Good book on Phonemic Awareness

“Reading Reflex” by Carmen & Geoffrey McGuiness is excellent. About $16 at bookstores. This book covers more than just phonemic awareness, includes tests, and provides a methodology for teaching.

“Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills” edited by Judith Birsh is very good but it is more expensive ($59 at Amazon) and does not include assessment tests.

Mary

Phonemic Awareness in Young Children by Marilyn Jager Adams, Barbara Foorman, Ingvar Lundberg and Terri Beeler is a classroom curriculum that has assessments and an entire curriculum in PA.

You can get it from amazon.com via the “LD Store” on this site and a percentage goes to WETA.

Students seem to be more receptive to Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills (Birsch).

NT

Hi Kate:
The Marilyn Adams book previously mentioned is a great start…it contains a general ovrivew, an informal screening tool and games and activities to promote phonemic awareness for Kindergarteners.

Here are a few more:
Phonological Awareness Skills Program (PASP)
This is by Jerome Rosner and can be obtained through Pro-ED
1-800-897-3202….this also conatins his new test which leads you into an entry point in his curriculum…..

Sounds and Letters for Readers and Spellers…this is really a huge collection of auditroy drills….I have used it with many older students. www.sopriswest.com, 303-651-2829.

I also really like like Creative Teaching Press Phonemic Awareness: Playing with Sounds to Strengthen Beginning Reading Skills—

There are many more out there—good luck-Sherry

Hi,
Have you seen any of the J and J readers they have for sale at the sopriswest site? Any good?

Thanks,
Ana

Dear Ana:

I use the J & J Readers in my private practice, and they are a great supplement for reinforcing sound/symbol relationships just introduced. I use Project Read materials for teaching a sound/letter relationship, then reinforce it with reading from the book that coordinates with the sound/symbol just introduced. These books are sequencial and cumulative, so the student does not encounter many words that they cannot decode.

While they are excellent books to reinforce “phonics” style instruction, they cannot be used for phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that words are made up of individual SOUNDS and how SOUNDS can be manipulated within words. No LETTERS are involved with this type of instruction, only the deletion, addition, or switching of sounds in words is done in this type of instruction. The Phonemic Awareness for Young Children by Adams, et. al. (mentioned in posts above), and the block excercises in the LiPS materials from Lindamood Bell are excellent for phonemic awareness instruction.

Hope this helps,

L. Starr

What instrument(s) enables one to determine that a student has acquired phonemic awareness?

Hello—There are many tests that can give you a good idea about a child’s level of phonemic awareness—
The TOPA (Test of Phonological Awareness) Pro-Ed, is a great group screening tool given to K-2.
For acquisition of specific phonemic awareness skills I really like the PAT (Phonological Awareness Test) Linguisystems—This looks at rhyming, blending, segmenting, phoneme isolation, deletion, and manipulation. It also has very nice sound symbol and word attack sections. For a broader look at phonological processing I use the CTOPP (Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing)—also Pro-Ed….This test looks at phonological processing, phonological memory and rapid automatic naming.

Dear Arthur:

“The Test of Phonological Awareness (TOPA)” by Torgesen and Bryant can be used for children in kindergarten. The Early Elementary version can be used for first and second graders. Another test that can be used for individuals 7 to 24, which is more comprehensive, is “Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP)” by Wagner, Torgesen, and Rashotte. It assesses phonemic awareness, phonological memory, and rapid naming skills. It was normed on over 1,600 individuals in 30 states, and the reliability coefficients exceed .80. Another test is the Lindamood Auditory Conceptualization test which has reliability and validity data in its tester’s manual.

I hope this is helpful. If you would like articles regarding the importance of phonemic awareness, I’d be glad to look in my collection of professional journals.

L. Starr

Reading Reflex develops phonemic awareness while simultaneously developing knowledge of sound/symbol relationships. Only the ability to manipulate phonemes is taught separately and even that is taught within the context of learning sound/symbol relationships as well. When done this way, there is no real need for other books with phonemic awareness “activities” as far as I can see. I would like to hear comments about this from others who use Phono-Graphix/Reading Reflex or Wordworks. I’m not familiar with Wordworks, but I’d like to know more about it. Are there phonemic awareness “activities” included or is phonemic awareness developed simultaneously with sound/symbol relationships as it is in Reading Reflex?

Thanks,

Margo