practical and move on to Conversations with Cheryl.
Resources & Further Reading
Boyer, N.& Ehri, L. C. (2011). Contribution of phonemic segmentation instruction with letters and articulation pictures to word reading and spelling in beginners. Scientific Studies of Reading, 15(5), 440–470.
Brady, S. 2020 Perspective on research findings on alphabetics (phoneme awareness and phonics): Implications for instruction. Posted on The Reading League website: https://www.thereadingleague.org/journal/ Note: A short version was published in The Reading League Journal in the September/October 2020 issue (pgs. 20-28).
Castiglioni-Spalten, M. L., & Ehri, L. C. (2003). Phonemic awareness instruction: Contribution of articulatory segmentation to novice beginners' reading and spelling. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7(1), 25–52.
Cunningham, J. W., Cunningham, P. M., Hoffman, J. V. & Yopp, H. K. (1998, April). Phonemic awareness and the teaching of reading. Retrieved from http://www.reading.org/Libraries/position-statements-and-resolutions/ps1025_phonemic.pdf
Erbeli, F., Rice, M., Ying, X., Bishop, M. Goodrich, J.M. (2024). A meta-analysis on the optimal cumulative dosage of early phonemic awareness instruction. Scientific Studies of Reading, 28(4), 345-370.
Kilpatrick, D. (2015) Essentials of assessing, preventing, and overcoming reading difficulties. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley.
Rehfeld D.M., Kirkpatrick, M., O'Guinn, N., Renbarger, R. (2022) A meta-analysis of phonemic awareness instruction provided to children suspected of having a reading disability. Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch, 53(4), 1177-120
Shanahan, T. (2015, April 15). Is rhyming ability important in reading? Shanahan on Literacy, https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/is-rhyming-ability-important-in-reading
This post is a part of our In Focus series, timely writings for educators, addressing concerns and solutions for today’s changing educational climate.
