Literacy Foundations for English Learners

A Comprehensive Guide to Evidence-Based Instruction

Elsa Cardenas-Hagan, Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan

• Publisher: Brookes Publishing
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781681250489
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Teoria e pratica della didattica

More than 5 million English learners attend U.S. public schools—and yet fewer than 3% of teachers are certified to work with them. Fill that gap in teacher education with this practical and comprehensive textbook, an evidence-based guide to providing English learners in Pre-K–Grade 6 with explicit, systematic instruction on language and literacy fundamentals. Aligned with IDA's Knowledge and Practice Standards, this book prepares current and future educators to teach English learners the key components of language and literacy, as first described in the National Literacy Panel report. For each component, teachers will get a dedicated chapter with research-based insights on how to teach English learners, guidance on making connections across languages when teaching that component, and ready-to-use principles and strategies for instruction. Learning objectives, study questions, and extended application activities help educators grow their knowledge and apply it in their classrooms. An essential text for courses on literacy foundations and biliteracy—and an ideal in-service professional development resource—this accessible book will give teachers the knowledge base they need to help English learners develop strong literacy skills and achieve academic success. PREPARE TEACHERS TO:

• Enter their classroom with a full understanding of the language and literacy development of English learners
• Teach English learners the key components of language and literacy: phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, spelling, and writing skills
• Apply insights from current, reliable research on how best to teach English learners
• Use specific, evidence-based principles, strategies, activities, and sample teacher–student dialogues to guide and strengthen instruction
• Leverage technology to adapt and enhance instruction for English learners

ONLINE COMPANION MATERIALS INCLUDED: Faculty will get helpful PowerPoint slides for each chapter, plus a sample syllabus that shows you how to use this book in your course.

II

The Components of Literacy and English Learners

4

Phonological Awareness Development Among English Learners

Virginia Lovelace-Gonzalez

By completing this chapter, the reader will

•Learn the components of phonological awareness and how phonological awareness develops among speakers of other native languages

•Understand the research on cross-linguistic transfer of phonological awareness

•Be able to identify and use strategies for improving phonological awareness skills among English learners (ELs)

Josefina is a first-grade student who is learning English. Her mother has informed the school that Josefina is able to read in her native language of Spanish. Students in the first-grade classroom are learning to read and are mastering foundational skills such as phonological awareness. Josefina’s teacher will need to determine Josefina’s knowledge of phonological awareness and her preparedness for reading in English. The teacher wants to know which English sounds are challenging for Josefina. She will instruct Josefina in a manner whereby Josefina understands how beneficial her native language sound knowledge is for learning to read in English. The teacher will also monitor Josefina’s progress.

INTRODUCTION

Students like Josefina come to school with language and literacy skills in their native language; their teachers are tasked with determining what those skills are and how they will transfer to English. Josefina’s teacher is particularly interested in her new student’s phonological awareness skills because they will have a key impact on other areas of language and literacy development.

Phonology refers to the system of rules that determine how sounds exist and combine in a language (Cárdenas-Hagan, 2018). Phonological awareness refers to one’s understanding of the sound structure of oral language, such as syllables, onset-rimes, and phonemes. Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound in a given language that can be recognized as being distinct from other sounds. Processing and understanding the sounds of a language is a necessary skill for reading in all alphabetic languages (Cárdenas-Hagan & Carlson, 2009). Research has demonstrated that phonological awareness will transfer from one’s first language to one’s second language (Durgunoğlu, 2002; Shakkour, 2014). It is therefore necessary for educators to understand the similarities and differences of the sound structure across languages in order to incorporate the similarities during instruction and thus increase an English learner’s (EL’s) phonological awareness.

PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS

Phonological processing is one’s ability to perceive and use the sound structures of words. Every word spoken is processed phonologically. The components of phonological processing include phonological awareness, which is demonstrated by one’s understanding of rhyming, alliteration, syllables, and phonemic awareness (Paulson, 2018). Two additional components of phonological processing include phonological memory and phonological naming. These three components are important foundations of literacy acquisition (Paulson, 2018) and are summarized in Figure 4.1.

Of these three components of phonological processing, phonological awareness is the most strongly related to literacy development (Paulson, 2018). The skills of rhyming, alliteration, syllabication, and phonemic awareness can be taught and are discussed in detail next.

Figure 4.1.The components of phonological processing. (Adapted from Paulson, L. H. [2018]. Teaching phonemic awareness. In J. R. Birsh & S. Carreker [Eds.], Multisensory teaching of basic language skills [4th ed., p. 207]. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.)

Components of Phonological Awareness and the Linguistic Hierarchy

Phonological awareness is an oral language skill. A student does not have to have any knowledge of letters to demonstrate the developmental components of phonological awareness, which include rhyming, onset-rime, alliteration, syllables, and phoneme awareness.

Rhyming One of the early signs of emerging sensitivity to this linguistic hierarchy of phonological awareness is the ability to play rhyming games and activities (Paulson, 2018). Researchers have found that early knowledge of nursery rhymes was strongly related to the development of phonological skills as well as emergent reading abilities (Adams, 1990). Examples of nursery rhymes in English for young children might include “Three Blind Mice,” “Hey Diddle Diddle,” and “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider.”

Onset-Rime Students who can hear rhymes can also recognize the onset, which is the initial phoneme before the vowel. The onset is exchanged for another phoneme in rhyming words. The word rime is a linguistic term for the spoken vowel and final consonant(s) (Adams, 1990). Examples of recognizing the onset and rimes in English are as follows:

Onset	Rime
/m/	/an/
/f/	/an/
/p/	/an/
/r/	/an/
/v/	/an/

Alliteration Alliteration involves matching spoken words with similar onsets, such as dog, doll, and dig. This requires not only sensitivity to similarities and differences in the overall sounds of words, but also the ability to focus attention on the individual sounds that make words similar or different (Adams, 1990). This skill can also include identifying the common initial sound in an alliteration at the level of a sentence (e.g., Mary makes marvelous muffins. Sammy saw seven sailors swimming).

Syllables Syllable awareness requires the student to build an understanding that words can be segmented into smaller units. Individual syllables are distinctly marked in the speech stream. Every syllable contains a vowel sound, and these vowel sounds correspond to loudness, providing the speaker cues by which to distinguish one spoken syllable from the next (Adams, 1990). Another cue for identifying syllables for the speaker is the opening and closing of the jaw. Activities for syllable awareness can include having students identify how many syllables exist within a word, blending syllables together to form words, deleting syllables within words, and segmenting words into syllables. For instance, a teacher could use the following scripts for activities on syllable identification and syllable blending:

Syllable identification: Say hungry. How many times did you open your mouth? How many vowel sounds? How many syllables?

Syllable blending: Say /ba/ /gel/. The word is _________. (bagel)

Say toothache. Now say toothache without /ache/. The word is ______. (tooth)

Phonemes A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that can change the meaning of a word. Adams (1990) described phoneme awareness as the ability to delete and exchange a unit of sound within words. A student’s ability to process and manipulate a phoneme predicts future reading abilities. Tasks at this level are blending individual sounds together to form a word or segmenting a word into its individual sounds (Paulson, 2018). Phoneme identification, phoneme blending, phoneme deletion, phoneme manipulation, and phoneme segmentation are considered tasks that fall under the category of phoneme awareness. Example activity prompts for each of these concepts follow:

Phoneme identification: Say man. Tell me the first sound in man. (/m/ ...