Will Explicit Instruction in Phonemic Awareness Increasethe Reading Skills of At Risk First Graders?

Ann M. HolewinskiDecember 2007

Elementary Education 792Seminar in Curriculum and Instruction

Dr. Judith Hankes

2

Will Explicit Instruction in Phonemic Awareness Increase theReading Skills of At Risk First Graders?

Ann M. Holewinski

A Seminar Paper Submitted in PartialFulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

Master of Science in Education

Curriculum and Instruction

University of Wisconsin-OshkoshOshkosh, Wisconsin 54901-8621

December 2007

Approval Date

First reader: _____________________________________________________________Judith Hankes, Ph. D

Second reader: ___________________________________________________________Pam Dorn, MA

3

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract page 4

Study Sequence page 5

Statement of the Problem page 6

Situating the Problem page 6

Literature Review page 8

Methods

Participants page 12

Data Sources page 13

Intervention page 14

Data Analysis and Findings page 16

Conclusions page 20

Future Implications page 22

References page 23

4

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to determine whether explicit instruction in

phonemic awareness would increase the reading skills of at risk first graders. The study

was motivated by the fact that several of my first grade students lacked phonemic

awareness skills and read below grade level. Explicit instruction in phonemic awareness

was the primary intervention method of this study. The control group of the study solely

received guided reading and word work instruction. The experimental group of the study

received guided reading, word work instruction, as well as explicit instruction in

phonemic awareness during the four-week intervention period. The goal of the lessons

was to help children develop phonemic awareness skills that promote success with

learning to read. The results of the study indicated that explicit instruction in phonemic

awareness combined with guided reading and word work produced greater learning gains

than guided reading and word work alone.

5

STUDY SEQUENCE

September

• Brainstormed possible action research topics• Identified action research topic• Drafted statement of the problem• Drafted situating the problem• Gathered phonemic awareness resource books• Gathered pre-assessment and post-assessment materials• Administered pre-assessments• Began literature review research

October

• Submitted UW-Oshkosh human consent form• Revised statement of the problem• Revised situating the problem• Drafted literature review• Revised literature review• Drafted methods section• Began phonemic awareness intervention activities

November

• Revised methods section• Continued phonemic awareness intervention activities• Administered post-assessments• Analyzed data• Drafted data analysis and findings section• Drafted conclusions and future implications section• Drafted abstract• Completed table of contents• Submitted to second reader: Pam Dorn, MA• Submitted to first reader: Dr. Judith Hankes, UW-Oshkosh professor• Revised draft

6

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

At the beginning of the school year I assessed my first grade students’ level of

phonemic awareness. All except three of the students performed proficient on this

assessment. These three students also read at a text reading level that was below grade

level. Research has shown that phonemic awareness is a strong indicator of a child’s

future reading success. Since explicit instruction in phonemic awareness may increase a

child’s reading ability I decided that a study of phonemic awareness would be a valuable

undertaking. The purpose of this study was to determine whether explicit instruction in

phonemic awareness would increase the reading skills of these three at risk readers.

SITUATING THE PROBLEM

This study was conducted during my first year as a first and second grade multi-

age teacher in the Madison Metropolitan School District. The school in which the study

was conducted serves students in kindergarten through second grade and has a student

population of approximately 350 students. This population is both culturally and

economically diverse. Approximately 72% of the students are identified as representing

minority racial groups, and 67% of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch. These

demographics qualify the school to participate in the Wisconsin SAGE (Student

Achievement Guarantee in Education) program, which ensures that the student to teacher

ratio is no greater than 15 to 1. My first and second grade multi-age classroom is

comprised of 10 first graders and 5 second graders of both Hispanic and Caucasian

decent, 10 girls and 5 boys.

7

Children enter first and second grade with different backgrounds and experiences.

