W est Virginia Phonological Awareness Project

1. West Virginia Phonological Awareness Project West Virginia Department of Education Office of Special Programs Extended and Early Learning Adapted from information by C. Melanie Schuele, Ph.D. Vanderbilt University

2. What do you remember about learning to read? Most educators were very successful at learning to read. Most educators like to read. What does it mean that people who are good at reading are trying to teach reading to children who are not very good at learning to read and probably don’t like reading very much?

3. Discussion Topics • WVDE PROGRAM OVERVIEW/RATIONALE • How did we get here? • WHAT IS PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS? • What is your phonological awareness? • PROGRAM COMPONENTS • How does this program relate to tiered instruction? • PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION • Classroom Component • Intensive Phonemic Awareness Program (IPAP) Intervention • SCHOOL IMPLEMENTATION • School Team Roles • Materials • Assessment • Monitoring

4. Why Worry About Reading? • 20% of elementary students nationwide have significant problems learning to read. • 80% of all referrals to special education involve reading difficulties (Kavale and Reese, 1992). • The rate of reading failure for African-Americans, Hispanic, limited-English speakers and poor children ranges from 60% to 70%. • 75% of children behind in reading in 3rd grade remain behind through high school.

5. Poor readers are more likely to drop out of school. • One-third of fourth graders who are poor readers come from college-educated families. • 75% of children with oral language impairments are reading disabled in fourth grade. • Children with language impairments are 6 times more likely to be reading disabled than peers. • Effective prevention and early intervention programs can increase the reading skills of 85 to 90% of poor readers to average levels. (Lyon, 1997)

6. Why Focus on Phonemic Awareness? • Longitudinal studies of reading acquisition have demonstrated that… • the acquisition of phonemic awareness is highly predictive of reading success. • At the kindergarten level, phonemic awareness abilities appear to be the best single predictor of successful reading acquisition. • Without direct phonemic awareness instructional support…. • 25% of middle-class first graders and substantially more children from less literacy–rich backgrounds will evidence serious difficulty in learning to read and write.

7. Why are we here? To improve children’s early reading achievement • Poor phonemic awareness • significant factor in the poor early reading achievement of many children. • Through instruction…. • children’s phonemic awareness skills can be improved. • Improvement in phonemic awareness skills • leads to greater reading achievement.

8. What are the Implications? • According to Research, Best Practice, Evidence-based Practice……………. • All children should receive phonological awareness instruction as part of literacy instruction. • In the early grades, especially kindergarten. • Children who do NOT have an adequate foundation of phonological awareness… • Require intensive phonemic awareness intervention (e.g., small group) at the end of kindergarten and/or beginning of first grade.

9. What Motivated the WVDE Phonological Awareness Project? • Student Achievement • Data from Statewide Assessment • Low literacy scores • Legal Implications • No Child Left Behind • IDEA • ASHA • Changing Roles and Responsibilities of SLPs in literacy initiatives • Initiated by WVDE in 2001

10. Project Goals • To increase • Number of students reading on grade level. • Third Grade • Professional educators’ knowledge base • Importance of phonemic awareness in the reading program. • To provide professional educators with • Strategies • Teach and promote student mastery of phonological awareness. • Appropriate intervention strategies when student mastery has not been met. • Program Expansion to additional school sites.

11. Project Collaboration • Collaboration with university researchers. • Dr. Melanie Schuele • to plan the project • to in-service the professional staff • Evaluation: Dr. Laura Justice • Collaboration across WVDE to fund and coordinate the project. • Reading First • Special Education • Title I • Collaboration with local county school districts to implement the project. • Collaboration of the WVDE with local county school districts in order to implement the project. • Office of Instructional Services: • Title I • Reading First • Office of Special EducatioN

12. What was the rationale for program development? • By teaching specific phonemic awareness skills to kindergarten and first-grade children…. • Provide them the opportunity to “catch up” to their peers before they experience failure. • One-on-one training is highly effective but not cost efficient. • Training must be effective and cost-efficient and time-efficient. • Group instruction can be effective and efficient. • Educational practice needs to reflect research-based practice.

13. Rationale…… • Many materials are available for phonemic awareness training, but….. • Little guidance as to how to effectively implement comprehensive, systematic, intensive training with children. • Textbooks • Phonemic awareness training must be…… • Adequate in scope, intensity and duration. • Materials and programs must…… • Explain “how to teach” skills as well as describe activities. • Intensive, early intervention can….. • Prevent reading difficulties.

