Kari Hoffman

ISED 797

How does instruction in phonemic awareness affect decoding skills in

readers with dyslexia?

Dr. Helen Hyun

December 8, 2015

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Table of Contents

Problem and Purpose of the Study

……………………………………………………………..

3

Background and Review of Related

Literature…………………………………………………..

5

Procedures

……………………………………………………………………………………..

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3

Expected Findings, Conclusions, and Recommendations

………………………………………

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7

References

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Problem and Purpose of the Study

Over the last thirty years, there has been extensive research on how

typical and struggling readers acquire reading skills.  Due to the fact that I

teach first grade in a specialized school for students with language-based

learning differences, particularly dyslexia, I am interested in gaining a

better understanding of reading acquisition.  This teacher study will

investigate the affect instruction in phonemic awareness has on decoding

skills in students with dyslexia.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate

phonemes in spoken words. This includes the understanding that spoken

words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds (Yopp,

1992). Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound in words, which make a

difference in meaning. Instruction in phonemic awareness would include

activities aimed to teach a reader that words are made up of phonemes.

These phonemes or individual sounds can be segmented, blended and

manipulated to make new words. When preparing instruction, the aspects

of phonemic awareness to be considered include: grapheme phoneme

relationships and phoneme isolation, deletion, counting, blending and

segmentation (Yopp, 1988).  Instruction should guide students in repetitive,

structured practice with these phonemic skills.

Decoding is the ability to apply knowledge of grapheme phoneme

relationships and knowledge of letter patterns to correctly pronounce

written words. Children who understand these relationships have the

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ability to quickly recognize familiar words and to figure out words they

haven’t seen before. When reading a new or unfamiliar word, a reader

decodes the word by segmenting the sounds or phonemes, which correlate

which each individual symbol or grapheme and blending the sounds

together to read the word.

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is characterized by

difficulties with accurate and fluent word recognition and by poor spelling

and decoding. Developmental dyslexia is characterized by an unexpected

difficulty in reading in children and adults who otherwise possess the

intelligence, motivation, and schooling considered necessary for accurate

and fluent reading (Shaywitz, 1998). A deficit in phonological processing

impairs the ability to decode and identify meaning from written word

(Shaywitz, 1996).  Deficits in the phonological component of language are

thought to be the cause of these difficulties, and these deficits are not

consistent when compared with other cognitive abilities. Compared to

typically developing readers, students with dyslexia have more difficulty

learning to read words and acquiring sight word vocabulary due to limited

knowledge of decoding and analogizing strategies (Ehri & McCormack,

1998). This deficit in decoding poses a challenge for gaining meaning from

text.

In this teacher study, I plan to implement instruction in phonemic

awareness with two students with dyslexia and monitor their process in

decoding. The students in this study will be two students from my first

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grade classroom who have been diagnosed with a specific learning disability

in reading. I will administer instruction in phonemic awareness four days a

week for twenty minutes each session. The progress monitoring tool I will

use will be from the Wilson Fundations language program, which I use to

teach reading and writing in class. This progress monitoring tool will

assess the students’ abilities to decode written real words and nonsense

words and their ability to segment sounds in a word read aloud. Based on

prior research on the phonological nature of dyslexia, my assumption is that

instruction in phonemic awareness will positively affect decoding skills in

students with dyslexia.  

In terms of ethical considerations, I will protect my students’ identity

by using pseudonyms to ensure confidentiality and that any documents

copied in the appendix do not show names, birth dates, addresses, or any

other personal information. All of the data will be stored in a personal

computer with password protection or in a locked file in the office which is

monitored by office staff. Only I and my instructional coach will have access

to scores and data for each student. Parents will be informed of all

procedures and attempts to protect student confidentiality. Additionally,

the information found in this study will not be related in the students’

school performance reports. Parental consent will be acquired before

conducting the study with students, and the parents have the right to

withdraw at any time as research is voluntary in nature.

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I have chosen to do this teacher study because many studies on the

topic focus on students who are typical readers and students with various

learning differences. I would like to learn the effect that additional

instruction in phonemic awareness has on a small group of students with

dyslexia. Students who have holes in their early learning of language

typically struggle to read and write fluently later in their schooling. The

research question is: How does instruction in phonemic awareness affect

decoding skills in readers with dyslexia? If I can understand the

effectiveness of instruction in phonemic awareness, I may be able to

prevent gaps in my students’ learning in the future to prevent further

struggles in learning language skills. In addition, if instruction in phonemic

awareness is affective, it may be a skill to focus on in intervention with

students who are struggling with reading and writing fluency in later years.

