Reading Specialist Blog

In an earlier Reading Specialist post, we pointed out that, across all grade levels, there is no better predictor of students’ ability to read successfully—that is, with full comprehension—than their levels of vocabulary knowledge. It’s just simple logic: Students can’t understand what they’re reading unless they know what most of the words mean. And, as they read more and more advanced materials, they’ll see more and more words they don’t know. The all-to-common result? Reading failure—which continues throughout their lives. Continues, that is, unless students receive intense instruction that both directly teaches them new words and shows them how to learn new words on their own. In our first vocabulary-related post, we focused on the first approach to vocabulary building: direct, or intentional, teaching of specific concept-related words. Later this year, we’ll look at what we know from research about how to teach students strategies that they can use to become independent word learners (we’ll give you links to this research base with the fall post).

First, let’s clarify what we’ll be talking about. Independent word-learning strategies are procedures that you can model and teach explicitly to your students to show them how to figure out the meanings of unfamiliar words. Or, in the words of researcher Michael Graves, to help them learn about words rather than simply acquire a list of new words.

This ability is crucial because it’s how we all learn most of the words that we know. No one teaches them to us, we just learn them incidentally—through reading, listening, and talking. From childhood on, our vocabularies grow because of our exposure to and interaction with increasingly complex and rich oral language and because we see and read lots of new words in many different contexts—books, newspapers, magazines, and TV and computer screens, even signs and billboards.

In our next vocabulary post, we’ll look at specific word-learning strategies that research has identified as effective, including (1) how to use dictionaries, (2) how to identify and use context clues, (3) how to use word-part information (morphological analysis), and (4) how to build word consciousness.

Get Ready to Teach Vocabulary
Here are some things that can help you get a head start on preparing vocabulary instruction for your students in the new school year:

• Plan. Think about ways that you can include more challenging words in lessons and daily class talk. Make note of daily routines, such as getting out materials, lining up, forming groups, and of the language you use for each. Then make a list of words you might include in these routines that stretch students “word worlds.” For example, “don’t dawdle” for “keep up”; “you’ve performed exceptionally well today” rather than “good job”; “leave the door ajar” rather than “keep the door open a bit.” And so on.

• Bookmark Web sites. There are many great Web sites that can provide you with endless materials for word learning. These include age-appropriate dictionaries; rhyming dictionaries; collections of prefixes, suffixes, and roots from many different languages; lists of cognates from various languages; anagram makers, and so on.

Online Dictionaries
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/
This site also includes simple match games and word building games such as hangman.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/
This also features various word games as well as a Spanish-English Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Medical Dictionary.

http://dictionary.reference.com/
More games and language software

Rhyming Dictionaries
http://www.rhymer.com/

http://www.rhymezone.com/

Prefixes, Suffixes, Roots
http://www.prefixsuffix.com/

http://www.betterendings.org/homeschool/Words/Root%20Words

Cognates

Spanish

http://www.colorincolorado.org/educators/background/cognates

http://www.colorincolorado.org/educators/background/cognates

French
http://french.about.com/library/vocab/bl-vraisamis.htm

Italian
http://polyglottobe.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/fun-with-italian-cognates/

German
http://german.about.com/library/blcognates_A.htm

Anagram Makers
http://www.easypeasy.com/anagrams/

http://anagram.mastervb.net/

http://www.anagramgenius.com/server.html

• Make word and language games. Look for books and Web sites that offer word and language games that students can play in groups, pairs, or as individuals. Use them as models to make your own games with words from the reading selections in your students’ anthologies. You might include word search grids, Hink Pinks, rewriting familiar idioms or puns, drawing cartoons for multiple meaning words, making anagrams, “word races” that require students to make as many words as possible from one long word, completing silly analogies, and completing starters for silly sentences and rhymes.

• Promote your own word consciousness. Spend some time this summer playing word games!

In an earlier Reading Specialist post, we looked at what the research tells us about comprehension strategy instruction. In that post, we noted that helping students to acquire certain mental procedures, or cognitive strategies, that good readers use to keep track of how well they understand what they read, is a necessary part of a good reading program. Strategy instruction alone, however, is not enough. It will not equip students to read and understand their increasingly complex textbooks; or, for that matter, the newspapers, magazines, books, Web pages, and other written materials that keep us informed and allow us to function fully in our daily lives.

