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DEVELOPMENT OF AN INS ERVICE PROGRAMONPHONEMIC AWARENESS FORTEACHERS AND EARLYCHI LDHOOD EDUCATORS
by
Kim Bursey, B.Ed., B.Sp.Ed.
Athesissubmit ted to the Schoolof Graduate Stu d i e s in partialfulfi l lment of th e
requirementsfor the degree of Mas t er of Educati on
Departm ent of Cur r icu l u m and Instruction Me mor i al Unive r s i t yof Newfoundl and
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This thes is reviewsthe rese arch on Pho n e mi c Aware n e ss and Inservice Tra i n i ng Progra ms and culminat es in the development of an Inservi ce Program on Phonemic Awar e ne s s. The research on phonemic awareness revi ewe d studies dealing withthecorrel a t i on between ph onemic awa reness andreading, th e predictive ability of phonemi c awareness on re ading ability , the effect of training in phonemicawareness skills onreading achie vement and th e levels of phonemi caware ne s s. The research on inservice tra iningprogr a ms reviewe d st.udies de a l i ng wi t.h differ e n t. t.ypes of inse rvice programs, chara c t.e rist.ics of effecti v e inservice progra ms , and some models of st.a f f development..
An inservicet.raining programwa s developedfor t.eachers and earlychildhood educat.or s . The inserviceiscompr i s ed of fourt.wo- hour sessions, designed t.obepresentedove r a period of thre emonth s. The inse rvicepartici p antsar e requ i r e d t.o read suppleme ntal ar t ic l e s between sessions, ob s e rve th eir pe e rsusing the st r a t e g i e s discus sed in t.he training ses sions
either in person or through vi d e ota pe • and admi n iste r an assessment ec t.heirst udent.s bothbeforeandat.theendot:the inservice. The facilitatoris required to provide videotapes of several of the activities beingus e d wit h childrenand is enco uraged toprovide examplesof some of the activit.ies ee showt.he participants. Defini tionsand.theoreticalbackground ar e provided for both thefacilit a t orandthe parti c i pants. An eval uation of the inservice is provided for the pa r t ic i pant s to completeattheend of the ins ervice tr aining program.
(i i i )
TABLEorCOH'l'BNTS
ABSTRACT...• •.... ... . ... . ...•.• • • •. •.•... .. ... . .ii
CHAPTER ONE:OVERVIEW
Int roduc tio n••. . ... .. .•• .. . . ... ..•..•. ..•.... . . . ... .1 Stat emen t of the Prob lem...•... ..•.. •... .. . . ...3 Defin it i o n ofTermsandTheor e ticalBackgro und. 6 Limitat ions oftheStudy... •... ... .. . . . ... .. . .14
CHAPTER TWO: REVI EWOFLITERATURE
Phonemic Awarenes s 16
Int roduction..•... •... ...16 Correlati on between phon emic awarenes s and
readi ng abil it y.... ..•... . ... .. ... . . ...19 Pho n emi c aware nesspre dictsre a dingability... . .22 Traini ng phone mic awareness sk i ll s..•. •. .... . ...•28 Leve l s ofph o n emi cawareness...• •... ..•...45 Concerns regardingresearchonphonemic
awareness 47
Inservic eTra i n i ng•.••.. .. • .•....• . . • . . . .. ... ... ...S3 Different typesof inservice programs•... . . .. .S3 Chara cteristicsof effective ins ervi ce progra ms..56 Models of staff devel o pmen t... .. ...• •.. .65 Concerns re g a rdi ngre s e arch on inservice
trai ning. . . .. .. ... ... . . . .... ...•69
CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY
Researc hDesign 73
Ro leof Researche r 75
Da t aAna l ysis..•. . ... ... .. . .. ... . . ... . .... ...75
Limitati o nsotthe st.udy 76
CHAPTER.FOUR: SOMMARY
Discuss i o n 78
COnclusions 84
Rec:cxmnendations 85
REFERENces..... . . • • • • .• . •• ••••• ••• ••••• • ••• • ••... ..•.••• • • • •86
APPENDI X A.. •... .... . .... . ...... • ... •. .. . ... . ... . ..94
(vi
CIW"1"ER " " "
OVERVIEW
:IDtroduetion
Prevent-i onof rea d ing fa i l ureis an issue of importance fo r educators andparents. A childwho is at risk of readi ng failuredo e s no t rely , or else place s toomuch relian c e ,on eyn e e c e Lc, semantic or graphophonlc cu e s. Teaching the s e ch i l dre n how to re adhasresul ted in much debate over thebest method to use (i.e., ·ph o nics", "look- and-s a y · or ·whole languag e") andthe debat.e con t i n ue s.
Much res e a r c hin theareaof rll!a di ng ha s sh own that.or-e of the fi rs t skil l s needed to faci lit ate reading , andde ter re ading fa i l ure, is that of pho n e mi c awa re ness (Ad ams, 1990;
Calfe e , Lindamood"Linda mood, 1973; cunningham. 1990; £hri, 1979 ; Jue l , Grif fi t h " Gough. 1986; Perfe t t i, Beck, Bell "
Hughe s .1987;Spector,19 9 2). Acqui sition of va r iou sphonemic
awareness skills are related to reading and spel lin g achievement. regardles s of themethod of instruction usedin the classroom. Resea r ch has also sh o wn that performance on
pho ne micaware n e s s meas ure s is abetter cognit ive predic t orof ear ly reading acqu isiti o n than measure s of intel ligence , vocabulary or l is tening compr ehe ns ion ( Bradl ey " Bryant, 1983; Grundin, 1994; Spector . 1.992: Stanovich, Cunningham"
Cra mer. 1.984; St anovi c h, CUnnin gham " se e ean , 1984; Tunmer "
Nesdale , 198 5). Inothe r words, chi ldrenwho per formpoorly on phon e mi cawarenesstests. usually perf orm poorlyin rea di ng and spellingach i e v eme nt. These phon e mi c awar e n e s s ski l ls can be taught; however, theyneed to be taught in an orderly sequen ce (Ba ll .Ii.Bl a c hman, 1991 : Byrne &.Fiel di ng -Ba rnsley, 199 1 ; Dav i dso n " Jenk i ns , 1994; Lewkowicz " Low, 1979; Lie, 19 91; Lundberget aI, 1988;Murray, 1994). Furthermore, there have been suggestions, such as. using Elkonin boxes and changing thewordsin familiarsongstofocus on thesoundsin words. for teachers to us e in helping to develop phonemi c aware ness in their stude nts (YOpp , 1992; Lewko wicz , 1994;
Griffi th "Olson, 19921
Even tho ugh much has been lea rned from these stu d i e s regarding phon emic awarene s s, many ed uc a tors are no t aware of the impo r tanceof this sk i l l for the ir st u de n t s. Th e re is a
need for inservicingin thisar e a. AI though te a c h e r s re c e i v e cou r s e s in the area of reading developme n t in the ir undergraduate de gree. they need to contin u e prof ess i onal developmentthrou g hout thei rcareers in ord er to keep on to p ofnew issu es. innova tion s and theorie s. Furthermore. early childhood ed uca to r s rec e ive no traininginrea ding skills and on l y li mi t e d training in pre-reading skill s. Rese a rch has shown that effective in s e rvi c e traini ng can improve school practicesand student learning (Conley, 1983; Griffin. 198 3 ; Gus k e y. 1986; Joyce&Sho wers, 1983 ; Li t t le. 198 2; Sparks&
Loucks -Ho r s l ey . 1989;wade. 1984/1 985) .
St.tementof the Problem
Pho ne mi c aware nessis crucialtobeginning read i ng , and conce ivably helps in prevent i ng re ad i n g fail u r e . since it as s i st sread i ng acquisition. -I f childrenare to rea l i s e and make us e of th e alphabetic rel a t i o nshi p be twee n spo ke n an d writtenwordsthey mus t fir s t rec ognize that spoke nwor ds can be broken up into phone me s.- IAnd r ews.1992.90 l . Howe ver.
phonemicaware n e s s does ne t; seem todev elop naeurallyfor all
children (Da l las, 1992) becau s e the abstract.composition of the phonemes convey no meaning and are t.hus difficult t.o learn. Children have great difficulty at.tending to t.hese abstractunits as th e y t.end to focus on the meaningof the words. For many children considered t.o be -at-risk- of reading failure , phonemic awareness mus t be acquired ee faci l it ate reading acquisition.
