Phonics/Phonemic Awareness

With the greater emphasis on phonic instruction of the past several years, there has also been an interesting problem regarding what a phonic approach is or is not. Perhaps this has become a problem because a great majority of our training programs over the last fifteen to twenty years have only stressed whole word approaches. In spite of my direct focus on combining the phonemic awareness training with teaching the letter-sound (sound/symbol), which starts immediately in kindergarten and is stressed daily throughout the entire year, I have been asked if I teach “explicit” or “implicit” phonics. I’ve also had others report that ARL is a whole language approach and that I teach implicit phonics. I will choose to regard these questions as evidence of lack of understanding of just what phonics instruction entails.

Marilyn J. Adams (1990) defines explicit phonics as “- the provision of systematic instruction on the relation of letter-sounds to words -” and implicit phonics as - “the philosophy of letting students induce letter-sounds from whole words - “. Jeanne Chall (1996) has reported that “systematic and early instruction in phonics leads to better reading: better accuracy of word recognition, decoding, spelling, and oral and silent reading comprehension.” Chall and Adams, along with many other researchers not listed here, state that the most effective type of instruction is explicit , or direct, instruction of the letter-sound correspondences. The practice of letting children “discover” the sound-letter relationships has not worked well with the great majority of children.

A basic component of ARL from its inception in 1972–3 has been the direct explicit instruction of the sound/symbol relationship before asking children to read. Children need to know the sounds of letters, not just the names, in order to read. We read letter sounds, not letter names. Fortunately, Jerome Rosner’s "Auditory Motor Program" was published as we were starting the program and we used it as the most effective source of what is now referred to as phonemic awareness training. It is interesting to learn from recent research that the single most critical process in the many phonological processing activities is the interchange of the onset from the rime to make a new word. Example: hat to sat to mat. This activity was in the Rosner manual and identified by him as critical. Unfortunately, he didn’t have enough activities to assist youngsters with poor language skills. However, it was the best program available in 1973 and it was the inspiration for my "Phonemic Awareness Program." The research of the past decade has overwhelmingly confirmed the importance of phonemic awareness and phonological processing as well as the direct explicit instruction of the alphabet.

I will grant anyone that I have not introduced the vowel combinations as rapidly as most phonic programs require. I want to use direct instruction to teach the sound/symbol relationship, followed by direct instruction of the rime - an activity considered to be phonic -, and have taken care not to introduce the long vowel combinations and the vowel digraphs and dipthongs too early. I’ve remembered the research of Isabelle Liberman regarding the different levels of blending and also observed the difficulty many children had with a rapid introduction of the three levels within Rosner’s program. This resulted in my not wanting to proceed at the rate required in most phonic programs. The 1 in 5 children identified by Chall as having problems learning to read tend to have memory problems. It seems futile and excessive to expect these children to memorize all of the phonic rules, syllable rules, and when to apply them. There are simple, often repeated, phonic generalizations which are appropriate and necessary — we teach the critical rules, but try to simplify for less mature children. It is too easy to complicate the process unnecessarily when requiring all of the memorizing and rapid introduction of the three blending systems.

My goal is to have all properly placed first grade children experiencing the joy of reading by January. They are at different levels of comfort and some will still need a controlled vocabulary, but others are reading any series available. ARL at kindergarten and for the first four months of 1st grade, is a readiness for learning program. Our experience of 27 years has been to carefully and continually assess what each child is ready for as we observe their progress with the Levels of the Phonemic Awareness Program and how well they are learning the sound/symbol relationship. Adams writes that knowledge of these processes at the beginning of first grade are the two most critical predictors of success at the end of the year. Chall found that children who knew the sound-letter relationship at the beginning of 1st grade have the greatest success at the end of the year. Barbara Bateman, University of Oregon, completed research on the number of reinforcements needed to learn the letters of the alphabet. She reports that the average child needs 1,500 reinforcements for the first eight letters of the alphabet. After the child starts to understand the system, it goes a little faster, but not much. For the hard-to-teach child she reports 5,000 - 6,000 reinforcements are necessary. Gates, a reading expert, reports that a genius needs 10’s of reinforcements. When using a phonic, linguistic, or look/say approach, you will not find enough reinforcements in the kindergarten and/or first grade materials to properly prepare any except the brightest for reading. This realization led to the "Guide to Readiness & Reading, Phonemic Awareness & Blending." We have to provide more explicit experiences for all children in order to develop automaticity. The number of reinforcements is different for all children and we individualize for each by knowing how to ask questions in the proper order. Recognition for some, recall for others, and application for the most ready. Good teachers know how to individualize.