Each year I must implement an appropriate literacy curriculum that will allow my

students to become successful readers and writers. The school that I work at focuses on a

balanced literacy approach to teaching reading. Since every student develops their

literacy skills at a different rate, this approach allows the teacher to develop instruction

that meets the various needs of each individual student. In kindergarten, students are

given many opportunities to practice developing their phonemic awareness within this

balanced literacy framework.

At the beginning of the school year I assessed my first grade students’ level of

phonemic awareness. All, except three, of the students performed proficient on this

assessment. I noticed that when the students would sound out a word, they often did not

hear all of the sounds in the word. They would often say the sounds in a word and were

unable to blend them together to form the word. In addition, all three of these students

were reading below grade level on the Rigby PM Benchmark Reading Assessment

(2007). I wondered how I would meet the needs of these three students so that they could

grow into successful readers and writers.

As I began to learn more about the concept of phonemic awareness I realized that

it was a valuable piece missing from my literacy curriculum. I began to consider ways

that I could implement phonemic awareness activities into my daily instruction. The goal

of my study was to help struggling first grade readers develop an “ear” for language—to

hear certain sounds, identify sound sequence, and to understand the role that phonemes

play in forming words. It was my hope that increasing their level of phonemic awareness

would lead to an increase in their text reading level.

8

LITERATURE REVIEW

Phonemic awareness has become a key topic in reading research and practice.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken

words (Chard & Dickson, 1999). Speech stream is made up of a continuous sequence of

sounds called phonemes. Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound that are important in

communication and the development of beginning literacy. In its simplest form,

phonemic awareness involves understanding sound patterns. More complex tasks include

the ability to segment, blend, delete, and insert phonemic segments (Stanovich, 1992;

Yopp, 1988).

Teachers often supplement the literacy curriculum with phonics instruction for

students with poor decoding skills. Phonics generally refers to the ability to use letter

sound and other rules to sound out words. Children who lack phonemic awareness are

unlikely to benefit from instruction in phonics (Juel, Griffith, & Gough, 1986) because

they do not understand what letters and spellings are meant to represent. Instruction in

phonics teaches children to retrieve sounds as they look at letters. Phonemic awareness

instruction takes a step back and helps children concentrate on the order of the individual

sounds they hear in words (Adams, 1990; Chase & Tallal, 1991; Perfetti et al., 1987;

Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1994).

Phonemic awareness is an essential component to learning to read and spell

because English is alphabetic. In an alphabetic language, letters represent sounds.

Adam’s (1990) review of research related to beginning reading stressed the importance of

functional understanding of the alphabetic principle. Adam’s concluded, “Faced with an

alphabetic script, the child’s level of phonemic awareness on entering school may be the

9

single most powerful determinant of the success he or she will experience in learning to

read” (p. 304). Children who start school with a lack of phonemic awareness will have

difficulty acquiring the alphabetic principle, which will hinder their ability to decode

words (Blachman, 1991).

Phonemic awareness is found to be a powerful predictor of future reading

difficulties, and it is also a major cause of word-level reading difficulties (Torgesen &

Wagner, 1998). Studies have shown that phonemic awareness instruction results in

improved phonemic awareness skills, more rapid response to beginning reading

instruction, and improved subsequent reading development (Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley,

1993; Cunningham, 1990; O’Connor, Jenkins, Leicester, & Slocum, 1993; Tangel &

Blachman, 1992).

Phonemic awareness has been shown to be a strong predictor of future reading

achievement (Juel, 1988; Juel, Griffith, & Gough, 1986; Lomax & McGee, 1987; Tunmer

& Nesdale, 1985). Children who enter first grade with poor phonemic awareness skills

are most likely to remain struggling readers at the end of fourth grade, since their lack of

phonemic awareness contributes to their slow acquisition of word identification skills

(Juel, 1988). Phonemic awareness is a hard concept for many children to understand.

According to Adams (1990), about one-third of middle-class children fail to attain

phonemic awareness by the end of first grade. This may be caused by the fact that

phonemes are such abstract elements (Griffith & Olson, 1992).