Research (to which we’ll link you in the fall post) shows that good readers bring to each reading activity a lot of general knowledge (and a large vocabulary—but more about that in other posts). The concepts and concept-related words they encounter in their reading activate this knowledge, triggering connections to other concepts and words, which, in turn, produces comprehension. It’s not surprising, then, that lack of general world knowledge turns up as a major cause of students’ comprehension failure across grades. And, equally unsurprising, students do not automatically develop world knowledge on their own. This means that without specific instruction designed to build their general knowledge (knowledge of the world beyond themselves) and show them how to connect this knowledge to what they already know, many students are unlikely to achieve the only purpose for picking up a book—getting meaning.

Get Ready to Teach Comprehension
Here are some things that you can do to prepare ahead for instruction that can promote knowledge building in your students:

• Build a library of fact sheets. Look through your reading program and identify the unit themes/concepts that your students will read about over the year. For each theme, prepare a fact sheet that contains related information and key concept-related words (especially words not covered in the program’s vocabulary work). Make copies of each sheet to share with the class before beginning a unit.

• Make use of your program’s resources. If you are using a commercially published reading program, check the publisher’s Web site for additional resources that you might use to increase students’ knowledge of a theme/concept. For example, many publishers have links to student-friendly Web sites for each theme covered. The Web site might also contain lists of books related to the theme. Prepare a list of the Web sites and book titles to post at the beginning of a unit.

• Practice. As you think about each theme that you will teach, think also of key words that you can use to talk about that theme. Then think of questions that you can ask that require students to use your words. Students readily add key words to their vocabulary when they have many opportunities to hear and use them.

• Make your own connections. As you look through the topics and themes you and your students will work with, think about how each relates to your own life and experience. Choose several personal experiences that you feel comfortable sharing with your class. In particular, focus on how these experiences helped you acquire knowledge that led to a better understanding of a specific topic/concept that you were interested in; other people, places, or events; or the world in general. For example, sharing your personal experiences of working with others to improve a neighborhood is a good way to introduce students to the idea of community and teamwork—basic themes in many reading programs. Telling about your experiences in learning to use new technology can help students get a grasp of the concept of perseverance, another common theme. And explaining how some machine that was invented during your childhood changed your life in some way is a great way to show the importance and impact of inventions and inventors. Having your own experiences in making connections ready to model will give you a head start in helping students bring their own experiences into play as they read.

Fluency is another area of focus for the Reading Specialist articles that we’ll post in the fall. As with other areas of reading instruction we discuss, fluency has been identified by decades of respected research as an attribute of skillful reading, and thus, fluency development is a crucial component of effective reading instruction (we’ll give you a link to this research base with the fall post). And, like the other areas, it’s often misunderstood. For example, you’ll see and hear discussions of fluency that make it sound like nothing more than reading speed or a score on an oral reading-rate chart. Now It’s true that many fluent readers read quickly (and usually score well on oral reading-rate tests), but more importantly, they also read with accuracy and comprehension—orally and silently. That is, whether reading aloud or to themselves, fluent readers don’t just recognize and read words, they group words in ways that make sense—phrases, sentences, passages; they pause as the text cues—commas, semicolons, end marks, italic or bold type—indicate; and they change tone and stress to reflect what is happening in what they read.

And so, fluency is not just a nicety that makes oral reading easier to listen to, it is an essential component of successful reading. In fact, research shows us that fluent reading is so important, that unless students develop fluency, they’re likely remain poor readers throughout their lives, regardless of how well they decode words or how bright they are.

Get Ready to Teach Fluency
Here are some things that can help you get a head start on preparing fluency instruction for your students in the new school year:

• Inform yourself. Make sure that you fully understand what fluency is and why it is important for your students. Specifically, keep in mind that fluency is not speed reading. Don’t automatically assume that students who read aloud quickly are fluent. They may just be good word callers. What matters is whether they understand what they read. On the other hand, don’t assume that students who have difficulty reading aloud lack fluency. Some very good readers are shy or hesitant to read aloud, even on a one-on-one basis with you. The proof of fluency is always in whether the reader gets the meaning of a text.

• Prepare selections for repeated readings. Research indicates that the best way to build fluency is reading practice of the sort offered by repeated oral reading. There are many forms of repeated reading, but several, including choral reading and readers’ theatre, are both effective and engaging for students. Unfortunately, many reading programs offer few selections in either a choral reading or readers’ theatre format. To augment your program, look over the reading selections for the coming year. Choose two or three—perhaps stories with lots of dialogue—and prepare reading scripts and plays for students to perform in readers’ theater. Choose other selections, such as poems, for choral reading. Finally, mark sections of various selections that you think will work well for echo reading exercises.