The current st.udy proposes to analyse re s e a r c h on pho ne micawarenes s and in servi cetrainingin orde r to deve lop an inservice program on PhonemicAwarenessfor kindergarten, gr a d e one and special educationteachersand early childhood educ a t ors. Nocour s e s or inservices hav e bee ndevel op ed in this area and teachers and early chi l dhood educators must embark on the irownresearch t.o gaininformat.ion. This stud y will help fill th i sgapbyresearchingpho ne micawarenessand ef f e c t ive inservi ce programst.odevelopan inse rvic eint.h i s
Developing inservice on pho nemic for
te a c hers and early childhood educators is important for teachin g be ginni ng reading skills. Teachers and early
childhoodeducatorsinte r a c t with childrenwhohave di f fi culty lea rninghowtore a dandthese educa torsneedIcnow'ledge of the bestways to teachreading. Many studies have investigat e d methods of inservic e programs (Bos, 19 95; Eps tein, Lockard"
Dauber, 19 91; Hendricksonet a.L, 19 93; Sparks, 198 6 ; Todnem
" Warner, 19 94; Wiggins , 1994) and while there are some differen ces abouthowins e rv ice s should be organi z e d . th ere ar e many similarities throughout th e rese archwhi ch will be us edto design this in s e rvice.
Thepropos e d ins e rvice program is signifi c ant in thatit shoul dprovidesupport foreducat o r sworkingwi th childrenwho are experi e nc ing difficult y, or wh o are pr e d i cted to have difficulty, learningto read. providi ng ed u cators with the knowledge of , and methods tote a c h phonemic awarenessshould co n trib ute to a so lution to the problem of reading difficul tie s witha nu mbe r of ch ildren. Pho n e mi c awaren ess skil l sare best taug htto young childrenbefor e orat thesa me timetha t formal read i ng ins t ructionbegins. Itis important to provide act ivi t i e s to enhanc e the procurement of the se sk i l l s before an y read i n g difficult ie s arise.
This stu d y shou l d al s o help to survey andsynthe size research pre viously conducted on phonemic awareness and eff ectiv e inservice programs. This wi l l co ntribute to the deve lopin g knowledge in reading failure pre ventio n and the el e mentsof eff eceivein s e rvic e.
Furt he rmo re , this stud y could in fl u e nce the con ten t of cour ses for te ache r s and early chil dhood educ ato rs toedu c ate them inth earea ofpho ne mi c awa reness.
Definitions of Terms and Theoretical Background For someed u c ato r s,one of th e mostinte r e s t i ng findings ofre s earch on readingistha tphone mi c awa r e n essisacrucial skill intheac qui s i t i o n of re adingandspel l ing. The term
"pho nemf.c awa r e neea'", alsocalled·p honolog i c a l ewar en eee-, is general l y us ed to denote the ability to percei vespoken wo r d s as a sequenceof sounds (Spector, 1!l9 2 ) , and the abi lity to manipulate th e s e component sounds (Gr i ff i th&Olson, 1992) . It is impo r t a n t to note that phonem i c awareness is not synonymous with phonics. Pho n emi c awa r ene s s isan essential skil lneededbeforephonics canbe acquired. "Phonicsis the
association of phonemes, or sounds, wi t h graphe me s, or symbols- (cellin s " Cheek, 1989: 283). Phonemic aware nes s sk i lls involve t.he abi l i t.y t.omanipula t.e different.parts of t.be soundsin words. Phonemic awarenessdoesnot consistof le a rned spel l ing-t o - soun d co rrespo n denc e s and it is not soundingou t words - i t is anunde rstandingof the structure ofspokenlangu a g e (Griffith&;Ol son, 1992).As St ahl (1992) sta t e s:
Onlybyunde r s t.andingthat spokenwords con t a i n phon eme s ca n one le a rn the relationships be twee n let ters and sounds.(p.621).
Many of t.he stud ieswhich investiga tephonemi c aware n es s in young children, measure i tthrough word identi fica tionof words in list s. Wordidentificationinvolvesreadinga word andunderst.andingit smeani ng (Andre ws,1994l. Grundi n (19 94) has cri t ic i z e d these seudies for only measuri ng chi l dren's word ident if icaeion ski l l s and not measuring children's re a di ng abiliey.
But wha t is reading? Smith (1971 ) statesthat -r e adi n g is less a matte r of extr a c ting sound from print t.han of br ing i ng meaning to pri nt- (p.2) an d ac cording to Goodman
(1994 ) re a d i n g is a meaning-seeking task whichinv o l v e s t:he application of all cueing systems (Le. , semaneic, syntactic and graphopbonicl. If this is the case, then measuring children 's word identification ability does not measure reading ability sinceword identification mainly utilizes the graphopbonic .cu e ing system. But thereare other t:heories of reading and beginning reading acquisition which state that word identification is the first step in learning to read (Ada ms, 1990; Ehri, 1984).
The theory upon which this study is based is the AutomaticProcessing theory which states that we have limited at:tentional capacity whichis divided amoung different tasks performed simultaneously(An drews , 1992). Therefore , some of these tasks, such as knowledge of the sound-let ter relationship and word identification, must become automati c . Fo r sk ill e d readers th e process of word identification is aut:omatic thereby enabling the reader to focus attention on comprehending the text and relating i t to existing schema.
One of the first skil ls needed to automatize word identification is an awareness of the phonemes of spoken
words. When children become awa reof the phonemes in words, theyneed tole arn the relationship betweenthesephonemesand the alphabet (Le., the alphabetic princ iple). Ehri (19 91 ) has statedtha t ch ildrenprogress through four developme n tal stages in acqu iring word-analysis and word-recognitio n ability: the logographic stage, the transitional stage , the alphabetic stage, and the orthographic stage. Thus, the transition from logographic to alphabe tic is facil itated by phonemic awareness (Dall a s , 199 2 ). Deve lopi ng phonemic awareness is neede d to enhance automatic word re c ogni t ion whichenables the reade r to comprehend ormaking meaning from text.
Phonemic has also been shown to ha v e an
inf lue n c e on spelling ( Bal l & Bl achman, 1991; Dav i dso n &
Jenkins, 1994; Juel, Griffit h & Gough, 198 6; Lie, 1991) . Spel l i n g signifiesthe or d e r inwhic h letters arewritt ento formwords. Writ ing , on theoth e r hand, involvesexpres s ing thoughts, id e a s or meaning through wri tte n symbo l s (Le., letters). Writing in the primary grad e s invol ves chi ldren usinginv e nte d spelling. When children us e inv e n t e d spelling
they sound outandsegmentwordsand print the letters for the sounds they hear. During the processof inventing spelling children utilize skills inv o l v e d in phonemic awareness. The ability to perceive spoken words as a sequence of sounds (Spector, 1992) supports children, in their early writing, with inventedspelling.
Investigations into beginning reading and spelling development have provided insight into phonemic awareness. Whether these skills are a prerequisite, a facilitator, a consequence of or an incidental correlate of reading ability, phonemic awareness training influences reading and spelling development (Ehri, 1979) . Limited exposure to print and practice opportunities delays the development of automaticity at the decoding level and much of their attention must go into word recognition rather than comprehension of text (Ball ok g Lachman, 1991) . For these children, developmentof phonemic requires intervention and -heightening phonemic may help prevent some children from experiencing early reading and spelling failure- (Ba l l okg Laohman , 1991:
52)•
10
The research studies of phonemicawareness finds that i t is a precursorof re adingand spelling . Therefore, teac h ing in this area in the hopes that i t wi l lfacilitatereadingand spelling acquisition, would be IDOs t effective during the preschool age before formal readi ng and spe l l ing instruct i on In other words, training should take place in preschool or early Kindergarten.
