Step 1:Phonemic Awareness
"We started with the vowels because I couldn't really tell the difference between them. That helped a lot. Trust me - it's important."
~12th Grade Structured Literacy Class graduate
Embedded Files
From Report of the National Reading Panel:
"In implementing PA instruction in their classrooms, teachers need to evaluate the methods they use against measured success in their own students" (NICHD, 2000, p. 2-7).
Instructional Routines:
If students need additional explicit instruction:
We use portions of Equipped for Reading Success (Kilpatrick, 2015). We are trying to make automatic the connection between speech sounds and the letters that represent them. This begins with discriminating individual sounds within words and our work includes letters. Examples given below.
Watch the clock and plan purposefully - this is literally just a few minutes and no more than three. Keep things moving by establishing routines, like using hand signals to orchestrate a group choral response or having dry erase tablets ready to go.
Errors are diamonds - we never let one go to waste! When one misses, we all practice. Make a note, and review again tomorrow. Mistakes are our guide to instruction.
Teenagers like to be quiet sometimes - which makes for tricky PA practice! We honor that by changing up the activities (see some examples below).
Constantly point out the purpose of this training:
teaching students that letters represent speech sounds.
attending to every letter in written words is paired with attending to every sound in spoken words.
Goal = fluent, effortless, unconscious mastery. Because every young adult deserves to know the foundations of oral and written language.
"Touch and say the sounds in ..."
We spend a little time in the beginning of the year with "touch and say" or "build and say" using age-appropriate vocabulary and build up to multi-syllabic words taken from our phonics sequence. This example is brisk (top) and inhibit (bottom).
I walk around the room asking, "What does this one say, what does that one say?" This sets a habit of discriminating the sounds before we spell, especially as we're breaking the guessing habit. Then we "graduate" to Elkonin boxes with letters as mastery develops. They'll "touch and say" the sounds in "brisk" on an Elkonin sheet, for example, then spell the word, then read the word. Then, of course, we'll talk about the words!
We do not use different colored tokens for vowel sounds. We try to keep things simple and have cut-up bits of paper in a basket. Each student gets a handful and we get started. We use larger "cards" for syllables and small pieces for phonemes.
If a student needs support when others are ready for oral-only practice (no cards), I will build her a model on the table in front of her, with a different color or shaped card for the sound we are manipulating.
"What's that sound?"
We also use this time to teach and review articulation. For example, this student needed practice discriminating between /b/ and /p/. How did I know? His spelling demonstrated confusion. Noticing how his mouth moves the same for both sounds with a mirror helped tremendously. He figured out the difference was voiced and unvoiced when he covered his ears with his hands.
Then I said a word with /b/ or /p/, he repeated and identified a /b/ or /p/. Then we graduated to writing a "b" or a "p." After 2-3 days of practice, he no longer made mistakes when reading or spelling. After years of confusion. In just a few minutes.
We can learn alongside our students. "Let's see if we can discover how similar or different these two sounds are."
"Tap the vowel sound(s) in ..."
Reading a list of real or nonsense words and having students move or touch the vowel sound they hear brings success. We can make it more challenging by choosing words with 2 or three closed syllables (no schwas) like "instruct" or "possum." We change this around a bit and use a dry erase board - students write down only the vowel sounds that they hear or say in a word.
We keep these activities fast paced, daily, and very brief. Students learn these skills very quickly when explicitly taught.
"Here's the pattern."
When working with a new(ish) skill, I explain where in the word the sound that we'll be working with is located. Then provide a model before we dig into a minute of practice with a set of words. This often provides just enough of a scaffold to allow all students to succeed.
For example, if we are deleting the final sounds in words, I will have the class say, "throne." They'll help me "dash it out" on the board and say each sound. I'll ask, "Where is the /n/ sound in throne? Or - where do you say /n/ in throne?" They'll note it's at the end, delete it, and say, "throw." We'll put a star over the /n/ "dash" and explain that this set of words are all going to follow this pattern of deleting the final sound. I can point to the model on the board if they need it. The trick is to then only choose words from the 1 Minute Activities that have 4 sounds. Students repeat pairs of words and write down which sound was changed on their dry erase boards.
"What changed, and what did it get changed to?"
My all-time favorite exercise: handwriting, PA, & sound/symbol knowledge all-in-one. Win, win, win.
When practicing for automaticity, I'll say pairs of words like "lisp-list" (in this example, Level L2, p. 215) and students identify the sound that changed and what it got changed to. It's music to a reading teacher's ears to hear students saying sounds to themselves as they practice. Again - this is for automaticity and review.
This routine is also used with other skills such as:
"What sound was added (last-blast)? "
What sound is being deleted (blast-last)?"
We do 1 or 2 for practice of whichever set we are working with then say, "Let's fill your board up with these sounds. Here we go ...." Keeping the pace moving right along. One after the other, always maximizing opportunities for students to respond.
Our 2021-22 PAST Data
Structured Literacy's Data for 2021-2022
Based on automatic scores on the Phonological Awareness Screening Test (PAST) (Kilpatrick, 2019). We don't intentionally group students by PA skills. But what trend do you notice in each class?
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