Realization of the great need for the sound/symbol and the number of reinforcements needed to properly learn them, led to my urging kindergarten and 1st grade teachers to review letters and concepts introduced 10–12 times each and every day. Quick one-minute activities. It is also why we administer the sound/symbol screening on the first day of school each year through sixth grade. Further, it is the reason why we should review at least 6–8 times a day in 2nd and 3rd grade. In a school year of 180–185 days it is difficult to arrive at 1,500 to 6,000 reinforcements. The children learn best with intermittent rather than massed reinforcement. A drag for the adult, but critical for the children. We need to teach the way the child learns! As the children move into first grade, the onset-rime becomes critical for reading success and automatic recognition of the Keys become an additional phonic skill. It is also referred to as a linguistic property of reading, usually in a somewhat demeaning tone. However, we have found, whether we like it or not, that the less mature children of first through third grader will have success with a more consistent approach. Since my goal is to prevent reading problems and reading disabilities with all of the incumbent problems, in spite of my reservations about the repetitive nature of the beginning linguistic series, we found that SRA or Merrill Linguistic Readers are a godsend for these children. They can read them, they are excited about reading, they are unconcerned about the lack of literary quality, and they are someone who can, not someone who cannot! My experience as a school psychologist taught me that all children know whether they are in the can or cannot group by November of 1st grade. If we utilize the proper approach, reinforce faithfully, have the children properly placed, not overplaced, they are all starting to have success with Level G phonological processing and have a more positive experience with school and learning. Level G in the "Guide to Readiness & Reading," is the interchange of the onset to complete a rhyming pattern — pat, hat, sat, etc.

When children are unable to successfully interchange the onset-rime, Level G, they must revert to memory, guess, or use picture cues. Children who are less mature or those who demonstrate limited phonemic awareness, are not good at guessing, their memory problems are part of why they are less mature, and picture cues don’t provide enough stability for several words on a page. There are programs which require these children to repeatedly read a story, with help, day after day until it is “memorized.” They then proclaim “success” with the child. This approach is no different than all parents experience when they repeatedly read a story to the 2–5 year old child. The preschooler will remember the story even though they are not able to identify any letters or words except in the context of that specific picture and setting with the parent. (This is a classic example of implicit instruction.)

Children need to have the process for reading taught to the automatic level and it is not acquired through guessing or picture cues. Neither are they able to memorize all of the necessary words to become an adequate reader. Chall’s research found that children with reading problems in 3rd grade still had problems in 9th grade. Through the Proactive Remediation component of ARL, we have had success with older students who are fixated at 3rd grade by returning to the skills which were not properly taught in the K–3 period, by directly teaching the processes critical for success: the sound/symbol, phonological processing, and stressing the Keys found in multisyllabic words. The process is critical at any age and if not taught to the automatic level, the children will not progress beyond approximately 3rd grade. It is difficult to understand how anyone would consider this instruction to be implicit. ARL has always advocated explicit instruction for the proper foundation for reading.

Timing is critical to learning to read. A classroom of 20–25 eager first graders may contain a range of three years of developmental contrast. It certainly is a challenge to meet all of the diverse needs of these children. I’ve never been able to conceptualize how the needs of all are met by having only one reading group for the entire class, or by smaller groups with the same text. The best indicators of readiness and subsequence success that we have found have been within the Phonemic Awareness Program. How much success does the child have with the various activities of the Phonemic Awareness Program? Is the child only able to successfully complete Level G (the interchange of the beginning consonant; the easiest of the three blending processes — pat to sat, etc.)? If it is January of 1st grade, and the child is only able to complete the Level G process, they need more reinforcement with the sound/symbol and further training with the blending process. If they are able to interchange the vowel sound, the second of the three blending processes, even if it is short term memory, then we have confidence that they will be able to succeed as we continue to explicitly teach and review the sound/symbol daily, 10–12 times per day, as well as continue daily phonemic awareness training. In most first grade classes there are 3–5 children who need the consistency of the linguistic series and their repetitive comfort with the slower pace of blending. When educators don’t overwhelm these children, they succeed. Again, my choice is to teach these children the way they learn, not the way I would wish they would learn. I don’t prefer the linguistic series and feel they would be much too slow, repetitive, and lacking in stimulation for the children who are capable of the more complex and appropriate blending. However, we have found the linguistic series to be a perfect fit for the child who can blend only in the simplest manner. We also have learned that if we are patient, consistent, assure them of success with something they can read, are explicit with the direct application of the sound/symbol and phonemic awareness training, they will eventually be able to develop antomaticity with the three levels of blending. It usually takes a full three to four years of daily instruction to accomplish this for these children. If we are not patient with these children and overwhelm them with too difficult reading materials, we fail them. We have not adjusted and place the blame on the child “— after all we have presented them with the best of reading materials and they were unsuccessful.” Where schools have followed the suggestions regarding selection of proper materials for the children with language processing problems, been patient and persistent, the children do not stop reading at third grade level. They continue to grow in reading skills. It takes longer for them than other children, they are more literal comprehendors, but they continue to improve and they do not need to be labeled. We see a definite reduction in the number of children who need to be labeled or placed in special programs. This a consequence of direct explicit instruction; there is nothing implicit regarding the approach.

