Pam Chalfant: All right, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for being here for our webinar, The Truth About Phonemic Awareness. We’re happy to be with you this afternoon. I’m Pam Chalfant. I’m the Assistant Director of Literacy here at the UF Lastinger Center. I’ve been an educator in my previous roles: I was a preschool teacher, also taught kindergarten and second grade. In the public schools, I was a school-based literacy coach and also a state-based literacy coach. And I’ve been here at the University of Florida since 2008.

Amanda Wilson: Hi everyone, thanks for spending your lunch time with us. I am Amanda Wilson. I am the manager of the literacy micro-credentials, so any of you have taken our emergent or our elementary micro-credentials, or secondary, thank you so much for continuing your professional learning journey with us. Previously, I was a VPK teacher and VPK director for 16 years, and then I’ve also taught kindergarten and first grade.

And, I’ve been at the Center for eight years, and my passion is really early literacy, and sort of that space between pre-kindergarten and kindergarten readiness. So, thanks for being here with us.

Alright, we will go ahead and get started. There’s us.

​Alright, so we are, the University of Florida Lastinger Center. We are a not-for-profit center within the College of Education. We create professional learning, from birth to grade 12, and our mission is to support teachers and students, so to help students learn and help teachers teach.

 We have three major buckets that I think are on our next slide. So, we research, develop, and scale professional learning across the state of Florida, and we are in some other states, partnerships as well.

So, our three major buckets that we know make a difference in the trajectory of a student’s life, right? So, it’s kindergarten readiness, third grade reading proficiency, and ninth grade algebra proficiency. And numerous research studies have shown that if a child is hitting those targets, the trajectory of their life outcome from socioeconomic and health and well-being and professional development is greatly improved. So that’s what we focus on here. 

So, thank you for being with us. We’re gonna hit that kindergarten readiness bucket.

​I am seeing some hands raised, so there should be a question box for you to put anything down that you want us to answer or chat about later when we get closer to the end of the presentation.

​So our goals for today, we are going to talk about the critical role of phonemic awareness in early literacy. I will say that going from preschool to kindergarten, I had somebody say to me a long time ago, you know there’s a difference between phonological awareness and phonemic awareness, but then they never talked to me about what that difference was. So I spent the rest (I was at a conference) I spent the rest of the conference saying, okay, but I don’t know, so what is that? So we’re gonna talk about that.

We’re going to distinguish key terms and concepts, because they all sound alike and can be confusing. We’re going to identify and address common misconceptions. So much has changed from when I started teaching to what I heard about phonemic awareness to what I now understand from the science of reading. So we’ll talk about that.

​And review evidence-based instructional strategies to help you support this in real time in your learning environment. So, we always want you to walk away from any professional learning experience with us feeling empowered to go and do it.

​And then, our agenda for today, we’re going to talk about the science of reading, just a quick recap, and what it says about phonemic awareness, misconceptions around that evidence-based instruction. We’re going to give you some resources to take with you.

​We’ll go over the key takeaways, and then that’s where we’ll have that Q&A and discussion time, and then we’ll give you some contact information, and we have our references, so, you know that we do know, and science does back what we’re talking about.

​Pam Chalfant: All right, thank you, Amanda. Let’s jump in and learn about the science of reading and phonemic awareness. And you might ask, first of all, what is phonemic awareness, and what is a phoneme? 

So, a phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in the English language. For example, the word “mat” has 3 phonemes.

​/m/ /ǎ/ /t/

Each of those sounds is a phoneme. Phonemes help us distinguish the differences between words. For example, mat and bat. Two different words, two different meanings, because the initial phoneme, /m/ for mat, is different from the initial phoneme for bat.

​When we teach phonics, we emphasize that words are made of phonemes, and so it’s important for children to know that and to be able to listen to phonemes. It helps children to connect sounds with letters, which is the key, of course, for reading and spelling.​

Phonemes are not naturally heard as separate sounds in speech. Before learning to read, children hear language as a stream of sounds. As babies, if you think about when you’re talking to a baby, they don’t hear individual sounds, they hear it as a stream of sounds, and they don’t hear those individual phonemes, so they’re not naturally heard as separate sounds in speech.

