Phonological Awareness: Assessment and Intervention

1
Phonological Awareness Assessment and
Intervention

• Presentation to Student Support Services Unit
• Ministry of Education, Trinidad and Tobago
• January 3 - 5, 2007

2
Phonological Awareness

• The understanding of different ways that oral
  language can be divided into smaller components
  and manipulated
• Sentences into words
• Words into syllables
• Simple into /sim/ and /ple/
• Onset and rime
• Bright into /br/ and /ight/
• Phonemes
• Hamper into /h/, /a/, /m/, /p/, /er/

3
Phonemic Awareness

• The most sophisticated level of phonological
  awareness. The understanding that words are made
  up of individual sounds or phonemes and the
  ability to manipulate these phonemes either by
  segmenting, blending, or changing individual
  phonemes within words to create new words.
• Chard Dickson, 1999

4
(No Transcript)
5
Phonemic Awareness and Success in Reading I

• "Findings from a large body of research converge
  to suggest that students who enter first grade
  with little phonological awareness experience
  less success in reading than peers who enter
  school with a conscious awareness of the sound
  structure of words and the ability to manipulate
  sounds in words."
• "Significant gains in phonological awareness can
  be achieved with teaching andthe gains in
  phonological awareness directly affect the ease
  of reading acquisition and subsequent reading
  achievement."
• Smith, Simmons, Kameenui (1998)

6
Phonemic Awareness and Success in Reading II
7
An Aid to Interpreting Effect Size (d) Statistics
8
Phonemic Awareness Tasks

• Rhyming
• Oddity (sound categorization)
• Blending
• Segmenting
• Manipulation

9
Taxonomy of Phonemic Awareness Tasks - 1

• Rhyming Tasks
• An ear for the sound of words. Can recognize
  rhymes. Can produce rhymes.
• Note the frequent use of rhyming words in books
  for young children (e.g., The Cat in the Hat).

10
Taxonomy of Phonemic Awareness Tasks - 2

• Oddity Tasks (Sound Categorization)
• Child is presented with a set of 3 or 4 words and
  asked which of the words is different or does not
  belong. They may be asked to base their decision
  on the first sound of the words, or the final
  sound of the words, or sometimes the middle sound
  of the words. (Middle sounds amount to rhyme
  detection).
• Only requires that children compare and contrast
  phonemic similarities and differences in the
  sounds of syllables.
• Especially usable with children before formal
  reading instruction has begun. Bowey (1995)
  suggested sound matching may be more closely
  related to decoding performance than is
  phonological memory or rapid naming.

11
Taxonomy of Phonemic Awareness Tasks - 3

• Blending Tasks
• Child is presented with segments of a word
• ( /m/..... /a/ ..... /p/), and asked to put them
  together into the word (map).

12
Taxonomy of Phonemic Awareness Tasks - 4

• Segmentation tasks
• Can child decompose a syllable into its component
  phonemes. Easy tasks typically use words of 1 - 3
  phonemes.
• 1. Tapping. Child is given object (e.g. pencil)
  and asked to tap out the number of phonemes in
  each syllable.
• 2. Counters. Child lays out chips, blocks, etc.
  instead of tapping. This leaves a permanent
  product.
• 3. Spoken. Child articulates each sound in a word
  sequentially without the aid of concrete
  manipulates.
• 4. Counting. Child counts the number of sounds in
  the word.
• Typically, these tasks are preceded by ample
  training, demonstration, and modeling and, even
  while assessing skill, feedback may be given for
  incorrect responses. Thus, failure to perform is
  attributed to the inability to break syllable
  into smaller segments.

13
Taxonomy of Phonemic Awareness Tasks - 5

• Manipulation tasks
• Children are asked to pronounce a word after they
  have removed a phoneme from the beginning,
  middle, or end of a word
• Say hill without the /h/
• Say monkey without the /k/ Say nest without the
  /s/
• Say pink without the /k/
• In other versions of this task, children are
  asked to add, delete, isolate, or move any given
  phoneme contained in a word.
• Requires all the skills of phoneme segmentation
  plus more.

14
Manipulation II

• Initial phoneme removal (syllable-splitting) is
  easier than other tasks.
• Skill needed to delete the initial phoneme from a
  word.
• Child is asked to break off first phoneme of a
  word. In some versions they are then asked to
  pronounce the phoneme in isolation (instructor
  says "bear" and child says "b-b-b-b").
• In others, child is asked to say what is left
  (instructor says "pink" and child says "ink").

15
Mountain Shadows Phonemic Awareness Scale (MS-PAS)

• Sound categorization task
• 20 items
• 10 same items
• 20 different items
• Group administration
• Screening

16
MS-PAS in U. S.

• Internal consistency reliability of .89
• Test-retest stability of .73 for interval of 5
  months
• Test-retest stability of .75 to .88 for interval
  of 2 weeks
• Predictive validity (reading) of .63
• Parallel with Test of Phonemic Awareness

17
Conducted Pilot Study

• Address concerns with face validity.
• To see if instrument would work in this
  population.

18
Same Items (a .84, N 4,112)
Lamp .83
Fan .82
Tent .82
Seal .82
Hand .83
Mitten .83
Wig .82
Nine .82
Key .82
Pan .82
19
Diff Items (a .83, N 4,112)
Net .81
Pin .81
Gum .81
Bed .82
Leaf .81
Cane .81
Frog .81
Tack .81
Rope .81
Mop .81
20
of Students with Perfect Scores
21
Correlations with Age and Grade
Age Grade
Same Sound .34 .46
Different Sound .33 .45
Total Score .37 .50
22
MS-PAS Normative Sample inTrinidad and Tobago

• 50 boys and 50 girls from Infant 1, Infant 2, and
  Standard 1, respectively
• No differences in scores between boys and girls.
• No difference in scores based on students ethnic
  background.

23
Descriptive Statistics for MS-PAS
24
Reliability of MS-PAS
25
MS-PAS Reading (Concurrent Validity)
Beginning of School Year
End of School Year
26
MS-PAS (Beginning of Year) Reading (End of
Year)Predictive Validity
27
Page 18
28
Page 19
29
Page 20
30
MS-PAS Norms
Page 15
31
Interpretation
Tentative suggestions until validity research
can be done in Trinidad and Tobago Infant
1 below 25th percentile further
individual assessment with IPA Infant 2
begin year raw score 18 further
individual assessment with IPA Standard 1
begin year raw score 18 further
individual assessment with IPA
32
Lets Practice
Student named Joe at end of Standard 1 Ill
administer test and Joes responses will be on
screen You mark Score Sheet (page 20) You
score using norms (page 15) You interpret
(page14)
33
1
34
2
35
3
36
4
37
5
38
6
39
Score Sheet for Joe
40
MS-PAS Norms
Page 15