Abstract
Colleen has been teaching preschool children with Liza, her teacher assistant, for 6 years in an inclusive early childhood classroom. One of Colleen’s favorite activities each day is storybook reading. She loves to gather the children on the carpet and read to them. She knows that she needs to engage the children in the story and support active participation. She prompts the children to make predictions about what will happen next in the story. Colleen explains vocabulary words the children might not know, and she connects the content of the story to their lives by asking them whether they have had similar experiences as the characters in the story. On occasion, she asks the children to identify letters in the title of a book and sometimes has them repeat rhymes from the text.
Most of the children love this interactive storybook reading time, but Colleen wonders whether she could do more in her book reading to help the children get ready to learn to read. There are five children with disabilities in her classroom, several of whom appear to have delays and difficulties acquiring early literacy. In addition, some of the other children worry Colleen when she thinks about getting them ready to learn to read. In particular, Colleen is concerned about Sam, a 4-year-old boy who has a developmental delay and is currently receiving individual speech therapy once a week. Colleen notices that Sam and some of the other children have difficulty responding when she asks a question about letter sounds or rhyming words. Colleen has discussed her concerns with Liza and both teachers wonder what else they could do to help Sam and the other children.
Like Colleen and Liza, many early childhood educators have these concerns about how to best support the development of early literacy skills with all the children in their classroom. How can early educators like Colleen and Liza effectively use the common preschool classroom activity of storybook reading to support all children’s early literacy development? In this article, we focus on one important early literacy skill, phonological awareness, and describe how to support its development for all children by intentionally embedding it in storybook reading.
What Is Phonological Awareness?
Children begin to acquire literacy skills important for becoming a good reader long before they begin formal reading instruction (Duncan et al., 2007; Lonigan, Burgess, & Anthony, 2000; B. H. Wasik & Newman, 2009), including oral language, print awareness, phonological awareness, and alphabet knowledge (Allor & McCathren, 2003; Whitehurst & Lonigan, 2001). Phonological awareness, one of these early literacy skills, refers to children’s ability to recognize and identify sounds in their environment including spoken words. Children’s increasing sensitivity to the sound structures they hear is foundational to their eventual ability to make connections between sounds in spoken language and written text (Pullen & Justice, 2003; Torgesen & Mathes, 2000). Their awareness that words are made of different sounds associated with specific letters or letter groups leads to the ability to “sound out” or decode words (Phillips, Clancy-Menchetti, & Lonigan, 2008; Schuele & Boudreau, 2008). In this way, phonological awareness provides an important foundation for later reading success (Goldstein, 2011; National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). Difficulties with phonological awareness and related processing skills have been identified as problematic for many children who struggle learning to read (Lonigan, 2006). As such, promoting phonological awareness in young children is important as children who leave preschool and enter school settings without adequate early literacy skills often experience difficulties learning to read (Johnston, McDonnell, & Hawken, 2008; Lonigan, 2006).
“Understanding the components of phonological awareness can help guide decisions about instruction and identify where and when a child may need support.”
Many preschool-aged children acquire phonological awareness easily by engaging in everyday routines and participating in language rich environments. Other children, like Sam in Colleen’s class, may need more extensive adaptations and individualized instruction to meet their specific needs (Lieber, Horn, Palmer, & Fleming, 2008). Phonological awareness instruction has proven beneficial for children with disabilities, including those with language impairment (e.g., Skibbe, Behnke, & Justice, 2004) and Down syndrome (e.g., van Bysterveldt, Gillon, & Moran, 2006). Children from low-income families and/or English language learners also benefit from phonological awareness instruction (e.g., Gersten & Geva, 2003; Gillon, 2007; Lemons, Mrachko, Kostewicz, & Paterra, 2012). With well-planned instruction in the preschool years, children can develop phonological awareness, including the ability to identify environmental sounds, segment words into syllables, match words that rhyme, and begin to identify initial sounds in words (Phillips et al., 2008).
Understanding the components of phonological awareness can help guide decisions about instruction and identify where and when a child may need support. It is important to note that children need not master one phonological awareness component before another, or have mastery of all phonological awareness components before entering kindergarten. The acquisition of phonological awareness does not happen in distinct stages; rather, components may be acquired simultaneously (Anthony, Lonigan, Driscoll, Phillips, & Burgess, 2003). An example of each of these components of phonological awareness is presented in Table 1.