​Children process spoken language in syllables, or larger chunks. In, like, words before they learn to read.

Phonemic awareness develops through literacy, not before it.

That means that literacy instruction helps children become aware of phonemes as separate units. They’re not going to get this naturally. It has to be taught, and it needs to be taught explicitly. This is why phonemic awareness instruction is critical in grades K-2.

As I said, phonemic awareness must be taught explicitly, and it consists of teaching children to listen for phonemes, and isolating and segmenting phonemes and words. So here’s an example of segmenting.​

How many sounds do you hear in the word cup?​

/c/ /u/ /p/

We hear 3 sounds, that’s segmenting. How many sounds do you hear in the word flag?

/f/ /l/ /a/ /g/

​You’re segmenting the sounds in those words. How many sounds do you hear in the word duck?

​/d/ /u/ /ck/

​Three sounds.​

Explicit instruction consists of identifying initial, medial, and final sounds in words. For example, what sound do you hear at the beginning of cup? What sound do you hear at the end of duck? What sound do you hear in the middle of cup?

And then blending phonemes to form words. So, an example of blending.

​What word is this? /m/ /a/ /p/ They blend those sounds together, and they tell you the word.

​And then manipulating phonemes to create new words, and that’s substitution.

​This word is map. What word do I have if I change the /m/ to /s/? And that word would be sap.

​So that’s a substitution, manipulating phonemes. So these activities train students to recognize and work with phonemes, helping them become fluent readers, incorporating daily phonemic awareness exercises into your lessons supports this learning.

So what’s the research behind phonemic awareness?

​Research has demonstrated that phonemic awareness plays a vital role in developing beginning reading skills. The National Reading Panel identifies that the most critical phonemic awareness skills are blending and segmenting phonemes.

​These two skills contribute more to a student’s ability to read and spell than any other phonemic awareness skills. So that’s really important. Phonemic awareness is directly related to later reading ability.

​Research tells us that phonemic awareness develops independently from phonological sensitivity, and should begin in kindergarten or as early as students can manipulate individual sounds and words.

​If phonemic awareness is strong, reading is likely to be strong. If phonemic awareness is weak, reading is also likely to be weak. Students beyond kindergarten do not need to go back and work on phonological sensitivity, but should work on phonemic awareness, and Amanda’s going to talk more about that in just a minute.

​So just as a review, as we’re looking at the key terms and concepts that I just introduced, phonemes are the smallest units of spoken language. The phoneme level of phonemic awareness is the ability to manipulate individual phonemes or sounds within words, and it is the most sophisticated and important level of phonological awareness.

​Phonemes are the smallest units of spoken language that make a difference in a word’s meaning. For example, the phonemes /c/ and /m/ are different, and so the meanings of the word cat and mat are different.

​An awareness of phonemes is necessary for both decoding or reading words, and encoding or spelling words. Generally, blending phonemes is easier than segmenting words into phonemes. To blend phonemes, the student hears /s/ /u/ /n/ and blends the phonemes to say the word sun.

​When segmenting phonemes in a word, the student is given the word such as sun, and the student would be able to hear the three phonemes. What sounds do you hear in the word sun? /s/ /u/ /n/ and that’s segmenting.

So, literacy is dependent on processing both spoken and written language. This image helps to show the relationship between the two.

​Today, we’ll focus on the development of spoken language. Notice how spoken language begins with an awareness of the spoken word. For example, words and sentences and compound words.

​And then, what do you notice next? That’s right, the awareness of word parts. You can stay on that slide, Hope. Thank you.

​Awareness of word parts, such as syllables, onsets, and rhymes. And what spoken language skill is next? ​You see the awareness of phonemes. So the awareness of phonemes is being able to blend and segment. You’re going to hear us say that lots of times today, the smallest units of sound, and this is where spoken language begins to merge with written language.

​We’re gonna focus on phonemes today, since we know that phonemic awareness is a crucial first step for emergent readers. And as Amanda said, as we go through, please write your questions out, and then we’ll address them at the end.

​All right, Amanda, I’ll turn it over to you.