Background and Review of Related Literature

PHONEMIC AWARENESS

Phonemic awareness plays an important role in the ability to decode

words that will eventually become sight words read by memory.  Ehri and

McCormick (1998) caution in order for students to gain sight word

recognition and build fluency without relying too heavily on context,

students should be able to distinguish and manipulate phonemes sufficiently

in order to make connections between graphemes and phones

spontaneously when reading text. Phonemic awareness is the ability to

hear, identify, and manipulate phones.  

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Smith (1998) discusses the importance of phonemic awareness in

students’ abilities to read and write.  The article reviews strategies for

assessing phonemic awareness in children and suggests appropriate

intervention strategies for each of the assessed skill.  Immature phonemic

awareness underlies reading and spelling delays in both children with

reading disorders and typically developing readers.  Deficits in phonemic

awareness should be assessed and interventions should be put in place as

early as possible.  In kindergarten and first grade, students are already

expected to begin learning rhymes, word patterns, and segmenting and

manipulating phonemes.  As children become more mature in their

phonemic awareness, they are able to segment words into individual sounds

and split syllables, delete and substitute sounds in words.  All of these skills

are critical for the decoding process, which requires children to be aware of

the order of sounds when sounding out and blending words.  When students

who have weak phonemic awareness receive appropriate instruction, they

make a more rapid improvement in reading and spelling words when the

skill is linked with instruction in letter-sound and word learning.  Smith

concludes instruction in both phonemic awareness and whole language

instruction can be integrated in order to maximize student progress in

vocabulary development, reading comprehension, and writing skills.  “The

faster we boost children's phonemic awareness skills, the more likely

children with weaknesses in this area will "crack the code" and become

readers” (p.24).  

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The purpose of the study described by Weiner (1994) was to teach

beginning readers phonemic skills and direct students’ attention to the

relationship between their phonemic skills and decoding abilities to

determine whether phonemic awareness training would improve the

phonemic awareness and reading in beginning readers compared to no

phonemic awareness training.  Three groups of beginning readers were

instructed with the following approaches, phonemic awareness training

only, phonemic awareness training with decoding opportunities, and

phonemic awareness training with decoding and reading opportunities.  The

results show that phonemic skills’ training does interact with reading ability

in middle-level reading students. Due to limitations of this study, Weiner

calls for further studies in phonemic awareness.  This provides rational for

the study, which focuses on instruction in phonemic awareness in order to

improve decoding skills. It is apparent that Weiner understands and

supports the implications that phonemic awareness has on reading

acquisition and comprehension in mid-level reading students and

recommends effective training coupled with opportunities to read.

Yopp (1988) argues that phonemic test reliability should be an

important consideration in test selection for classroom and research use.

She administered phonemic awareness test and a word decoding test to 96

kindergarten children.   The test results showed a correlation between the

results of the phonemic awareness tests administered. The study supports

the notion that phonemic awareness is necessary for reading acquisition.

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Yopp concludes that one assessment in both compound Phonemic

Awareness and Simple Phonemic awareness are necessary for assessing

reading acquisition than any one test alone.  This information is necessary

for teachers to choose useful and well-rounded assessments in order to

assess beginning readers’ phonemic skills.  The descriptions of the various

assessments administered break down the various skills beginning readers

need to acquire through instruction in phonemic awareness.

de Carvalho (2014) investigated the relationship among reading

fluency, reading comprehension and phonological processing with typically

developing readers and readers with dyslexia. One hundred fifteen students

from grades 3-8 were grouped into a control group and a group with

dyslexia.  Students were assessed in their in their abilities to read words

and pseudowords; as well as in their text (decoding) abilities, listening and

reading comprehension, phonological short-term memory and working

memory.  The results showed that the dyslexic group performed more

poorly in all of these categories of assessment. However, both groups

showed similar performance in listening comprehension and in making

“gap-filling” inferences in reading comprehension.  This study highlights the

importance of working memory, which is necessary for reading

comprehension.  Working memory in reading involves the ability to hold on

to information and decoded words while making sense of the text. Students

with developmental dyslexia need phonological working memory to decode

and comprehend text. de Carvalho concludes the correlation between

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reading fluency and phonological memory in students with dyslexia support

the specific nature of phonological disorder in students with dyslexia.

