Supporting Phonemic Awareness in the

ClassroomFinal Project Template

Final Project DirectionsAs a final project, you will develop plans for teaching phonemic awareness in your classroom, including plans for assessment procedures, analysis, and activities. This final project template will also include one example of a phonemic awareness assessment and analysis on a student.

Your plans should incorporate at least one of the technology tools explored in this course and include details for other types of phonemic awareness strengthening activities.

Complete this template as the course progresses. This template is due to your facilitator at the end of Session Six. At that time, your facilitator will review your final project and provide feedback for you in the Notes section.

Part I: General Information (Session One)

GRADE: first and second grade inclusion support and small groups outside of the classroom.

LESSON BLOCK LENGTH:45 minutes

Is Phonemic Awareness currently being addressed in your classroom? If so, how? If you are not currently teaching in a classroom, please fill out this template as if you are teaching in the classroom of your choice.

Yes, phonemic awareness is being currently addressed in the first grade. The Houghton/Mifflin reading program has teacher led phonemic awareness activities such as: phoneme blending, phoneme deletion and substitution. One thing I find is because it’s part of the reading program it’s not always the activity a particular group is ready for so I need to modify the lesson.

Part II: Phonemic Awareness(Session One)

Reflect on one of the readings from this session. Some guiding questions could be: Why is phonemic awareness an important step in learning to read? Do you currently assess student’s phonemic awareness? If not, what are the early indicators that allow you to identify if a student is at risk of reading difficulty?

Phonemic awareness is assessed for all Kindergarten and first grade students. We use the Aimsweb, which is just like the Dibels. Second grade is going to begin being assessed with Aimsweb next year. The reading program has some phonemic awareness activities that can be used with first graders. The activities take about 15 minutes to implement. Whenever I’m in a classroom for reading I like to do these “warm-ups”, as I call them. The blending usually goes well but I find phoneme deletion can be more difficult for many children. I’m going to try it with the felt like I viewed on the video.

Part III: Linguistic Components(Session Two)

From the Yopp article, which activities look promising and intriguing? Which ones might be easiest to incorporate into your current curriculum? Which activities, before assessing your students, do you think would benefit your classroom most?

It was a great article, with a lot of valuable information. I would start with reading books that contain rhymes. I think children have a lot of fun with these types of books, poems or songs and they are typically very engaging. The Hungry Thing looks like a fun book. As the article stated, kids become interactive with the reading and like to guess what word is coming next. This is very easy to incorporate into the whole class curriculum. I think the activity they described where children used colored paper to represent the number of syllables in their name was good for kindergarteners or early first graders. The follow up activities using the names for attendance was also a fun way to reinforce this skill. Also incorporating syllable division throughout the day helps to reinforce the skill and apply it to all words and not just names. We are going to lunch, recess, library etc. I think the onset-rime activity using pictures of items and having the children hold up the card with the word and then mailing it is engaging and interactive. I’d like to try this next year. I think any 5-10 minute activity prior to reading instruction is easy to incorporate into the curriculum. For instance a blending activity where the teacher says a word, isolating each phoneme. The children then take turns blending the sounds to form words. This can also be used as a “ticket to leave”. I like the way they broke down the different types of manipulation by syllable, onset-rime and phoneme.

Part IV: Audio Recording Practice(Session Two)

Share your URL to your practice audio recording here:

http://cinch.fm/eileenk/246765

Reflect on this practice. How do you imagine audio recordings will help you teach and your students learn about phonemic awareness?

I think one important aspect of audio recordings is it gives you an opportunity to hear yourself as others hear you. I know when I listened to myself after recording my remarks there were a couple of words that I thought I should say more clearly. It also gives you an opportunity to note your rate of speech.

I could see it used to practice phonics skills. I can also see recording children so they can then listen to themselves read. I think you could use this practice when trying to assist a child in improving their oral fluency.

Part V: Student Assessment(Session Three)

Which assessment will you be using on your student?

Aimsweb. I choose this because it is an assessment we currently use. This child is monitored monthly due to her low scores. I also informally assessed her for substitution, blending, segmenting and deletion of sounds.

Insert the URL of your audio-recorded assessment with a student here.

Part VI: Analysis(Session Three)

After completing an assessment on a student or small child, you will reflect on their scores using the appropriate worksheet.

What stands out to you most? I choose a child who has a lot of difficulty with reading. On phoneme segmenting her score fell within the lower end of average although still slightly below her target expected growth. On nonsense word fluency she demonstrated growth but still well below her peers.

Reflect on the areas of student strength. Her areas of strength are with letter sound fluency. She shows stronger skills with blending sounds.

Reflect on the areas of student weakness. Segmenting, substitution and deletion.

Part VII: Strategies(Session Four)

Include strategies you will use in your classroom here. Products and Performances: Games and activities Questions relevant to your lesson: Will these activities help her improve her segmenting and blending skills? Instructional Strategies: Through games and activities the student will segment and blend sounds. Specific Skills to be developed: segmenting and further develop blending skills

Part VII: Strategies, cont.(Session Four)

Include strategies you will use in your classroom here. Activities and procedures: games individually and/or with a partner

Sound substitution- What rhymes with cat and starts with /b/ Phoneme segmenting -Phoneme counting sort activity (segment phonemes in words) Phoneme blending-Phoneme Split and Say (Partners use Elkonin Box to segment and blend words)

Materials and resources needed: Elkonin Box, pictures of items and counters

Websites used: Reading Rockets, Florida Center for Reading Research References (copyright needed?)

Part VIII: Common Core Standards(Session Four)

Please list all relevant Common Core Standards here, as well as any relevant Massachusetts Proposed Additional Standards.

Reading Standard: Foundational skills

Phonological awareness

2. Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllable and sounds (phonemes)

Phonics and word recognition

3. Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.

Part IX: Technology(Session Five)

Include technology strategies you will use in your classroom here, noting also your access to computers and other required hardware. You may also consider using your newfound podcasting skills in a creative way to help students with phonemic awareness.

Lack of computers within the classroom makes it difficult to use computers.

I will try using recordings of the children so they can hear how they sound. I will also record myself periodically.

I saw some activities that could be used with a tape recorder and listening to given sounds. I will share this with first grade teachers to use in the classroom setting at a center.

Part X: Reflection(Session Six)

Include technology strategies you will use in your classroom here, noting also your access to computers and other required hardware. You may also consider using your newfound podcasting skills in a creative way to help students with phonemic awareness.

Reflecting on the course in general, I found the course to be beneficial in regards to further developing my understanding of the importance of helping children develop strong Phonemic Awareness skills. The activities, videos and readings were clear, engaging and informative. I look forward to trying some of these activities with students next year.

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