The Literacy Lowdown- Phonological Awareness Assessments at Memorial

After reading my recent post about phonological awareness, you may have asked yourself, How do we as parents and teachers know that students have mastered all of these skills? Teachers at Memorial combine their daily interactions with students and the
results from three universal/benchmark assessments to determine student progress and next steps for instruction in phonological  awareness.  These assessments are: DIBLES First Sound Fluency (FSF), DIBELS Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF), and the Burlington Phonological Awareness Screener- keep reading for more information about each of these assessments!

DIBELS First Sound Fluency (FSF)

All kindergarten students at Memorial are administered this assessment at the beginning and middle of the school year.   It is given to each child individually.  During the test, children are a asked to give the first sound in spoken words.  At the beginning of the year, we expect kids to identify 20 first sounds in one minute, and at the middle of the year the expectation is 30.

DIBELS Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF)

Students are administered the Phoneme Segmentation Fluency assessment at the middle and end of the year in kindergarten, and also at the beginning of first grade.  This test is also given to children one at a time. When students are assessed, they are asked to segment, or break apart, the sounds in spoken words.  For example, if a student is given the word hat,  they should respond with each sound, /h/ /a/ /t/.  In the middle of kindergarten, we expect students to segment 20 sounds in one minute, and at the end of kindergarten we look for them to segment 40 sounds in one minute.  At the beginning of first grade, we check in to make sure that they are still able to segment 40 sounds in one minute.

Burlington Phonological Awareness Screener

The Burlington Phonological Awareness Screener is a formal assessment that was created by teachers in our district.   It is composed of ten sub-tests, and assesses student's ability to apply a range of phonological awareness skills.  Specifically, it measures a child's understanding of rhyme awareness, syllable awareness, and phonemic awareness.  The test is administered to all kindergarten and first grade students in Burlington.

Phonological Awareness encompasses a wide range of skills.  Our assessments at Memorial help us to get a better understanding of our student's progress in these critical early literacy abilities.

Dr. Seuss Day!

Today we had the opportunity to celebrate Dr. Seuss Day! In Mrs Burnham's room we read Green Eggs and Ham.  Then we created our own class book, 1st Grade Does Not Like Green Eggs and Ham.

The highlight of our morning was a special visit with a Burlington High Senior, Caileigh H.  She did a wonderful job reading a couple of our Dr. Seuss favorites.  A huge thank you to Mrs. Bannon and Mr. Peterson for organizing this event!

Continue the celebration  tonight and the rest of the month with fun titles from this  Complete List of Dr. Seuss Books.

For online fun and games check out Seussville.

The Literacy Lowdown: What is Phonological Awareness?

My plan for a series of upcoming posts is to clearly explain the five major elements of literacy instruction: phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.  Something to keep in mind about today's post: phonological awareness mostly pertains to students in kindergarten, first, and second grade.  Another big picture idea to remember is that phonological awareness lessons and activities do not involved letters or written words- they can be done with the lights out.  In a nutshell, phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the sounds in words. There are four subcategories of phonological awareness: rhyming, word awareness, syllable awareness, and phonemic awareness.

Rhyming

We expect our earliest students to recognize and produce rhyme with ease.  Kids have fun learning to rhyme through a variety of creative activities that involve pictures, puppets, songs, and more!  It's great to encourage children to play with creating new nonsense words that rhyme.  For example, "What rhymes with purple...how about murple?"

Word Awareness

Before learning to read, kids should first develop the ability to determine the number of words in a sentence.  Students who have a keen grasp of word awareness can also distinguish between lengths of words.  For example, "Is this a long word or a short word?  How do you know?" They demonstrate an understanding of compound words by segmenting, blending, and isolating the individual words.

Syllable Awareness

Many children learn how to segment the syllables in a word by clapping for each syllable they hear.  Syllable awareness also involves blending individual syllables to say a whole word.  It's also important for kids to learn how to manipulate or "play" with the syllables in a word by isolating and deleting a syllable.  For example, "Say kindergarten.  Now say kindergarten without the ten." The student's response should be, "kinder."

Phonemic Awareness

People sometimes use the terms phonemic awareness and phonological awareness interchangeably.  In fact, phonemic awareness is one component of phonological awareness.  A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in words, and simply stated phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and work with these sound units.  I have included more specifics about phonemic awareness skills below:

Blending Phonemes:  By the end of first grade, we expect students to blend or segment the phonemes in words with up to 5 sounds to say the whole word.  For example, if a student hears the individual sounds in a word,  /f/ /r/ /o/ /s/ /t/, they should be able to put the sounds together and say the whole word,  frost.  Kindergarteners should be able to blend or segment the sounds in words with at least 3 phonemes to say the whole word.

Segmenting Phonemes: In a nutshell, segmenting phonemes is the exact opposite of blending phonemes.  When students segment the sounds in a word, they break apart the word by its individual phonemes.  For instance, if an adult or peer says the word, bed, the student would segment the phonemes by responding, /b/ /e/ /d/. 

