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Phonological Awareness

This document discusses phonological awareness, which refers to an understanding of how oral language can be divided into smaller linguistic units like syllables, onsets and rimes, and phonemes. Research has shown that phonological awareness is critically important for learning to read. Carefully planned instruction can help develop children's phonological awareness, which benefits both their reading and spelling. The document provides guidelines for effective phonological awareness instruction and assessment.
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100% found this document useful (1 vote)
178 views11 pages

Phonological Awareness

This document discusses phonological awareness, which refers to an understanding of how oral language can be divided into smaller linguistic units like syllables, onsets and rimes, and phonemes. Research has shown that phonological awareness is critically important for learning to read. Carefully planned instruction can help develop children's phonological awareness, which benefits both their reading and spelling. The document provides guidelines for effective phonological awareness instruction and assessment.
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Phonological Awareness

Article  in  Intervention in School and Clinic · May 1999


DOI: 10.1177/105345129903400502

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Phonological Awareness:
Instructional and Assessment
Guidelines

DAVID J. CHARD AND SHIRLEY V DICKSON

This article defines phonological awareness and reading instruction, including instruction in phonics,
discusses historic and contemporary research word analysis, and spelling (Adams, Foorman, Lund-
findings regarding its relation to early reading. berg, & Beeler, 1998; Chard, Simmons, & Kameenui,
Common misconceptions about phonological 1998). The most common barrier to learning early word
awareness are addressed. Research-based guide- reading skills is the inability to process language phono-
lines for teaching phonological awareness and logically (Liberman, Shankweiler, & Liberman, 1989).
phonemic awareness to all children are described. Moreover, developments in research and understanding
Additional instructional design guidelines are have revealed that this weakness in phonological pro-
offered for teaching children with learning dis- cessing most often hinders early reading development
abilities who are experiencing difficulties with for both students with and without disabilities (Fletcher
early reading. Considerations for assessing chil- et al., 1994).
dren’s phonological awareness are discussed, No area of reading research has gained as much atten-
and descriptions of available measures are pro- tion over the past two decades as phonological aware-
vided. ness. Perhaps the most exciting finding emanating from
research on phonological awareness is that critical levels
Row, row, row your boat of phonological awareness can be developed through
gently down the stream. carefully planned instruction, and this development has
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily; a significant influence on children’s
Life is but a dream reading and spell-
ing achievement (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Bradley &
Bow, bow, bow your boat
bently bown the beam. Bryant, 1985; Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1989, 1991;
Berrily, berrily, berrily, berrily; O’Connor, Jenkins, Leicester, & Slocum, 1993). Despite
Bife is but a beam. the promising findings, however, many questions remain
Sow, sow, sow your soat unanswered, and many misconceptions about phonolog-
sently sown the seam. ical awareness persist. For example, researchers are look-
Serrily, serrily, serrily, serrily; ing for ways to determine how much and what type of
Sife is sut a seam. instruction is necessary and for whom. Moreover, many
people do not understand the difference between phono-
ctivities like substituting different sounds for logical awareness, phonemic awareness, and phon-
the first sound of a familiar song can help chil- ics. Still others are uncertain about the relationship
dren develop phonological awareness, a cogni- between phonological awareness and early reading.
tive substrate to reading acquisition. Becoming The purposes of this article are to (a) clarify some of
phonologically aware prepares children for later the salient findings from research on phonological

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awareness and reading and (b) translate those findings
into practical information for teachers of children with
learning disabilities or children who are experiencing
delays in early reading. To this end, we answer three
questions: 1
.i ,

1. What is phonological awareness, and why is it


important to beginning reading success?
2. What are documented effective principles that
should guide phonological awareness instruction?
3. What principles should guide the assessment of
phonological awareness? Figure 1. A continuum of complexity of phonological awareness
activities.