14. Who are the children we anticipated would benefit? All children benefit from instruction that reflects best practice. Children lacking early literacy experiences. Children needing an extra push. Children with speech/language disabilities. Children with learning disabilities.

15. WVDE Pilot ProjectHow did we get here? • Program Design • Classroom Based Instruction • Intensive Phonological Awareness Program • Selection of School Sites • Training/Materials • Pre and Post Assessment • Evaluation

16. Program Design • Classroom- Based Phonological Awareness Instruction • Instruction provided to all children in kindergarten and first grade classes. • Incorporated into classroom daily activities. • Teacher or collaboration w/ SLP or Title I • Phonemic Awareness in Young Children: AClassroom Curriculum • Data Collected ______________________________________________________ • Intensive Phonological Awareness Training Program (IPAP) • Small Group Instruction: (6 students) • Fall: First Grade Spring: Kindergarten • Three 30 min sessions/week for 12 weeks • Letter names/sounds reviewed each session • Weeks 1-3: Rhyme Training • Weeks 4-8: Initial Phoneme Segmentation • Weeks 7-9: Final Phoneme Segmentation • Weeks 10-12: Word Segmentation and Blending • Data Collection

17. WVDE Pilot ProjectSelection of School Sites • Schools: 15 Sites Selected • Funding • Application Process • Criteria • Administrative Support • School Commitment • Geographic Considerations • Representative Cross Section of Schools • School Teams • Classroom Component: • Kindergarten/First Grade Teachers • Intensive Intervention: • Speech-language pathologist • Title I teacher • Special Educator

18. Training • School Teams trained by Dr. Schuele. • Intensive – 5 days • Two strands of instruction/intervention. • (1) Classroom based instruction: • Kindergarten/First Grade • Material: Phonemic Awareness in Young Children: A Classroom Curriculum ________________________________________________ • (2) Small group intervention • Low-achieving first graders • Low-achieving kindergartners • Material: Intensive Phonemic Awareness Program (IPAP) Book IPAP Materials Box box • Evaluate child outcomes. • Kindergarten classrooms • Small group intervention participants

19. Training Materials • Classroom Program • Phonemic Awareness in Young Children: A Classroom Curriculum • Brookes Publishing Company • Activity Implementation Record • Kindergarten and First Grade • Resource • Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers • Brookes Publishing Company • Intensive Program • Intensive Phonological Awareness Program (IPAP) Manual • Dr. Melanie Schuele • IPAP Implementation Record Forms • IPAP Materials Box • All materials to implement IPAP • Resource • Sounds Abound: Listening, Rhyming, and Reading • LinguiSystems

20. Assessment: Pre and Post Intervention Test of Phonological Awareness (TOPA) PALS ( Phonological Awareness Screening) Invented Spelling Task Alphabet Knowledge and Letter-Sound Knowledge Task DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills)

21. Evaluation Questions What improvement in phonological awareness do kindergarten children exhibit as a result of consistent classroom based instruction? _________________________________________ For kindergarten and 1st grade students who are identified as deficient in phonological awareness, what improvement in phonological awareness is realized as a result of a small group, 12-week intensive intervention program? ________________________________________ Dr. Laura Justice – University of Virginia

22. PALS-K Word Recognition

23. Children Below BenchmarkEnd of Year

24. Developmental Spelling First Grade Change Over 12 Weeks/first grade

25. Alphabet KnowledgeKindergartenChange Across 12 Weeks

26. What were the school teams’ perceptions of the project?

27. CURRENT STATUS • 200 SCHOOLS • READING FIRST SCHOOLS • RTI SCHOOLS • MONITOR CURRENT SCHOOLS • HIGH NEEDS TASK FORCE • FULL IMPLEMENTATION – 2010 • RESA TRAININGS ANNUALLY

28. Phonological AwarenessTraining Objectives • Increase knowledge …. • in order to provide effective phonemic awareness instruction. • Analyze the sound structure of language …. • in order to understand the importance and skills necessary to analyze sounds. • Develop effective teaching strategies …. • in order to provide effective phonemic awareness instruction.

29. What do we know about children who display difficulties in learning to read from the outset? Poor word recognition skills with underlying deficits in phonemic awareness.

30. models ofREADING DEVELOPMENT Chall’s (1983) Six Stages of Reading • Stage 0: Preceding (0-5 yrs.) • Stage 1: Initial Reading or Decoding (5-7 yrs.) • Stage 2: Ungluing from Print (7-9 yrs.) • Stage 3: Reading to Learn (9-14 yrs.) • Stage 4: Multiple Viewpoints (14-18 yrs.) • Stage 5: Construction and Reconstruction (above 18 yrs.)