The Directed Reading Lesson (DRL) and the Assured Reading Assignment (ARA) both ask the teacher to introduce all new words in context, to assist the children in decoding and encoding each new word, to develop a sense of the story, or passage, before asking them to read the passage/story. This is rather explicit and direct instruction. The DRL is utilized for all first grade lessons and with children reading below grade level in second through fourth grades. The ARA is the introductory part of all lessons; social studies, science, reading, math; from second grade through twelfth. The ARA is similar to the syllabus which is presented by many teachers at the college level as they introduce the students to a topic. We need to use the same technique for our youngest students. Learning is not a game similar to ‘hide and seek’, it is a necessary skill and function of each developing child and we must understand how to properly promote it. Comprehension is a product of the proper introduction of the assignment in any subject area, not something the children are to discover on their own. Yes, there are children who are great at deductive and inductive reasoning, but not the majority, and the majority need to be directly taught. It was not by accident that Piaget called the third growth period a concrete growth period. If we all had the select group of students Socrates was fortunate enough to have had, we could all use the Socratic approach to learning and reading. As educators in the 21st Century, we have all of the children, not select populations. We must help them understand what we want them to learn, at the same time that we teach them strategies which enable them to become more independent learners. This too is explicit direct instruction.

The Language of Instruction (LOI) which is employed from day one of kindergarten within the ARL program, is also direct explicit instruction. Children and teachers need to have a common language which is useful across subject areas. The same directional language is reinforced daily until it becomes automatic. The LOI allows the children to properly label their environment, thus gaining control through language, and this results in greater self-control. They don’t have to continually check through other sensory systems to know. When in kindergarten for example, they see a triangle, they don’t have to touch, rotate, and smell to verify that is a triangle — they know and they have the proper label. There is less impulsive and distractible behavior from the children since they have been enabled, through language, to organize and label their world. There are many other advantages to the LOI, however, this is not the time to pursue them. It is enough to understand that they are further evidence of the direct explicit focus of ARL.

A Decoding Key is introduced on the second day of first grade. Others will follow as the children review/learn new letter sounds as the weeks follow. Decoding Keys are rhyming patterns which, hopefully, have been introduced by parents as they read to their preschoolers. The rhymes have been emphasized daily in ARL throughout the entire kindergarten year. Stories with the rhyming pattern have been read, emphasized, and the children have been asked to make up rhymes. Adams in the "Summary" version of "Beginning To Read," page 85, listed thirty-seven rhyming patterns which research has demonstrated to appear immediately and frequently in early readers. She reports that “- nearly 500 primary-grade words can be derived from -” the thirty-seven rimes (p84). Adams further reports “Using onsets and rimes has several advantages over traditional phonics instruction. First, as we have seen, phonic generalizations about pronunciations of individual vowels and vowel digraphs are frustratingly unstable. As it turns out , however, vowel sounds are generally quite stable within particular rimes.” It is this consistency which we have been utilizing in ARL since 1972–3. It is this same consistency, the phonogram/rime, that we have found to be readily responded to by the less mature or language delayed children rather than a strict traditional phonic program. It is very critical to develop the alphabetic principle early in the instructional process for reading. It must be taught directly and explicitly at the same time that we understand how to flexibly adjust for the children who need more time to allow them to acquire all three blending systems. We have been able to use the phonogram with its rhyming pattern to enable second semester first graders to readily decode and encode a word such as "intergalactic." I ask them if they have watched any of the TV program Star Trek. The usual response is an enthusiastic “Yes!” Then I ask that they can spell the word. Usually they are a little reluctant. I then ask for one child to write the word, as spelled by all, on the chalkboard. I tell them that they already know all of the Keys and the letter sounds needed then — “What two letters say /in/? - what letter says /t/? - what two letters say /er/? - what letter says /g/? - what two letters say /al/? - what three letters say /act/? and what two letters say /ic/?” “Now clap and tell me the number of parts in the words?” They clap five times. “Now underline the Keys in the word. ” “How many Keys did you find?” Five. We are starting to help them to understand how “alphabetic coding” (my term for what I’m attempting to teach) allows them to attack “big” words. As they develop confidence and competence, they will start to deal more appropriately with multisyllabic words. Research from, among others, the Orton Society, tells us that 85% of the 38,000 most frequently used words are consistent. Therefore, if we enable the children to learn the Decoding Keys (phonograms) and the sound/symbol relationship to the automatic level, through a strategy which is an easier version of the phonic system, we can expect much greater success than through a strictly traditional phonic system. Is this variation a rejection of phonics? Absolutely not. Isobelle Liberman referred to it as “alphabetic coding” — this was her name for what I was attempting to develop in 1975. I thanked her at the time and have used the term ever since. The ARL program consists of many opportunities for syllable segmentation, syllable deletion, (Levels D, E, I), phoneme deletion (Level F), phoneme substitution (Levels G, H, J, K, L, M), as well as a new Level which is promising better assessment of the knowledge of the sound/syllable relationship than nonsense words. There is constant segmentation required to complete any level of the program. They are learning to manipulate both the syllable and the phoneme.