Teachers can determine whether or not a child is phonemically aware by

administering a variety of tasks (Lewkowicz, 1980; Yopp, 1988). Performing phonemic

awareness tasks is not easy. Children must treat speech as an object and move their

10

attention away from the content of speech to the form of speech. Phonemic awareness

tasks require that children manipulate the units of speech instead of focusing on the

meaning.

Research on phonemic awareness has identified tasks that appear to be reliable

and valid predictors of reading improvement. Yopp (1988) identified two tasks from a

series of 10 phonemic awareness tests that together accounted for 58% of the variance in

scores on a test devised to simulate the process of learning to read. It is suggested that

these phonemic awareness tests could be used to identify children who may benefit from

instruction in phonemic awareness (Share et al., 1984).

Research has shown that at risk readers have trouble distinguishing sounds on

their own, and require explicit instruction in these skills (Blachman 1997; Mathes &

Torgesen, 1998; Snow, Burns, and Griffin, 1998). Explicit instruction in phonemic

awareness is a systematic method of instruction that teaches children to hear the sounds

that make up words, recognize relationships between sounds, and rearrange sounds to

make new words.

The National Reading Panel (2000) reported that phonemic awareness was an

important educational component because it helps “children understand and use the

alphabetic system to read and write” (p. 2-33). In order for struggling readers to develop

phonemic awareness they need to be given opportunities to practice phonemic awareness

skills. Most instruction can be incorporated into the context of meaningful reading or

writing (Wadlington, 2000; Yopp, 1992). Some children need more extensive practice

with phonemic awareness skills. Struggling readers benefit most from explicit instruction

11

in phonemic awareness along with instruction in how to apply those skills in a

meaningful context (Cunningham, 1990).

Studies have revealed that instruction in phonemic awareness has a positive effect

on the development of children’s word recognition and spelling abilities. Bradley and

Bryant (1983) presented phonemic awareness training to children over a two-year period.

They concluded that training in phonemic awareness had a positive effect on reading

improvement, and the training was most successful when combined with explicit

instruction in the alphabetic principle. Ball and Blachman (1991) found that most

kindergarteners are capable of being taught how to segment spoken words into

phonemes. Their research concluded that the most beneficial phonemic awareness

training involves letter-name and letter-sound instruction because it makes explicit the

connection between sound segments and letters.

The importance of phonemic awareness is present in different instructional

approaches. Griffith, Klesius, and Kromrey (1992) found that phonemic awareness is an

important factor in both whole language and traditional classrooms. Dahl and Freppon’s

(1995) study found that both skills-based and whole language classrooms helped children

increase their awareness of and experiment with letter-sound relations. It was only in

whole-language classrooms that children were found to apply their understanding of

letters and sounds.

Research literature suggests that brief amounts of phonemic awareness training

result in increases in phonemic awareness performance (Brady & Moats, 1998). The

length of instruction ranged from 10 minutes to 30 minutes per session. In some studies,

12

instruction occurred daily. In other studies instruction occurred two or three times a

week. Training took place over the course of a minimum of 3 weeks up to 2 years.

There were several gaps that I found as I reviewed the literature. Although Snow

et al. (1998) suggested that some type of daily phonemic awareness instruction be

provided in kindergarten, the exact amount of time required is still unclear (Blachman,

1997). Researchers are unsure as to which phonemes should be introduced first and

whether phoneme counting should be introduced before phoneme segmenting (Blachman,

1997; Stanovich, Cunningham, & Cramer, 1984). It is also less clear whether phonemic

awareness develops as a prerequisite or a consequence of learning to read. Some studies

supported the notion that phonemic awareness is a consequence of exposure to print and

formal reading instruction (Ehri, 1979; Read et al., 1986;), but there is also evidence that

at least some level of phonemic awareness is a prerequisite to learning to read (Juel,

Griffith, & Gough, 1986; Tunmer & Nesdale, 1985).