​Amanda Wilson: Thank you.

​So the first misconception I have is phonemic awareness and phonics are the same, but I actually want to back it up a little bit and talk about the example that I gave a few minutes ago, that phonemic awareness and phonological awareness are the same. 

Phonological awareness is an umbrella term that includes those first pieces of that road to oral language that Pam was sharing. And phonemic awareness, so it’s all three of those things. Phonological awareness is the big term, and within it, we have phonological sensitivity, which is being able to hear words and sentences. 

So I know the sentence, I like pizza. I can say, I like pizza, I can count out three syllables. I mean, three syllables. No, that is not phonologically correct. I can count out 3 words in that sentence. Or I can hear compound words. I can hear rhyming words. I can hear that “sat” and “at” end with the same ending sound. 

And then I can get to where I can start manipulating within syllables. I can switch out those syllables, and then I get into phonemic awareness, which are the individual sounds. So when you look at word families, cat, sat, hat, mat, those are intrasyllabic units. That’s still part of phonological sensitivity, because I’m changing one piece, but when I get to, now I can hear, /m/ /a/ /t/, then I’m at the phoneme level, which is the most sophisticated level of phonological awareness.

​So phonemic awareness, not the same thing, but phonemic awareness is part of phonological awareness. 

But phonemic awareness and phonics are not the same thing. So the first misconception is that they’re the same. 

Phonemic awareness is solely a sound-based skill. When we add letters, we get into phonics instruction. That’s not bad either, and we’re going to talk about why you should, but first, we want to make sure that we’re working solely in a sound-based skill set with young children, so they need to be able to hear the individual sounds. There is no print involved. 

When we add grapheme or letters, we get into phonics instruction. So we want to start with hearing and manipulating. In infants and toddlers, that looks like nursery rhymes, and rhyming sounds, chants, and things like that, so they start to get used to the sounds of language. As we get ready for kindergarten, we can start to get ready for the individual sounds in the word.

​Phonemic awareness, sound-based, graphemes refer to the written symbols that represent those phonemes. For example, the phoneme represented by the letter B is /b/ and the /sh/ sound is a single phoneme represented by a two-letter grapheme, SH.

​And then phonics is the instructional method by which we teach students to connect those phonemes with the graphemes that they represent.

​Phonological awareness prepares the brain for phonics. So, when we go through phonological awareness steps on that road to reading that Dr. Chalvin shared, and then we get to phonemic awareness, and once we become aware of the sounds, it helps to prepare our brain for decoding and encoding. They’re both essential and mutually reinforcing.

​Alright, the second misconception is that you should focus on teaching phonological sensitivity, so that’s sentence level, word level, syllable level, rhyming and phonological sensitivity, before phonemic awareness for students who lack phonological sensitivity when they enter kindergarten.

​So, especially coming out of COVID, (and we have the COVID kids, I was a COVID mom. I had a 3-year-old when COVID started. He stayed with me until the end of pre-K. I have many Zoom pictures of him sitting on the back of my shoulders and just trying to live our lives, but we know there wasn’t necessarily a whole lot of… everybody had masks on,) and so maybe there was a lot of phonological awareness skills that were missing when these kids got to kindergarten. You don’t have to go back.

​What we know from the Science of Reading, which is four decades worth of research from cognitive science and linguistics, that teach us about what happens in a child’s brain when they learn to read. What we know from the signs of reading is these things can develop simultaneously.

​A child with phonological sensitivity holes can learn to be phonemically aware without going back and filling in those holes. And when you go back and you fill in those holes, you’re missing some really precious instructional time in kindergarten.

​Now, for children in preschool, the longest time I heard when I was teaching preschool, “it’s not appropriate in preschool. Phonemic awareness is not appropriate in early childhood. It’s not appropriate, it’s not appropriate.” Once a child can hear individual sounds in words, so if, you know, what sound does the word cat start with? Not what letter does it start with? What sound does it start with? 

When you start to hear those sounds and manipulate them and they know three to five letter names and letter sound correspondences, you can start working with phonemic awareness.