Instruction in phonemic awareness is necessary for beginning

readers.  Students must understand that words are made up of individual

letters and sounds, which can be blended together to read words.  They

must learn to recognize graphemes and phonemes and demonstrate the

ability to manipulate these sounds.  According to the dual-route theory, this

is known as the indirect (phonological) route.  According to Coltheart et al.

(1993), students with dyslexia who struggle to master the skills needed to

read using indirect route may have what is considered Developmental

Phonological Dyslexia (Temple & Marshall, 1983).  

Because prevention is the best antidote for struggling readers,

phonemic and whole word instruction should be implemented as early as

possible (Smith, 1998).  For students who have difficulty learning the

connection between graphemes and phonemes, instruction can be as basic

as learning the names and shape of each letter and how the mouth, teeth,

and tongue form different sounds.  This can lead into direct instruction in

letter, sound correspondence, assigning keywords to represent the

connection between graphemes and phonemes (Ehri & McCormick, 1998).

When preparing instruction, the aspects of phonemic awareness which

should be considered include: grapheme phoneme relationships and

phoneme isolation, deletion, counting, blending and segmentation (Yopp,

1988).  Teachers should guide students in repetitive, structured practice

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with these phonemic skills.  It is also vital to understand the instructional

history in order to assess student’s true reading abilities and potential

(Weiner, 1994).  For students with reading challenges, it is possible that

there are gaps in their phonemic skills, which need to be filled before

building upon phonemic concepts towards decoding and eventually reading

and comprehending text.

DECODING

Decoding is the ability to apply knowledge of grapheme phoneme

relationships and knowledge of letter patterns to correctly pronounce

written words. Children who understand these relationships have the

ability to quickly recognize familiar words and to figure out words they

haven’t seen before. Explicit instruction in this area is necessary to teach

students the principles of letter-sound relationships and how to sound out

words (Reading Rockets, 2015).

Ehri argues that we must understand how readers process and

remember the written form of words.  Because each student is unique, the

process may vary from student to student.  Readers learn each skill and

eventually become capable of reading words in all five ways:

1.     By sounding out and blending letters, referred to as decoding or

phonological recoding.

2.     By pronouncing common spelling patterns, a more advanced

form of decoding

3.     By retrieving sight words from memory.

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4.     By analogizing words already known by sight.

5.     By using context to predict words. (Ehri, 1997, 1994)

The process of learning to read sight words relies heavily on the phases

involving phonemic awareness. Sufficiently read words often become sight

words which are read from memory. The processing of learning sight words

and meanings in memory involves forming relationship between graphemes

and phonemes to the spelling of words and their pronunciations (Ehri,

2005).

Ehri theorizes that the course of development of sight word reading

can be characterized by four phases.  These phases include pre-alphabetic,

partial alphabetic, full alphabetic and consolidated alphabetic phases.

Readers move fluently between these four phases throughout the process of

learning to read.  The first is decoding, also called phonological recording,

where a reader can either segment and blend graphemes into phonemes or

break words into larger chunks of syllabic units, hold them in mind, and

blend them into pronunciations that are recognized as real words.  Those

students who are reading at the pre-alphabetic phase are able to use their

decoding skills in order to decode less complex words.  This is in contrast to

readers who are reading in the partial alphabetic phase, where readers

used letter-sound cues to remember words.  Ehri and McCormick (1998)

proposed readers learn to read sight words from memory by forming

connections between letters in spellings and sounds in pronunciation of the

words.  This strategy includes both decodable words and irregular words,

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however the process differs between the two.  Furthermore, as readers

progress from the earlier phases of reading to the most proficient phase,

they learn to read words in several different ways, including: using context,

decoding by segmenting sounds or associating spelling patterns, by

analogy, and by sight.  During each phase, reading improves as students

gain and practice more strategies for reading words.

Those students who are reading at the pre-alphabetic phase are able

to use their decoding skills in order to decode less complex words.  Readers

who are reading at the partial alphabetic phase use their knowledge of

letter-sound cues to read and remember words.  Based on the phases laid

out by Ehri, most of my students are reading at the partial alphabetic phase

and are growing into the full alphabetic phase.  According to Ehri and

McCormick (1998), multiple word reading deficiencies are apparent in

struggling readers, specifically students with Dyslexia due to a discrepancy

in how strategies for reading words are developed.  Each skill is dependent

on the other; if one skill is not adequately developed, the others will not

develop adequately either.  Decoding skill is necessary to retain sight words

in memory.  A sight word vocabulary is necessary to read words by analogy

(recognizing how the spelling of an unfamiliar word is known similar word).