Phonological Awareness Components
To target phonological awareness with intentional instruction, it is important to have a repertoire of teaching strategies appropriate to use with young children (Powell, Diamond, Bojczyk, & Gerde, 2009). Teachers can support phonological awareness through listening activities, songs, nursery rhymes, and games in which children are asked to listen to and manipulate sounds they hear. It is important to provide children with activities in which they have multiple opportunities to engage in word play that helps develop various components of phonological awareness. For example, to develop phoneme awareness, teachers may play a game using the song “Willoughby Wallaby Woo” and substitute the first sound in children’s name with another letter sound that is drawn from a letter bag. Although some children may have difficulties detecting and manipulating sounds in such word play, they nevertheless enjoy and benefit from the exposure to this activity (Yopp & Yopp, 2009). Even children with significant disabilities will enjoy singing the song, which may support the development of their expressive language. Another effective approach to teaching phonological awareness is through intentional instruction during storybook reading.
“It is important to provide children with activities in which they have multiple opportunities to engage in word play that helps develop various components of phonological awareness.”
How Can Storybook Reading Be Used to Teach Phonological Awareness?
Storybook reading provides a rich context for early language and literacy learning (Goldstein, 2011). Research suggests that shared book reading can be particularly effective for early literacy development when it is not only interactive but also intentional (Epstein, 2007; Wasik & Bond, 2001). Intentional teaching refers to “directed, designed interactions between children and teachers in which teachers purposefully challenge, scaffold, and extend the children’s skills” (Pianta & La Paro, 2003, p. 28).
Storybook reading provides an opportunity to intentionally teach phonological awareness within a meaningful context for the child (Beauchat, Blamey, & Walpole, 2009; Justice, Kaderavek, Bowles, & Grimm, 2005; Lefebvre, Trudeau, & Sutton, 2011; Ziolkowski & Goldstein, 2008). Research demonstrates that storybook reading may in fact accelerate the development of children’s initial rhyme and sound awareness (Justice et al., 2005; Ziolkowski & Goldstein, 2008). By embedding phonological awareness in storybook reading, instruction is both meaningful and motivating, thus likely eliminating the concerns raised by some experts about literacy instruction that is taken out of context or developmentally inappropriate (Allor & McCathren, 2003).
An essential consideration when embedding phonological awareness in storybook reading is planning. Teachers need to take the time to read books ahead of time and decide how to embed specific phonological awareness activities. While some books may easily lend themselves to focusing on specific skills (e.g., teaching rhyme with rhyming books), some books may be used for teaching many different components of phonological awareness. Choosing books that emphasize particular components of phonological awareness is important. In Table 2, we provide examples of familiar children’s books that can be used to emphasize various components of phonological awareness.
Examples of Books That Can Be Used to Support Phonological Awareness
Trying to cover too many phonological awareness components in one book reading can be overwhelming for young children as well as the teacher (Phillips et al., 2008). An effective way to plan to embed phonological awareness instruction is by considering what components to address before, during, and after a book has been read. Teachers may find it helpful to jot down these ideas beforehand and then keep these notes at hand while reading. A bookmark template that could aid in this planning process can be found in Figure 1.
Bookmark for embedding phonological awareness in book reading
Colleen and Liza decide to embed more phonological awareness activities during their storybook reading. Colleen starts with word awareness, particularly compound words. Given the winter weather, she picks a book about a sister who plays with her brother on a snowy day, Stella, Queen of the Snow (Gay, 2010). Colleen uses a bookmark to remember to provide opportunities for the children to discuss the words they hear in “snowball,” “snowflake,” and “snowman.” Colleen then places the bookmark in the book so that it is ready when she reads the book in the upcoming days (see Figure 1).
As Sam often has difficulty paying attention during storybook reading, Liza sits close by so that she can redirect him and others as needed. In this instance, she decides to give Sam extra adult support by helping him clap when he hears the two words that make up each compound word (Sandall et al., 2008). Later, in a small group, Sam and a few of the other children use blocks labeled with the two words making up the compound word, clicking the blocks together as they say the new compound word. They also cut and paste pictures of the two words that make up the compound word, such as “snow” and “man.”
What Does Intentional Phonological Awareness Instruction Within Storybook Reading Look Like?