METHODS

PARTICIPANTS

This study included both an experimental group and a control group. Six six-year

old first grade students, three boys and three girls, were selected as study participants

based on their comparable text reading levels using the Rigby PM Benchmark Reading

Assessment (2007). All six students received minimal scores on the Yopp-Singer Test of

Phoneme Segmentation (1995) and read below grade level. Of these six matched

students, three were selected as intervention participants and three were selected as

control participants.

13

DATA SOURCES

Students in both the experimental and control groups were assessed using the

Rigby PM Benchmark Reading Assessment (2007) and the Yopp-Singer Test of

Phoneme Segmentation (1995).

The Rigby PM Benchmark Reading Assessment is a series of leveled books and

recording sheets designed to allow teachers to determine students' reading accuracy and

comprehension levels. If the accuracy level is between 90%-94% and the student has

replied to the comprehension questions with appropriate understanding, the student’s

instructional reading level has been identified. This assessment provides teachers with a

method for assessing and documenting primary students' development as readers over

time within a literature-based instructional reading program. The assessments are

conducted during one-on-one reading conferences as children read specially selected

assessment texts. The Rigby PM Benchmark Reading Assessment was given as both a

pre-test and a post-test.

The Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation is a brief test of children’s

ability to isolate and pronounce the individual phonemes in a word. For example, given

the orally presented word fish, the student should respond with three separate sounds: /f/-

/i/-/sh/. Sounds, not letter names are the correct response. This 22-item test is reported

by Yopp (1988) to be both a valid and highly reliable measure of phonemic awareness.

Immediately prior to the administration of the test, a student is trained with three practice

items.  Feedback is provided to the child in the form of praise, or in the case of an error,

the correct answer is modeled.  The child's score is the number of items correctly

segmented into all constituent phonemes. Students who obtain a perfect or nearly perfect

14

score are those who are phonemically aware.  Students who respond correctly to some of

the items may be thought of as having emerging phonemic awareness skills.  Little or few

correct responses suggest intervention. The Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation

was given as both a pre-test and a post-test.

INTERVENTION

Explicit instruction in phonemic awareness was the primary intervention method

of this study. The control group of the study solely received guided reading and word

work instruction. The experimental group of the study received guided reading, word

work instruction, as well as explicit instruction in phonemic awareness during the four-

week intervention period.

Students in both the control group and experimental group met with their guided

reading groups daily. Guided reading lessons focused on specific reading strategies using

books that were at the student’s level. Such strategies included predicting, making

connections, questioning, and fluency. Students also engaged in word work activities

each day. Word work activities provided students the opportunity to manipulate words in

meaningful activities. Word word activities included word sorts that involved finding

patterns in words.

Students in the experimental group received explicit instruction in phonemic

awareness. The phonemic awareness lessons were presented over a four-week period and

took approximately 20-30 minutes each to administer. The twenty phonemic awareness

lessons used in the intervention were all taken from the book, A Sound Start: Phonemic

Awareness Lessons For Reading Success (2002). The first ten lessons focused on the

15

phonemic awareness skills (e.g. rhyming, word/syllable awareness, onset-rime) and the

last ten lessons focused on the phoneme (e.g. isolation of beginning, middle, and ending

sound; phoneme counting, blending, and segmenting). The goal of the lessons was to

help children develop phonemic awareness skills that promote success with learning to

read.

Literature was included in some of the lessons to help link phonemic awareness

to reading. The stories gave students the opportunity to look at pictures, follow a

sequence of events, listen to oral speech, and practice phonemic awareness skills. The

children were often active during many of the activities and took turns manipulating

words and sounds.