• Put together a collection of CDs or tapes of short stories, poems, and other materials read by professionals as models for students. If your reading program does not have recordings of its selections, make your own recordings or recruit other good readers to record them for you

• Look at and evaluate Web sites that have read-aloud and read-along functions. Bookmark sites that are appropriate for your grade level and your students. Here are some examples:

http://www.mightybook.com/story_books.html These books although read aloud are also animated. Children will have fun with them but may lose focus on the manner in which they are read.
http://www.storylineonline.net/ This is a site sponsored by the Screen Actor’s Guild and offers books read by actors such as James Earl Jones and Melissa Gilbert, and Tia & Tamera Mowry.
http://www.rif.org/kids/readingplanet/bookzone/read_aloud_stories.htm This site offers both the traditional reading of stories and story songs and raps.

Spelling? In a blog about reading instruction? Absolutely, and here’s why one of our Reading Specialist blogs this fall will deal with the role of spelling instruction in the reading program: Successful reading and good spelling skills are closely related in that both depend on the same understanding of how language works. Good spellers, like good readers, have a clear understanding that words are made up of individual sounds and groups of sounds—(syllables, prefixes, suffixes, and so on)—and can use this knowledge to rapidly decode and get the meanings of words as they read. Because the spellings of about 50% of English words are predictable based on sound/spellings, and because another 34% are predictable except for one sound, good spelling leads to increased reading fluency and aids vocabulary development. (The fall post will have links to this research base).

And, as is the case with phonemic awareness and phonics in general, don’t assume that your students will “eventually” become good spellers on their own and don’t need a lot of specific spelling instruction. Some students will learn on their own; most won’t (just ask your colleagues in the upper grades!).

Get Ready to Teach Spelling
Here are some things to do this summer that will help you help your students with spelling in the new school year:

• Review. If your school has a spelling curriculum separate from your commercially published reading program, look at it carefully to determine whether its approach fits with any spelling instruction that the reading program might contain. If you see conflicts, think about how you might address them so that students aren’t getting mixed messages. In addition, check to see whether the spelling instruction builds on students’ knowledge of sounds and spellings. If it doesn’t, begin to plan for ways to include this feature on your own. You might, for example, make lists of words from student selections that have the same spelling patterns (e.g., the –dge spelling for final /j/), origins (words that have a common Greek base, such as phono or photo), or spelling rule (the “floss” rule: after a short-vowel sound, final /f/ is spelled ff, /l/ = ll, and /s/ = ss).

• Search, collect, and prepare: For young students, prepare free-time activity sheets or games that require students to identify and match letter/sounds to spell and write or say “mystery words.” For older students prepare activity sheets or games, such as word sorts and Concentration-like games, that require students to identify and group words by spelling patterns, spelling rules, or etymology.

In the first Reading Specialist article we’ll post this fall, we focus on phonemic awareness and the role it plays in reading development and success, not just for beginning readers but also for older students. As a quick introduction here, remember that phonemes are the individual sounds in words, and phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with phonemes. Why take time to help our students, particularly students beyond beginning reading, focus on word sounds rather than whole words? Because an extensive body of research—which we’ll link you to in the fall post—has established clearly the strong relationship that exists between level of phonemic awareness and reading ability, a relationship that holds for students throughout the grades.

As spelled out by researchers Joseph Torgesen and Patricia Mathes, here’s how phonemic awareness contributes specifically to reading success: Hearing, distinguishing, and working with phonemes helps students come to the understanding that the letters they see in print represent the individual sounds they hear in words. It is this understanding that students must have if they are to “get” the alphabetic principle and to use it to decode and read words. As students progress as readers, this awareness helps them learn unusual letter patterns and to recognize the patterns in new or rare words. In other words, phonemic awareness is important to all students because it provides them with a foundation not just for phonics but also for deeper comprehension and fluent reading, as well as for spelling and writing.