​So we don’t need to master early phonological skills before beginning phonemeal-level work. We’ll lose instructional time. Phonemic awareness can be taught earlier than once believed, and it’s especially important once children begin working with print. Skilled reading depends most directly on phoneme-level awareness, not on syllable rhyme skills. That’s why you can go into phonemic awareness and hearing the individual sounds. Kindergartners who cannot yet segment syllables or identify rhymes can still succeed with explicit, scaffolded phoneme-level instruction. 

So that’s what Pam was talking about. They’re not going to hear it naturally. You have to explicitly teach it, and we’re gonna go through some ways that you can do that. Don’t you love that we’re not just saying, go do it, but we’re going to talk about how you do it? 

And then instruction can move flexibly between the two. You can work on rhyming. And then you can work on phoneme-level awareness, right? But it depends most directly on the phoneme level blending and segmenting becomes reading and spelling.

​Phonological skills develop along a continuum, so it’s not a staircase. We don’t have to go here, and then here, and then here. We’re going this way, but we can work on a couple at the same time. You can introduce it earlier, even if phonological skills are weak, and it has the strongest payoff for decoding.

​And then misconception number three, please, Hope?

​Is that since phonemic awareness is a sound-based skill, it’s not appropriate to add graphemes into instruction.

​You want to start with the sound-based skill, but once they’re able to hear those individual sounds, break them apart, put them together, and like I said, if they have five or so letter-sound correspondence, you can start. And research actually indicates that combining phonemic awareness instruction with letter knowledge gets them on the road to decoding earlier. 

Please hear me, as a career early educator, I am not saying that you teach preschoolers how to read or decode. That is not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is, if in preschool they are ready, and they could hear it, then you can work on it, and that sets them up to be ready for kindergarten. If they’re not, they’re gonna get into kindergarten, and they’re gonna get solid instruction on phonemic awareness.

So, it’s just if they’re ready. But I am not telling anyone, “please go teach 4-year-olds how to read.” If they’re ready, please, please work on it with them.

Teaching phonemic awareness using letters helps children understand the connection between sounds and their written symbols. So just like we use manipulatives in math (everybody’s got the little counting bears, or little counting cubes, right) it’s the same way using those graphemes, those letters, to make those sounds more concrete. It helps reinforce the foundation of the alphabetic principle.​

And then graphemes that are introduced during phoneme skill practice should be known, right? So it’d be letters that the students know and can recall and produce both the letter name and the letter sound. So once we combine print with phonemic awareness, it makes for faster reading growth.​

I’m gonna turn it back over to Pam to say, okay, so now what? What do we do? How do we do it?​

Pam Chalfant: All right, as promised, we are going to talk about evidence-based instruction, and what does that explicit instruction look like?

It can be used to support your students in developing phonemic awareness, so let’s take a look.​

Phonemic awareness instruction should be engaging for all students and explicitly taught, and we know that we can do all of these kinds of things in a fun way. The purpose of phonemic awareness instruction is to help students read and spell. You’re getting them ready to take that next step and start blending sounds together and reading words.​

So, as we said, blending and segmenting phonemes is the most critical phonological awareness skill. And those skills progress in difficulty.​

Blending is typically easier for students than segmenting, but both can be difficult for some children. We can’t just say that blending is easier, not necessarily for all children, but typically it will be.​

So this section is going to focus on instructional strategies for blending, segmenting and then both combined. And because this is what research says is the most critical, this is where we’re going to spend our time today.

All right, so what does that look like? Well, we’re going to start with Elkonin boxes. Elkonin was a Russian psychologist who developed a method of teaching students to segment the sounds in words by moving markers into boxes. Remember, we’re just talking about sounds first. We’re not talking about letters yet.

​So these boxes were developed so students could physically move a marker as they listen for the sounds. And we’re going to go through what that looks like. So the first picture you see here is a picture of a cow.

How many sounds do you hear in cow? /c/ /ow/ How many sounds? Two. Two sounds. Remember, we’re not talking about the letters in cow, we’re just talking about the sounds you hear.

Alright, so the next picture. How many sounds do you hear in dog? /d/ /o/ /g/ How many sounds? Three sounds. So you would take the marker and move the markers as you say those sounds.

