Transcript I taught phoneme awareness: Why didn`t my

I taught phoneme awareness: Why
didn’t my students catch on?
Bruce Murray, Auburn University
Georgia Struggling Reader Conference
Sept 7, 2007
Source for lesson ideas and materials for
teaching phoneme awareness:
http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie
Note: URL in the handout is incorrect.
1. Unsound PA
assessment: Instruction
fails when we don't limit
PA to students who need it,
or when we use poor tests.
BREJ
think
/th/i/ng/k/
saw
/s/aw/
/aw/s/
Test of Phoneme Identities
1. Say: We’ll see the moon soon.
Now say /s/. Do you hear /s/ in
moon or soon?
2. Say: She caught a fish by the fin.
Now say /sh/. Do you hear /sh/ in
fish or fin?
3. Say: That bug makes a buzz.
Now say /z/. Do you hear /z/ in
bug or buzz?
MEAL
Is this word meal or seal?
SIT
Is this word sit or mitt?
2. Failure to monitor for
criterion. PA instruction
goes wrong because
teachers present activities
without individual
monitoring and reteaching.
MOON
Is this word soon or moon?
Confusion of sounds and
phonemes. PA instruction goes
wrong when focused exclusively on
sounds.
We define the phonemes not as sounds but
as motor control structures we choose to
call gestures. . . . The gestural strategy
permits coarticulation. That is, it permits
the speaker to overlap gestures that are
realized by different organs of articulation.
The consequence is that people can and do
regularly speak at rates of 10 to 20
phonemes per second.
Liberman & Liberman, 1992
Non-chance Scores on Phoneme Awareness Test
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Suburbs
Inner city
Wallach & Wallach, 1979
Vowels are phonemes made by
vocalizing while forming various
mouth shapes,
e.g., E-I-E-I-O.
Short vowels are particularly
opaque because they represent
very subtle differences in mouth
shape.
Consonants are made by tightening
the vocal channel enough to get
some friction. Some consonants
make a plain sound, visible from the
outside. They are salient
(noticeable).
Examples: /s/, /k/, /f/, /p/
Other consonants make less distinct
sounds, hidden back in mouth.
Examples: /l/, /r/, /n/, /ng/.
FOX
Is this word fox or box?
4. Wheel-spinning with
phonological awareness. Some PA
instruction goes wrong because
teachers spend too much time on
phonologi cal awareness, i.e.,
working wit h syllab les, rhymes,
onsets and rimes, and other subword
parts not encoded by alphabets.
Depth Chart Model of PA
/An/
ane
ain
a_e = /A/
ade
ake
ale
ame
ane
ape
ai = /A/
aid
ail
aim
ain
air
ait
5. Practicing manipulations before
teaching identities. PA instruction
goes wrong because we teach
advanced skills (especially
segmentation and blending) before
children learn to identif y basic vocal
gestures.
Depth Chart Model of PA
6. Neglecting a conceptual
approach to phonemes. PA
instruction goes wrong because we
give too little attention to defining
the characteristics of individual
phonemes, which are the indivi dual
vocal characteristics in phoneme
production.
Four mental operations in concept learning
1. Learn the critical attributes of the concept
from explanations, examples, and nonexamples.
2. See relationships between the concept and
other known words―learn boundaries of
meaning.
3. Apply the concept in variety of
contexts―extricate the word from its original
context.
4. Generate new contexts for the learned
concept―put words to use.
7. Failure to use letters to teach
phonemes. Inadequate use of letters
as phoneme symbols limits the
effectiveness of PA teaching.
/d/
door
/dOr/
drive
/jrIv/
HWY Q
8. Neglecting to make phonemes
sufficiently familiar and
memorable. PA instruction fails
when we don't build in many ways
to remember phonemes.
Sh is for Sheep.
Sh
Inadequate generalization
of phonemes. PA instruction
goes wrong when teachers
don't help students locate
phonemes in a variety of
different example words.
Four mental operations in concept learning
1. Learn the critical attributes of the concept
from explanations, examples, and nonexamples.
2. See relationships between the concept and
other known words―learn boundaries of
meaning.
3. Apply the concept in variety of
contexts―extricate the word from its
original context.
4. Generate new contexts for the learned
concept―put words to use.
Cats and kittens
cry for Christmas.
1. Aunt Amy's alligator ate the
armchair.
2. Amos the amiable ape ate
Amy's apron.
M
N
Tt
BISKL
Overlooking the essential
teaching practice of modeling.
Teachers limit the effectiveness
of instruction when they omit
modeling how to find phonemes
in spoken words , i.e., show and
tell with phoneme-finding
problems.
M
Omitting phoneme-finding
practice. PA instruction may
neglect the essential practice
activity that defines phoneme
awareness: Spotting phonemes
in spoken words .
Neglecting the application of
PA to reading words. PA
instructio n is incomplete when
teachers don't show students
how PA is applied in early
decoding.
t r u s t
body
coda
t r u s t
onset
rime
t r u s t
body
coda
LIKE
FIGHT
BAND
LEARN
Basic Components of a Phoneme
Awareness Lesson
Choose one phoneme to teach.
Examples: /m/ or /l/.
Devise a meaningful name, picture, and
hand gesture for your phoneme, and
display its principal grapheme.
M
Make an alliterative "tongue twister."
Have students stretch or split off your
phoneme in the twister.
Example: Many mice make music.
Lead students to study the mouth move
for your phoneme.
Provide a model of how to find your
phoneme in a spoken word.
M
Add phoneme-finding practice by testing
spoken words.
Have students blend the new phoneme
into words.
Apply phoneme awareness in phonetic
cue reading—decoding the first letters of
rhyming words.
LIKE
FIGHT
BAND
LEARN
Rr
read
mow
In kindergarten:
 Introduce phonemes with a variety of
developmentally appropriate activities.
 Work with consonants.
 Emphasize finding phonemes in spoken
words.
 Apply in invented spelling and in reading
beginning letters to distinguish rhyming
words.
By late kindergarten and with older poor
readers:
 Review phonemes to introduce vowels and
digraphs in phonics.
 Apply by using vowel correspondences
to decode and spell written words.