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We all know by now that phonemic awareness is critical to learning to read and that we need to be conducting phonemic awareness training with our students. But how do we do it? How far do we take it? And how do we determine proficiency?

This post is a quick summary of chapter eight of Kilpatick’s Equipped for Reading Success: A Comprehensive, Step-by-Step Program for Developing Phonemic Awareness and Fluent Word Recognition (2016), wherein phonemic awareness proficiency is discussed.

Kilpatrick reminds us that phonological awareness is a mental skill absolutely necessary to develop a large sight vocabulary. Since the ability to acquire phonemic awareness is not tied to intelligence, we cannot predict who might struggle with it; however, we do know that the lack of phonemic awareness is the most common source of word reading difficulties. Therefore, phonemic awareness must be taught to all students, whether they are just starting their literacy journey or are deep in remediation.

To be proficient in phonemic awareness is to respond accurately, automatically, and effortlessly with all types of phonological awareness exercises.

Phonological awareness is a broader category of skills that includes phonemic awareness. In Kilpatrick’s book, you’ll find activities that cover syllable deletion, onset and rime deletion and substitution, phoneme deletion and substitution in various positions within the word, and changing the medial vowel. There are 24 levels/tasks in all. I have students move through these levels at their own pace, providing one-on-one instruction and practice as needed. All students make good progress and the majority of them progress to advanced phonemic awareness training, which includes deleting and/or substituting phonemes in words. The beauty of this approach, as opposed to/in addition to using Heggerty or other whole group phonemic awareness activities is that I know, at any given time, where each student is at and with whom I need to be intervening with and on what skills.

Students typically go through three phases to become proficient at any given level:

* Multisensory Stage —> Students need objects or other visual or verbal prompts to understand the activity. For example, a student might look at the actual letters in the word, use tokens, clap, or need the teacher to elongate or repeat sounds to accurately respond to phonemic awareness questions.

* Knowledge Stage —> Students can do the task mentally—that is, with no external visual or verbal prompts—but they are not yet able to do it automatically or always accurately.

* Automatic Stage —> Students can do the activity quickly and effortlessly and rarely make mistakes.

A student might be automatic with tasks at one level, but then go back to the multisensory stage to get started on the next progressively more difficult level.

To help students who are in the multisensory stage at any level, use one or more of these visual and verbal supports. They are listed in order of providing the most support to the least.

* Use letters to illustrate phonemic awareness concepts. (This is only helpful if the student can read.) Yes, you are moving out of phonemic awareness and into phonics once you start showing graphemes associated with sounds, but doing so is sometimes necessary to help students understand what it is you are asking them to do. Showing the letters is allowed and is an excellent way to work on phonics simultaneously. In fact, some researchers now say that phonemic awareness should almost always include phonics because… why not?

Example: If you ask a student to “say flat but don’t say /l/” and they don’t understand the task, you can write the word and then remove the letter l so they see that without that sound they should say fat.

* Use tokens, lines, or positional tapping to illustrate the location of sounds. Tokens or other 3D manipulatives are the most concrete and thus provide the most support in this category. Drawing boxes or lines would be the next step and tapping the table in a first position, second position, third position manner is the most abstract visual-spatial queue.

* Clap once for each segmented portion of a word, whether it be once for each syllable, once for an onset and then again for the rime, or once for each phoneme. Clapping provides less support than writing a word out or using tokens to represent sounds and therefore should be used once a student completely understands the phonological awareness task and is becoming more automatic with it.

* Use oral cues to emphasize sounds. You can whisper sounds, repeat sounds, or elongate sounds to help students hear the part of the word you need them to hear.

In my classroom, we often put our hands together in the prayer position (fingers straight up, like the emoji) while we say the whole word and then flip one arm out to the side and then the other while saying different parts of the word. To remove a part of a word, I can pull that arm back in while emphasizing that the other arm/word part remains.

Remember, the goal is to get students to answer accurately, automatically, and effortlessly. Do not assume that if students can manipulate sounds through the use of tokens or tapping that they can do it at a completely automatic level without those supports. Practicing phonemic awareness activities whole group is important, but you will need to listen carefully to students individually during small group instruction to determine if they really understand the task at hand and can consistently do what you are asking of them. Small group time (or intervention time) is the perfect place to provide the various levels of support as needed, starting with visual-spatial representations such as tokens, lines, and tapping, then moving on to clapping or oral cues such as repeating or elongating sounds, and—after students know how to read a little—using letters to represent the sounds.

You probably understand that students need to be accurate, automatic, and effortless when it comes to phonemic awareness. But I’m sure you are wondering which phonemic awareness tasks kindergartners are expected to be able to do. Kilpatrick lists these skills in this order:

* Delete one syllable from a two-syllable compound word

* Delete one syllable from a two-syllable word (not a compound word)

* Delete the first or last syllable from a three-syllable compound word (example - pineapple)

* Delete the first syllable from a three-syllable word where the stress or accent is on the second syllable (example - imagine)

* Delete the first syllable from a three-syllable word that has the stress or accent on the first syllable (example - wonderful)

* Delete the first syllable from a three-syllable word where the middle syllable is made up of only a vowel sound (example - elephant)

* Delete the last syllable from a three-syllable word

* Delete a single consonant from a single syllable word

* Delete the rime unit from a single syllable word

* Substitute single-phoneme onsets at the beginning of words

* Substitute rime units in words

This may seem overwhelming as most of us kindergarten teachers probably focus on blending and segmenting words and maybe get into a little deletion and substitution. Having Kilpatrick‘s book in your hands* will help alleviate any anxiety about understanding this and teaching it. His One Minute Activities included in the book make it seem doable. He also includes phonemic awareness levels and activities that are more advanced and considered for first grade. For students who become accurate, automatic, and effortless with all of the kindergarten levels, I move them on to the first grade skills. They think phonological/phonemic awareness exercises are fun and challenging and are always happy to listen and try their hardest.

*If you do not have Kilpatrick’s book and cannot afford it (it’s pricey), you might want to use my just-developed resource for this. Following Kilpatrick’s lead, I created my own word lists and tips to support you as you attempt this in your classroom.

The most important take-aways from this post for you:

* You most definitely need to be doing systematic phonemic awareness training with kindergarten students.

* It will not suffice to do this whole group; you will need to work with students at their particular level of phonemic awareness in small group or one-on-one instruction. This past school year, I usually had a group of three students at my table. I worked with each, one-on-one, but the other two listened in and learned much and were much more ready to go when it was their turn. Plus, since students were already there at the table with me, there was not a lot of wasted transition time between students. You can get an idea of what individualized phonological awareness training looks like in my classroom right at the beginning of this video.

* As students become accurate, automatic, and effortless at one level and move into the next level, you can use strategies with progressively less support like showing them words; using tokens, lines and tapping; clapping word parts; and, oral cues to help them understand and get better at the next level.

You might be anxious about how you are going to implement this in your classroom. Don’t worry so much about that at this point. Just realize what your students need and what you need to do for them, plug some time into your daily schedule, plan on getting started, and let it unfold as the weeks and months go on. You will develop a system as time progresses.

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You can join a chat about this topic. I would love to hear your knowledge, methods, concerns, and questions. Also, I have new materials for you! I just created a 26-page document consisting of word lists and instructions that you can use to practice and assess students on the different levels of phonological awareness as well as the tracking sheet I’ve always used. If interested, just email me. [email protected]

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