How many sounds do you hear in snake? This one could be tricky. Do it with me. /s/ /n/ /a/ /ke/ How many sounds? Four sounds. Say it with me as we move those markers. Four sounds

Allight, so, again, that’s segmenting sounds.

So, I have some instructions for you on how to use Elconin boxes, if you’re not familiar. So you see a picture of the fish, so we’ll start with fish.

So you ask the child to say the word fish. So we say the word fish together.​

Next, you count the sounds in the word, while the student is holding up one finger for each sound, like we just did previously. All right, let’s count the sounds in the word fish.​

/f/ /i/ /sh/

How many sounds? Three sounds. I hope I didn’t trick you with that digraph at the end of Fish. You only hear one sound there.​

That S and H together makes one sound, /sh/.​

All right. Next, with the child, you’re gonna draw one box for each sound. We said we heard 3 sounds, let’s do it again. And then, as they say the sounds, /f/ /i/ /sh/, you’re gonna draw those boxes.​

Next, you’re gonna put the markers into each box while saying the sound, so you say it again. You’re gonna repeat this with them, so that this is something that they start to understand and can do on their own. So you’ll push the markers up into the box as you say each sound. Let’s say the sounds we hear in fish again and then you’re going to move those markers each time.

I will say that when you’re holding up your fingers, you want to make sure that you’re doing it left to right. So you may have to do it backwards for yourself, but so that the children, if they’re sitting in front of you, so that when they’re looking at you, they see your fingers go up left-to-right. [For me, on Zoom, it’s a little tricky because I have a mirror image, so I have to do it backwards so that you can see it the right way.] But you may have to do the same thing when you’re in front of your children at school.

Alright, so we have the markers in the box, so now we’re gonna say the sounds again, /f/ /i/ /sh/. ​

What word do those sounds make? Fish. Say the word fish. So we’ve done some segmenting, and then we’ve blended those sounds together and we have read the word. Or, we hear the word fish.​

All right, one more time, we’re going to practice, some segmenting, and you’re going to do this with me. The first picture we see is boy.

How many sounds do we hear in boy? Ready? /b/ /oy/.  How many sounds? Two.

Alright, how many sounds do we hear in frog? /f/ /r/ /o/ /g/. How many sounds?​ Four sounds. 

The next one is hat. How many sounds do we hear in hat? /h/ /a/ /t/. How many sounds? Three.

Alright, next picture, bike, don’t let me trick you. /b/ /i/ /ke/. How many sounds in bike? Three sounds. Three sounds, and again, you don’t need any letters, you don’t need anything other than the pictures, or you can just say the word. 

And the last one is flag. How many sounds do we hear in flag? /f/ /l/ /a/ /g/ Four sounds. All right.

And just to wrap up this, explicit instruction and practice session, we have a video for you to watch. I want you to watch to see how this teacher explicitly models and scaffolds segmenting and blending phonemes with this kindergarten student. So take a look at this video.

[Outside video played over Zoom call. You can watch the video HERE]

Pam Chalfant: Alright, I just wanted to say,

Hopefully you notice how explicit she was, how she repeated the skills, you know, numerous times so that the child could understand. And you also notice that the Alconen boxes were already drawn. She already had them in front of her.

It’s best if you draw them as you say the sound, so the children can see that, and make sure they’re connected because all those sounds connected make a word, and that helps them really solidify that in their brain. So, if you can, draw the boxes as you say the sounds, have the boxes connected, and then have them move the markers up into the boxes. A lot of teachers will have these Elconin boxes already made, just to save time. If you have to do that, that’s okay. But, really the best way is to draw them as they’re sitting there.​

All right, Amanda, back to you.​

Amanda Wilson: Thanks, Pam. I was gonna say, did you notice they were connected? So, the other thing is that they connect because we don’t have spaces between letters in words, so the boxes are connected. 

I do have teachers who say, “I don’t have time. I don’t have time to draw all these boxes.” It doesn’t take that long, but if you do, one of the suggestions is to print out more than one option. So you might have two boxes, you might have three boxes, you might have four boxes. And then when the child sounds out, then you ask them to pick the one. Because if you just have three in front of them, they’re pretty savvy, they’re gonna know it’s three. 