that words can be divided into


sequence of phonemes,
a
WHAT IS PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS? ~/J’y?M~-g7’~/M~~~~/~ ~ termed phonemic aware-
ness. (Snow, Burns, d~’ Griffin, 1998, p. Y1 )

Phonological awareness is the understanding of different


ways that oral language can be divided into smaller com- Throughout this article we will use the term phono-
ponents and manipulated. Spoken language can be bro- logical awareness to mean an awareness at all levels
ken down in many different ways, including sentences from basic rhyme to phonemic awareness. Only in some
into words and words into syllables (e. g., in the word
specific instances will we use the term phonemic aware-
simple, /sim/ and /ple~, onset and rime (e. g., in the word ness.
broom, /br/ and /oom~, and individual phonemes (e.g., in At this
point, it is important to note that phonological
the word hamper, /h/, /a/, /m/, /p/, /er~. Manipulating awareness differs distinctly from phonics. Phonological
sounds includes deleting, adding, or substituting sylla- awareness involves the auditory and oral manipulation of
bles or sounds (e.g., say can; say it without the /k/; say can
sounds. Phonics is the association of letters and sounds
with /m/ instead of /k/). Being phonologically aware
to sound out written symbols (Snider, 1995); it is a sys-
means having a general understanding at all of these
tem of teaching reading that builds on the alphabetic
levels.
Operationally, skills that represent children’s phono- principle, a system of which a central component is the
logical awareness lie on a continuum of complexity (see teaching of correspondences between letters or groups
of letters and their pronunciations (Adams, 1990). Phon-
Figure 1). At the less complex end of the continuum are awareness and phonics are intimately inter-
activities such as initial rhyming and rhyming songs as ological
well as sentence segmentation that demonstrates an twined, but they are not the same. This relationship will
awareness that speech can be broken down into individ-
be further described in the following section.
ual words. At the center of the continuum are activities Children generally begin to show initial phonological
awareness when they demonstrate an appreciation of
related to segmenting words into syllables and blending
syllables into words. Next are activities such as segment- rhyme and alliteration. For many children, this begins
ing words into onsets and rimes and blending onsets and very early in the course of their language development
rimes into words. Finally, the most sophisticated level oi and is likely facilitated by being read to from books that
are based on rhyme or alliteration, such as the B Book by
phonological awareness is phonemic awareness. Phonemic
awareness is the understanding that words are made ur Stanley and Janice Berenstain, 1997, or Each Peach Pear
of individual sounds or phonemes and the ability to manip- Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg, 1979, (Bryant, Mac-
ulate these phonemes either by segmenting, blending, oi Lean, Bradley, & Crossland, 1990). As children grow
changing individual phonemes within words to create older, however, their basic phonological awareness does
new words. The recent National Research Council report not necessarily develop into the more sophisticated
on reading distinguishes phonological awareness from phonemic awareness. In fact, developing the more com-
phonemic awareness in this way: plex phonemic awareness is difficult for most children
and very difficult for some children (Adams et al., 1996).
The term phonological awareness refers to a general However, it is a child’s phonemic awareness on entering
appreciation of the sounds of speech as distinct from their school that is most closely related to success in learning
meaning. When that insight includes an understanding to read (Adams, 1990; Stanovich, 1986).

262 Downloaded from isc.sagepub.com at Airlangga University on June 10, 2015


WHY IS PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS skills (Smith, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1998), especially
SO I M PORTANT? for students at risk for reading difficulties. With this in
mind, we discuss documented approaches to teaching
An awareness of phonemes is necessary to grasp the phonological awareness.
alphabetic principle that underlies our system of written
language. Specifically, developing readers must be sensi-
tive to the internal structure of words in order to benefit TEACHING PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS
from formal reading instruction (Adams, 1990; Liber-
man, Shankweiler, Fischer, & Carter, 1974). If children There is ample evidence that phonological awareness