There are a number of ways to intentionally teach components of phonological awareness in storybook reading. The type of book being read, the component of phonological awareness targeted, and the amount of time available for book reading that day will influence how teachers plan. It is also important to make decisions based on children’s engagement and interest that is apparent during storybook reading. Sometimes it is necessary to shorten the session if children’s attention is wavering, but it is also the case that storybook reading can be extended if the children seem interested in the topic. In the following examples, Colleen and Liza illustrate how they work together to intentionally teach various aspects of phonological awareness in storybook reading, providing extra support to children who need it. Note that they use the same storybook multiple times to teach activities related to various components of phonological awareness.
Example 1: Environmental Sounds
Colleen and Liza decide to read the storybook “Little Cloud” (Carle, 1996) during a class study of seasons. As she reads, Colleen has the children identify the object the cloud changes into as it moves across the sky (e.g., sheep, airplane). “What sound does an airplane make?” she asks the children. “What sound does a sheep make?” The children have fun making the sound associated with each object. Some children are paired with a buddy who produces the sound for them, and Colleen then prompts them to repeat it. After she finishes the storybook, Colleen plays a CD that has environmental sounds on it, including rain and thunder. Liza asks the children to think of what may have made that sound, and whether it was loud or soft. She gives pictures of rain and a large thunder cloud to several of the children including Sam, helping them to hold up the picture in response to the appropriate sound.
Colleen and Liza ask the children to listen and identify any sounds they hear in their classroom (e.g., children in a nearby classroom, the aquarium, air conditioner). In a small group, several children with limited language use the environmental sounds CD and pictures to link the sounds on the CD with the objects that produce the sound.
Example 2: Word Awareness
During another reading of “Little Cloud” (Carle, 1996), Colleen stops as she reads and asks the children to repeat short sentences clapping the words while they say them. For example, they say and clap the sentence “The clouds moved out of sight” and together count the number of words they hear. Liza helps Sam sit next to a friend who is asked to help him clap. Colleen also uses this reading to point out the compound words in the book, such as airplane. She pronounces the compound words slowly, emphasizing the two words and giving children the opportunity to say the two words in isolation and together.
Later, in a small group, Liza uses books familiar to the children that have repetition to provide additional practice with word awareness. For example, the children clap the words and repeat “Wanna fight?” “No, you’re not big enough” from the Grouchy Ladybug (Carle, 1977). Using the book “Froggy Goes to School” (London, 1996), the children hop every time Froggy flops and hops in the story.
Example 3: Syllable Awareness
Liza makes a list of two syllable words from the story on the back of her bookmark and reads the book “Little Cloud” (Carle, 1996) to the children again. She stops and points out the number of syllables she hears in various words in the story, such as “thunder” or “rabbit.” After reading the book, she reminds the children that all words are made up of parts called syllables. She teaches the children to extend their arm, patting it with their other hand for each syllable, starting from the shoulder and working down. Colleen helps some children pat their arms using hand over hand to demonstrate. Liza asks children for suggestions of words to pat. They suggest their own name, patting out the syllables of all of the children’s names in the class.
Later in the day, when Liza sees Sam playing with a box of plastic zoo animals, she takes advantage of the opportunity to provide Sam with one-to-one instruction. She and Sam pat the syllables for “monkey,” “elephant,” “giraffe,” and “rhinoceros.”
Example 4: Rhyme Awareness
Reading the poetry book “I’m Gonna’ Like Me: Letting off a Little Self-Esteem” (Curtis & Cornell, 2002), Colleen emphasizes the rhyming words as she reads. After finishing the story, she picks a stanza that the children can act out: “I’m gonna like me when I jump up so high, I’ll twist and I’ll stretch straight up to the sky.” Colleen and Liza both demonstrate the actions emphasizing “high” and “sky” as they move. As the children settle back down on the carpet, Liza explains that “high” and “sky” sound the same at the end and they rhyme. Colleen and Liza take turns rereading other stanzas leaving the final word for the children to provide. For example, “I’m gonna’ like me when I clean in a flash and play with my brother and take out the _______ (trash).” Colleen and Liza model other words that rhyme with “flash,” including “mash” and “hash.” As Colleen reads other stanzas, only a few children are able to produce other rhyming words. Recognizing that rhyme awareness is not an entry-level skill (particularly the production of rhymes), they provide pictures of familiar rhyming words in a small group activity later in the day. They have the children identify words that rhyme, such as “mop” and “top,” and “cat” and “hat.” For children with more significant language delays, they provide actual objects whose names rhyme, such as “shirt” and “dirt” or “dog” and “frog,” using stuffed animals, a bag of dirt, and child’s shirt.