Familiarity with the relationship between sight words and spelling patterns

is useful for more efficient decoding. Instruction in all aspects of word

reading is necessary for students who have difficulty learning to read, “Very

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little can be left to self-discovery or chance” (Ehri & McCormick, 1998, p.

158.)

de Oliveria, da Silba, Dias, Seabra, and Macedo (2014) studied the

importance of various components in reading comprehension in students

with dyslexia comprising a study on the components of the reading

comprehension model and predictive skills in 40 typically developing

students and students with dyslexia.  In the study, listening, reading

comprehension, and word recognition skills were assessed.  de Oliveria et

al. introduce the cognitive model of reading comprehension posits that

reading comprehension is a result of the interaction between decoding and

linguistic comprehension.  They include the notion of word recognition in

her definition of decoding skills, including processing speed and

phonological awareness.  

According to de Oliveria et al., The Simple View of Reading suggests

reading comprehension includes an interaction between decoding and

linguistic comprehension.  Decoding can be understood as the conversion of

graphic symbols into sounds.  de Oliveria et al. describe three different

strategies for decoding and word recognition.  The logographic strategy

includes the use of contextual cues and visual recognition.  The alphabetical

includes an understanding of the correspondence between graphemes and

phonemes in order to decode and encode words. The orthographic strategy

involves the accumulation of the reader’s experience and the development

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of a “mental orthographic lexicon” (p.2) or ability to read sight words from

memory and based on understanding of vocabulary.

Results of de Oliveria et al.’s study showed a discrepancy in decoding

and reading comprehension skills between typically developing readers and

readers with dyslexia. They found students with dyslexia showed deficits in

processing speed and word recognition, but preserved auditory

comprehension, which allows for the understanding of listening

comprehension and text comprehension in reading.  When both abilities are

intact, written text can be decoded and understood in order for reading

comprehension to occur.  Alternately, if one of these processes is impaired,

reading comprehension will not occur due to the interaction between the

two strategies necessary for reading comprehension.  Students with

dyslexia have deficits related to word recognition, specifically in

orthographic strategy and have more difficulty in creating an “orthographic

mental lexicon,” which causes a challenge in the orthographic strategy of

reading.  Students with dyslexia have appropriate knowledge in

phonological awareness, vocabulary, naming and oral accuracy and reading

comprehension, although they require more time to complete tasks which

may be related to processing speed.  The fact that these skills are intact

suggests students with dyslexia have the ability to comprehend text and

make inferences regardless of challenges in processing speed and

phonological and decoding skills, which suggest that the readers have

developed strategies that enable them to compensate for these difficulties.  

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The ability to decode words relies heavily on phonological awareness.

As students learn to recognize and manipulate graphemes and phonemes to

read words, they begin to build a lexicon of words they are able to read

from memory or by sight.  According to the dual route theory, this implies

that students can build skills using the indirect or phonological route in

order to broaden their lexile vocabulary in order use the direct or

orthographic route to read words.  Students with dyslexia may struggle with

either the indirect or the direct route for reading words, and sometimes

both.  Understanding how to support readers who struggle with either or

both of these strategies is vital for supporting struggling readers.  Practice

reading words using indirect route can be used as a tool to strengthen the

ability to read using the direct route.  This implies that direct instruction in

both phonemic awareness and decoding are necessary for students to gain

and appropriately practice reading skills required for reading words by

sight.  This notion illustrates the importance of gaining practice in

segmenting sounds and blending phonemes for decoding words in order to

gain a broader sight word vocabulary in order to build reading fluency.

The studies reviewed show that there is a relationship between

phonemic awareness and decoding. The phonological nature of dyslexia

mentioned in the literature reviewed also supports the question asked in

this study: How does instruction in phonemic awareness affect decoding

skills in readers with dyslexia?

Procedures

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This teacher study will include a journal of teacher reflections. Each

week, I will reflect on the Phonemic Awareness lessons taught, student

engagement and performance, and the progress monitoring process for

each student. Reflections will include observations of how the students

respond to instruction and to relate this information to student performance

in progress monitoring. It will also include ideas on what should be taught

next based on assessments and how to improve instruction in future lessons

to increase student engagement.

My instructional coach, Rosa Lee Johansen will observe one lesson a

week and give feedback in our weekly debrief sessions. Rosa Lee is an

instructional coach and specializes in teaching language and beginning

reading, specifically with students with language-based learning differences

such as dyslexia. She is trained in Wilson and Wilson Fundations programs

and has been my instructional coach in teaching Fundations for three years.

