There has been a lot of buzz these last few weeks about using letters when teaching phonemic awareness tasks of segmenting and blending - and while I am excited to see more conversations surrounding this, integrated phoneme awareness is not new!
In 2000, the National Reading Panels’ in-depth review of 52 phonemic awareness articles found that explicitly teaching phonemic awareness directly impacts children's reading, significantly more than instruction that lacks any attention to phonemic awareness. This evidence was so clear that they recommended that explicit phonemic awareness be a part of classroom early reading instruction.
The National Reading Panel showed that connecting letters to sounds (graphophonemic connections) during phonemic awareness tasks benefited students in reading and spelling.
Phonemic awareness in structured literacy lessons has always held importance. We know that our spoken language needs to be connected to our written language. So, if we have been teaching phonemic awareness tasks of segmenting and blending without linking to letters, making the shift to an integrated approach will benefit students.
This approach is integral to structured literacy and lays the foundational skills needed to read and spell. |