Tracking Phonemic Awareness Progress:
One way we measure progress is through checks of phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the awareness of individual speech sounds (consonants and vowels) and the ability to manipulate those sounds. It is one of the best predictors of a student’s ability to read fluently. The ability to hear speech sounds clearly, and to differentiate them, is what allows us to acquire language easily. With a strong phonemic awareness foundation, it provides students with an approach to sounding out and reading and writing new words. Phonemic awareness is one of the most important foundational reading strategies because everything in reading builds upon it.
We use the Phonological Awareness Skills Test (PAST) to assess phonemic awareness. We do checks to determine where the student’s phonemic awareness strengths are, and the areas they are in need of instruction. We also use this data to show the growth the student has made in these skills. This is just one measure we use to track progress.
This informal assessment is not timed.
The Phonemic Awareness Test (PAST) assesses the following areas:
*Concept of Spoken Word
*Rhyme Recognition
*Rhyme Production
*Syllable Blending
*Syllable Segmentation
*Syllable Deletion
*Isolation of initial Sounds
*Isolation of ending Sounds