Teaching strategies have been de velopedin teachers and early childhood educators during preservice education, graduate studies, independent reading and ongoing inservice and professional development. Rese a r c h e r s are conti nual l y de ve l o p i n g newmethodsand theories onhow childrenlearn to re ad. Educators need to keep pace with t:he chang e s in methodol ogy in the area of read i ng. Afte r the init ial pr e s e rvic e educa tio nthe y relyveryheavi ly on oppor tuni ties to upgra d e the irteac h i ng ski lls throu gh inservic eprogr ams. Many educators tendtoremain in the irpositi ons for a lo ng er ti meand they need tobe suporte d in their te a c h i n g through ongoing profess i onaldevelopment (Gu s ke y , 1986;Hendrickson, O'Shea, Gable, He itman &Sealander , 19931. Knowledge will
continuetoadv anc eandthis knowledge •...must find i t ' s way in to staff development activities.. . • (Ep s t e i n, Lockard &
Dauber, 1991). In s e rvi c e traininghas become oneof the most important and powerful ways to assisteducators (Fenstermacher
&Berliner, 1985).
Inservice training and staff development are termsus e d in the researchli t e r a t ure. Hendrickson et al (19 93 ) defined in servi c eed u c a t i o n as:
(a) a process through whicheducators maintainandupda te th e i r knowledge and professional expertise ; (b) an op port uni ty to examine, to enhance, and to redefi ne profes sional responsibil i t ies; (c) a vehicle fo r establishing and evaluating educational goals ; (d ) a mechanism for ne t wo r k i n g and for resource development ; and (e) a context for promoting self-assessmentand job enhanc e me n t. (p.31- 3 2).
Burke, Heideman &Heideman (1 99 0) define st a f f deve lopme n t as fol lows :
Inservi c e ed u catio n is only one pa r t of st a f f development, being almos t exc l u s i v e ly informat i onal in na t u re. In contras t , sta ff deve lopmentgoes beyond the in f o rm a t ion al stage ; it in vol v es adaptati ons to change with the purpose of modifyi ng in s t ru c t i o n al activitie s, of cha n g ing tea cherattitudes and impr oving studentachiev ement. (p. 4) .
The proposed inserv ice program pro videsinforma tion, to
12
·modify instructional ac t i v i ti e s · , to ·chang e teacher attitudes· and to "improve student achievement" even if the programwill be labelled an inservice as opposedto a staff development program . For the purpose of this study. the terms inservice, workshop and staff development wi l l be used interchangeably.
There are many different formatss inservice programs may take and many variables that influence the effectiveness of them. Inservice programs must be based on models of adult learning and designed to encourage transfer of training from the inservice to the classroom by "he l p i ng the learner learn hcw-cc-Lea zn rather than merely transmitting content. "
(O' Br i e n , 1.992:422). O'Brienalso states that the following components maximize inservice training effectiveness:
(a ) a diagnostic/prescriptive phase to build awareness within the teachers of the need for change, (b ) presentation of theory/concepts eo give teachers the backgroundon what it. is that. they are ec learn and why (Le., its outcome in t.erms of improvedteaching/learning relative to the cost of change). (c) modeling or demonstrations by skilled trainers of the techniques and behaviors trainees are to acquire, and (d)practice under simulat.ed conditions with feedback such as microteaching and role playing. (p. 422-423).
This interpret.ion of staff developmentis similar to the
onepropo s e dbyBurke, Heideman&.Heideman(1990l in t.hat. they bot.h indicat.e chang i ng t.eachers behaviorsand/or inst.ruct.ional pract.ices. Clearly, there are different definitions and interpret.ationsof inservice and staff development. For the purpose of this research, inservicetraining involves not; only passing on information, but t.rying eo change t.he actitudes and behaviors of teachers in order to improve student achievement. While there is an abundance of research on how children read and the benefits of teaching phonemic awareness to children, for this inservice prgram eebeuseful to teachers, it mustbeexplained to themin ".. . specific, manageable , and comprehensible teaching strategies and procedures...II
appropriate for the current curriculum. (cereeen, Morvant &.
Brengelman, 1995: 55). But we must remember the major goal of inservice training is to increase student: learning and ach ievement.
Lim.!ta t i on s of the Study
Th i s study is basedon only one type of data collection strategy, namely document review. This reliance on onlyone
14
Cype of data collection makes triangulat.ion more difficult. to atcain. However, by cboroughly researching t.he areas of phonemic awareness and inservice craining ehrough various articlesand books, s.eisexpectedehac a variecy of daea will becolleceed Co allow for eriangulacion.
CBAP'l'ZIl TWO REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
PBONEMl:C AWA1tmaSS
XDtroduet:1.on
Aschildrenbeginto learn to read ,they need tobe aware thatwords canbebroken up into phonemesthat.are represented bythe lettersof the alphabet. Adams (1990 I contends enee preschoolers who are given training in phonemic awarene s s display significantaccelerationinthe ir la te r acqui s i t ion of reading. Bradleyand Bryant (19 83) co nclude that ch i l dre n' s awa reness of rh yme andallit erat i o n has apowe r ful influence on their eventu a l su c c e s s in learning co read and spell. Cal fe e, Lindamoodand Lindamood (1973) conclud e tha t simple phonological skil l s, such as using colour e d blocks to rep r esent pho n eme s he ardintwo-or thre e-pho nemewords, are signi f i c an t.l y related to reading and spelling performance through high sc hool. Cunningham (1990) found there significant imp r o v e me n t in reading achievement for
16
Kindergartenand first. grade childrenwho received inst.ruct. ion inphonemic awareness.Perfet.ti. Beck. BellandHugh e s (19 8 7 1 found that. t.he abi l i ty ee blend phone mes into words faci l it.at.:es lat.:er reading. and that phonemic knowledge and le a rning to readar e mut ua l l y sup portive.
Inmost.: of the researchsupportingphonemi c awaren ess . reading is measured by the abi l i ty ee read words in decontextualized texts . Some studies measure phon emic awareness by performance a wide range of tasks, for examp l e , rhyming (St ano v i c h , Cunni ngham & Cramer, 1984), phoneme iden t.:it.y ( Byrne & Fielding-Bam sley, 199 0; Lie. 19 9 1), sequent i a l analysis (Lie , 1991) , segmentingwordsinto component sounds (Bal l " Blachman , 1991; Byrne" Pie l d i ng - Bams l e y. 1990; Calfee, Linda mood " Lindamood , 19 7 3; CUnning ha m, 19 9 0; Davidson &: Je nk ins. 19 9 4; Liberman, Sbankwe i l e r, Fiscber " Cart e r , 1914; Spector, 1992; Tunmer "
Ne sdale. 1985 ), segmenting words into syl l ab l es (Calfee et al. , 1973; Libe rma n et al., 19 74), blending phoneme s int.:o words (Cunni n gham,1990 ; Davidson" Je nkins, 1994 ; Perfetti et al., 1987), sa yingwordswith target soun ds deleted (Sp e c t o r,
1992; Stanovich. CUnningham '" Cramer. 1984). producing invented spellings ( Spector. 1992). isolating initial. medial and final sounds (Stanovich et al.. 1984). and explicit instruction of how and when to use phonemic awareness (CUnningham, 1990; Davidson&Jenkins, 1994). The general findings of these studies indicate that students who enter reading instruction unable to perform phonemic tasks. experience less success in reading than students who
high in phonemic awareness when instruction begins. These findings are consistent with models of reading acquisition that emphasize the role of the alphabetic principle during the initial stages of beginning reading
(Sp e c t o r . 1992).
One such model proposed by Ehri (1 991 ) suggests th at children progress through four developmental stages in acquiring word-analysis and word-recognitionability:
1. the logographic stage in which children use visual context or graphic features to read words (for example.
reading RMcDonaldsRby looking at the logo).