And please don’t assume that your students (1) will develop phonemic awareness on their own or (2) do not need explicit instruction because they come from literacy-rich backgrounds. Phonemic awareness must be taught. The fact is, most children, even those from homes where they have heard and seen lots of books, don’t automatically develop phonemic awareness. Why? Because in our daily speech—and reading aloud—we don’t say words sound by sound, pausing at the end of each word. Rather, we say words in groups, so that they make up one long stream of sounds. (To test this, listen closely to the next person who speaks to you. See if you can hear the breaks between words.) Although this makes our speech fluent, it also makes hearing and distinguishing the individual sounds difficult. Adding to this problem is the fact that English phonemes—there are about 44 of them—and letters—only 26 of them—do not always have a one-to-one relationship. So, again, phonemic awareness must be taught, and it must be taught explicitly.

Get Ready to Teach Phonemic Awareness
Here are some things that can help you get a head start on preparing phonemic awareness instruction for your students in the new school year:

• Inform yourself. Make sure that you fully understand what phonemic awareness is, why it is important for your students, and why it must be explicitly taught. Specifically, keep in mind that phonemic awareness is not phonics. Phonemic awareness deals only with the sound structure of spoken language. Phonics relates that structure to the structure—letters—of written language. In other words, phonemic awareness activities and instruction should be largely oral.

• Learn about your students’ language backgrounds. Developing English phonemic awareness can pose terrific problems for students for whom English is not the first language simply because some English phonemes do not exist in other languages. If your class will contain students who are English learners, make note of their first languages. Use this information to become familiar with any English phonemes that may be difficulty for the students and be prepared to offer extra assistance in helping them hear and identify these sounds.

• Practice, practice, practice. Practice (and record yourself) saying letters sounds and saying words sound by sound to make sure that you can pronounce each sound clearly and correctly. If your reading program has a sound pronunciation audio, review it. If not, check Web sites such as these:

http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronunc-soundsipa.htm

http://www.angelfire.com/wi3/englishcorner/pronunciation/pronunciation.html (This website offers free audio downloads of phonemes pronounced in isolation as well as in the context of individual words.)

• Make recordings of environmental sounds. Before students can hear and distinguish individual sounds in words, they may need some practice just learning to listen carefully. You can get them ready for work with phonemes by first engaging them in some enjoyable activities that require close attention to the sounds around them.
For young students, record familiar sounds such as these: water running from faucet, a vacuum cleaner, popcorn popping, a microwave ding, a hairdryer, a washing machine, a zipper, a door slamming shut, a dog barking, birds singing, the wind in trees, a car starting, a basketball bouncing, an ambulance or police siren, emergency warning sirens, a flag flapping in wind.

For older students, record different kinds of musical instruments (e.g., trombone, piccolo, kazoo), cars on a racetrack, a bat hitting a baseball, a blender/mixer, light switch on/off, a computer sign-on, a printer printing, a sprinkler, a horse walking on pavement, a cell phone on vibrate.

Look for books with repetitive language patterns. Use the Web or other resources to put together a collection of books with repetitive language that students can read on their own, in pairs, or in groups. For older students, add books with tongue twisters, hink pinks (Hink pinks are riddles. The answers to the riddles are words that rhyme with each other and contain the same amount of syllables. For example, What do you call an overweight feline? fat cat) alliteration, and other forms of word play. These Websites can give you some ideas for books to look for:

http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/ela/e_literacy/awareness.html

http://kids-games.suite101.com/article.cfm/tongue_twisters

Like spelling, writing is not a topic that you’d expect to see covered in a blog about reading instruction. But, like good spelling skills, good writing ability has much in common with reading success. In fact, we’ve known for a long time that having students write often (and with a clear purpose and focus) not only leads them to become better writers, it leads them to become better readers (we’ll review this research base in the fall post).

Unfortunately, many commercially produced reading programs treat writing as an add-on activity (one of those “language arts” suggestions that you find in part 3 of a typical 3-part reading lesson). But reading and writing are not separate “language arts,” they are intertwined processes that require the development and application of the same kinds of abilities and knowledge: Both good writers and good readers use sound/spelling knowledge and word-recognition skills to decode/encode words automatically. They both use vocabulary knowledge and personal experiences to get meaning from the texts they read and to give it in the texts they write. So, want to improve students’ reading comprehension? Get them to write, write, write.

This is why we’ll include writing instruction and its place in the reading program as the focus of one of our Reading Specialist blogs this fall.

Get Ready to Teach Writing
Here are some things to do this summer that will help you get ready to teach writing in the fall.

• Review. Look over any writing activities included in your reading program with these questions in mind: How often do students write? What do they write? What specific instruction is provided? Does it reflect the kinds of writing that students need to be able to do, both in school and on their own? If your school has a writing curriculum separate from your reading program, also look at it carefully to determine whether its approach fits with the writing instruction in the reading program. If you see conflicts n the approaches, think about how you might address them so that students aren’t getting mixed messages.