Example 4: Onset-Rime Awareness
Colleen and Liza realize that the ability to begin to distinguish smaller units of sounds within words is an important precursor to phoneme awareness and helps in the decoding of words. However, they also know that onset-rime awareness is difficult for many preschoolers and will be taught in kindergarten. Toward the end of the school year after many of the children have learned the names and sounds of many letters, in a large group, Liza reads the book “Someone Bigger” (Emmett, 2004), which tells the adventure of a young boy and his Dad flying a kite. Colleen plans to re-read the book with small groups of children to expose them to onset-rime awareness, while Liza works with the rest of the children on an art activity making their own kites. Colleen pinpoints the words “mail” and “jail” in the book, knowing that she can focus on their beginning sounds and similar ending rime. Colleen asks the children what is the first sound they hear in the word “mail.” She asks what would happen if the sound /m/ became /j/ (jail) and what new word it would be. She encourages the children to think of other sounds they could put in front of “–ail” to create more words.
To provide some children with extra support, Colleen has prepared cards to illustrate possible words, including a picture of a tail, a pail, and a sail. Printing the word under the picture, she makes the first letter red while the rest of the word is black.
Example 5: Phoneme Awareness
Before reading the book “Someone Bigger” a third time (Emmett, 2004), Colleen identifies simple words especially suitable for identifying sounds in words. She thinks the word “Dad” would work well as it is a simple word the children all know, and they have already learned the sounds that the letters “d” and “a” make. While talking about the events of the story, Colleen asks them to listen closely to the word “Dad” and see whether they can hear the three different sounds in the word: /d/ /a/ /d/. When some children respond that they hear the sound /d/, Colleen asks them to listen again and see whether they hear the sound at the beginning, middle, or end of the word. Danny shouts out that it sounds like his name, and Colleen tells him he is right. Liza asks Sam what sound his name starts with and he tells her /s/. She also tells Sam that /a/ is in his name pointing to the letter “a” on Sam’s carpet square. In this way, Colleen uses embedded learning opportunities to address Sam’s individual learning needs (Sandall et al., 2008).
Liza gathers a set of objects, pictures, and words that begin with the letters “s” and “d,” the sounds of which the children have already learned. In a small group, she uses these to emphasize the beginning sounds of each object, picture, and word, emphasizing the beginning sounds. In particular, Liza uses the children’s names such as Sam and Danny. She asks children to repeat the words of each object or picture. For example, “Ssssssam” and “Dddddanny.”
“Monitoring children’s progress is an important part of providing differentiated instruction and truly meeting individual child needs in inclusive early childhood settings.”
How Can Children’s Phonological Awareness Progress Be Monitored?
Monitoring children’s progress is an important part of providing differentiated instruction and truly meeting individual child needs in inclusive early childhood settings. Teachers like Colleen and Liza must closely monitor children’s progress and plan and modify their instruction to support each child’s learning success. To do so, teachers may use formal assessment tools that are periodically administered to provide overall measures of child progress. These tests focus on certain elements of phonological awareness (e.g., rhyme, phoneme sounds) along with other early literacy skills (e.g., letter recognition, print awareness, vocabulary development). A few examples include the Test of Preschool Early Literacy (Lonigan, Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 2007), Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (Invernizzi, Sullivan, & Meier, 2001), and the Individual Growth and Development Indicators (IGDIs; Carta, Greenwood, Walker, & Buzhardt, 2010). Compared with other standardized screening tools, IGDIs are quick and easy to use, and can be administered repeatedly by classroom teachers to measure child growth over short periods of time (Carta et al., 2002).
While most formal assessments can provide a global assessment of how children are progressing relative to their same-age peers, informal assessments can be beneficial in monitoring children’s ongoing progress in learning including phonological awareness abilities. Informal assessments can often be administered quickly and repeatedly. An example of an informal, phonological awareness assessment that teachers can use in their classrooms is provided in Table 3. This observation tool includes examples of activities a teacher could use to assess key components of phonological awareness. Furthermore, for each specific component of phonological awareness, teachers can determine a level of mastery to ascertain whether a child needs further instruction. If the skill is consistently demonstrated, teachers may decide to focus on more complex skills. If the skill is emerging, teachers can continue to provide opportunities to practice, and if the skill is not yet demonstrated, teachers may plan more scaffolding of instruction or differentiating or individualizing instruction at the child’s level.