So, we’re gonna go into some resources that can help you.

The first I have for you is the bridge document, and I don’t know if this is a thing that you have seen, but there is a document that the Department of Early Learning and the Florida Department of Education created in conjunction in April of 2020 that’s a bridge document from the Florida Early Learning Developmental Standards to the Kindergarten Best Standards. And you can see, on the very left side of this, we have the FELDS, or Florida Early Learning Developmental Standards, language and literacy domain, and the indicator shows age-appropriate phonological awareness. 

Take a minute and look at this, or take 30 seconds, and look just at the difference between the language and literacy domain on the far left, and then the kindergarten standards for English Language Arts (that first one) and see if you notice anything. Actually, we go first grade, second grade and third grade standards as well.

​Now, I know you can’t really respond to me right now, so I’m just giving you a little bit of wait time.

There are not phonemic awareness indicators in the Florida Early Learning Developmental Standards. There’s phonological awareness, but not individual sounds. So we go from words within phrases and sentences to compound words, to deleting syllables and adding syllables. Anyone who was ever a VPK teacher before Start Early Literacy, if I say “say sidewalk without side,” you have flashbacks trying to get a child to delete side from walk. This is not a thing that comes naturally, and so these are things we practice.

But then when we get into kindergarten, you will see that adding and deleting phonemes at the beginning of the end of a word, segmenting and blending phonemes,. So we go from blending and segmenting onset and rhyme, identifying initial, medial, and final sound of a word. So we go from intrasyllabic work to phoneme in kindergarten. 

So the more you can support, if they’re ready to just hear or if they’re ready for letters, toward the end of pre-K, then it helps them with that bridge.

​And then that QR code should work for you. You can access this document. I think it’s a really helpful tool for anyone who is a pre-K or a kindergarten teacher, even primary, second or third grade, so that you can see it’s really important for us to know where they’re coming from and where they’re going to be able to support them where they’re at.

Please remember to use the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen if you have questions for us, so as we go along.

And then the second resource is the teacher reading guides. So, if you’ve likely heard of New World’s Reading Initiative. I’m really hopeful that you do, that you have. It is a completely free homebook delivery program, VPK through Grade 5 in Florida public and public charter schools and VPK. Excellent, I’m seeing some thumbs up. It’s a fabulous program. It is for any child who is reading below grade level, as indicated in their Fast Progress Monitoring, so that’s that start early literacy for RVPK and K kids. 

And once they are scoring at that threshold that’s indicated, then they are enrolled in the program. We really want everybody at VPK or K to say, “hey, sign your kids up.” They may not need it now, but if they get to third grade and they need it, our data pulls them up and automatically enrolls them. So, the more you can say, “please sign your families up,” the more helpful that is.

And then once they’re in the program, they’re in it until 5th grade, even if they become advanced readers. They stay in the program because we know that those supports help to get them there, and we’re not going to take those supports away.

​It’s also subject area based, so the child and family choose together the things they’re interested in. So we’ve got choice, which is a huge engagement piece for reading. They come to their homes. Kids love getting mail.

​Also, the books are all approved by the Department of Ed and the Division of Early Learning.

​The thing I wanted to talk to you about, though, is there are teacher reading guides. I’m not sure they are as widely known. And you can go to the New World’s Reading website, the web address is there, and you can click on Educator Resources. You’ll see a page that looks like what’s on the screen. And the teacher reading guides are created by our literacy team here to help you read with students. When they get it at home, they get a family reading guide, and it helps the family know how to, in developmentally appropriate ways, work on those standards, either the early learning developmental standards or the best standards for that grade level.

​But these help you in a teacher-friendly classroom practice way. So, we’re going to look closer at a teacher reading guide in just a minute, but what I want to show you is there’s also videos of evidence-based science of reading strategies to use in your classrooms.

Please leverage those. There’s also family videos. Send those out. If you have a web email that goes out every week, if you have an email or a web update that goes out to families, add those in. There are instructional resources, there’s a school toolkit and a district toolkit. We will come out and help host family nights. We’ll help host literacy nights. There are regional engagement specialists all over the state who can come out and help you. So please, please, please reach out.