• Search, collect, and prepare: Check Web sites and other resources for generic “sentence starters” and “writing frames” that you can use for quick writes—spur-of-the-moment activities in which students respond in writing to a reading selection or to a question or issue that arises during discussion. Prepare a variety of these to keep on hand. For younger students, use thee frames to make activity sheets that they can fill in to express their ideas. Here are some ideas:

http://www.ccswebs.org/gaffney/images/sentence%20starters.PDF

http://gse.berkeley.edu/program/ENG/SentenceStarters.pdf

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2611046/Reading-Journal-Sentence-Starters

• Write! To see for yourself the power of writing and it’s role in promoting reading comprehension, write down your thoughts and opinions of the books newspaper stories, magazine articles, or Web pages that you read this summer.

Materials
• chart paper
• markers, crayons, colored pencils

What: Story grammar is a semantic-organizer framework, or set of “rules” that students can use to describe and talk about stories’ common elements—characters, setting, plot actions and events, solutions/outcomes, theme—and how the relationships among these elements contribute to a particular story.

Why: Research indicates that when students are familiar with and able to use a set of rules to identify story-structure elements and their relationships, their comprehension improves (e.g., Beck,1984).

When: Before and after reading

Who: Whole class

How:

Prepare
• Choose a simple, familiar story, such as Cinderella and divide the story into meaningful episodes. Work with students to develop comprehension questions they will ask and answer through guided silent reading and discussion.
• Draw a chart on chart paper. Write only the headings and the story elements on the chart.

Model/Teach
• Guide students as they discuss and develop a definition for each of the story elements listed in the chart. Write the definitions on the chart.
• Work with students to develop questions they might ask themselves as they read to help identify these various elements. Write these questions on the chart.
• Have students read silently the parts of the story that form an episode. Tell them to use the guiding questions that bring out the elements of the story grammar.
• When students have finished reading each episode, have them discuss the story elements it contains, using the guiding questions to inform their answers.
• Continue with the remaining episodes

Extend
• Ask students what other questions they used to help them identify the different story elements. Add these questions to the chart.
• Have students choose another story with which they are familiar and retell the story, using the guiding questions to help them identify the various story elements.

Materials
-chart paper
-markers

What: Story maps are graphic organizers that show the sequence, of events that make up the plot of a story. This version of a story map allows young children to see the three basic parts of a story and introduces them to the idea that all stories contain this structure.

Why: Research indicates that knowledge of the way in which story content is typically organized into a plot—initiating events, problems/goals, attempts to solve problems/achieve goals, and resolutions/outcomes—helps readers better understand how stories “work.”

When: After reading

Who: Whole class

How:

Prepare
• Before class, use the model below to draw a story map on chart paper, but do not show it to students. In addition, choose a story—a fairy tale or fable—that students know well. On separate sheets of paper, make simple line drawings that show events at the beginning, in the middle (you can draw more than one event), and at the end of the story.
• If necessary, explain to students that all stories have a beginning, middle, and end. Say, for example, The beginning is what happens at the start of the story, or what the character in the story does. The middle is what the character does next. Lots of things can happen in the middle of a story. The end is what finally happens, or how the story turns out.

Model/Teach
• Read or tell the story that you have chosen, using the pictures that you drew to illustrate beginning, middle, and ending events.
• On the board, write the words Beginning, Middle, and End. Display all of the pictures and have students choose the one(s) that go with each story part. Tape or attach the pictures to the board beneath the appropriate heading.
• Display the chart-paper story map. Write the title of the story that you have chosen, then point to and read each sentence starter.
• Point to and read each sentence starter again and prompt students to finish each one by telling what happened at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the story. Write their answers on the map.
• Call on individual students to retell the story using the sentence starters.

Beginning, Middle, End Story Map

Story Title:

Beginning Middle End
At the start of the story— Then— The story ends when—

Extend
• Throughout the year, have students use these or similar sentence starters to retell each story that they read in class.
• Have students work in pairs to retell this or any other story that they read but with a different ending.

em>Research We Use
In recent years, we have seen encouraging news of marked improvements in the abilities of beginning readers to relate sounds to letters, to translate these relationships to words, and to link words with meanings. And as these students move beyond the primary grades, many continue to refine and improve their reading skills, easily making the transition to independent reading. But these studies also contain some discouraging news: Many students, even some who have no difficulty sounding out and reading words, fail to make reading progress over the grades. Although they are skillful decoders, these students lack the knowledge and abilities to get meaning from their reading (Chall, Jacobs, & Baldwin, 1990; RAND Reading Study Group, 2002; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Simply put, they can read words, but they do not comprehend the messages conveyed by those words, which means that they are not really reading at all.