2.the transitional stage from logographic to beginning
18
al p habe tic. inwhic hchildrenbegintore adwordsbyshifting fromvisualcontext and speci ficlette r associationsto useof the alphabetic principle (the ini tial sound Icl in cat: is as s oci a tedwi t h the letter c)
3. the alphabetic stage, in which ch ildre n rely on letter -soundor grapheme-phonemerelationships tore a d words (cat is soundedou tandblend edusing a phonologica l receding process th ataccesses the child 's me n t al lexi con )
4. the orthogr aphic stage, in whi c h chi ldre n use the al phabeticprinciple,predictable le t t e r patterns,groupswi t h shared letter seque nces and consistent pronunciations (h at, fa t, ma t) and analogy (-ain in rain to read the new word train) to read.
Thus , the transi t i on from logogra p h i c to alphabetic is fa cil itatedby pho n e micawareness (Dall a s , 1992 ).
Correla tionbetweenphon-.1c awar en••• ~reading Some researc h ha s shownthat childrenwho ar e able to read possess phonemic: aware n e s s skil ls and these skills are direc t lyrelated to readingabili ty ( Bradley&Bryant , 1983;
calfee et al., 1973; Perfetti et al., 1987). Bradley "Bryant (19 B3) hypot h esized that childre n ' s awarenessof rhyme and al l i teration has an eff ect on reading and spel l i ng abi l ity.
This st udy combi n edtwo dif f e rent methods of dat a collection - longitudinaland empirical.The long i t Ud inal met hodinvolved mea s uring ch i ldre n' s skills at sound categorizati o n before theystart to re adand the empiri c almethodinvolvedinten s i ve trai n ing of a subsample of children. on soundcategorizat. i o n and/orconceptual categorization. Thre e hundred and sixt.y- ei g ht fourand fiveyear ol ds were te sted. Ahigh correlat i on wasfo und between the initi a l so un d catego r i zat i o nscores and thechi ldre n's rea dingandspelli ng overthre e ye a r s. Also, intensive tra in inginsoun dca tegorizationin conjunct.io nwith t.he al phabet, affects progres s in readi ng and spelling . Br ad ley and Bryant co nc lude dtha t the awareness of rhyme and alliterationhas a tremendous infl uenceonchildren'ssuc c e s s inlearning to read and spell.
cat.zee, Lindamood" Lindamood.(1 973) tested st ude n t s from Kinde r g a rte n to Grade 12 on theirability to matchcolou red blocksto repre s ent ei the r the phon eme s or syllables in a wo rd
20
provided orallybyt.he examiner. The result.sfound t.hat. t.here wa s a subst.antial correlation bet.ween performance on t.h e audit.ory-phonet.ict.est.andreading abi l it.y. as measuredbythe Wide Range Achiev e me,nt. Test. The maj o r impl i c a t.ion of t.he findings is that these rel a t i v e ly si mplephonologicalsk i l ls. such as usingco l oure d blocks tore p res e n t phonemes heard in two- or thre e -phoneme words, are signi ficant ly related to reading and spelling pe r f o rmanc e through high school. The data suggests that there is a needformo r e attention(to be given) to the development of phonologicalskills in the earl y grades, and to cont i nue training on t.he se skills at the syll abel level until mas t e ry.
A study....hichfoundt.hatphonemic awa rene s s skills has an influenceon read i ng wa s conductedby Perfet.ti. Beck, Be l l (.
Hugh e s (1987). Theytested 82f1rst~gradechildren fo urtimes thro ug ho ut th e year on their ability to blendphone mes and thei r ability todele t e and tap out phonemes in words. The children receivedre adi ng instruc t i on in ei the r a basal reader series , wh i c h did not inv olvedi rec t phonicsinstruction. or by systematicdirect code instruction. ....hichdirectlyteaches
letter-soundcorrespondencesand blending. The results found that the abil ity to blend. faci l ita t es la te r reading. They conclude d tha t pho ne mi c awarene ss and le arning to re a d are mutually supportive.
Phonemic
.waren...
.til.l. predict. re.di.ng ahili ty Deve l opmen t in phone mi c awaren ess canbeused topre dic t late r re a ding abi li ty. Accordingto Spector, 1992; Stanovi c h etal., 1984; Tunmer&Neesdale, 1985, phonemicawarene ss is a mor e powerf ul predic t orof lite racy acqu i si tion than more gener a l i zedmeasures of int e l ligence. Tunme r &Ne sda le (1985) conducted a study in Aust r a l iaof 63first-gra dechil dren wieh a meanage of 6 years and 2 monehs. This studyinvestigated Grade 1childrenwhowe r e receivingtheirfirstyea r of formal schooling si nc e Kindergarten was not pa rt of Au s t r a l i a's school eyeeea. The aim of the st-ud y was t-o determine t-he nacueeof therelationsl:~ipbet ween phonologic a l aware ne ss and lea rni ng t-o re ad. Th e chi l dren were admi ni stered t-est-s of verba l intel l i gence, phone mi c segme n t-at- i o n abil i ty and re ading achiev e men t. The pho n emi c segmen t-at ion te st required t-he22
children to tap out the number of phonemes in words and pseudowords spokenbythe experimenter after two exampleswere demonstrated. Reading achievementwas assessedthroughreal worddecoding,pse udoworddecoding,andreading compreh e nsion. The results indica t e d: (a) phonological awareness is a necessary, but not sufficientcondition for theacquisiti onof pho nological decoding because there were no children who performedpoorlyon phonemic segmentati onbut performedwell on decoding; (bl phonological awarenessaffectscomprehension proficiency indire ctly through phonological recoding ; (cl the dev e l opment ofphon ologi calawarenes s is not greatly affected by method of re ading instruct ion (Le., decodi ng non decodi ng ins truct i on ) and (d ) ver bal int ellige n ce weakly correl ated with test s of read i ng achieveme n t . These findingssug gest the nee d for inst ruc tion thatis speCif i cal l y des igned to inc rease the pho nemi c segmentatio n abi l ity of tho se student s who are de vel opment all y del a ye d in thi s abil i ty .
The degree to whi c h phonemic awa renes s is related to reading achievement may depend on the type of task used to
measure pho n e mi c awareness. In orde r ee determine t.he predict.ive abi l i ty of t.en phon e mi c aware ness t.a s ks on subs e qu ent reading abil ity. scaacvfeh, CUnningham " Cra mer (1 98 4) admin i s e e r ed ten phonological aware ne ss tas ks , one a da y, for approximae ely 10 minutes a day to 49 Kinde rgarten st u de n t s witha mean ageof 6 years 2 mont.hs . Thetas ks were conducted in May and the subsequen t read i ng abi l ity assessed at the en d of the foll owing school year. The experimental tasks we r e preceded by t.hree to five practice trials to ensure t.hat the child underst.ood the task. All tas ks were admi nistered or a l l y. The types of phono l og i cal awarenesstasks admi n i stered and th e orde rof pr e s e neation was as fol lows:
(1) rhymesu ppl y · providea word that rhymes wi thexe target wor d
(2) rhyme choice • choose 1 of 3words thatrhymes wi t h t.he target word
(3) initia l co nsonantsame - choose 1of 3wordswhic h has the sa me initial so und as the target word
(4) final consonantsame · choose1 of3words which has the
24
same final sound as th e target word (pictureof target wo r d provided)
(5)stripinit ialconsonant -delete initialphonemeof a word and pronounce the embeddedwordthat remains
(6) substitute initial consonant - is olate the initial sound of a wordandsubstitute a differe n t soundto produ c e a new wor d
(7 ) initial consonant di ffere nt - listen to the be g i nni ng sound of 4 words and choo s e the ""Ord that has thebeginning sound di f fe rent from the ot he r words
(8) initialconsona ntnot same(Note: Thistas kwas the same as the initial consonant different task. butthe instructions we r ephrase d in ane g a ti v e manne r. Forexampl e. -I am going to say awordal oudfollowed bythree morewords.Yourtas kis to te l l mewh ichword does not begi n with the samesound as the first word-)
(9) final consonant different - identify1of 4words wh ich hasa finalsoundthat is di f ferent fr om theot hers (l O) supplyini t i al consonant - identif y the mis sing phon eme when presen t e d with two wordsthat are thesame except for the
beginningsound.
