Phonemic Awareness in Young Children aligns fully with the research supporting the importance of phonemic awareness instruction for kindergarten, first-grade, and special education students. It is based on the Lundberg, Frost, and Peterson (1988) program developed in Sweden and Denmark. Some activities were modified to suit the tempo and culture of American classrooms. To ensure that the program’s effectiveness was not compromised, researchers field tested the modified version in 23 classrooms over a 3-year period, confirming the children’s growth in phonemic awareness.

The program is also backed by the following research results:

• Studies have found that when children are taught phonemic awareness, they are more prepared to learn to read and spell. Also, phonemic awareness instruction, combined with instruction connecting the phonemic segments to alphabet letters, significantly improves early reading and spelling skills (Ball and Blachman, Reading Research Quarterly, 1991, Vol. 26, No. 1, p. 49).
  
  
• Research has shown that phonemic awareness instruction gives at-risk students a bigger boost in reading than it gives typical or readers with disabilities (Ehri et al. Reading Research Quarterly, July/August/September 2001, Vol. 36, No. 3, p. 266).
  
  
• Overall studies have found that phonemic awareness instruction can be beneficial for all children, including those from low-income, inner-city schools.
  
  
• Studies have shown that teachers can incorporate phonemic awareness instruction into their regular day through games and learning activities.
  
  

Annotated Research Bibliography

Adams, M. J., & Henry, M. K. (1997). Myths and Realities about Words and Literacy. School Psychology Review, 26(3), 425–436.

Backed by research, the authors explore and debunk six myths about beginning reading instruction. Here are the realities revealed:

1. When reading meaningful text, good readers normally pause their eyes on very nearly every word of text. (The myth: Good readers do not have to process text in a word-by-word manner.)
   
   
2. Rather than relying on deliberately designed predictable text, beginning readers should be taught to attend to and decode new words. (The myth: Beginning readers should be taught to guess the meaning of words using context and pictures.)
   
   
3. Skillful readers visually process virtually every individual letter or word they read while automatically translating the print to speech as they proceed. (The myth: Good readers recognize familiar words directly, without analysis of their component letters or sounds.)
   
   
4. Phonics is useful for all learners; children with reading disabilities benefit most when given a reading program that directly emphasizes decoding and word recognition skills (i.e., they need more, not less, phonics instruction). (The myth: Phonics is useful for only a limited set of children with certain learning styles or analytic abilities.)
   
   
5. A child’s level of phonemic awareness—the understanding that words are made up of individual sounds, or phonemes, that can be taken apart and changed and put together again to make different words—is the strongest predictor of the success he or she will experience in learning to read. (The myth: The most critical phonics lesson is that of teaching children to blend letters and letter groups to form words.)
   
   
6. Older children need to learn word recognition and spelling strategies that extend beyond phonics, including the ability to recognize syllable junctures and understand the form and meaning of common prefixes, suffixes, and roots. (The myth: Phonics instruction alone is a sufficient basis for children to learn to read and spell words well.)

Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Willows, D. M., Schuster, B. V., Yaghoub-Zadeh, Z., & Shanahan, T. (2001). Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel’s meta-analysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 36(3), 250–287.

The National Reading Panel, formed under a 1997 directive from Congress to assess the status of research-based knowledge regarding the effectiveness of various approaches for teaching children to read, conducted a meta-analysis on phonemic awareness instruction. Its analysis of 52 published studies supported causal inferences about the impact of phonemic awareness on learning to read. The benefits of phonemic awareness instruction were replicated multiple times across experiments and provided solid support for the claim that phonemic awareness instruction is more effective than alternate forms of instruction or no instruction in helping children acquire reading and spelling skills.

Foorman, B. (1995). Research on the “Great Debate”: Code-oriented versus whole language approaches to reading instruction. School Psychology Review, 24(3), 376–392.

In a review of research on the relevance of instruction in the alphabetic code, the author examined links among phonological awareness, spelling, and reading in order to appraise the claim that alphabetic understanding is implicitly gained through writing activities. She found the results to be “surprisingly congruent,” favoring explicit instruction in alphabetic coding. The research demonstrates that instruction in the alphabetic code benefits decoding (which, in turn, benefits comprehension), and that reading and spelling are consequences of and contributors to phonological awareness. Based on her review, the author concluded that incidental instruction provided by the writing activities of whole language alone does not guarantee alphabetic understanding.

Foorman, B. R., Francis, D. J., Beeler, T., Winikates, D., & Fletcher, J. M. (1997). Early interventions for children with reading problems: Study designs and preliminary findings. Learning Disabilities: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 8(1), 63–71.

As part of a large multi-year study, Early Interventions for Children with Reading Problems, researchers attempted to determine whether ensuring that kindergartners were well grounded in the precursors to reading and spelling would prevent subsequent reading difficulties. The study sought to prevent reading problems by introducing 15 minutes of phonological awareness activities into the daily kindergarten curriculum. The activities were based on the English translation of the Lundberg, Frost, and Peterson (1988) program used in Sweden and Denmark (subsequently modified into the program currently available as Phonemic Awareness in Young Children). Researchers compared the growth in literacy precursors—phonological and orthographic processing, rapid naming, and visual-spatial ability—of 100 children to that of 81 control children. The control group received instruction under the district’s standard developmentally appropriate curriculum. Preliminary results showed that the group who received 15 minutes of daily phonological awareness activities improved in phonological analysis skills faster than the control group.