31. READING • word identification • sight word recognition • word attack skills • comprehension • word level comprehension • sentence level comprehension • text level comprehension

32. WHAT IS PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS?WHAT IS PHONEMIC AWARENESS?WHAT IS PHONICS?

33. Phonological Awareness • An awareness of the sound structure of spoken language • An aspect of metalinguistic ability or metalinguistic awareness. • Think about language as an object of thought, ……….separate from language meaning. • Not important for communicative uses of language. Crucial for literacy acquisition

34. Phonological Awareness • The ability to analyze the the sound units (phonemes, syllables) of language. • metalinguistic skill • NOT hear, NOT discriminate • Phonemic awareness critical to early reading ability.

35. Phonological AwarenessPhonemic Awareness Phonological Awareness Phonemic Awareness

36. Phonemic awareness ???????Phonological awareness ??????? • Phonological awareness – a broader term; analyze the overall sound structure of words. • What rhymes with cat? Which word is longer – watermelon or house? • Phonemic awareness – a more narrow term, analyze the specific sounds in words. • What sound does box start with? Tell me the three sounds in the word cat. • Terms are often used synonymously.

37. Phonological Processing Predicts Reading Achievement • Phonological memory • repeat nonsense words of increasing length • Rapid automatized naming • names of common objects, colors • Phonological or phonemic awareness

38. Why is the acquisition of phonological awareness a challenge for so many children?

39. ROW A: Letters f i sh ROW B: Sounds /f/ /i/ /sh/ Row C: Pronunciation And Meaning Lewkowicz, 1980

40. What can a child do with phonological awareness? phonemic awareness? • Color the picture that rhymes with cat. • Tell me a word that rhymes with moon. • Do cat and cow begin with the same sound? • Circle the pictures that begin with the “kuh” sound. • Tell me a word that begins with mmm. • What word does /k/ – /ae/ – /t/ make? Put the sounds together. • What are the three sounds in the word phone? • Pig Latin – alktay igpay atinlay

41. Letter-Sound Correspondences • Alphabet Knowledge • Letter names • Letter Sounds • Alphabetic principle…… • Words can be divided into sounds…….phonemic awareness • Sounds can be linked to letters………..Alphabet Knowledge • 26 letters, 44 sounds, 245 letter patterns _______________________________________________ What can a child do with phonemic awareness and the alphabetic principle? • Write the letter for the beginning sound in box. • Write the letter for the ending sound in house. • Read this word: fish. Sound it out.

42. Phonological Phonics Awareness Focus: sound structure of words • Intervention tasks involve identifying, segmenting, and manipulating the sounds in words, without reference to the letters that represent the sounds • Achievement: ability to segment a spoken word into its component sounds (a metalinguistic skill); ability to combine sounds into words Focus: print representation of sounds and words • Intervention tasks involve identifying, categorizing the print symbols (i.e., letters) that are used to represent speech sounds • Achievement: ability to represent a spoken word in print with conventional sound-symbol correspondences; ability to create a spoken production of a written word by “sounding out” the written word

43. New names for old concepts? PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS = AUDITORY DISCRIMINATION? NO PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS = PHONICS? NO

44. LINKING:Phonemic Awareness and Phonics and Reading READING Phonics Phonemic Awareness Phonological Awareness

45. What Phonemic Awareness Instruction Will and Won’t Do? • DO……. • Benefit students who don’t figure it out on their own • Benefit especially students who are having problems learning to decode words • WON’T DO….. • Ameliorate deficits in vocabulary and reading comprehension (language comprehension)

46. MORE Manipulate phonemes COMPLEXITY Segment/blend Individual Phonemes Onset-rime segment/blend Alliteration, Sound Sorts LESS Rhyme Syllable segmentation

47. Phonological Awareness TasksLewkowicz (1980) • sound-to-word matching • word-to-word matching • recognition of rhyme • isolation of beginning, medial or final sound • phonemic segmentation • counting phonemes • blending • deletion of a phoneme • specification of phoneme deleted • phoneme substitution

48. DEVELOPMENT: Benchmarks

49. Instructional Sequence

50. The Big Question…….. What effort is necessary for the child to acquire a foundation of phonological awareness that enables him or her to benefit from formal classroom reading instruction?