The resules found ehae ene mose dif f i cult. casks for t.he children were t.he scrip inieial ecnec eaae, while cbe thre e easiesetas ks involved t.he subseicut.e ini tialcceeceene, rhyme supply and rhyme cho ice . The correlat.io na l dat.a imdicaces thatthe seven no nrbymi ng tasks are usefulpredictors of firs t grade read i ng abil i ty and are equal co or bett.er than more globalmeasuresof cogni~i ve skills, su chas tihe intelligenc e eest.of Ot i a_T enDOPSChOO l Ab j l i t yTeat and theMetrop ol i t a n Read;pe55 Test.
Furtherev i d en c e of t.he importanc eof pho nemic aware ness ability as an effeceive predictor of rea dingac h ieveme ntwa s cor.duc t e dbySpector (1992). She inves tig a ted theabi l i t.y of a dynamicmeasureof phonemic aware n e ss eepre d i c eprogre ss in beginning reading . The dynamicmea sure assessed the abiliey of Kin de rgarten ch i l dren toperform a phonemicawarenes s task (i.e.,phon e me segmeneaeion)whengiv e n supportiveprompts and A seri es of seven prompt s was provid ed fo r cbe examinerseo follow each time achi l d was unab l e tose gme n t a word. The prcmpt.e con s i s t e d of: (1) pron o uncing the t.arget
26
word slowly; (2) asking the childto identifythe first sound of the word; (3) cueing the childwith the firstsound; (4 ) cuing the child with the number of sounds in thewo r d ; (5 ) modeling segmentation usin g pennies placed in squares to represent the number of sounds in the word; (6 ) modeling segmentation as above, but working hand-over-hand with the child while pronouncing the segments; and (7) repeating the prompt. Thirty-eight kindergarten nonreaders were assessed in the fallon re c e p t ive vocabulary, letterand word recognit ion , inventedspelling, phoneme segmentation,phoneme deleti on and dynamic phonemesegmentation. The ch ildrenwere testedagain nearthe end of the school year on all measures except dynamic phoneme segmentation. The resultsin d i c a t e d that performance on the dynami c phoneme segmentation is a better predictorthan anyof the three static measures of phonemic awareness (Le.• phonemesegmentat ion ,phonemede l e tionand inventedspelling). Another study which found a significant correlation between student's phonemic awareness ability and later word ide n t i fi c at ion andspel l ingskillswas conductedby Macdonald and Cornwall (1995 ). Th i s study is a follow-upof24 students
(13girlsand11 boyslwhowere firscassessed in kindergarten in 1982 and assessed again 11. years laCer. The resulcs indicaCed Chac phonological awareness, as measured by che Audicory Analysis Test (Ro s ner " SilnOn, 1971) -...was boch a concur-rent; and a long-cerm prediccorof word identifi cat ion and spel l i ng skills for students assessedat 6 years of ag e and again at 17years of age. - (p. 525). Th i s wa s a better predictorthan kindergarten ac h i e ve me n t in word identifi cation and spe l l in g. Thes e re s ultssugge s t that phonemicawareness (as asse s s ed by the Auditory Analysis Test) at age six
•...approx imat es its adul t form sooner than do word
id entif i c a t ion or spell ingskills.- [p, 52 6 ).
Tra1n1ng phon8Jllic awar en.. ..kil l .
Chil dren ' llIphonemic awareness abilit ycan predictlacer reading ach i evement as the prev i ous studies have shown. However. can training in phonemicawareness improve children' s reading and spe ll ing abil ity? Seve r a l studies have investigated the effects of trai ning in phonemic awarenes s sk i lls onre a di ng and sp e l l ing achievement (Ba l l &:Blachman ,
2.
1991; Bradley" Bryant, 1985; Byrne" Fielding-Barnsley, 1990;
caecfe , Riach&:Nicholson, 1994; Defior&:Tudela, 1994; Lie, 1991). Most of these findings indicace that craining in phonemic awareness improves children's ability to read and spell, and some studies indicate this is particularly so if training is in conjunction with the letters of the alphabet.
Ball and Blachman evaluated the effects of training in phonemic segmentation, letter names and letter sounds, Kindergarten children's word recognition and spelling.
Eighty-nine children with a mean age of 5 years 7 months, were divided into one of r.fu-ee groups: (1) the phoneme awareness group, which received training in say-it-and-move-it activities, other segmentation related activities, and letter- name and letter sound training; (2) the language activities group, which participated in activities such as, general vocabulary development, listening to stories and learning semantic categorization. In addition, these children received training identical to the phoneme awareness group on letter- name and letter sound instruction; (3 ) the control group, which received no additional intervention to Kindergarten.
The children met in groups of 5, for 20 minutes, four times each week over a period of 7 weeks. The results of this study indicate t.hat; phonemic awareness training in segmentation, along with training in phoneme and letter identity, significancly improve children's ability to read and sp e l l words over training in language activities, which also included training in phoneme andle t t e r id e n t i t y.
A study which also found that phonemic awareness training in conjunction with the letters of the alphabet, significantly improves reading and spelling, was conducted by Br a dl e y and Bryant (1 985 ). Sixty-five childrenaged 5 to 7 were provided in d i v i d u a l i z e d instruccion in sound cacegorization. The children receivedtraining in one of three of the following training groups: (1) categorizing words accordingto co mmo n sounds (e. g., rhymeor alliteration) ; (2 ) categorizing words according tocommo n soundsand representing these sounds with plasticletters ; (3) semantic categorization of wo r d s. The fourth group receivedno intervention . The training involved 40 individual, ten-minute sessionsspread over two years. The results indicated tha t children who received sound
30
categorization trainingonlyscored somewhathigher onreading and spelling tasks than chi l dre n who did no t ge t th i s ins t ruction. Also, childrenwho rece ivedsound categorization tra iningsuppl e raente d with a.lphabe t le t ters , signi f i c ant l y outper formed bot h control groupsin readingand spel l ing, and ou t per f o rtlle d sound only catego r i z atio n group tr ai ning in spelli ng. Th e s e findings in d i c a t e d th a t the mos t ef f ect i v e ph o n e me awa r ene ss ins t ruc t i o n includes attentio n to the as soc i a t i o n s betwe en the so und segm ents of speech and the writtensymbols th a t representtho s e sound s.
Defio r " Tude la (1 99 4) wante d to de termi ne under wh a t conditionstraininginphonologicalabi l i t iesimproves re a d i ng and wri t i n g. They scudted 60 children in five randomly as s i gn e d groups (ex c e p t for genderwhi c h was controlled) in first le v el, middl e class primary sc hool in Spain. The children were homogeneous regardi ng age, lQ, phonological abi l i t ies and readi n g an d writing le ve l. The fi ve groups consiste dofsix children with each grou p re c e i vin g oneweekl y tr a inin g ses s i on for 20 we e k s (6 months). The 90 mi nu t e se ss ion s werepart of the afterno on ac t i vi t ie s in the school
and includedbothgroup ac t ivitiesrelatedto the particular eeeeeeeee of ehegroupandindividual training to insure thae every child achieved an adequaee performance level. Each group receivedtrilininginone of fiveof the following areas:
(1) work cut; rhyme and alliterationwith a series of pictures of familiar objects. All of the words us e d in a give n session had phoneme either initially or finally.
Initial pho n eme s were usedfi rst and once this wa s learned, theycontinu e dwi th rhyme and final phon e mes; (2) classi fy thesamepictures as group 1bu t classificaeion wa s based on co nc e ptua l criteria ; (3 ) same as group1but in additionto the sounds , the childrenwere given experience wieh plast ic letters to help the massociate letters and phonemes. Once they became fami liarwi ththe alphabet. the ymade eachwordin ehe set with theplasticleeters; (4) same tr e atmen t asgroup 2 but in add it i o n to classification, they were gi ven experiencewith writt1!nwords. As training proceeded, the categorization tasks we r e carried out with the labelled pictures , then with both the labelled picture s and chen writ.t.en labe l s wi t ho ut pictu r es; and (5) rec e i ve no training.