During her observations, she will take note of student engagement and

performance in addition to reviewing my lesson plans and creating

suggestions on how to proceed with instruction.

In this teacher study, I plan to administer instruction in phonemic

awareness and to monitor student progress on a weekly basis for 17 weeks.

The instruction in phonemic awareness will take place four times a week for

20 minutes each session. The design of the instruction will be guided by or

directly taken from Phonemic Awareness in Young Children: A Classroom

Curriculum, (Adams, Foorman, Lundberg, & Beeler, 1998). The

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instruction includes teacher lead activities including identifying beginning

and ending sounds, replacing sounds to create new words, recognizing

rhyming words, and segmenting and blending sounds in words. There is an

assessment included in the curriculum, which I will administer as a pre

assessment before beginning instruction in order to choose appropriate

activities for my group. I will also assess my students as a post assessment

at the end of the semester to see what my students have learned. This

curriculum was recommended to me by my instructional coach, Rosa Lee

Johansen. She will provide feedback and guidance in using the curriculum

in addition to her observations throughout the study. The curriculum is

research based and created by experienced teachers in reading acquisition.

The progress monitoring tool will be taken directly from the WILSON

Fundations® program, which monitors student progress compared to skills

taught in the program. The probes I will be using from the WILSON

Fundations® progress monitoring tool assess students’ abilities to decode

written real words and nonsense words and to segment sounds heard in a

word spoken aloud. In my research study, I will provide examples of these

assessment tools. Students will be given a minute to complete each of the

three probes. The number of words read or sounds segmented within 60

seconds will be recorded, and each error will be subtracted from the score.

When reading nonsense words, each sound correctly identified will be

recorded, and each error will be subtracted from the score. The number of

words read and sounds segmented in the 60 seconds will be recorded and

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plotted on a graph. A line will be drawn from the number of sounds read

the first week to the benchmark number of words or sounds to be read by

week 17, which is provided by WILSON Fundations®. As the number of

words read and sounds segmented are charted onto the graph each week,

progress will be reflected by assessing where the data is plotted on the

graph compared to this benchmark baseline. According to the Qualitative

Overview (2014) of the WILSON Fundations® systematic, research-based

program is a reliable source for instruction in “…foundational skills for

reading and spelling, emphasizing phonemic awareness, phonics-word

study, high frequency word study, fluency, vocabulary, handwriting and

spelling.” The reliability of the results of this progress monitoring tool will

be strengthened by keeping a consistent time, location and warm up routine

for each testing session.

I will be using a convenience sample when collecting information and

data in this teacher study. The two students I have chosen are both first

grade students in my classroom. They have both been diagnosed with a

specific learning disability in reading. In my study, I will write a more in

depth portrait of each of these two students.

Validity

I will use triangulation to increase the validity of this study and

decrease data collection bias. Triangulation means that I will gather

information from multiple sources and perspectives. Triangulation includes

the use of my teacher reflection journal and observations and meetings with

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my instructional coach. In addition, I will use two pre-existing assessments:

a pre and post assessment for phonemic awareness, and the WILSON

Fundations® progress monitoring tool. The use of a preexisting phonemic

awareness curriculum and a research based language program for progress

monitoring assure that this teacher study supports the question being

investigated. In addition, the students participating in the study will have

the diagnoses of dyslexia and/or specific learning disability in reading. A

major threat to the validity of this study is that students may acquire

phonemic awareness skills in settings outside of the instruction

administered in this study. It will be necessary acknowledge this possibility

and to explore ways to ensure that any progress made in decoding can be

related specifically to the addition instruction in phonemic awareness

administered in the study.

As a teacher study using a convenience sample, I acknowledge that

there is still an element of data collection bias to consider. The findings in

this teacher study will mostly be valuable to me as a teacher in this specific

setting with these specific students and resources. The findings in my

teacher study may be generalizable to teachers who are searching for an

intervention strategy for readers with dyslexia who are struggling to

acquire decoding skills. However, the small sample size makes this study

less generalizable. It would be useful to conduct a study with a larger

sample size and a wider demographic. Further

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Threats to the validity of my teacher study include inconsistency, data

collection bias, history, subjects’ attitude, implementation and history.

