It is widely identified that many students have phonological awareness problems.

This affects
their ability to decode words, hence, read accurately, fluently and automatically.

Phonemic awareness is the idea that a specific sound is associated with a specific letter in the
alphabet. When children are able to correlate the sounds with the correct letters, they can them
sound out words when reading to decode as well we develop their writing and spelling skills.
Phonemic awareness uses peoples audio processing to hear the individual sounds in words to
increase and support language acquisition. By using iPad applications in the classroom to
increase phonemic awareness, student growth is possible for the above, at, and below grade
level ability students.

Phonological and phonemic awareness are important pre-reading skills, related to the ability to hear,
identify, and play with the sounds in spoken language — including rhymes, syllables, and the smallest
units of sound (phonemes). Children with strong phonological awareness skills are ready to become
readers. The most sophisticated phonological awareness skill (and the last to develop) is called
phonemic awareness — the ability to hear, recognize, and play with the individual sounds (phonemes) in
spoken words. When playing with the sounds in word, children learn to: blend individual sounds to
make a word; Stretch out a word into its individual sounds; and swap in a different sound to the
beginning, middle, or end of a word to make a new word.

Phonological awareness involves being able to recognize and manipulate the sounds within words. This
skill is a foundation for understanding the alphabetic principle and reading success.

Many students who have experienced reading difficulties in their first year of schooling display
problems with phonological awareness. They have difficulties reading words accurately, fluently
and automatically. A possible reason for this could be due to their inability to use their
phonological knowledge effectively. They are unable to detect, match, blend, segment and
manipulate speech sounds. There have been numerous studies on phonological
awareness to detect early reading problems. Phonological skills such as phoneme deletion, blending
and segmentation are major obstacles for many emergent readers (Lane et al…2002; Vellutino &
Scanlon, 1987; Wagner & Torgesen,1987). Many teaching programs on phonological awareness
have targeted these sophisticated skills. Researchers found that phonological awareness tasks have
been shown to be excellent predictors of reading ability or reading disability. That is, children who
perform well on tasks of phonological awareness typically are or will become good readers, but
children who perform poorly on them are or will become poor readers (Blachman, 1991; Catts,
1991; Torgesen, 1992; cited in Lane et al…2002). Furthermore, in a study by Ball and Blachman
(1991), seven weeks of explicit instruction in phonemic awareness combined with explicit
instruction in letter-sound correspondences for kindergarten children was more effective than
other language-related activities conducted by the control group. This suggests that students will
benefit from programs that provide focused instruction in phonological skills such as segmenting
and blending phonemes to help them decode words.
In addition to outlining the importance of instruction in phonemic awareness, Chard & Osborn
(1999) provided a guideline for using “decodable text” to help children practice accurate and
fluent reading in stories. Chard (1999) states that, “Decodable stories can provide children with
reading disabilities with the opportunity to practice what they are learning about letters and
sounds (as well as phonemic awareness skills)”. The present study aims to link the earlier
research by investigating the effectiveness of explicit teaching the phonological skills of
segmenting and blending and whether these skills will increase the ability to read isolated words
and in prose. The phonics aspect of the instruction gives the student the tools to learn to read
and the books included in the program gives the student the opportunity to practice reading
successfully.

During my student teaching, I noticed a lack of participation and excitement in learning when
students were not being challenged, and those individuals who were lost as to what the teacher
was saying. Paper pencil activities, assessments, and projects have their time and place in
education. It is the students that need more scaffolding and to be pushed further that get put
on the back burner. Watching students become excited about using new technologies has shown
that they are becoming more involved in their own learning.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to reproduce and hear sounds in language. It involves
knowing that words are composed of sound units; and that these sound units can be combined
to form words. It is the ability to generate and identify rhyming words, to count syllables, to
separate the beginning of a word from its ending, and to identify each of the phonemes in a word.
Phonemic awareness is an integral part of early literacy and a method of ensuring that children
have the necessary skills to be literate a nd develop the skills needed to read. It is an important
component in a child’s literacy development and should be a part of early literacy instruction.
Strong phonemic awareness skills provide a concrete foundation for learning to read and this will
infl uence student success in future years. Further understanding of phonological terms is
necessary for discussion regarding development of phonological awareness skills in early childhood
education settings. The smallest unit of sounds is referred to as a ph oneme. Children learn to use
phonemes to speak. There are approximately 40 phonemes in the English language, though this
number can fluctuate based on dialect and accent of language. A phoneme helps a child to
determine the difference between log/ and dog and took/cook. A grapheme is the minimal unit of a
writing system or the letters and letter combinations that represent a phoneme. The English
language has 26 graphemes, most commonly indicated by the American alphabet. Unlike
phonemes, this number does no t fluctuate based on dialect and language location. Grapheme
knowledge is necessary for verbal explanation of phoneme representation. For example, we must
understand the symbol “A” is called “a” before we can verbally discuss its presence in word
format of Abby starts with an” A.”). a child’s first name (e.g., “Your name is Abby.")