32
The children engaged in manipulative activicies such as coloring,cuCCing, sCicking, ece. Posc-crainingmeasures were caken in reading , wricingandmaChematics. The resulc s found thaC training in phonological abil i tiesin co n j un c t i o n with the use of pl as t ic le t t e r s during the process of init ial learning, has a positive causal in f lue n c e on reading and writing acquisition. They also found that subjects who were trained with the aidof wricten words, did not pe rform any betterthan that of subjectswho were trained without written words.
Further evidence to support training of phonemic awareness has be e n provided by Lie (1991). He studied 208 grade one Norwegianchildren with a mean age of 7 years 2 months . The childrenwere di vided in t o three gr o ups and received one of three daily tr a ining ses sions in wor d analysis. The aim of thestudy was to stimulatethe children to discover and attend to th e phonological struc t ure of language. The first group{GOchildren }receivedtraining in positional analysis which involved identifying the initi a l , final and medial soundsin spokenwords. The secondgroup(52
ch i ldren) received training in sequential analysis, also ca l led ph on e me segmentation, wh i c h involved id e nt i f y i n g the sounds in a word one af teranother inthe right sequence. The third group (96 children) was thecontrol group who received instruction in looking at and discussing illustrations. The results found that training in both positional analysis and sequential analysis, had a facilitatingeffect on reading and spelling. The differences on reading between the training groups and theco n trol group we r e significant at the endof Grade 1, but not at the end of Grade 2. In spelling, both training groupsscored significantlyhigher than theco n t rol group at th e end of Grade 2, but the sequentia l training produced higher scores at the end of Grade 1. The results demonstratethat skills in word analysisfacilitate learning to read and that these skills are not simply a co nse que n c e of readingacquisit ion. Th isstudy also foundthat. childrenwith low general int.el ligence benefited more from the training program than ch i ld renwith averageor high intelligence.
Anotherst u d y which foundthat instruction in phonemic awareness positively affects reading and spelling was
34
conductedbycastle . Riach and Nicholson (1994). They wanted to determinewhe t her earlytrainingin phonological awareness would givechildrenan advantageinreadingandspel ling.even though they were already receivi ng reading and spell i ng ins t ruc t ion in a regular whol e-l an gua g e classroom. Two experiments wit h five-year-old childre n were conducted to st u d y the effects of phonemic awa r e n e s s trainingon spelling and reading acquisition. The training consisted of two, twenty mi nu t elesson s perwe ekfo r 10we e k s. InExperiment I, which fo cu s e d on spe l l ing acquisition , IS children were trai ned in phonemic awareness ski l l s involving pho neme segmentat ion . phon eme substitution . phoneme deletio n and rhyme. Anothergro up of 15children were trai ned in process wri t ing (inwh i c h children areenc o u ragedtowritethe ir own stor iesand to inventtheir ownspellings ). Theresultsshow that improv e men t in phone mic awarene ss abi l i ty le ads to improve d spell i ng skill. pos sib l ybyenabl i ng children to use phoneme-graphe mecorrespondencerule s. In Experiment2,which focusedon re a din g acquisition, 17 chi ldren wer e trained in phonemic awareness skills involving blending, deletion,
sl!gtoent ation, rhyme, al literat ion and letter-sound correspondences . Anothergroupof 17 childrenwas tr a ined in semantic categorization and le t t e r-recognition, and a third group of 17 ch ildre n received no tr a ini ng . The re s ults in dicat e that th l! phone mic trai n ing had a highereffec t on reading skills, as measuredbyeeeee of rl!adingabiliCy, than ebe oc he r crainingactivi cies• •..•both expez'Lment.e provide evidence of cbe positive ef f e c t s of phonemic awarene s s instruction as part of aregular whole lan gu ag eprogr a m. " (p. 356)•
While some st u d ies (Ball .. Blachrnan,1991i Lie, 1991 ) concl u d e d that cr ai ni ng in segmentat ion provides the best result.s in improvi ng ch i l dre n's read i ng and spel l ing ac quisition , a study which opposed this concl usio n was cond uc t.ed by Byrne and Fie ldin g -Ba rnsley (1990) . Th ey inv estig a t.e d how phone me identi c y and pho ne me segment.at i on in fl u e n c e acquisit. i o n of the alphabet.i c principle in preliterate preschool ch ildrenwith a me an age of 4 year s 5 mcnnbe . The two components of phonemic awareness studi ed were, rec ognit ionof phoneme identity whenpresentedin new,
3'
untrainedwordsand phonemic segmentation of io1 tial and final consonants within words. They concluded that i t is more advantageous to train childreninphoneme identity rather than segmentation as part of beginning reading instruction because i t had a st.ronger relationship to the alphabetic principle and i t was easier to implement. The authors also found that:
children could identify final consonants just as easily as initial consonants; consonant clusters ( ego -s k a t e - or -ma s k- ) did not pose a difficulty; and vowel phonemes were just as easily learned as consonant phonemes.
Another study which indicated that segment.ation of phonemes difficult for young children was conducted by Liberman et a1. (1 97 4). They studied how well children in nursery school, kindergarten and first grade can identify the numberof phonemic segments in spoken utterancesandhow this compares with th e i r ability to deal with the number of syllables in spokenut t e r anc e s . They studied 46 preschoolers with a mean ageof 4 years 13. months, 49 kindergartnerswith a mean age of 5 years1.0 months and 40 first graders with a mean age of 6 years 11 months. In a game-like atmosphere,the
child was required to repeat a word or sound spokenbythe examiner, and to indicatebytapping a small wooden dowel on the table, the number (from one to threel of phonemes or syllables(de pe nd i ng on which testing group) in the utterance. The results found that the children were markedly more able to segment into.syllables than into phonemes,whatever the grade level. ...the findings strongly suggest that a greater level of intellectual maturity is necessary to achieve the ability to analyse words into phonemes than into syllables." (p. 210) . But they also note that changes in age mayor may not be independent of instruction in reading and writing.
Research involving training in segmentation has found positive effects on children's reading and spelling acquisition. Other training studies that included a component with explicit instruction in phonemic awareness consistently report positive effectson reading. cunningham (19 90 ) divided 42 Kindergartners, witha mean age 5 years 11 months, and 42 first grade children, with a mean age 7 years 2 months, into two groups and provided each group with one of the following forms of instruction in phonemic awareness: (1) a "skill and
3.
dril l - approachwh i c h emphas izedthe proceduralknowle dg e of segmentationand blendingof phonemes in a decontextualize d manner versus (2 ) a metacognitive approach whic h explicitly emphas ize d the appl ication , value and uti lity of pho ne mic awareness, as well as theprocedural knowledgeofs~tation and blending. Prior to this training, the Kindergarten children had receivedno formal prereadinginstruction and the first grad ers were re c e i v i ng formal reading and spelling ins truct i on in a basal readingseriesthat empha s i z e d phon i c s, word recognition and re a d i ng compre hension. Children, in groupsoffo u ror five, receivedtraining of 15 minutes,twice a week for tenwee ks. Reading achievementwas assessed by mea s uring children'sknowledgeof sound-lettercorrespondenc e, word recogni tio n andre adingcomprehe ns i on. The resultsfo und a significant improveme n t in reading achi eve men t for bot h Kind e rga r t en and first grade ch ildren after they rec eived ins t ruc tion in pho nemi cawareness. Howev e r, the first grade ch i l drenwho rec e i ved instruction throughthe meta cognitive approach, perfonnedsignificantlybetteron a transfer mea sure of rea ding achievement tha n the - skill and dri l l- only grou p
of first grade rs. Th e resultsof this study indicate that childrencan acquire phonemic awareness thro u g h bothexplicit and imp l ic i t instruction, although, for first graders, explicit instructioninvolving a metacognitiveapproachsho we d the most improve men t in reading ability.
Another study which investigated explicit instruction of phonemic awareness was conducted by Davidson and Jenkins (1994). FortyKindergarten cbildrenwith a mean age 6 years, 3 months werestudiedto examine the relativeeffectiveness of phonemic awarenesstrainingthat fo c u s e d oneither segmenting , blending or a combination of the two. In addition, they wantedtodetermine whether transfer toword reading couldbe facilitatedby showing childrenat the time oftr ans f e r howto use the phonem ic sk i ll. Thechil dre n met with an instructor for 10 minutes a day and did not receive any other type of instruc ti on in rea d i ng words in the re gu l a r classroom.