The following is an outline of the skills targeted each day:

Day Area targeted

1 Concept of words

2 Rhyme recognition and discrimination

3 Rhyme choice

4 Rhyme production

5 Syllable awareness/counting

6 Syllable blending

7 Syllable deletion

8 Onset-rime blending

9 Onset-rime blending

10 Review/Assessment of rhyme production, blending syllables, and blending

onset-rime

16

11 Initial sound identification

12 Initial sound production

13 Final sound identification

14 Final sound production

15 Medial sound production

16 Phoneme counting

17 Phoneme blending

18 Phoneme blending

19 Phoneme Segmentation

20 Review/assessment of initial, medial, and final sound identification; phoneme

counting, segmenting, blending, and deleting

DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

I organized the students’ phonemic awareness pre-test and post-test scores in a

table format. Figure 1 shows the results of the Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme

Segmentation that was administered prior to and following the intervention. Analysis of

the phonemic awareness pre-test scores revealed that students in both the experimental

and control group were performing at a minimal level of phonemic awareness. At the

end of the four-week intervention, students were given the phonemic awareness post-test.

Analysis of the post-test data revealed that the students in the experimental group had

higher phonemic awareness scores than the students in the control group. Both pre-test

and post-test scores are reported in Table1.

17

Student One of the control group segmented 5 out of 22 words correctly on the

Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation pre-test. On the post-test, Student One

segmented 12 out of 22 words correctly. Student Two of the control group segmented 6

out of 22 words correctly on the Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation pre-test.

On the post-test, Student Two segmented 11 out of 22 words correctly. Student Three of

the control group segmented 6 out of 22 words correctly on the Yopp-Singer Test of

Phoneme Segmentation pre-test. On the post-test, Student Three segmented 12 out of 22

words correctly (Table 1).

Student One of the experimental group segmented 6 out of 22 words correctly on

the Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation pre-test. On the post-test, Student One

segmented 18 out of 22 words correctly. Student Two of the experimental group

segmented 5 out of 22 words correctly on the Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme

Segmentation pre-test. On the post-test, Student Two segmented 17 out of 22 words

correctly. Student Three of the experimental group segmented 5 out of 22 words

correctly on the Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation pre-test. On the post-test,

Student Three segmented 17 out of 22 words correctly (Table 1).

18

Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation Results

Table 1

Yopp-Singer Test ofPhoneme Segmentation

Score = ___/22

Yopp-Singer Test ofPhoneme Segmentation

Score = ___/22

(Pre-intervention) (Post-intervention)

Control Group

Student 1 5 12

Student 2 6 11

Student 3 6 12

Experimental Group

Student 1 6 18

Student 2 5 17

Student 3 5 17

Students’ text reading levels were also organized in a table format. Figure 2

shows the results of the Rigby PM Benchmark Reading Assessment that was

administered prior to and following the intervention. Analysis of the text reading level

pre-test revealed that the students in both the experimental and control group were

reading below grade level. At the end of the four-week intervention, students were given

the text reading level post-test. Analysis of the post-test data revealed that the students in

the experimental group were reading at a higher text reading level than the students in the

control group.

19

Student One of the control group read at a text reading level 3 on the Rigby PM

Benchmark Reading pre-test. On the post-test, Student One read at a text reading level 6.

Student Two of the control group read at a text reading level 3 on the Rigby PM

Benchmark Reading pre-test. On the post-test, Student Two read at a text reading level 5.

Student Three of the control group read at a text reading level 3 on the Rigby PM

Benchmark Reading pre-test. On the post-test, Student Three read at a text reading level

6 (Table 2).

Student One of the experimental group read at a text reading level 3 on the Rigby

PM Benchmark Reading pre-test. On the post-test, Student One read at a text reading

level 8. Student Two of the experimental group read at a text reading level 3 on the

Rigby PM Benchmark Reading pre-test. On the post-test, Student Two read at a text

reading level 7. Student Three of the experimental group read at a text reading level 3 on

the Rigby PM Benchmark Reading pre-test. On the post-test, Student Three read at a text

reading level 7 (Table 2).

20

Rigby PM Benchmark Assessment Results

Table 2

Text Reading Level Text Reading Level

(Pre-intervention) (Post-intervention)

Control Group

Student 1 3 6

Student 2 3 5

Student 3 3 6

Experimental Group

Student 1 3 8

Student 2 3 7

Student 3 3 7

CONCLUSIONS

Analysis of the pre-intervention and post-intervention data indicated that explicit

instruction in phonemic awareness combined with guided reading and word work

positively impacted the experimental group’s reading levels. Although students in both

the control group and the experimental group showed growth, the students in the

experimental group showed the most significant improvement in regards to their reading

levels and phonemic awareness skills.