understand that words can be divided into individual training is beneficial for beginning readers starting as
phonemes and that phonemes can be blended into early as age 4 (e.g., Bradley & Bryant, 1985; Byrne &
words, they are able to use letter-sound knowledge to Fielding-Bamsley, 1991). In a review of phonological
read and build words. As a consequence of this relation- research, Smith et al. (1998) concluded that phonologi-

ship, phonological awareness in kindergarten is a strong cal awareness can be developed before reading and that
predictor of later reading success (Ehri & Wilce, 1980, it facilitates the subsequent acquisition of reading skills.
1985; Liberman et al., 1974; Perfetti, Beck, Bell, & Documented effective approaches to teaching phonolog-
Hughes, 1987). Researchers have shown that this strong ical awareness generally include activities that are age
relationship between phonological awareness and read- appropriate and highly engaging.
ing success persists throughout school (Calfee, Linda- Instruction for 4-year-olds involves rhyming activi-
mood, & Lindamood, 1973; Shankweiler et al., 1995). ties, whereas kindergarten and first-grade instruction
Over the past 2 decades, researchers have focused pri- includes blending and segmenting of words into onset
marily on the contribution of phonological awareness to and rime, ultimately advancing to blending, segmenting,
reading acquisition. However, the relationship between and deleting phonemes. This pattern of instruction fol-
phonological awareness and reading is not unidirectional lows the continuum of complexity illustrated in Figure 1.
but reciprocal in nature (Stanovich, 1986). Early reading Instruction frequently involves puppets who talk slowly
is dependent on having some understanding of the inter- to model word segmenting or magic bridges that are
nal structure of words, and explicit instruction in phono- crossed when children say the correct word achieved by
logical awareness skills is very effective in promoting synthesizing isolated phonemes. Props such as colored
early reading. However, instruction in early reading- cards or pictures can be used to make abstract sounds
specifically, explicit instruction in letter-sound cor- more concrete.

respondence-appears to strengthen phonological During the last few years, publishers have produced
awareness, and in particular the more sophisticated multiple programs in phonological awareness, some of
phonemic awareness (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). which are based on research. Two of these programs
Many children with learning disabilities demonstrate are Ladders to Literacy (O’Connor, Notari-Syverson, &

difficulties with phonological awareness skills (Shaywitz, Vadasy, 1998) and Teaching Phonemic Awareness (Adams
1996). However, many other children have such diffi- et al., 1996). Figures 2 through 4 are illustrations of

culty without displaying other characteristics of learning phonemic awareness lessons that are based on examples
disabilities. Although a lack of phonemic awareness cor- from these programs.
relates with difficulty in acquiring reading skills, this lack Most early phonological awareness activities are
should not necessarily be misconstrued as a disability taught in the absence of print, but there is increasing evi-
(Fletcher et al., 1994). More important, children who dence that early writing activities, including spelling
lack phonemic awareness can be identified, and many of words as they sound (i.e., invented or temporary
them improve their phonemic awareness with instruc- spelling), appear to promote more refined phonemic
tion. Furthermore, although explicit instruction in awareness (Ehri, 1998; Treiman, 1993). It may be that

phonological awareness is likely to improve early reading during spelling and writing activities children begin to
for children who lack phonemic awareness, most chil- combine their phonological sensitivity and print knowl-
dren with or without disabilities are likely to benefit edge and apply them to building words. Even if children
from such instruction (R. E. O’Connor, personal com- are unable to hold and use a pen or pencil, they can use

munication, June 22, 1998). letter tiles or word processing programs to practice their
In short, success in early reading depends on achieving spelling.
a certain level of phonological awareness. Moreover, Instruction in awareness can be fun,
phonological
instruction in phonological awareness is beneficial for engaging, and age
appropriate, but the picture is not as
most children and seems to be critical for others, but the simple as it seems. First, evidence suggests that instruc-
degree of explicitness and the systematic nature of tion in the less complex phonological skills such as
instruction may need to vary according to the learner’s rhyming or onset and rime may facilitate instruction in