Foorman, B. R., Francis, D. J., Fletcher, J. M., Schatschneider, C., Mehta, P. (1998). The role of instruction in learning to read: Preventing reading failure in at-risk children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90(1), 37–55.

A study of 285 first- and second-graders receiving Title 1 services who were given three kinds of classroom reading instruction revealed that children receiving direct code instruction improved in word reading at a faster rate and had higher word-recognition skills than those receiving implicit code instruction. The three types of instruction given to three separate groups included direct code (direct instruction in letter–sound correspondences practiced in decodable text), embedded code (less direct instruction in systematic sound–spelling patterns embedded in connected text), and implicit code (implicit instruction in the alphabetic code while reading connected text). The results showed advantages for reading instructional programs that emphasize explicit instruction in the alphabetic principle for at-risk children (the embedded group tended to perform between the direct and implicit groups).

Foorman, B. R., Francis, D. J., Novy, D. M., Liberman, D. (1991). How letter–sound instruction mediates progress in first-grade reading and spelling. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83(4), 456–469.

In an investigation designed to study changes in the ways first-graders read and spell words as they are exposed to more or less letter–sound instruction, children in six first-grade classrooms were administered tests of phonemic segmentation and of reading and spelling 60 regular and exception words three times during the year. The researchers found that classrooms with more letter–sound instruction improved at a faster rate in correctly spelling and reading words.

Foorman, B. R., Liberman, D. (1989). Visual and phonological processing of words: A comparison of good and poor readers. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 22(6), 349–355.

At the beginning of the school year, 80 first–graders, half receiving phonics instruction and half receiving whole word instruction, were asked to spell, read aloud, and recognize 60 regular and exception words. A standardized reading test and phoneme segmentation test were also administered. Those above grade level in reading excelled in phonological recoding and applying of grapheme–phoneme correspondence rules and were weaker in utilizing visual-orthographic knowledge. Those below grade level applied visual more than phonological coding and benefited from visual-orthographic knowledge available in a clue word. The results support teaching a continuum of visual and phonological analysis skills in first-grade reading. 

Foorman, B. R., Torgesen, J. (2001). Critical elements of classroom and small-group instruction promote reading success in all children. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 16(4), 203–212.

In a summary of the research on classroom instruction in beginning reading over the last 20 years the authors found that the components of effective instruction are the same whether the focus is prevention or intervention: phonemic awareness and phonemic decoding skills, fluency in word recognition and text processing, construction of meaning, vocabulary, spelling, and writing. Findings from evidence-based research show dramatic reductions in the incidence of reading failure when explicit instruction in these components is provided by the classroom teacher. To address the needs of children most at risk of reading failure, the same instructional components are relevant but need to be made more explicit and comprehensive, more intensive, and more supportive in small-group or one-on-one formats. The argument is made that, by coordinating research evidence from effective classroom reading instruction with effective small-group and one-on-one reading instruction, instructors can meet the literacy needs of all children.

Lundberg, I., Frost, J., & Petersen, O.-P. (1988). Effects of an extensive program for stimulating phonological awareness in preschool children. Reading Research Quarterly, 23(3), 263–284. 

A group of 235 Danish kindergartners who took part in an 8-month, daily training program of systematic instruction made up of games and exercises designed to develop phonological awareness showed a dramatic increase in ability to perform tasks requiring phoneme segmentation over a comparison group of 155 Danish kindergartners. The study showed that, with explicit instruction, phonological awareness can be developed before, and independently of, alphabetic instruction. It also showed that phonological awareness can have a facilitating effect on subsequent reading and spelling acquisition. 

Richgels, D. J. (2001). Phonemic awareness. The Reading Teacher, 55(3), 274–278.

As “phonemic awareness” has spread as a buzzword, the market has been flooded with books on the topic, “too many of which,” the author notes, “fail to provide adequate information about phonemes, phonemic awareness, and phonics.” To be useful to instructors, the author contends, books on phonemic awareness should contain the following five elements:

1. A definition of phoneme that explains how phonemes work in spoken language.
2. A definition of awareness that emphasizes conscious attention.
3. The realization that phonemes are not discrete entities, but rather are categories within which there is much variation.
4. Delineation of the differences among phonological, phonemic, and phonic.
5. An appreciation of the small, albeit necessary, part that phonemic awareness plays in beginning reading and writing.

In a review of available books, the author included Phonemic Awareness in Young Children: A Classroom Curriculum (as well as Road to the Code: A Phonological Awareness Program for Young Children; see separate entry) among those meeting these criteria.

Wasik, B. A. (2001). Phonemic awareness and young children. Childhood Education, Spring, 128–133.

Over the past 20 years, considerable research has been devoted to phonemic awareness and the role it plays in young children’s learning to read. Many teachers of young children, however, fail to include phonemic instruction based on the assumption that phonemic awareness is 1) phonics, and 2) not developmentally appropriate for young children. To disabuse that notion, the author highlights four of the key findings of the research:

1. Children who know how to manipulate sounds in words at any early age have greater success in learning how to read in the first and second grades.
2. Children as young as 3 and 4 have demonstrated phonemic awareness.
3. Opportunities to play with language result in the development of phonemic awareness.
4. Adults can create opportunities for children to learn phonemic awareness. 

The author concludes that children need to learn phonemic awareness by engaging in fun and motivating activities that promote the recognition and manipulation of sounds in words.