21

Post-assessment data supported studies that have shown that phonemic awareness

instruction results in improved phonemic awareness skills, more rapid response to

beginning reading instruction, and improved subsequent reading development (Byrne &

Fielding-Barnsley, 1993; Cunningham, 1990; O’Connor, Jenkins, Leicester, & Slocum,

1993; Tangel & Blachman, 1992). The gains made by the experimental group from a text

reading level 3 to a text reading level 7 and 8 provided evidence that students who read

below grade level do benefit from explicit instruction in phonemic awareness.

According to Bradley and Bryant (1983), training in phonemic awareness had a

positive effect on reading improvement, and the training was most successful when

combined with explicit instruction in the alphabetic principle. The alphabetic principle is

the idea that letters and letter patterns represent the sounds of spoken language. In

addition to the explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, all students in the study were

given opportunities to practice the alphabetic principle in their guided reading groups and

word work activities.

Research literature suggests that brief amounts of phonemic awareness training

result in increases in phonemic awareness performance (Brady & Moats, 1998). I found

this claim to be true over the course of the study. It was interesting to see the significant

gains that the students in the experimental group had made over the brief 4-week

intervention period.

22

FUTURE IMPLICATIONS

As a result of this study, I plan to continue to provide the experimental group with

explicit instruction in phonemic awareness. It is my hope that daily phonemic awareness

instruction will further increase the experimental group’s text reading levels. I also

intend to implement phonemic awareness activities with a few other struggling readers in

my classroom. Since the experimental group was positively impacted by instruction in

phonemic awareness it is my hope that other struggling readers will benefit from this

intervention too. I also plan on sharing the phonemic awareness activities that I used

during this study with my colleagues.

23

References

Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge,MA: MIT Press.

Ball, E. W., & Blachman, B. A. (1991). Does phoneme segmentation training inkindergarten make a difference in early word recognition and developmentalspelling? Reading Research Quarterly, 26, 49-66.

Blachman, B. A. (1997). Foundations of reading acquisition and dyslexia: Implicationsfor early intervention. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Blachman, B. A. (1991). Phonological awareness: Implications for pre-reading and earlyreading instruction. In S. A. Brady & D.P. Shankweiler (Eds.), Phonologicalprocesses in literacy (pp. 29-36). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Bradley, L., & Bryant, P. E. (1983). Categorizing sounds and learning to read--A causalconnection. Nature, 301, 419-421.

Brady, S., & Moats, L. (1998). Buy books, teach reading. The California Reader, 31(4),6-10.

Byrne, B., & Fielding-Barnsley, R. (1993). Evaluation of a program to teach phonemicawareness to young children: A 1-year follow-up. Journal of EducationalPsychology, 85, 104-111.

Chard, D., & Dickson, S. (1999). Phonological awareness: Instructional and assessmentguidelines. Intervention in School and Clinic, 34(5), 261-27.

Chase, C. H., & Tallal, P. (1991). Cognitive models of developmental reading disorders.In J.E. Obrzut & G.W. Hynd (Eds.), Neuropsychological foundations of learningdisabilities: A handbook for issues, methods, and practice. New York: AcademicPress.

Cunningham, A. E. (1990). Explicit versus implicit instruction in phonemic awareness.Journal of Experimental Psychology, 50, 429-444.

Dahl, K. L., & Freppon, P. A. (1995). A comparison of innercity children's interpretationof reading and writing instruction in the early grades in skills-based and wholelanguage classrooms. Reading Research Quarterly, 30, 50-74.

Ehri, L. (1979). Linguistic insight: Threshold of reading acquisition. Reading research:Advances in theory and practice, 1, 63-114.