To understand why this disconnect between reading skills and reading comprehension exists in so many students, it is helpful to think of reading as a two-level process. One level is composed of foundational skills—the skills needed to connect spoken to written language and to recognize and read individual words. The other level is made up of higher order processes, or cognitive strategies, that readers use to determine relationships among groups of words—sentences, paragraphs, entire texts—and to make connections between their existing knowledge and the information they get from reading so as to interpret, evaluate, and analyze those sentences, paragraphs, and entire texts (e.g., Pressley, 2000; Willingham, 2006/07).

Are the skills necessary to achieve word recognition and automatic decoding less valuable than the mental processes necessary for comprehension? Not at all. Both are essential for successful, purposeful reading. Providing beginning readers with instruction that ensures that they develop strong phonemic awareness, phonics, and decoding skills is critical. However, from the earliest grades on, effective reading instruction must help students—all students—develop and refine not just foundational reading skills but also the knowledge base, vocabulary depth, and cognitive strategies needed if students are to become proficient and engaged readers.

In other Research We Use reports, we address the foundational, knowledge-building, and vocabulary development components of good reading instruction. In this report, however, we focus on instruction designed to help students develop and apply cognitive strategies that will help them to construct meaning as they read. Specifically, we look at what research tells us about what strategies are, which strategies should be taught, and how best to teach them.

For kindergarten, grade 1, and even early grade 2 students, phonemic awareness can be developed through instruction that involves students in daily listening and language games and activities in which they play with and manipulate sounds. These activities should be explicit, systematic, engaging, and brief—no more than 15 minutes a day (Cunningham, 1991).

Research indicates that effective phonemic awareness instruction follows a progression that first presents activities to build phonological awareness (e.g. Adams, Foorman, Lundburg, & Beeler, 1998; National Reading Panel, 2000; Armbruster et al, 2001). Phonological awareness instruction generally begins with activities that have students listen for and identify non-speech sounds (such as blinds being raised and lowered), and recognize speech-sound patterns such as rhymes and word repetition. Instruction then moves on steadily to activities that help students hear and recognize

- spoken words in sentences,

- syllables in words,

- onsets and rimes in syllables (in the word cap, /k/ is the onset, /ap/ the rime), and, finally, phonemes.

Once students can hear and recognize phonemes, phonemic awareness instruction generally follows a progression in which students

- identify and isolate the same phoneme at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of spoken words;

- put together (orally blend) phonemes to make words;

- break (segment) words into individual phonemes;

- delete and add phonemes to make new words (take /s/ from spot to make pot; add /g/ to row to make grow; and

- substitute phonemes to make new words (substitute /b/ for /p/ to change pig to big; substitute /sh/ for /t/ to change fit to fish).

At each level of instruction, the specific skills are introduced, practiced, and returned to as often as needed. Instruction in specific skills is rapid and often overlaps. Student mastery of a skill comes from repeated work over time, not with intensive and isolated drill (e.g., Adams, 1990; Honig, Diamond, & Gutlohn, 2000).

From their review of studies that have investigated phonemic awareness instruction, Smith, Simmons, and Kame’enui (1995) discovered a number of elements typical to effective instruction. For example, in the most effective instructional programs:

Teachers use explicit and systematic instruction.

Teachers model how to make each individual sound before asking students to produce it. After students produce the sound, teachers focus their attention on what they did—how they formed their lips, placed their teeth and tongue, and so forth. And how the sound felt when they made it (Did your lips move? Could you feel your throat vibrate?

Teachers give students a way to represent and visual sounds. They use both sound and visual cues in the activities, such as having students clap, work with puppets, or move blocks, chips, or disks. For example, the teacher models a sound, and then has students say the sound and simultaneously move a block to represent the sound

Finally, to be most effective, phonemic awareness instruction should begin before instruction in sound-spelling relationships, but it should continue throughout the teaching of these relationships. Reinforcing instruction in sound-spelling relationships with instruction in phonemic awareness leads to the development of both skills (National Reading Panel 2000; Torgesen and Mathes 1999).