Phonemic Awareness In Reading

The Panel was charged with reviewing research in reading instruction (focusing on the critical years of kindergarten through third grade) and identify methods that consistently relate to reading success.

The Panel reviewed more than 100,000 studies. Through a carefully developed screening procedure, Panel members examined research that met several important criteria:

• The research had to address achievement of one or more skills in reading. Studies of the effective teaching were not included unless reading achievement was measured;

• The research had to be generalizable to the larger population of students. Thus, case studies with small numbers of children were excluded from the analysis;

• The research needed to examine the effectiveness

Before children learn to read print, they need to become aware of how the sounds in words work. They must understand that words are made up of speech sounds, or phonemes.

Phonemes are the smallest parts of sound in a spoken word that make difference in the word’s meaning. For ex, changing the first phoneme in the word HAT from /h/ to /p/ changes the word from HAT to PAT, and so changes the meaning. (A letter between slash marks shows the phoneme, or sound, that the letter represents, and not the name of the letter. For example, the letter H represents the sound /h/.)

Children can show us that they have phonemic awareness in several ways, including:

• Recognizing which words in a set of words begin with the same sound (“BELL, BIKE, and BOY all have /b/ at the beginning”);

• Isolating and saying the first or last sound in a word (“The beginning sound of DOG is /d/.” “The ending of the sound SIT is /t/”);

• Combining, or blending the separate sounds in a word to say the word (“/m/, /a/, /p/-MAP”);

• Breaking, or segmenting a word into its separate sounds (“UP - /u/,

When fluent readers read silently, they recognize words automatically. They group words quickly to help them gain meaning from what they read. Fluent readers read aloud effortlessly and with expression. Their reading sound natural, as if they are speaking. Readers read aloud effortlessly and with expression. Their reading sounds natural, as if they are speaking. Readers who have not yet developed fluency read slowly, word by word. Their oral reading is choppy and plodding. Fluency is important because it provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension. Because fluent readers do not have to concentrate on decoding the words, they can focus their attention on what the text means. They can make connections among the ideas in the text and between the text and their background knowledge. In other words, fluent readers recognize words and comprehend at the same time. Less fluent readers, however, must focus their attention on figuring out the words, leaving them little attention for understanding the