Clas sroominstruction co ns ist e d of story reading, alphabet introduction through songs , exercises in letter formation, teaching the names and so und s of thele tt e r s , keywor d s for letters (e . g., -A-apple- la/ "l, ident i~icat ionof beginning
40
soundsandrhymingwords. The resultsindic a t ed thatchil dren tended to acquir eth eparticular generali zat ionthat the ywere taugh t but it didnot improve thei r abilityto performano t her ki nd of pho n e mi c sk i l l whic hwas not taug ht. Theresu l t s also in dic a t e that a combinat ion of segme n t ing and blending instruct io nmayhel p pre-readingchil dren ut i l i ze le tte r- sound knowl e d g e wh en fi gurin g ou t bowto pron o unce printed words. Howe ver, it cannot be co n c lud ed whether children need to acquire both segment ing and blending to develop a le v el of pho nemic awareness tofa cilitatelearning to read or whether segmen t at ionabilit y byitselfproduces an ade quate de gree of phone mic aware n e s s. Wi t h regards to spel l i ng . bothgroups performe d we l l onth e spell ingtrans fe r task.
Many of the studies discussed thus far, hav e studied nOrlDal ly de ve l opi n g kinder g a rtenchildren whoei t he r did or di d not rec e i v e some phonemic awareness train i ng (either rhyming , segmenti n g, ble ndi ng, etc .) to find a causal li nk bet we e n ph o nologi c a l skills and le a rn i n g to read. These kind ergart en childre n rece i v e d tr aini n g in phonological inaddi t i o n toother re ading instruct ionin thei r
regular classroom. consequently,O'COnnor, Jenkins, Leicester andSlocum(19 93) studied preschool children with disabili ti es to determine th e usefulness of teachi ng the mph o n ological manipulation ski lls. Preschool childrenwere studiedbec a use the y had not re c e i vedany fo rmal re a d ing instruc t ion. They studied 47childrenagesfour, fi v e andsix. Eightyperc ent of the children had significantlangua gedelaysandsomehad addi tionaldisabilities, suchas ph ysicalhandicaps.mentally handicapp ed, or behaviordis o rders. The childrenhad similar abi lities in cogni tio n. phonologic al aware n e s s and lett er rec ogni t ion. The childre nwereplacedin oneof threegroup s to receive tra i n ingduringa seven-weekperiod: (1) rh ymers were taugh t to recogniz e rh yme. ide n t i fy rhyme oddity and produce rhyme; (2 ) blenders were ta ugh t to blendcontinuous stre t che d words, blend word s divided in to onset-ri me. and blendwordswithall soundssegmented;and (3) segmen terswere ta ught to segment two- and thre e-p h o n e me word s sayi n g all of th e soun ds inor der. sep a ra t e wor d s into begi nnin g so und and rhyme. an d say the first sound in words. A fourth grou p receivedno training. The resultssug ges t thatph o n ologi c a l
42
skil lscanbeta u g h t to, andacquiredby, young children with learning disabilities, and that they can be taught before children have functional reading ability. The children in each groupsi gni f i c ant ly outperformed the other children in their particulararea of training. However,many children did no t generalizefromthe set of trained words to new words. In addition, tr ain i ng in one aspect of a ski l l (e. g., blendi ng continuous sounds, Le ., m-a-t) did not generalizeto another as pect of that same skill (e.g. , blending stopsounds, Le., b-a- t) . Nor did trainingin one skill (e.g.• rhyming )leadto impr o ve men t inothe r phonologicalskills (e.g . , blending or segmenting ). Nevertheless, i t was concludedthat".. . young children with disabil i t i es can acqui re spec if i c phono logical man ipu l at ion skills. - (p.S4S).
While the previous studiesha ve shown that trainingin phonemicaware nesscanimp rov e children' sreading and spelling ability, all these studies involve th e researcherengaged in thetr a i n i ng of the children . Blacbrnan. Ball , Black&Tangel (1 99 4) trained ki nd erga r t e n teachers and thei r teaching assistants in low-i nc ome , inner-city schools, to provide
phonemic awareness activi ties to small groups of children during the regularschool dayin the regular classroom. The study c:ompared skills in phonemic awareness. letter-sound knowledge. andreadingandspelli ng skillsof thosechildren who receivedthe acti v it. ies, wit h those chil dre n who didnot.
receive the actiVit i es. A total sampleot159 chi ldrenwez-e involved in the studywith 84 treatment ch ildre n (47 boys and 37 girl s) havinga meanage of 5.62 and 75 controlchildren (38 boys and 37 girls) with a me an age of 5.64 . To avoid possibl e exposure of the control children to the treatment activities, t.he t.reat.ment. and control children were chosen from different sc hools. Prior to thetr a i ning, there we re no si gni ficant.difterenc e s between t.he 84treat.mentchildrl!nand the 75 control group ch i ldren on age , sex, race, scct c EconomicStat us (5&8), developme n t a l lev el and sound countin g. The tr e atment chil dren rece ivedpho nemic awa r ene s s t.rain i ng , fromMarchuntil May. in groups of fo ur or five. lS t.o 20 minut es a day. tour times each week. The teachers andthe teaching assistants received seven, two-hour ins e rvice worksho:>ps tolearn the phonem e awareness training program.
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Teachers also received instruction in th e theoretical framewo r k to support theteaching of phonological awareness, in addition to receiving practice activities and the opportunity toaskquestionsabout the program. Each 15 to20 minute lesson consisted of say-it-and-move-i t phoneme segmentationact ivi t i e s, segmentation-relatedactivities,and letter name and le t t e r sound training. The children we r e assessed inMaybyspecially trained examiners using a battery of tests. The results found that the treatment children si gn i f i c antlyou t pe r f o rme d the control children on tests of phoneme segmentation, lettername knowledge, and lettersound knowledge. In addi t i o n, they •...read signifi cantly more phonet icallyregular words an d nonwords, and demonstrat.ed a mo r e sophist i cated level of developmental spelling than the con t r o l children .- (p.13 ).
Levelsofpho nemic awareness
As has been di s cussed, the ability to manipulate differentpartsof the soundsin words can be taught to ,and learnedby , children . Adams (1 9 90) identifiesfive different
levelsof phone mic awarene s s whichare sunnarizedas foll ows: 1. At the moSt pr i mitive level, knowledge of Nursery Rhyme s, wh i ch is relat e d to development of more abstract pho nolog i cal skillsand ofemergent re a di ng abi lit i e s.
2. At this level, theoddity tasks requirethechild to compareandcont r as t soundsforrhymeor alli te ra t i on. This re qu irestheabi l i ty tofocusattenti on on the components of sound s of wo rds and tomake them similar or different.
3. The third level tasks of blending and sy l l abl e- spli tting require the chi l d to know ch a t words can be subdivide d int o phonemes , and be fami l i ar wit h the wa y phone mes so und -i n is o lat i o n- and to produce these sounds in d e pen dently.
4. Pho nemic segmen Cationrequiresene child toknowchat.
wordscanbebroke ndown int.o a se r i e s of component phone mes and cha t this breakdown can be done by the child and on request.
5. At this, the most dif fi cult le v e l, phoneme manipul ation requi r e s that the chil d have su ff i c i e n t proficiencywith th e phoneme st.ruc c ure
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that chil dren can
add, delete or move any designated phoneme and generate a word.
Sev eral conclus ions can be drawn from thes e researc h studi es revi ewed: phonemicawareness is relatedto su ccessin ear lyreadingand spellingof words; chi ldrencanbetrained to segment words in t o phonemes; includinginstruction in the assoc iat i onsbetweensoundsegmentsandlett e r s, se e m to have exhi b i ted a greater effe ct on early reading andspel l ing of words; and expli c i t ins t ruc t ion in the appli cat i o n and va l ue of these skil l s for read ing and spe l l ing. producedthe best resul t s.
