How does implementing phonemic awareness early in the year benefit my students ability to decode words?

Seminar Title

How does implementing phonemic awareness early in the year benefit my students ability to decode words?

Phonemic Awareness

Kindergarten

1st Grade

Reading

Language Arts

Do you want your students to be successful readers by the end of the year? Are you wondering how to best support your lowest readers? If you answered yes to these questions I have the seminar for you. I am excited to share my action research because even my students who struggle the most have shown great success’ in reading as a response to my implementation of small group interventions. These interventions were based on assessments and observations while using explicit phonemic awareness instruction. Not only does my research focus on reading skills, but it also touches on building confidence as readers. Even though this research was implemented in a Kindergarten classroom I believe teachers of all grade levels could benefit from learning more about phonemic awareness. Research shows that success with phonemic awareness is a direct link to a success in reading and writing.

The question guiding my research is as follows: How does implementing phonemic awareness early in the year help my struggling readers bridge the gap to be able to decode words? As I reviewed the literature related to my question I knew that I needed to provide a solid foundation of phonemic awareness lessons in order to maximize my student’s growth in reading. Taking into consideration all that I learned from my review of literature, I narrowed in on 1) my most at-risk students, 2) making my instruction narrow focused to encompass phonemic awareness skills 3) implementing small group interventions. In order to develop my own way of teaching I needed to 1) evaluate the baseline data of my students 2) create/implement focused phonemic awareness instruction that addressed the specific skills my students were lacking and 3) use and evaluate assessments and observations to update intervention plans. Through my research, I have come to better understand what phonemic awareness is and which skills my students need to grasp in order to be a more successful reader. I used data from FAST assessments and our ELA Wonders Curriculum from the beginning of the year to form small groups. I was able to create focused phonemic awareness interventions based on students needs making sure to include rhyming, identifying beginning, medial and ending sounds, syllables, blending and segmenting. I have been able to adjust those lessons through formal and informal observations and assessments. I again assessed my students using FAST and the Wonders Assessments provided to me through my district in January in order to evaluate the effectiveness of my interventions. I used reading surveys at the beginning of the year and then again in January to gauge my students thoughts about reading and if they have changed. My incoming struggling readers are gaining skills in many areas of phonemic awareness and as a result are feeling more confident as readers. I have learned that I need to help them see their success’ as a reader and can influence their attitude towards reading. I will continue to monitor my students for changes in their skills and adjust my intervention groups as needed but will put a bigger focus on building their confidence in their phonemic awareness and reading skills. In addition, I will be researching the power of repetition in respect to our young readers and their phonemic awareness skills.