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263
more complex skills (Snider, 1995) without directly bene- ties. Therefore, we recommend two tiers of instruction.
fitting reading acquisition (Gough, 1998). Rather, inte- The first tier of instruction is the highly engaging, age-
grated instruction in segmenting and blending seems to appropriate instruction that we introduced earlier. The
provide the greatest benefit to reading acquisition (e.g., second tier of instruction includes more intensive and
Snider, 1995). Second, although most children appear to strategic instruction in segmenting and blending at the
benefit from instruction in phonological awareness, in phoneme level (e.g., Snider, 1995).
some studies there are students who respond poorly to Beside content, another issue that requires attention in
this instruction or fail to respond at all. For example, in phonological awareness instruction is curriculum design.
one training study that provided 8 weeks of instruction From research, we are able to deduce principles for
in phonemic awareness, the majority of children demon- effectively designing phonological awareness instruc-
strated significant growth, whereas 30% of the at-risk tion. These design principles apply for all students but
students demonstrated no measurable growth in phono- are particularly important for students who respond

logical awareness (Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, poorly to instruction. In the design of phonological
1994). Similarly, in a 12-week training in blending and awareness instruction, the following general principles

segmenting for small groups (3-4 children) in 2-minute increase students’ success (Chard & Osborn, 1998):
sessions four times a week, about 30% of the children
still obtained very low scores on the segmenting posttest ~
Start with continuous sounds such as /s/, /m/, and /f/
and 10% showed only small improvements on the blend- that are easier to pronounce than stop sounds such as
ing measures (Torgesen et al., 1994). /p/, /b/, and /k/;
Torgesen et al. (1994) concluded that training for ~
Carefully model each activity as it is first introduced;
at-risk children must be more explicit or more intense ~ Move from larger units (words, onset-rime) to
than what is typically described in the research literature smaller units (individual phonemes);
if it is to have a substantial impact on the phonological ~ Move from easier tasks (e.g., rhyming) to more com-
awareness of many children with severe reading disabili- plex tasks (e.g., blending and segmenting); and,

Figure 2. Instructional activity that teaches synthesis of phonemes into words.


264
Downloaded from isc.sagepub.com at Airlangga University on June 10, 2015
.
Consider using additional strategies to help strug- students who are receiving instruction in phonological
gling early readers manipulate sounds. These strate- awareness. The measures used to identify at-risk stu-

gies may include using concrete objects (e.g., blocks, dents must be strongly predictive of future reading abil-
bingo chips) to represent sounds. ity and separate low and high performers. Measures used
for monitoring progress must be sensitive to change and
Research suggests that by the end of kindergarten chil- have alternate forms (Kaminski & Good, 1996). In this
dren should be able to demonstrate phonemic blending section, we discuss only measures that have been demon-
and segmentation and to make progress in using sounds strated to be valid and reliable. We report the technical
to spell simple words. Achieving these goals requires that adequacy of the measures in the Appendix, rather than in
teachers be knowledgeable about effective instructional the narrative description of the measure.
As stated earlier, screening measures must be strongly
approaches to teaching phonological awareness and be
aware of the ongoing progress for each of their students. predictive of future reading ability and must separate
In the next section, we describe effective ways to assess high from low performers. Measures of automatized
phonological skills and monitor progress in phonological color, object, number, or letter naming meet these crite-
awareness.
ria (Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte, Burgess, & Hecht,
1997; Wolf, 1991). Segmentation is a second skill that is
highly predictive of future reading ability (e.g., Nation
& Hulme, 1997; Torgesen et al., 1994; Vellutino &
ASSESSING PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS Scanlon, 1987; Yopp, 1988). Unlike rapid naming, seg-
mentation is a skill that can be taught, and the instruc-
Assessment in phonological awareness serves essen- tion of segmentation benefits reading acquisition.
tially purposes: to initially identify students who
two Screening measures must also separate high from low
appear to be at risk for difficulty in acquiring beginning performers. This means that they must address skills that
reading skills and to regularly monitor the progress of are developmentally appropriate. Phonological aware-

Figure 3. An instructional activity that teaches segmentation at multiple phonological levels.