Co n cerna regardingre.earch on phonemic awa r ene••
Analys e s of reading and spe ll i ng. along with correlat i o na l stud i es, hav e led some re searchers to con c l ud e that pho ne mi c awarene s sski l l s are causa l l y re l ate d toreading and spe!l l i ng of words atthebegi nni ng stages. Howe v e r, the r e are some con c erns re g a rd i ng thi s research. Th e stu die s conductedon phonemi cawarene sshave manipulated many of the skills ass ociated wi th this As a result, the r e are
conflict ingconclusionsas to which phonemic awareness skills facilitatereading andspel ling acquisition. Perfe t ti et; al. , (1987 ) conc l u d e that the ability tobl e nd segmented spee ch expediatesbeginni ng first gradersreadingachiev e ment , while Davidson"Jenkins (1994) suggest that segmentingabilitymay play a more crucia l role than blendingability in the early stage s of rea ding andposs ibly spe l l ingacquisit i o n. calfee et l".l., (1973 ), also found that pho ne me segtnenta tion is significantly relat e d toread i ngand spell i n g performanceand Li e (19911 contends tha t pho ne me segmenta tion and phoneme isolation has a fa cilit a t i ngeffecton beginni ng rea ding and spell ing acquisitio n. Byrne and Fielding-Barnsley (1 990).
however, ascertaintha t traininginphoneme identity is more advanta g e o usthan training in pho ne mese gmentati o n bec a u s eit has a strongerrela t i o nship tothe alphabe t icprinciple. As can be seen, there are many conflicting reports on which skil ls of phonemi cawarene ssfac ilitatere adi ng andspelling ac quisitio n. Thus, onecannot easily ded uce wh ether oneor more pho n emic aware n e ss sk i l l s ar e re s ponsib l e for helping children learn to re a d and spe l l, or whether
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generalized understanding of the skills ismore benefi c ial. Dn t i l further studies are conducted, it might be best to include a vari e t y of phonemic awareness skills, such as , phoneme segmentat i o n . phoneme blending , phoneme identity and rhyming, whenproviding ins t ruc tion inthisarea.
A conc ern wieh the as s e rtio n thae trai ni ng phonem i c awareness wouldbemose effeceiveduri ngthe preschoolageis ebae ch i l dren may not be cognitively ready eo acquire eneee skills. Liberman et al. (1974), contend that there are varying levels of diff icultyof phonemic awarenesstasks and that· ...a greaterlevel of intellec tualmaturityis necess a ry eo achieve the abi l i t y to analyse words int o phonemes than into syllable s.· (p. 210). Children seem tograsp th e skil ls of rhyme, alli t era t i o n and ana lys i s of syll abl es at the presc h ool le v el , howeve r phone me segme n t ationappears to be mor edif ficul tandtodevelop at a late rage (Libermanee al., 1974) . Ye t O'Connoree. a1. (19931 taughtpres ch oo l children with si gnific ant language delay s how to segment two- and three-phoneme wor ds sayingal lof the sounds in order. In loo k ing at thes e st u d i e s ca n see that there is a
diffe rence in cbe amounc of cime spent; on crain ing segmencaci o n skil l s in addicion co bow chis skill wa s measured. O'Connoret; ak, trainedthe chil dren fo r 7 wee ks and measure d mas te rybybaving the childre n orally segme n t two- and thre e·pho neme words, sayi ng all of the sounds in order , se para ting wordsin t o onset-rime, andsay ingthe first sound in wo rds. Whereas Li berman ee a1., admin istered 4 trai n i ngcr i a l s and measure dmasterybyrequiring the chil dren toCap out both the syl labl esand phone l'les in wor d s presented oral ly. Clearly, theseis a discrepancyin the age atwhic h childrencan le arntosegment.
Conflicting re sults have been found regarding the in f l u e n c e of phone me id e nti ty ins t ruc tion combined with phonemic awa r e ne s s traini ng. The conclusion s reachedbyBall andBlachman (1991) , Br a dley andBryant. (19 8 51 and Defior "
Tudela (1 994) werethat phonemicawareness t.raining combined with letter-sound in s t ruc c io n (Le., phoneme iden t.icy), sign i f i c an tly impro ve children's ability to re a d and spe ll words. In co nt.ra s t to this, Byrne and Fielding-Barnsley (1990) favo u r ed train i ng in pho ne me identity ov er phoneme
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segment.at.ionas a component. of beginning reading inst.ruct.io n. To further complicatethe findings, some researchershave measured -reading abil it.y-using a broad spect.rumof reading- related t.a s ks. Some of t.hese mea sur e s in c l ud e readi ng readi ness t.ests (CUnningham, 1990; Stanovich et al., 1984), word readi ng and spellinganalogta sk s (Dav i dson " Jenki ns , 1994), readinganalog tasks (Byrne &Fielding-Barnsley, 19 90 I Byrne &Fieldlng-Barnsley, 1991), word identificat ion lists and spe lling I Ball" Blachman , 19 91;Castle et al., (1994); Spector , 19921, word id e n ti fi c a t ion lists and rea ding compr e h e n sion (Tunmer &Nesdale,1985 ) and st.andardized tes ts of reading and spell i ng (Br a dle y " Bryant. , 1983; Calfe e ee aI. , 197 3 ; Defior " Tud ela , 1994). The majo r ityof th e s e t.a s k smeasurethe child's abi l i tyto rea d words in word list.s. Fromthis, it canbecon cluded that pho nemic awareness hasan effe c t on re a d i ng words in li s t s.
Phonemic aware ne s s can be develope d in preschool and ki n d e rgarte n chil dren. The Kindergarten year is th e fi r st ye a r of fo rm al educati on in Newfoundlandand thus the first year of reading instruction. The objectives for reading
instructio n are stated in the Atlantic Provinces' Euc at ion Fo undatio n Curricul um Gui de for Primary Language art a. However much of the devel opment of the language arts curriculum isleft up tothe individ u a l te a c h ers. Childrenin th e same grade are receiving di fferent languag e ans curricul ums as some teachersareexpandingon the object ive s in the curriculum guide. Thus children are acqui ring different ob jecti ves fo r reading ac quia icion . In th e preschoolenviron ment,no curriculum gui des or standard s ex ist fortheins t ruc tionof rea d i n g or pre -re adi ng ski l l s. Si nce i t hasbeen shownthac phonemicawarene ss trainin g imp roves chil dren's word recognition and invent.ed spe l ling.
inservice programfor educator s ne e ds to bedeve loped tobe usedacrossthe province.
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mSBRVICB TRADaNG
To ensure that educators keep abreast of current changes in theories and knowledge. developing inservices in these areas is of vital importance in increasing student learning and achievement.
Differenttypes of inserviceprograms Some of the research on inservice training entails implementing several different styles of inservices on the same topic. and measuring the effectiveness of each. The effectiveness of such inservices is measured by changes in te a c he r behaviour. Todnem &Warner (1994) developed three different types of staff development in the ar e a of questioning techniques. Treatment A invc.lved a one-year program with 40 hours of trainingconsisting of a three-day induction, seven co llegiums , seven practicums , in di v i d ua l study and classroomapplications . Treatment B was 18 hours in length and involved a three-day induction training and TreatmentC was a 3 hour long awarenesstraining. Theresults found that Treatment A, the long-term staff development
program, produced • significant gains to knowledge, understanding,and application of selected concepts related to effective que s tio n i ng . · (p .67). The developerssuggested that a successful in s e rvi c e should give the participants time to reflect on the value of the program, give participants opportunity to observe each other several times, have the developers use the evaluation data from the participants to improve the program for next time, and give the program a chance to succeed.
Bos (1995) studied three successful professional developmentprograms and found three characteristicsthat are powerful influences on changing teachers behaviors : (a) integrat.ion of teachers' personal knowledge wi t.h external knowledge; (b) creating teac her and school ownership by working in collaborative and supportive contexts thereby fostering self-efficacy; and (c) developinga common language in whichto engage in problem-solving. Bos states that it is important for these characteristics to be assimilated into inserviceprograms to promote changein teachers.
Another study which investigated changes in teacher
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