Inconsistency is a threat because it is common for students with specific

learning disabilities in reading to perform with inconsistency. In order to

help prevent this threat, I will take this inconsistency in performance into

account in my analysis of the results of my teacher research study. I will

also begin each lesson and assessment session with the same 3 minute

warm up review procedure to refresh students’ memory of the letters and

sounds they have learned. Test anxiety is also a threat because many

students who struggle with reading are often hesitant to read aloud for

assessments, especially when timed. I will attempt to minimize this threat

by allowing students to believe that this instruction and the assessments are

a typical part of the lesson, and not an assessment of them independent

from the group. I will tell them that I am using a timer to keep myself on

track so that it does not take too long, and that I am having them read aloud

so that I can learn more about what they know so that I can become better

at teaching them how to read. Due to the possibility that the students may

struggle with test anxiety and distractibility, testing will be conducted in a

small group room with limited auditory and visual distractions in which

students are familiar. History is a possible threat because some students

have had additional tutoring or speech and language services outside of

school, which may affect their performance in the classroom. I will

acknowledge this possibility and report it in my final teacher research study

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and discuss how any such services may affect student performance in class

and in assessments. Instrumentation is a threat because this teacher

research study is a convenience sample, and thus there is data collection

bias in how I interpret the findings. As stated above, I will use triangulation

with my instructional coach and two different methods of assessment to

limit the threat of data collection bias to the best of my ability.

I will assess the data from my teacher reflection journal and my

instructional coach’s observations by discussing them with my instructional

coach and comparing our findings. We will compare our observations and

findings throughout the teacher study in order to decide what instruction

strategy from the phonemic awareness curriculum to implement next. We

can use coding to find a theme within our reflections and notes as a data

analysis tool. This way, the common words and themes found can be

analyzed in order to create an instruction strategy in addition to

understanding the results of this study. We will also discuss and compare

our findings at the end of the study. I will assess my students’ progress

through comparing the scores in each section of the pre and post

assessment from the phonemic awareness curriculum. I will compare my

students’ improvement in decoding skills by comparing their weekly

progress to where they stand on the graph in relation to the projected

growth baseline drawn after the first assessment. I will also review this

data with my instructional coach to gain her input on the effectiveness of

the additional instruction in phonemic awareness.

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Expected Findings, Conclusions, and Recommendations

My expectation for this teacher study is that additional instruction in

phonemic awareness has the potential to improve decoding skills in

students with dyslexia. This statement is based on the phonological nature

of dyslexia found in the research previously stated in this proposal. I expect

that the students will show improvement in their decoding abilities and that

their progress will show growth that is somewhat in line with their

projected growth baseline set at the beginning of the study. This will be

shown in both their abilities to decode real and nonsense words. I also

expect that students will be able to segment sounds in words heard aloud

with increased accuracy due to the nature of instruction provided, which

includes explicit instruction in segmenting sounds in many lessons and

activities.

As a beginning researcher, I am aware that this teacher study has

limitations. However, moving forward I might consider altering this study

to increase the validity of the study and the transferability of the findings.

It would be beneficial to extend this study to a whole class of 12 students

rather than limit the study to two students in my language group. The

students in this study may be of a narrow demographic, and the study would

need a greater cross section, possibly involving several classrooms or

schools. I would recommend comparing data between a study group and a

control group of students with dyslexia or other specific learning disabilities

in reading. Although there may be ethical considerations to consider, it is

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worth considering implementing instruction in phonemic awareness to one

group, and to compare the findings to a control group who has not received

this additional instruction. This would be in addition to a teacher reflection

journal and additional observations and coaching sessions with an

instructional coach, since the findings should not be solely based on

assessment data. It would be interesting to also research the effects of

instruction in phonemic awareness on students’ fluency and comprehension

skills since these skills are also necessary for reading acquisition.

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References

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awareness in young children:

A classroom curriculum. Baltimore, Md.: P.H. Brookes.  

Blachman, B. (1997). Sight word learning in normal readers and dyslexics.

In foundations of reading

acquisition and dyslexia: Implications for early intervention (pp. 163-

189).  Mahwah, N.J.: L.

Erlbaum Associates.

Coltheart, M. , Curtis, B. , Atkins, P. , & Haller, M. (1993). Models of

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Coltheart, M., Masterson, J., Byng, S., Prior, M., & Riddoch, J.

( 1983). Surface dyslexia. Quarterly

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de Carvalho, C. , Kida, A. , Capellini, S. , & de Avila, C. (2014).

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746-753.

de Oliveria, D. , da Silba, P. , Dias, N. , Seabra, A. , & Macedo, E.

(2014). Reading component skills

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167-188.

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