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265
ness skills seem to develop along a continuum from measures for the second semester of kindergarten
rhyme to segmenting. Typically, students develop the include measures that are strong predictors of a student’s
ability to segment words into onset and rime during kin- successful response to explicit phonemic awareness
dergarten and to segment words into separate phonemes instruction or beginning reading acquisition. Such
between kindergarten and first grade. Therefore, most predictors of successful response to segmenting and
first-grade students perform well on an onset-rime mea- blending instruction are the Test of Phonological
sure, whereas most kindergarten students do poorly on a Awareness-Kindergarten (TOPA-K; Torgesen & Bry-
measure of segmenting into individual sounds. In either ant, 1993), a Nonword Spelling measure (Torgesen &
case it is difficult to separate low and high performers. Davis, 1996), and the Digit Naming Rate (Torgesen
Although we know a great deal about identifying stu- & Davis, 1996). Predictors of the successful acquisition
dents at risk for reading difficulties, many questions of beginning reading skills include automatized naming
remain unanswered. We recommend that teachers use a of colors, objects, numbers, or letters (e.g., Wolf, 1991)
variety of screening measures, including one that mea- and segmenting ability (e.g., Nation & Hulme, 1997;
sures automatized rapid naming and one that measures Torgesen et al., 1994; Vellutino & Scanlon, 1987; Yopp,
phonemic awareness sensitivity or segmenting. 1988). Other measures used during the second semester
Typically, kindergarten students are screened for risk of kindergarten to identify students at risk for not
factors in acquiring beginning reading skills in the sec- acquiring beginning reading skills include measures of
ond semester of kindergarten. Appropriate screening phoneme deletion.

Figure 4. An instructional activity that teaches phoneme deletion and substitution.

266
Downloaded from isc.sagepub.com at Airlangga University on June 10, 2015
The measures appropriate for identifying first-grade progress-monitoring measures indicate that the first-
students at risk for not acquiring reading skills overlap grade students receiving instruction in phonological
those used in kindergarten. The TOPA-K and onset- awareness lag behind their peers in reading or spelling,
rime are no longer appropriate, as students should have the teacher may choose to increase the integrated
developed these skills by the end of kindergarten, instruction in letter-sound correspondence and to make
whereas segmenting is still an emerging skill. However, stronger the links between segmenting and blending
tasks such as automatized naming of colors, objects, skills and reading. Brief descriptions of the screening and
numbers, or letters remain predictors for students at risk monitoring measures that have demonstrated validity
for not acquiring beginning reading skills, as do mea- and reliability through research follow. For each mea-
sures to determine whether students lag behind their sure, we indicate the grade and purpose for which the
peers in phonological awareness, such as measures of measure is appropriate. Note that some measures are

segmenting. appropriate for more than one grade level and for both
When using screening measures, the teacher must screening and monitoring progress.
establish decision rules for identifying students requiring
phonological awareness instruction. The decision rules TEST OF PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS-KINDERGARTEN.
vary. The TOPA-K has normed scores and provides (Second Half of Kindergarten; Screen). This measure
information to help a teacher decide whether to provide of phonemic sensitivity strongly predicts which students
phonemic awareness instruction to students who score will demonstrate high segmenting ability following
one or two standard deviations below the mean. small-group instruction in phonemic awareness (Torge-
However, there is little research evidence to guide deci- sen & Davis, 1996). The measure consists of one form
sion making about which children should receive the with 10 items requiring students to indicate which of
more intensive phonological awareness instruction. three words (represented by pictures) have the same first
A second use of measures is to monitor students’ sound as a target word and 10 items that require students
progress. Unlike the screening measures, progress- to indicate which of four words (represented by pictures)

monitoring measures must be sensitive to growth and begins with a different first sound than the other three.
require multiple forms. The Dynamic Indicators of The measure is administered to small groups of 6 to 10
Early Literacy (Kaminski Good, 1996) fit this require-
& children and is untimed. Students receive raw scores that
ment and are appropriate for kindergarten and first are normed.