Griffith, P. L., Klesius, J. P., & Kromrey, J. D. (1992). The effect of phonemicawareness on the literacy development of first grade children in a traditional or awhole language classroom. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 6, 86-92.

24

Griffith, P. L., & Olson, M. W. (1992). Phonemic awareness helps beginning readersbreak the code. The Reading Teacher, 45, 516-523.

Juel, C. (1988). Learning to read and write: A longitudinal study of 54 children from first through fourth grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, 78, 243-255.

Juel, C., Griffith, P. L., & Gough, P. B. (1986). Acquisition of literacy: A longitudinal study of children in first and second grade. Journal of Educational Psychology, 78,

243-255.

Lewkowicz, N. (1980). Phonemic awareness training: What to teach and how to teach it.Journal of Educational Psychology, 72, 686-700.

Lomax, R. G., & McGee, L. M. (1987). Young children's concepts about print andmeaning: Toward a model of word reading acquisition. Reading ResearchQuarterly, 22, 237-256.

Mathes, P., & Torgesen, J. (1998). All children can learn to read: Critical care forprevention of reading failure. Peabody Journal of Education, 73, 317-340.

McCormick, C. E., Throneburg, R. N., & Smitley, J. M. (2002). A Sound start:Phonemic awareness lessons for reading success. New York: The Guilford Press.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-basedassessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications forreading instruction. Bethesda, MA: National Institutes of Health.

O'Connor, R. E., Jenkins, J. R., Leicester, N., & Slocum, T. A. (1993). Teachingphonological awareness to young children with learning disabilities. ExceptionalChildren, 59, 532-546.

Perfetti, C. A., Beck, I., Bell, L. C., & Hughes, C. (1987). Phonemic knowledge andlearning to read are reciprocal: A longitudinal study of first grade children. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 33, 283-319.

Read, C., Yun-Fei, Z., Hong-Yin, N., & Bao-Qing, D. (1986). The ability to manipulatespeech sounds depends on knowing alphabetic writing. Cognition, 24, 31-44.

Rigby PM Benchmark Reading Assessment. Harcourt Achieve Inc. 2007

Share, D. L., Jorm, A. F., Maclean, R., & Matthews, R. (1984). Sources of individualdifferences in reading acquisition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 76, 1309-1324.

Snow, C. E., Burns, M. S., & Griffin, P. (Eds.). (1998). Preventing reading difficulties inyoung children. Washington, D.C: National Academy Press.

Stanovich, K. E. (1992). Speculations on the causes and consequences of individualdifferences in early reading acquisition. Reading Acquisition, 24(5), 307-342.

25

Stanovich, K. E., Cunningham, A. E., & Cramer, B. B. (1984). Assessing phonologicalawareness in kindergarten children: Issues of task comparability. Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology, 38, 191-207.

Tangel, D. M., & Blachman, B. A. (1992). Effects of phoneme awareness instruction onkindergarten children's invented spelling. Journal of Reading Behavior, 29, 233-259.

Torgesen, J. K., & Wagner, R. K. (1998). Alternative diagnostic approaches for specificdevelopmental reading disabilities. Learning Disabilities Research and Practice,13, 220-232.

Torgesen, J. K., Wagner, R. K., & Rashotte, C. A. (1994). Longitudinal studies ofphonological processing and reading. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 27, 276-286.

Tunmer, W. E., & Nesdale, A. R. (1985). Phonemic segmentation skill and beginningreading. Journal of Educational Psychology, 77, 417-427.

Wadlington, E. (2000). Effective language arts instruction for students with dyslexia.Preventing School Failure, 44, 61-65.

Yopp, H. K. (1995). A test for assessing phonemic awareness in young children. TheReading Teacher, 49, 20-29.

Yopp, H. K. (1992). Developing phonemic awareness in young children. The ReadingTeacher, 45, 696-703.

Yopp, H. K. (1988). The validity and reliability of phonemic awareness tests. ReadingResearch Quarterly, 23, 159-177.