Episode 1: Your Reader’s Journey
The research all points in the same direction: all people learn to read in the same way. But how? What are the steps to becoming a successful reader? Which direction should they take? What are the foundational skills? Let’s look at the steps that every reader takes on his or her journey to become successful.
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The Reader’s Journey
Emergent Phonological Awareness
What is it?: Emergent phonological awareness means being able to understand things like rhyme, syllable and sentence segmentation, alliteration, etc.
Why is it important?: Phonological awareness is vital in this reading journey because students need to be able to manipulate and recognize sounds in words.
The Scoop:
It’s common to think that readers should start with letters and sounds, but the journey actually begins when students pay attention to the sound of spoken words - it’s all about learning it orally to start.
The following are emergent phonological awareness skills that are taught orally:
Rhyme - This gets students playing with words, and their structure, and is a prerequisite for learning word families.
Sentence Segmentation - Students can recognize how many words in a sentence and be able to pick out each individual word, regardless of syllables.
Syllables - Counting syllables contribute to better decoding, reading, and writing.
Letter Names and Sounds
What is it?: Students realize that letters have both a name and a sound.
Why is it important?: Think of it like a puzzle: students are putting the pieces of the reading puzzle together when they realize that things with meaning are associated with a picture or symbol.
The Scoop:
This usually happens first with their names and names that are familiar to them, as well as environmental print.
Students look at this print and realize that letters have names as well as sounds.
They also realize that these words have meaning attached to them.
Beginning Phonemic Awareness
What is it?: Phonemic awareness falls under the umbrella of phonological awareness and is the ability to recognize individual sounds and manipulate these individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words.
Why is it important?: Phonemic awareness is one of the most telling signs of future reading success. With a solid foundation of phonemic awareness, students will have an understanding of how sounds work so they can string them together to make words.
The Scoop:
Certain literacy programs promote the absolute mastery of phonological awareness background (such as rhyming, syllables, and sentence segmentation) and suggest not moving forward until students are super skilled in this area. But we’re learning we can spend too much time in this portion of the phonological awareness umbrella.
The truth? All students need is a handful of letters to blend and segment. Then, they’re ready to actually read words.
Blending and segmenting are the two biggest skills students need in order to become more proficient readers and spellers.
Aspects of phonemic awareness:
Blending - ability to hear a spoken word that’s been segmented
/m/ /a/ /n/ → man /p/ /e/ /n/ → pen
Segmenting - ability to hear a spoken word and then segment it
man → /m/ /a/ /n/ pen → /p/ /e/ /n/
Phonetic Decoding = Blending + Segmenting
Phonetic decoding is when students are able to look at a new word, sound it out, and read it as a whole word. They recognize sounds they know, then they blend, then the segment.
Without these basics in place, students can seem like they’re successful in kindergarten through second grade because the words are simple. But when these students get to 3rd grade, they tend to struggle. These students are “overcompensaters”, and rely on a “fake it until you make it” approach. But students who have been taught with a strategic phonics approach have better success and fewer struggles later on.
“You cannot do in print what you cannot do aloud. If you are unable to take sounds apart (segmentation) and put them back together (blending), you have no chance of doing it while reading.” - Savannah, Campbell Creates Readers
Beginning Phoneme Manipulation
What is it?: Phoneme manipulation is when you take a word and change the phonemes (or sounds) within the word. You can add to a word, delete a sound from a word, or substitute.
Why is it important?: This lends itself to reading and spelling as students decode and learn to spell words, as well as
Phonics and Decoding
We must practice blending, segmenting, and phoneme manipulation in PRINT.
Example: Students are forgetting that pesky second sound with blends. “Stop” becomes “sop” and “snap” becomes “sap.” So we practice phoneme manipulation.
“The word is ‘nap’. /n/ /a/ /p/. Can you add an /s/ at the beginning?”
Practice, add more letters, and then eventually apply it to reading blends.
Once these phonetic decoding and awareness pieces are in place, fluency then follows.
Fluency
Orthographic mapping is how we remember words. It’s the opposite of decoding, which is to look at the word, segment its sounds, and then blend.
When orthographically mapping, they must know the word and must be able to map the pronunciation to print and meaning. This means explicit phonics instruction is more important than ever so that their brains can map sounds in words they aren’t familiar with. Irregular words require more attention to letters and sounds than regular words.
Once this “mapping” happens, these unfamiliar words then become sight words! Through phoneme graphing and mapping, students can turn unknown words into sight words. And when this happens, they emerge as fluent readers.
Reading Comprehension
And when students read fluently, comprehension can take place. This is the ultimate reading goal: students aren’t just reading, they’re reading to learn and reading for information.
Picture a bridge and pretend that you’re a runner and standing at the bottom of a big hill. At the bottom of the hill, that’s the emergent phonological awareness part of your journey. And you’re probably thinking: Wow. It’s going to take me a really long time to get to the top of this hill.
Then, right before you reach the top of the hill, you think: I’m not going to make it - this is the peak. This is the hardest part! When we’re thinking about the hardest part of the hill, that’s where the blending and segmenting part is. It’s a slow and awkward phase - they’re not reading yet. They’re just learning skills and foundational skills they need to be successful readers. Repeating, reviewing, and working on phonics.
We need to sit on this stage with our students for as long as it takes. Because if we don’t, they'll hit that wall in 3rd or 4th grade when they need to be fluent readers and reading to learn. We have to do the work and support them in phonics because once they reach the top of the hill, because once they reach the top, then they’re reading fluently and comprehending
