Phonics Program : The Effectiveness On Kindergarten Dibels

Although for awhile, phonics had lost some of its popularity, research has proven its usefulness when teaching children to read. Without explicit instructions in phonemic awareness and phonics a student is in danger of learning issues. The Headsprout Reading Basics program can prevent these issues from occurring through explicit instruction in phonemic awareness,

Phonics are essential to literacy and children’s ability to learn to read and write. Phonics are a system of associating letter symbols with speech sounds (Orton, n.d.). They have an important role in the Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority: phonics and word knowledge [ACARA]. There are two main concepts related to phonics they are analytical phonics and synthetic phonics. Diana Rigg (2016) states that “direct systematic instruction in phonics during the early years of schooling is an essential foundation for teaching children to read” (para. 3). Phonics are used by children to learn to read and to write, they include letter identification, onset and rime, blends and the relationships between blends and phonemic awareness (Hill, 2012, p.259) (Rigg, 2014). There are many teaching approaches that may be implemented to teach phonics effectively. This essay will discuss, critique and analyse phonics their importance and how different teaching approaches may be implemented to teach phonics to students effectively. It will maintain that synthetic phonics have been proven to be more successful in teaching children than analytical phonics, although it is imperative to use both a synthetic and analytical approach to teaching children phonics.

Phonemic Awareness refers to the knowledge that spoken words can be broken apart into smaller segments of sound known as phonemes. We learned about two levels of PA, one is auditory-you can do this in the dark and the other is matching sounds to letters. Reading to children at home—especially material that rhymes—often develops the basis of phonemic awareness. Not reading to children will probably lead to the need to teach words that can be broken apart into smaller sounds. Correlational studies have identified phonemic awareness and letter knowledge as the two best school-entry predictors of how well children will learn to read during their first 2 years in school. This evidence suggests the potential instructional importance of teaching PA to

According to McGuinness and McGuinness (1999), “phonemic awareness, alphabet code knowledge, and an early start… are the three strongest determinants of future reading success” (p. 10). Level one of the Go Phonics curriculum covers the alphabetic principle by teaching students the relationship between letter symbols and the sound they represent. Levels two and three of the curriculum focus more on the concept of phonemic awareness.

Blachman, B. A. (in press). Early intervention and phonological awareness: A cautionary tale. In B. Blachman (Ed.), Foundations of reading acquisition and dys-lexia: Implications for \Early intervention. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associate

Our textbook states that children benefit from both styles of learning, phonics and whole language. By using both styles, the teacher blends early phonics instructions into the teaching of reading stressing the importance of oral vocabulary, auditory discrimination, phonological awareness, syllable awareness, onset-time awareness and phoneme awareness. (Gordon & Browne, 2014, p. 392)

According to Stanovich (1986) and Kaminksi & Powell-Smith (2016), phonological awareness stands out as the highest predictor of reading acquisition. Phonological Awareness (PA) is the process in which students learn that words are made up of phonemes (sounds) and learn each individual phoneme (Eissa, 2014). PA is the ability to recognize rhymes, counting syllables, and separating the beginning sound from the ending sound (e.g. /c/ from /at/) (Yopp & Yopp, 2000). More than twenty percent of kindergarten and first grade students struggle with an aspect of PA; furthermore eight to ten percent show significant delays (Trehearne, 2003).

Research shows that all proficient readers rely on deep and ready knowledge of spelling-sound correspondence while reading, whether this knowledge was specifically taught or simply inferred by students. Conversely, failure to learn to use spelling/sound correspondences to read and spell words is shown to be the most frequent and debilitating cause of reading difficulty. Many children learn to read without any direct classroom instruction in phonics. But many children, especially children from homes that are not language rich, do need more systematic instruction in word-attack strategies. Well-sequenced phonics instruction early in the first grade has been shown to reduce the incidence of reading difficulty even as it accelerates the growth of the class as a whole. Given this, it is probably better to start all children, most especially in high-poverty areas, with explicit phonics instruction. Such an approach does require continually monitoring children's progress both to allow those who are progressing quickly to move ahead before they become bored and to ensure that those who are having difficulties get the assistance they need.