grade. After the first semester of first grade, teachers


may also be interested in monitoring their students’ NONWORD SPELLING. (Second Half of Kinder-
progress in generalizing phonemic reading
awareness to garten ; Screen). This measure strongly predicts which
and spelling. Two other measures of reading that are kindergarten students will demonstrate growth in blend-
sensitive to growth and have alternative forms are oral ing and segmenting after small-group phonological
reading fluency (tasks) and nonsense word reading flu- awareness instruction. Five nonwords (jèg, rit, mub,
gof,
ency (Tindal & Marston, 1990). pid) comprise the measure. Students receive one point
As with screening measures, teachers must establish for each phoneme that they represent correctly in the
decision rules about how to gauge the progress of their spelling.
students. One way is to establish a baseline by graphing
three measurement points before the start of instruction, DIGIT NAMING RATE. (Second Half of Kinder-
adding each subsequent data point to the graph, and garten ; Screen). This measure strongly predicts which
checking the slope of students’ progress. If many stu- kindergarten students are likely to demonstrate growth
dents are making slower progress than necessary to reach in blending after small-group phonological awareness
the level of their average-achieving peers, the teacher instruction. The measure consists of six rows with five
can modify the instruction by increasing one or more of single digits per row on an 8&dquo; x 11 &dquo; card. The students
the elements in the instructional guidelines. For exam- are timed as they name the digits as fast as they can,

ple, if students are not acquiring segmenting, the teacher beginning the top and continuing to the bottom.
at

may decide to add more scaffolds, such as cards that the Students complete two trials using cards with differently
students can move as they segment words, thereby mak- arranged numbers. The score is based on the average
ing segmenting instruction more explicit, or provide time for the two series.
students with more guided practice. If most students
successfully respond to instruction but a few respond YOPP-SINGER TEST OF PHONEME SEGMENTATION.
poorly or not at all, the teacher may decide to place these (Second Half of Kindergarten, First Grade; Screen).
students in a flexible group to receive more intense This test (Yopp, 1995) consists of 22 items and requires
instruction. The teacher could also choose to provide students to separately articulate each phoneme in the
some individuals with more intense instruction through- presented words. The student receives credit only if all
out the day to keep them up with their peers. If the sounds in a word are presented correctly. The student

267
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does not receive partial credit for saying /c/ or /c/ /at/ for series. The measure is administered individually and is

