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All About Teaching Reading & Writing
Taxonomy
Skill Explainer

1. An Overview of Phoneme Identification

Phoneme Identification Skill Explainer

Marion McBride, M.Ed.
The Simple View of Reading

Word Recognition x Language Comprehension = Reading Comprehension

Assessment

The process of measuring students' progress and providing information to help guide instruction

(active)
Word Recognition

The ability to see a word and know how to pronounce it without consciously thinking about it

(active)
Phonological Awareness

A group of skills that enable you to recognize and manipulate parts of spoken words

Articulation

Syllables

Onset-Rime

(active)Phonemic Awareness

Phonics

A method for teaching children the relationship between spoken sounds and written letters so they can learn to decode and encode

Sound-Letter Correspondence

Phonics Patterns

Common letter combinations found in words.

Short Vowels Skill Explainer
Closed Syllables Skill Explainer
Glued Sounds Skill Explainer
Open Syllables Skill Explainer
Spelling with 'c' vs. 'k' Skill Explainer
Consonant Digraphs Skill Explainer
Blends Skill Explainer
‘-ck’ Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
FLoSS(Z) Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
‘y’ as a Vowel Skill Explainer

Coming soon.

    Magic 'e' Skill Explainer
    Soft 'c' and Soft 'g' Skill Explainer

    Coming soon.

      R-Controlled Vowels Skill Explainer

      Coming soon.

        Vowel Teams and Dipthongs Skill Explainer

        Coming soon.

          '-tch' Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
          '-dge' Spelling Rule Skill Explainer
          Consonant '-le' Skill Explainer

          Coming soon.

            Schwa Skill Explainer

            Coming soon.

              Irregularly Spelled High-Frequency Words

              High-frequency words that have a part of their spelling that has to be memorized

              Irregularly Spelled High-Frequency Words

              Multisyllable Words

              Words that have more than one word part

              Prefixes

              How to add meaningful beginnings to words

              Suffixes

              How to add meaningful endings to words

              Language Comprehension

              The ability to understand the meaning of spoken words

              Reading Comprehension

              The ability to understand the meaning of printed text

              Text Considerations

              Characteristics of a text that impact the ease or difficulty of comprehension.

              Strategies and Activities

              How a reader approaches a specific text, depending on their purpose for reading

              Reader’s Skill and Knowledge

              The skills and knowledge a reader brings to the reading task that are necessary for comprehension

              Sociocultural Context

              Elements in a classroom that affect how well a child learns to read

              Fluency

              The ability to read accurately with automaticity and expression

              Fluency: Accuracy, then Automaticity

              Reading or decoding words correctly (accuracy) and reading at an appropriate rate (automaticity)

              Accuracy, then Automaticity Skill Explainer

              Coming soon.

                Fluency: Expressive Text Reading

                Reading characterized by accuracy with automaticity and expression

                Expressive Text Reading Skill Explainer

                Coming soon.

                  Writing

                  The act of putting thoughts into print using transcription and composition skills

                  Features of Structured Literacy

                  A systematic and explicit approach to teaching reading based on research

                  Why Do We Teach Phoneme Identification?

                  When we say a child is proficient at phoneme identification, it means they can hear and distinguish the individual phonemes in spoken words accurately and automatically. Phoneme identification is a skill that will help students both with sounding out words and with spelling words.

                  A phoneme is the smallest unit of spoken language, like the /b/ sound in the word bee, for example. And, as you can probably tell, phonemes combine to form words, like /b/ and /ē/ combine to make bee. The practical focus of phoneme identification lessons is to teach students to isolate individual phonemes in different positions of words — beginning, end, and middle, in that order. 

                  Here's a simple way to approach it. You may ask students,

                  What is the first sound in the word pot?  

                  /p/

                  And here’s a teacher asking her students to isolate an ending sound:

                  Quick Look: Isolating Phonemes

                  Video thumbnail for Quick Look: Isolating Phonemes
                  Produced by Reading Universe, a partnership of WETA, Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book
                  Hide Video Transcript Show Video Transcript

                  Teacher: Let's all say the name of this picture. What is this, everybody?

                  Teacher and Students: Horse. Horse.

                  Teacher: Yes. Now, let's rollercoaster horse. Let me see you ...

                  Teacher and students: /h/, /or/, /s/.

                  Teacher: What's the ending sound?

                  Students: /Ssss/.

                  Teacher: Very nice job.

                  Another way students practice phoneme identification is by identifying the same phoneme in more than one word. You could say,

                  What sound is the same in these words: pot, cat, bat? 

                  /t/

                  It's found at the end of the word.

                  And it can look like this:

                  Quick Look: Recognizing Phonemes

                  Video thumbnail for Quick Look: Recognizing Phonemes
                  Produced by Reading Universe, a partnership of WETA, Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book
                  Hide Video Transcript Show Video Transcript

                  Teacher: Where should this picture of the cactus go? Let's start with that. What do you think? Hmm. What's the ending sound for cactus?

                  Students: /Sss/.

                  Teacher: Very nice. So where should that go? Which other pictures do we have with that ending sound? Oh, go ahead. You can do it [teacher points to one of her students].

                  Student: Horse and mouse.

                  Teacher: Yes, horse, mouse. And let's all say this word.

                  Students: Cactus.

                  Teacher: Beautiful job.

                  A third approach to practicing phoneme identification is by having students identify a phoneme that is different within a group of words. Say,

                  The words are pot, cat, and bat

                  Which word has a different middle sound? 

                  pot

                  Watch students categorize phonemes in a small group:

                  Quick Look: Categorizing Phonemes

                  Video thumbnail for Quick Look: Categorizing Phonemes
                  Produced by Reading Universe, a partnership of WETA, Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book
                  Hide Video Transcript Show Video Transcript

                  Teacher: I am going to say three words and I want you to tell me which one doesn't belong. So, think it might be the first sound that you're listening for. It might be the middle or it might be the end. We want the one that doesn't belong to where Mrs. Venture's pointing. Are you ready? Repeat the words after me. My words are cat, cup, fig ....

                  Students: Cat, cup, fig ... fig.

                  Teacher: Good job. Okay. My words are pick, down, dash ...

                  Students: Pick, down, dash ... pick.

                  Teacher: Good. Down and dash have the /d/, but pick doesn't belong.

                  It’s pretty simple, and it’s often fun to teach. We’ll show you how to do it.

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                  Reading Universe is made possible by generous support from Jim & Donna Barksdale; the Hastings/Quillin Fund, an advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (opens in new window); the AFT (opens in new window); the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation (opens in new window); and three anonymous donors.