Assessment
Issues related to Phonemic
awareness assessment
 Is
it a conceptual understanding
about language or is it a skill?
Phonemic awareness
Involves a more or less explicit
understanding that words are composed
of segments of sound smaller than a
syllable, as well as knowledge, or
awareness, of the distinctive features of
individual phonemes themselves.
 The latter continues to increase after an
initial understanding of phonemic
structure of words is acquired

 Phonological
awareness is a more
general level of awareness than
phonemic awareness
 Phonological awareness entails
– Syllable structure knowledge
– Rhyme awareness (c-at) onset and rime
Importance of phonemic
awareness in learning to read
Helps children understand alphabetical
principle
 Helps children notice the regular ways that
letters represent sounds in words

– Reinforces sound-letter correspondence
– Helps forms mental representation

Makes it possible to generate possibilities
for words in context that are only partially
“sounded out”
– Search the mental lexicon for words that begin
with a certain sound – words are categorized
by meaning but also by sounds in all positions
Roles in learning to read
 Use
in sound-letter correspondences
to decode words
 Support overall reading growth
– Particularly growth of rich vocabulary of
sight words
Purposes for Assessment of
Phonemic Awareness
 Identify
children at risk
 Describe level of phonological
impairment in children being
diagnosed with Reading Disorders
 Some issues on usefulness, may not
always be reliable
 May be useful 2, 3 grade, but mildly
Procedures
 Over
22 tasks being used
 Categories
– Phoneme segmentation (counting,
pronouncing, deleting, adding or
reversing the individual phonemes in
words)
– Phoneme synthesis (sound blending)
– Sound comparison (discrimination)
Measures
Rosner Test of Auditory Analysis
 Lindamood Auditory Conceptualization
Test
 Test of Invented Spelling
 Test of Phonological Awareness
 Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme
Segmentation
 The phonological Awareness Test
 The Comprehension Test of Phonological
Processes in Reading

Instruction
Methods that integrate instruction in
sound-letter correspondences in a way
that directly links newly acquired
phonemic awareness to reading and
spelling produce stronger effects on
reading than those that do not.
 Phonemic awareness skills must be
applied to reading and writing
 Progression of oral to written language
activities

Instruction
 We
still don’t know the conditions
necessary for all children to acquire
phonemic awareness of sufficient
strength to facilitate acquisition of
normal phonetic reading abilities
Programs and Materials
Sounds Abound – LinguiSystems
 DaisyQuest and Daisy’s Castle – PRO-ED
 Phonemic Awareness in Young Children: A
Classroom Curriculum – Brooks Pub.
 The Phonological Awareness Kit –
LinguiSystems
 The Waterford Early Reading Program:
Level 1 – Waterford Institute
 Phonological Awareness Training for
Reading – PRO-ED
 Auditory Discrimination in Depth – PRO-Ed

Sequence of Instruction

Begin with
– Exposure to rhyming songs, books, and
activities in preschool and early kindergarten
– Once children understand the concept of
rhyme, they can begin with sound comparison
involving sounds in different positions in
words.
– Manipulations, blending and segmentation
come next (use immediately prior to or in
conjunction with instruction in sound-letter
correspondences and phonemic reading and
writing.
Word Recognition
 Assessment
more complex than
phonemic awareness because
readers can identify words in five
different ways
Ways of identifying words
Identifying and blending together
individual phonemes in words
 Noticing and blending together familiar
spelling patterns, which is a more
advanced form of decoding
 Recognizing words as whole units or
reading them “by sight”
 Making analogies to other words that are
already known
 Using clues from the context to guess a
word’s identity

Methods and Growth
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Early stages – phonetic decoding
More experienced – Spelling patterns
(processing letters in larger chunks)
Sight words – orthographic processes
(integrated visual representation)
Analogy to known words
Guessing their identity from the context
1. Skilled readers do not rely on context a lot
2. Poor readers actually rely on context more
than good readers
3. Context is not very accurate
Assessment
The word recognition processes most
impaired in children with reading
disabilities are those that involve
identifying words from the visual
information in the text (1-4 in anterior
slide)
 Children are most impaired in

– Ability to apply alphabetic strategies in reading
new words (phonetic decoding)
– Ability to retrieve sight words from memory
(orthographic processing)
– May have other special difficulties
Issues
 These
types of assessment are
different from authentic assessments
used by reading specialists
 These assessment do not guide
instruction, but for diagnosis
Measurement strategies
 Should
include
– Out-of context measures of word
recognition abilities
– Phonetic decoding ability (nonwords)
– Word recognition fluency
 These become more important by the 2nd3rd grades, after children acquire word
recognition skills
Measurement strategies
 Sight-Word
Reading Ability
– Word Identification Subtest in Woodcock
Reading Mastery Test-Revised
– Reading subtest in the Wide Range
Achievement Test -3
 Phonetic
Decoding Ability
– Word Attach subtest in the Woodcock
Reading Mastery Test-Revised
Measurement strategies
 Word
Recognition Fluency (rate of
reading connected text)
– Gray Oral Reading Test – 3rd Ed.
– Measures of Word Reading Efficiency
and Nonword Reading Efficiency by
Torgesen and Wagner
Instruction
 Instruction
must impact phonetic
reading skills for it to have longlasting effect
 Are we teaching to their strengths or
to their weaknesses?
 Some say we should work on sight
words or visually based approaches
Programs
 Auditory
Discrimination In-Depth
Program – Lindamood
 Embedded Phonics (EP)
Necessary conditions

Instruction that is
– More explicit


makes fewer assumptions about pre-existing skills or children’s
abilities to make inferences about sound-letter regularities on their
own
Direct instructions of correspondences and strategies to decode
– More intensive



More teacher-student interaction
Reinforced learning trials
More time
– More supportive


Emotional support
scaffolding
Than what is offered in schools