Episode 6: What does the Research Say about Phonemic Awareness?
An interview with Christina Winter
Podcast Episode 6: Interview with Christina Winter
Meet Christina Winter - a former first-grade teacher and science of reading rockstar who now creates resources for elementary school teachers and empowers them to lead their students to amazing heights. Below, she dispels some commonly believed myths about phonemic awareness and sheds light on its importance.
Check her out:
What is phonemic awareness?
When a child has phonemic awareness, they are able to isolate and manipulate phonemes.
The phoneme unit is the most important unit for kids to know in order to be readers.
Research shows that phonemic awareness is a strong predictor of future reading success.
Myth: We have to spend all of our time on rhyme, sentence segmenting, and syllables.
Nope! It isn’t a staircase - students don’t have to become masters of phonological awareness in order to move on to phonemic awareness.
Once students know their letter sounds, we can begin to teach blending and segmenting and get to working with words ASAP.
Remember the goal: to get kids reading!
Myth: As teachers, we need to do the entire program that’s handed to us by our schools or reading specialist
Not all manuals that we’re handed are evidence-based.
Use social media (Instagram, Facebook groups), to think more deeply and help your research and incorporate your Science of Reading findings as necessary.
In your manual, focus on these three phonemic-level skills: phoneme isolation, phoneme segmenting, and phoneme blending. These are “musts.”
Do them for 6 minutes per day (no need for more), and then move on so you can get to incorporating phonics.
Remember the goal: To get kids reading!
Myth: Phonemic awareness can be done in the dark.
Sure, technically yes - it can be done in the dark because it’s oral. But should it be?
Experts and studies continually show that we want to connect phonemic awareness and phonics - we need to bring in letters as soon as we can. That means we need to connect it to print - which you need to see!
Remember the goal: To get kids reading!
Our goal is not to get students to be good rhymers or segmenters. For the biggest success, we must bring in those letters so the kids can attach that phoneme and grapheme together. This can only be done in the light.
Myth: “My kids are SO good at phonemic awareness!”
We don’t want students to be good at phonemic awareness, per say.
Remember the goal: We want kids to be good readers! We want to grow proficient readers.
We want to say, “My kids are SO good at reading!”
We want kids to encode and decode - we simply cannot spend a plethora of minutes all on phonemic awareness. “Phonemic awareness is not a means to an end.”
National Reading Panel evidence says children had larger success with phonemic awareness when they “received focused and explicit instruction on one or two PA skills.”
It’s best to focus on one or two skills at a time in order to see greater results.
Myth: Phonemic awareness and phonics are two separate entities
False! We should be connecting phonemic awareness skills to our phonics whenever we can.
For example: if you’re teaching the long /ā/ sound, you should be blending and segmenting words with that sound.
The two should be connected and woven together - not separate.
Consider that phonemic awareness is a warm-up for the print they’re going to eventually see.
Fact: Reading has a beautiful path
Phonemic awareness → mapping → decoding and encoding words → sentences → reading a whole text!
Additional Resources & References:
Resources:
References:
National Reading Panel Report (Amie, I think I found this report on my own, but wanted to be 100% sure so I’ll wait for your link)
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