I read one chapter out of the book, "Research-based Methods of Reading Instruction, Grade K-3". The chapter focused on phonemic awareness. It was interesting to read this in light of the previous article I had read about how reading should be taught through subjects of interest. This book mentions that "one of the best predictions of how well students will learn to read during their first two years of school is phonemic awareness". I understand why that would be the foundation of reading while the books of interest would be the individual building blocks. If one does not know the individual letters or phonemes, how can they learn how to blend to form words?
This chapter also discussed how teaching these skills can be done in 15-20 minutes per day. An interesting fact that was shared was that students in small groups transfer their phonemic awareness skills to reading better than students in a whole class or one-on-one. I can see that having at least one other student in the group would be beneficial. I have one group that I am working on these skills with and they are models for each other. With this particular group, I spend 10 minutes each day working on a vowel sound and then we read a book of interest that has words with that vowel sound (e.g. short a and then we read a book that focuses on words with short a sounds). It is working very well. They get very excited when they can read these words or at least recognize the pattern.
That article sounds really interesting!! It's encouraging to hear that information as well since I spend my afternoon working with students who are really struggling in reading. Phonemic awareness is something we work on the entire year and it is truly challenging for these students. They do not always hear or understand how sounds work together which really shows in the difficulty that they have reading. Thanks for sharing!
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