​But the teacher reading guides. If you could go to the next slide, please, Hope.

​So you’ll look at this. Each teacher reading guide is written based on a book. We partner with Scholastic, but these books are available at your library. If you’re an early learning educator, you probably have some of these books as you’re building up your classroom library. So “Bear Feels Sick.”

​Everybody probably knows Bear. Bear has a cold, and Bear sleeps through the whole winter, and Bear gets into lots of things. This one is Bear Feels Sick. And you’ll see in it.

​Those indicators, this is a VPK teacher reading guide, so you’ll see that 4F2 shows age-appropriate phonological awareness. That’s from the Florida Early Learning and Developmental Standards. So it’s going to have the standard for you, in kindergarten, it’s going to have the best standard, and then it’s going to have the evidence-based strategy done for you. This is incredibly helpful as you’re planning, as you’re lesson planning. It tells you how to build backup background knowledge, vocabulary, asking comprehension questions and doing those phonological awareness, phonemic awareness skills that build to decoding. These are all of the indicators in the standards. 

You don’t need an account, you just go and access. Please share widely. You don’t have to have a student who’s enrolled in New World. You probably have students who are eligible, so if you don’t, please talk to your school about it. 

On the parent letters that come home from, Fast Progress Monitoring, it will say on the parent letter, your child might be eligible for, based on their score.​

Please check out New World’s Reading also on our website as well. 

So, and then the last resource I have for you is one that, well, it’s new last year.​

That I really love, and it’s written by people who are big literacy names in the science of reading, and it’s teaching phonemic awareness in 2024. So it goes over a lot of those misconceptions we talked about, and even more. But it’s a guide for educators, that QR code will take you to it, it’s a free PDF. Please download it, access it and share it widely. It is a research-based, evidence-based resource for you. So, I hope those are helpful!

​And if you have questions, I hope you’re putting them in!

​Okay.

​Pam, are you key takeaways, or am I key takeaways?

​Pam Chalfant: You’re doing key takeaways.

​Amanda Wilson: All right. All right, let’s do some key takeaways. Thank you.

​So, we talk fast. We’re a little bit early, but that’ll give us some time for some questions and answers, or some discussion. I’d love to hear what you’re doing. So, the key takeaways are that a phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in the English language.

​Phonemic awareness plays a critical role in the development of early literacy.

​Segmenting and blending contribute more to a student’s ability to read and spell than any other phonemic awareness skill. So we talked about adding in phonemes, we talked about deleting phonemes, we talked about identifying phonemes, but the segmenting and blending, when you think about reading and spelling, those are the things that contribute more to a student’s ability to encode and decode.

​It is directly related to reading ability. This is not me telling you this, this is not Pam telling you this, this is the science of reading, 40 years of research saying this is directly related to reading ability. If a child has secure phonemic awareness, their transition into decoding is secure.

​We talked about the three common misconceptions. You don’t have to go back and teach those phonological sensitivity skills if you have a student in kindergarten or first grade who doesn’t have those, you don’t have to go back and teach them before starting on phonemic awareness.

​You can add in graphemes as soon as they’re ready for it, and they know some letter name and letter sound correspondences. And phonics and phonemic awareness are not the same thing, but they are really good, super friends together. And then evidence-based, and we talked about evidence-based instructional strategies, with Dr. Chauffin, so you did Alconon boxes, you’ll also hear them called sound boxes. You used fingers, you used chips. The next step up is adding in magnetic letters. Once they’re ready for it. 

And then we talked about some resources for educators. Also, let me plug the Emergent, or the Early Literacy Micro-Credential. That’s not on here, but if you haven’t done it, our last term for Emergent started yesterday, or no, the enrollment opened this week, and we have one more term coming up for elementary and secondary, so please go to our website if you’re interested in more online professional learning, and this year there’s a $1,000 stipend, so if you get it done successfully, you’ll get a $1,000 stipend, you’ll get 60 PL hours, and you get 6 CEUs, and also it counts for your 40-hour reading renewal at lastingerLearning.com. Thank you. Thank you, Hope.