Informal Phonological Awareness Assessment
NOTE: This assessment tool may need to be adapted or individualized (e.g., use of pictures, providing an alternative way of responding). 1 = consistently demonstrated; 2 = emerging; 3 = not yet demonstrated.
Liza and Colleen conduct progress monitoring three times a year using their program’s formal progress monitoring assessment for all the children in the class. These data guide their instructional planning as they provide them with information about the children’s early literacy development. They use this information to identify what components of phonological awareness to target for extra support. For example, as Sam and several other children demonstrate delays in important aspects of phonological awareness, including syllable and rhyme awareness in the initial formal assessment, Colleen and Liza decide that it is important to collect informal assessment every 6 weeks for these children to inform ongoing planning (Table 3).
After several weeks during which Sam and others participated in intentional phonological awareness activities targeted to their identified needs, Liza and Colleen strategize about how to systematically collect data on their progress. Liza observes Sam carefully during several storybook readings and is able to take note of his responses when Colleen asks him to tell her the sounds animals make and to clap words in a sentence. She uses free play time to talk to the children about the pictures they have drawn of their pets, asking Sam and the other children questions such as the type of sound their dogs make, the number of words they hear in the compound word “doghouse,” and whether they think the word “log” or “cat” sounds more like the word “dog.” After Sam gets up to join his friends at the water table, Liza jots down what she has learned about Sam’s phonological awareness, seen in Table 4. Sam has already made progress in increasing his environmental sounds and word awareness. She and Colleen note that he continues to need individualized support with syllables and rhymes. They plan to discuss the need for more intense intervention for Sam and other children to support their acquisition of these important early literacy skills. Colleen, who has also been gathering progress monitoring data in this informal fashion with some of the other children, agrees that the process has been quite helpful for planning instruction and points out that the information can be shared with parents and other professionals who work in the classroom.
Example of Phonological Awareness Informal Assessment Completed With Sam
Conclusion
Supporting the development of young children’s phonological awareness is an important part of helping a child learn to read. Preschool provides an opportunity for all children to develop their phonological awareness abilities, particularly important for children with delays or disabilities. Doing so will better prepare children for the more targeted instruction in phonemic awareness and decoding that are part of early reading instruction. It is also important to note that older students with disabilities who are struggling with reading may lack phonological awareness and would benefit from this type of intentional teaching (Bhat, Griffin, & Sindelar, 2003; Browder, Wakeman, Spooner, Ahlgrim-Delzell, & Algozzine, 2006).
Finding time within each day and ensuring instruction is both meaningful and developmentally appropriate for all children can be challenging but important for teachers. Intentionally teaching phonological awareness instruction in storybook reading can provide a meaningful context for children to not only appreciate books but to also develop an awareness of sounds in the environment, words, syllables, rhyme, onset-rimes, and phonemes. Preschool teachers should consider how phonological awareness activities can be embedded throughout the day, in a variety of contexts, with a variety of instructional groupings (see Table 5 for examples). Children who require extra support may best be taught in small groups or one-to-one as the teacher provides additional cues or prompts to ensure engagement and support active participation. Over time, these supports should be faded so that children are increasingly independent in their learning. Conducting ongoing progress monitoring guides teachers in planning this instruction targeted to individual children’s needs. The critical importance of collaborating with other professionals and family members about children’s progress can scarcely be overstated.
Strategies for Supporting Phonological Awareness
As they prepare for each day in the classroom, Colleen and Liza read the books ahead of time and complete the bookmark to help them remember how to intentionally teach phonological awareness during storybook reading and extend it throughout the day. Ongoing progress monitoring helped them understand each child’s development and how to focus their instruction on children’s needs. Colleen and Liza are encouraged by the progress of the children. They understand that individual differences in development means that children learn at different rates and will not necessarily reach mastery at the same time. Because of the extra opportunities to practice, Sam and other children who demonstrated initial delays are more attentive and participate more often in storybook reading. Colleen and Liza themselves feel more confident about the children’s early literacy development and are excited to see how phonological awareness will develop throughout the year.
Footnotes
Authors’ Note
You may reach Alina Mihai by email at