Isolating Phonemes: In Kindergarten, students learn how to isolate each sound that they hear in words with at least three sounds.  When given a whole word, kindergarteners should be able to produce the sound they hear only at the beginning, middle, or end of a word.  For example, a teacher might ask a child, "What is the sound that you hear in the middle of the word, back?"  The student should respond with only the middle sound, /a/.  It should be noted that isolating and manipulating middle sounds is more challenging than working with beginning and final sounds.

Deleting Phonemes: Second graders should be able to delete one of the sounds that they hear in words with at up to five or six total phonemes.  A student might be prompted to delete phonemes in this way, "Say splice.  Now say splice without the /p/."  The student should respond, "slice".  In first grade, we expect students to delete the phonemes in words with at least three to five sounds.

Substituting Phonemes:  In first grade, students learn how to change words by replacing sounds with other phonemes.  For example, teachers may ask their students, "Say hit.  Now change the /i/ to /a/."  The student should respond with the new word, "hat".

Brooke J.  puts together a phoneme segmentation puzzle for the word, pen.  She segments each sound in the word, /p/ /e/ / n/ and then blends the sounds together to say the whole word, pen.  Nice work, Brooke!

First and Fourth Grade Buddies-Out of This World!

This afternoon in Mrs. Harlow's ELA class we journeyed down to First Grade for a meeting with our Reading Buddies! First Grade is learning about the solar system, and we were happy to help.  Each pair of buddies created a model of the Earth, Moon, and Sun as well as a labeled diagram of the planets.

    Brendon and Juliana pose with their model of the Earth, Moon, and Sun.  Nice teamwork!

    Jennifer and Asya used a book to ensure that their planet labels were accurate. Very resourceful!

Having Fun with Organizing to Improve Comprehension

With the start of a new year, I always feel the urge to organize the clutter around my house.  If you are looking for another reason to get organized, chew on this: categorizing everyday objects is a great way to improve your child's comprehension.  In fact, before teaching kids to determine the main idea and details of text, teachers often start with categorizing words and objects.  

Try This at Home!

Does your child have a huge mess of Legos?  Try categorizing the Legos in more than one way: by color, shape, size, use etc. How about doll clothes?  These could be organized by color, season, skirts, pants, etc. The kitchen is also full of items that can be categorized from types of food, to utensils, and beyond!  

Things Organized Neatly

Below I have featured a few photographs from a website created by Austin Radcliffe titled, Things Organized Neatly.  The photographs featured on this website feature aesthetically pleasing arrangements of everyday objects.  In some of the photos, everyday objects are categorized in unique ways.  I hope that enjoy browsing these images with your family- they may even inspire you to organize your clutter in a new, beautiful way!

Finding Your Child's Next Favorite Book

This week our book fair will be open December 14th-18th in the school library.  As you browse books with our without your child, keep in mind these simple tips for previewing and selecting books that are sure to be a hit.

Will the book be an interesting and enjoyable read? Think about text features such as the title, table of contents, back or inside cover synopsis, illustrations/photographs to determine if the book will interest your child!  Genre is important to consider as well.  

Use the "Five Finger Rule" to determine if the book is an appropriate level for the reader:

• Have the reader open up to any page in the book and begin reading.
• Hold one finger up for each "tricky" word that the reader encounters.
• If there are 0-2 fingers up, this book may be too easy for the reader.
• 3-4 fingers up, this book is probably a "Just Right" for for the reader.
• 5 fingers up, it's likely this book will be frustrating for the child to read.

Consider Read Alouds: If your child is interested in a book, but it doesn't pass the "Five Finger Test"  consider selecting the book to read aloud  and discuss with your family.  Kids (and adults!) of all ages benefit from listening to books read aloud and having rich conversations about text!  

A special thank you to our librarian Rachel Small and her amazing team of parent volunteers for organizing the Scholastic Book Fair!  Check out Rachel's blog post about the book fair .

Great Gifts That Develop Word Consciousness!

Families that promote word consciousness encourage children to be curious about and aware of words. Word Play is a wonderful way to have fun with word consciousness.  Keep reading for gift ideas that will get your family excited about words!

Bananagrams is one of my favorite anagram games.  The winner is the fastest player to create a word grid with all of their letter tiles.  Pairs in Pears and Appletters  are also terrific word games created by the same company.

Originally created by a busy mom of seven, Namits- The Game of Think is the perfect gift for the family on the go!  Kids love listing as many related words as possible to the topic cards.

Featuring a double sided board, Scrabble Junior can adapt to fit your child's readiness level.   

And of course my favorite gift of all... BOOKS!  Children expand their vocabulary when they incidentally encounter new words in text. The Mitten by Jan Brett is one of my seasonal favorites, but the best gift for any kid is a book they will fall in LOVE with!

If you are interested in learning more about word consciousness check out this blog post, Creating Word Conscious Kids.