Spelling is taught simultaneously with the decoding process as we use the sound/symbol and the Decoding Keys as the basis for extending recognition and usage of multisyllabic words. At the present time a list of commonly used words is being organized using the stressed Key within the word for classifying it into the Decoding Key lists. This will form the basis for a spelling approach and program.

Learning the phonic generalizations (rules) can be difficult — too difficult for the hard-to-teach children. Adams, p. 83, makes a strong statement regarding this issue: “In short, children cannot become skillful decoders by memorizing generalizations or rules. For neither the expert nor the novice does rote knowledge of an abstract rule, in and of itself, make any difference. Rules are useful only as far as they pertain to experience. Rules are intended to capture the patterns of spelling. But productive use of those patterns depends on relevant experience, not on rote memorization.” In ARL we stress the phongram/rime and the sound/symbol, but do not stress the memorization of the rules. As previously stated, there are a few very basic generalizations which are helpful and these are referred to as they appear within the context of the instructional process, but not committed to memory. Vowel digraphs and vowel dipthongs are introduced as Keys with the consistency being stressed rather than opting for the rule. Is ARL a phonic program? Yes, but with some flexibility built into the process. We try to let the children tell us when they are ready to shift from the short vowel to the long vowel, from the first blending process to the second, and then to the third blending system. We directly teach all three and attempt to promote the learning curve as quickly as the children are comfortable with each stage. If the process is optimized properly, the children tell us which reading approach they will successfully complete. But we let them learn the way they are able, rather than insisting that - “program A is the best reading series.” We simplify the amount of rules which are required, but stress the consistencies within the phonic system rather than focus on the inconsistencies.

Does it work? Yes! There are five schools in New York and Pennsylvania which have been cited by the federal government as Exemplary Title I schools in the past three years and several more receiving the same recognition by the states’ Title I offices — two in Brentwood, Long Island in the last year. Five schools have been cited as Blue Ribbon schools in the past three years. Saugerties, Hammondsport, Old Forge, the Split Rock School in West Genesee are among several using ARL who scored in the top or top two of their respective counties on the newly instituted 4th grade state mandated screening. Amityville, Brentwood, and Riverhead, NY are doing very well. The Reading, PA school district has done remarkable well in the past two to three years. Mayopac, NY has excellent results with two of its schools receiving Blue Ribbon status. Do all of these schools do only ARL? No, but the foundation is built through the direct instruction of the sound/symbol, the extensive use of the Keys, daily phonological processing and blending training, and the language of instruction. The schools experiencing the most success are those which:

1. extend the ARL training into the second through sixth grades;

2. do not treat the phonological processing as something which is completed by the end of first grade;

3. also use the Assured Reading Assignments from second grade through, at least, sixth grade; and,

4. provide adequate inservice for their teaching staff.


Children are learners when we provide them with the proper skill foundation. And, best of all, they are eager learners when we teach the way they learn. Discipline problems diminish as do learning problems which lead to labels.

Summarizing: I’m not certain that I’ve addressed each and every concern regarding explicit vs. implicit phonic instruction. However, I’ve presented the definitions of both Chall and Adams as well as an explanation of my variation for children who may have difficulty in dealing with the rapid introduction of all of the vowels. ARL has always been based on the realization that children must know the sounds of letters to the automatic level in order to have a successful experience in reading. I have advocated three basic prerequisites for reading success, constantly, since 1972. They are: (1) children must know the sounds of letters before they are asked to put them together to form words; (2) children must be able to blend in the manner required by the reading series the district uses; and, (3) they must be able to visualize, revisualize, and/or imagerize. (All three of the last three terms mean the same thing with the first two referred to most often by reading experts and the last used often by learning specialists.) The first two prerequisites cited above require explicit direct instruction as advocated by any phonic program. However, the strict phonic advocates are not as cautious as I have become regarding the levels of difficulty between the three blending systems.

-Dr. Phil McInnis
 

McInnis ARL
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