The relationship between phonemes and graphemes is known as sound letter correspondence. It
is the connection between the sounds in words and the letters that are used to repr esent those
sounds. Children use the skill of graphemephoneme correspondence for phonetic reading skills.
Children must understand the letters of the word “cow” are C read this word aloud and produce
written representation of this worOW. Contrarily, to d after receiving an auditory stimulus, a child
must understand the sounds of this word in connection to the letters are /kauw/. This
representation and understanding of sounds is known as phoneme segmentation. Word
phoneme segmentation is the ability to the word and its meaning.

RRL

In the academic journal written by Paige C. Pullen and Laura M. Justice, titled “Enhancing
Phonological Awareness, Print Awareness, and Children” Oral Language Skills in Preschool , Pullen and
Justice focus on the awareness of phonological awareness in correlation to the development of literacy
skills (Justice & Pullen, 2003). Pullen and Justice (2003) present the idea that there are three areas
associated with ensuring a smooth transition for preschool aged children. The three areas of focus for
Pullen and Justice (2003) are phonological awareness, print awareness, and oral language
development. Specifically, it was found that the three foc us areas presented by Pullen and Justice
(2003) directly connect to the critical components of emergent literacy for preschool children.
Associate Professor in the Department of Elementary and Bilingual Education at California State
University Hallie Kay Yopp (1992) , author of “Developing Phonemic Awareness in Young Children”,
says the aspect of language children are awareness. missing is phonemic Yopp (1992) focuses on the
missing element of phonemic awareness surrounding young children. One major facet presented by
Yopp (1992) explains the unawareness children have involving the makeup (sounds and phonemes) of
words. Specifically, she uses the word cat as an example in proving the lack children have for the
series of sounds or phonemes existing within w ords. Although Yopp (1992) proves her reiteration of
the implementation of phonemic awareness, she says that the nature of phonemes is difficult for
children to notice. Yopp (1992) concludes in saying phonemes and sounds are instrumental aspects to
the imp rovement of oral language among children, however, phonemes are discrete abstract units of
speech that can be difficult to understand.

According to the article written by Patricia A. McCarthy titled, “Using Sound boxes Systematically to
Develop Phonemic Aw areness”, there is a strong relationship between phonological processing of
skills and the acquisition of reading and spelling alphabetic languages (McCarthy, 2008). McCarthy
(2008) presents throughout her article one major element, which involves the incr ease of decoding
language for children. She states it is important for children to have the ability to retrieve
phonological information, but to also inhabit the ability to decode the information receives. McCarthy
(2008) concludes that while phonological awareness increases, so does the decoding of the language
for the children receive information. Stuart S. Yeh and David B. Connell, conducted a research study
surrounding the development of the sequence of phonemes within words. The article is titled “Effe cts
of Rhyming, Vocabulary and Phonemic Awareness Instruction on Phoneme Awareness” and is
measured by the research taken from 16 Head Start classrooms, involving 138 children who were
randomly assigned to three different approaches (Connell & Yeh, 2008). The three different
approaches surround the augmenting of early literacy instructions. Specifically, Yeh and Connell
(2008) focused on the “(a) instruction in phoneme segmentation, blending, and letter relationships, (b)
rhyming instruction, (c) vocasound bulary instruction. Yeh and Connell (2008) found that the
instruction enhancing of phoneme segmentation for students supports the phoneme segmentation
skills and promotes future reading abilities surrounding rhyming and vocabulary” (p. 243). Results
prese nted showed that enhancing phoneme segmentation could enhance phoneme skills for high
disadvantaged student as young as four years old (Connell & Yeh, 2008). According to the academic
article titled “Phonological Awareness Interventions for Students AtRis k of Reading Failure” written by
Jeanette M Chabot, reading is an important skill in today’s society (Chabot, 2010). The focus of this
study was to determine if the implementation of phonological awareness within a first grade
classroom improves reading ab ilities. The research was measured by letter sounds and phoneme
segmentation fluency. Chabot (2010) conducted this study within her first grade classroom, as the
reality of observation and examination was more prominent in an active classroom with current
students. Results from the study showed the implementation of phonological awareness within a first
grade classroom greatly improved reading abilities for most at risk students. However, the study did
reflect improvements; it also determined the need for c ontinuation of implementing phonemic
awareness to continuously improve results for students post action research (Chabot, 2010).