There are several methods that can be used and have been used to teach phonemic awareness. For example, some whole language teachers feel that using work-sheets and drills is less effective than teaching phonics in meaningful context using real lan-guage. (Griffith & Olsen, 1992; Morrow & Tracey, 1997; Richgels, Poremba, & McGee, 1996). On the other hand some educators differ in their thoughts as they believe that you may leave out some crucial parts of phonics instructions if you are teaching in only natural language settings.One of the more widely used phonics program is Color My World with Phonicsand it is written by Jenny O’Brien and Fran Key. There was also a study conducted to compare the results first grade students who were exposed to this programs explicit phonemic awareness instruction versus those who were instructed using a more traditional reader program. The results con-firmed that students who were exposed to the Color My World with Phonicscurriculum in the first grade achieved higher SAT-9 scores in the second grade than those in the traditional read-er program.The result of this study supports the fact that students who receive reading instruction pro-grams with explicit phonemic awareness instruction tend to be more successful at reading, especially at earlier

There is a widespread consensus that the developmental deficits in phonological skills characterize dyslexia. Phonological skills as the broad umbrella term include phonological awareness (PA), which refers to the ability to reflect upon and manipulate the sound structure of spoken words (Goswami & Bryant, 1990; Mattingly, 1972); and phonological processing, which involves access to phonological codes without necessarily explicit awareness of the sound structure of spoken words (Melby-Lervåg, Lyster, Hulme, 2012). A large body of evidence found that dyslexic children are worse than both chronological age-matched children and younger reading-age-matched children in PA tasks, such as phoneme deletion and rhyme identification (Swan and Goswami,

Phonemic awareness is a critical skill for a child when learning to read an alphabetically written language. A fair amount of confusion among educators, and a lack of knowledge among society, persists about what this skill is and why it is so important. Written for practitioners, this essay describes phonemic awareness and discusses why it is a prerequisite for learning to read, how we have come to understand its importance, why it can be difficult to acquire, and what happens to the would-be reader who fails to acquire it. Our discussion of phonemic awareness is framed within a particular view of reading, to which we turn first. Phonemic awareness is a relatively new focus for educators.

Providing students with intensive phonological interventions during the early stages of learning development can help students improve in reading, writing, and spelling.

“The National Assessment of Educational Progress reveals that 37 percent of U.S. fourth graders fail to achieve basic levels of reading achievement” (Lonigan & Shanahan, 2008, p. 13). Studies have indicated that the literacy skills of young children are indicators of their literacy learning in later grades (Lonigan & Shanahan, 2008, p. 13). In order to be successful when teaching students how to read, there are five reading components that needs to be addressed in a classroom. These five reading components consist of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension (Armbruster, Lehr, Osborn, Adler, & Noonis, n.d., p.ii). Even though there are countless ways in which teachers can instruct their students in these different areas, an ideal reading program for the first grade might pertain the different teaching methods as discussed below.

Chapter 5 describes teachers being able to monitor students’ development of word recognition for struggling readers and the importance of teachers understanding the underlying skills a student uses to recognize words. Teacher need to be organized in their assessments and instructions in the following areas: phonics, structural analysis and sight words. Phonics use letter sounds to drive pronunciation of the words. Phonic inventories on various levels can reflect and give us insight on the student’s decoding skills with consonant sounds, single syllabus vowel sounds, consonant blends and diagraphs. There are three phonic assessments used to test phonic skills: Z-Test, Informal Phonics Inventory and Informal Decoding.

This paper explores related research in aspects of language acquisition, specifically, reading instruction and its effect on students who live in low socioeconomic environments. We will review the methods of explicit phonics and whole language to examine what, if any, is the more advantageous method of reading instruction for students who live in poverty. The purpose of this literature review is to investigate the impacts of specific reading instruction on the literacy development of children and how socioeconomics restricts these impacts. The research reviewed was collected from peer review journals using the Central Search feature on the UCO Chambers Library website. The majority of the researcher’s findings came from EBSCOhost Education Research Complete and JSTOR: Journal Storage. Given the findings of this literature review, research suggests that explicit phonics instruction, when embedded in a whole language classroom, promotes growth in literacy skills among young children. Research suggests that multisensory phonics, based on Orton-Gillingham Approach, promotes literacy growth for students who are at-risk, however, its impact within a whole language classroom are undetermined. This literature review suggests that multisensory phonics should be utilized in a whole language classroom to determine if its use promotes growth in