cat.One feature that differentiates this screening mea- timed. Unlike the Yopp-Singer Test, students do not
sure from others is that students receive feedback after receive feedback on their responses but do receive scores
each response. If the child’s response is correct, the test for partially correct answers. In other words, for cat, a
administrator says, &dquo;That’s right.&dquo; If the student gives an student receives a score of 1 for saying /c/, a score of 2
incorrect response, the examiner tells the student the for saying /c/ /at/, or a score of 3 for saying /c/ /a/ /t/.
correct response. Moreover, if the student gives an Because this measure assesses the number of correct
incorrect response, the examiner writes the error. phonemes per minute, it is sensitive to growth and is,
Recording the errors helps the teacher decide what therefore, appropriate for both screening and monitor-
remediation the student requires. The student’s score is ing progress.
the number of items correctly segmented into individual
phonemes. The test is administered individually and
requires about 5 to 10 minutes per child. CONCLUSION
BRUCE TEST OF PHONEME DELETION. (Second As we noted at the outset of this article, efforts to
Half of Kindergarten; Screen). The Bruce (1964) test understand the role of phonological awareness have far
assesses phoneme deletion, a more difficult and com- exceeded the efforts to relate research findings to class-
pound skill than segmenting (Yopp, 1995). The measure room practice regarding phonological awareness. This
consists of 30 one- to three-syllable words drawn from article is an attempt to pull together the valuable infor-
words familiar to children between the ages of 5 and 61/2. mation available on the role that phonological awareness
The examiner asks students to delete one phoneme from
the beginning, middle, or end of a word and to say the
plays in early reading development, the research-based
word that remains. The positions of deleted phonemes
teaching strategies that address the needs of all children,
the instructional design principles that address the needs
are randomly ordered throughout the test. The test is of children experiencing delays in early reading develop-
individually administered and requires 10 minutes to ment, and the validated instruments available for screen-
administer.
ing and monitoring students’ progress in phonological
awareness.
AUDITORY ANALYSIS TEST. (Second Half of Kinder-
garten ; Screen). This measure (Rosner & Simon, 1971,
description of the role that phonological aware-
Our
cited in MacDonald & Cornwall, 1995) consists of 40
ness plays in reading development conspicuously fails to
address the connection of phonological awareness and
items arranged in order of difficulty from deletion of syl-
lables in compound words to deletion of syllables in mul- spelling. This failure is not an oversight, nor should it be
tisyllabic words to deletion of phonemes in beginning, perceived as a statement of our beliefs regarding the
middle, and end positions. The teacher asks the student importance of spelling. We firmly believe that findings
from spelling research (e.g., Ehri, 1998; Templeton,
to delete a syllable or phoneme and say the word that is 1995; Treiman, 1993) represent such a significant part of
left. The measure is administered individually.
our knowledge base about reading that they would go far

RAPID LETTER NAMING, DYNAMIC INDICATORS OF beyond the length and scope of this article.
BASIC EARLY LITERACY SKILLS. (Second Half of Recent research on phonological awareness and
Kindergarten, First Grade; Screen). The Rapid Letter phonemic awareness, including how to teach and assess
Naming, DIBELS (Kaminski & Good, 1996) is another them, has made an extremely valuable contribution to
our understanding of how to teach reading to children
of many measures used to assess the rapid letter-naming
with learning disabilities or delays in early reading. It is
ability of students. The measure has 18 alternate forms
and consists of 104 randomly selected upper- and lower- not, however, a cure for reading disabilities, but a signif-
case letters presented on one page. The measure is given
icant advance in preventing and correcting reading diffi-
culties so that more children are prepared to learn how
individually, and students have 1 minute to name as to read in our alphabetic writing system.
many letters as possible in the order that they appear on
the page.

PHONEME SEGMENTATION FLUENCY, DIBELS. (End ABOUT THE AUTHORS


of Kindergarten, First Grade; Screen, Monitor Prog-
ress). The Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, DIBELS David J. Chard, PhD
, is an assistant professor of special education
(Kaminski & Good, 1996) is one of many segmenting at The University of Texas at Austin. His current interests include
research in professional developmental in early reading and analysis of
measures. The measure has 18 alternate forms. Each
children’s discourse in mathematics classrooms. Shirley V Dickson,
form consists of 10 words, each with two or three
PhD, is an assistant professor of special education at Northern Illinois
phonemes, randomly selected from words in the pre- University. Her interests are in research on phonological awareness
primer and primer levels of the Scribner basal reading and reading instruction and collaboration models in special education.

268 Downloaded from isc.sagepub.com at Airlangga University on June 10, 2015


Address: David J. Chard, University of Texas at Austin, Dept. of MacDonald, G. W, & Cornwall, A. (1995). The relationship between
Special Education, SZB 408, Austin, TX 78712. phonological awareness and reading and spelling achievement
Journal of Learning Disabilities, 28, 523-527.
eleven years later.
Nation, K., & Hulme, C. (1997). Phonemic segmentation, not onset-

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Reading Research Quarterly, 32, 154-167.
O’Connor, R. E., Jenkins, J. R., Leicester, N., & Slocum, T. A. (1993).
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APPENDIX
Table A. Technical Adequacy of Screening and Monitoring Measures

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