Phonics Instruction in the Kindergarten Classroom
Cheryl Serrill
RE 5040: Teacher as Researcher
Dr. Moorman
There is a critical role for good decoding skills in early reading. Systematic and structured teaching of alphabet and letter/sound relationships has positive effects on early reading (Xue & Meisels, 2004). Systematic phonics instruction leads to higher word reading and spelling achievement. Kindergarten students need to be taught the alphabetic principle. (Adams, M.J., 1990)
There are many different perspectives on phonics instruction. There is much discussion, mostly centered on how to teach it. According to (Stahl & Duffy-Hester, (1998), how people talk about phonics depends on their belief about reading in general, which affects how they think about phonics instruction. The National Reading Panel reported that systematic phonics instruction enhances children’s success in learning to read. Students in Kindergarten who received systematic phonics instruction had better decoding skills and spelling skills in first grade. They also showed significant gains in comprehension of text (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). We as teachers need to study the research on systematic phonics so we can provide stronger and better prepared readers in the first and second grade.
Many researchers stress the need for a systematic phonics approach, but there are so many programs on the market. I have had mixed feeling about phonics programs. My experience with phonics was not memorable for me or the students. The programs were scripted and boring. The lessons were drill and practice and worksheets. I did not enjoy teaching the lessons; therefore the students did not enjoy learning. I support phonics in the classroom and feel it is a necessary component to help young children learn to read.
In our Kindergarten grade level meetings, my colleagues and I shared our experiences with various phonics programs with each other and our literacy coach. We had a multitude of experience with various phonics programs. We had components we liked and disliked from each, but no one expressed a passion for one particular program. We did not see strong results evidenced over time.Student engagement and excitement were not prevalent in our program experiences. During cross-curriculum planning, our first and second grade teachers spoke of the many gaps in student ability to decode text and that students entering were not well prepared for reading.
Currently, I have one second and one third grade student attending my phonics lesson to address some skills that have not been mastered. I noticed the confusions between long and short vowels and some letters and sounds. I offered to complete a few running records on each of the students to better learn their reading strengths and weaknesses. When I compared the two students, both showed weaknesses in letter sounds and had letter confusions which led to difficulty decoding. Their difficulty in being able to fluently decode text interfered with student comprehension.
I wanted to examine our new phonics program because I have Kindergarten students that are mastering alphabet letters and sounds in remarkable time and several students are beginning to blend CVC words together. These are skills which I see lacking in many second and third grade students.
Another reason for my study was the continual low reading scores in third grade. In the article, “Kindergarten predictors of first and second-grade reading achievement”, Morris & Bloodgood (2003), found that alphabet recognition, spelling, word recognition, and beginning consonant awareness were significant predictors of first and second-grade reading achievement.
Our school has a high concentration of students from lower income environments. Students from lower income environments with poor literacy skills and children with reading disabilities benefit from direct phonics instruction(Foster &Miller, 2007). Many students entered my classroom with little to no literacy background. I became interested in how our new phonics program would help all students achieve success with the alphabetic principle. I wanted to know what “magic” does this particular phonics program have that motivates students to learn.The presentation of the material seems to capture student attention and motivation to get quick results. What happens when a systematic phonics program is implemented in Kindergarten? Will my low level learners and students with disabilities be successful? What happens to my high level learners who have a solid letter base knowledge?
Theoretical Perspective
Results of a recent U.S. National survey of elementary school teachers indicated that 99% of K-2 teachers consider phonics instruction to be essential(67%) or important (32%)(Baumann, Hoffman, Moon, & Duffy-Hester, 1998). Good phonics instruction should constitute two main components: alphabetic principle and phonological awareness. Students who are successful readers understand that letters and sounds have a relationship. Phonological awareness (sounds in spoken words) aid in the development of the alphabetic principle, word recognition, and invented spelling (Adams, 1990).
Effective phonics instruction should provide a thorough familiarity with letters, children should recognize letters immediately. My research study will investigate a phonics program that helps children learn letters and sounds quicklyand recognize them on sight with no hesitation.The program offers continual repetition and is tiered for all stages of learning.
In the 1970’s and 1980’s much instructional time was devoted to having students complete workbooks. A typical phonics lesson consisted of a brief introduction to a skill followed by student practice on worksheets. The average reader spent 6 minutes/day reading text. Children with reading problems spent considerably less (Gambrell, Wilson, & Gantt, 1981). Students who spent little time with connected text and most of their instructional time on worksheets are not able to make the connection between letters and sounds. The lessons are not engaging and do not maintain student interest. Phonics does not need to use worksheets, teach rules, or be boring (Clymer, 1963, reprinted 1996).
It is no surprise that many children struggle with learning to read in first grade, and once they have fallen behind, have difficulty catching up to their peers(Clay, 1991). This research has led reading educators to emphasize early intervention in early primary grades. Scarborough (1998) found that print related measures (e.g., letter-identification, letter-sound knowledge, and print concepts) were the best indicators of later reading ability. (Whitehurst and Lonigan, 2001) supported her findings by acknowledging that letter-identification and letter-sound knowledge drive reading development in the early stages.
Review of Literature
Xue Y. & Meisels S.J. (2004) found that overall students learned a great deal in their Kindergarten year. Their extensive research showed that children’s initial status as they enter Kindergarten is a powerful predictor of scores at the end of Kindergarten. The more time that students are exposed to instruction, the more they developed cognitively. Students entering with less instructional skills benefited greatly with a systematic phonics approach.
Stahl, S., Duffy-Hester, A., & Dougherty-Stahl, K. (1998) convey that good phonics instruction should develop the alphabetic principle. When students understand the relationship between letters and sounds, they are able to decode words. Their study compared students using traditional and contemporary phonics approaches. The traditional phonics approaches were mostly basal and scripted lessons with the majority of student practice in workbooks. The students who were in the contemporary phonics group examined words and word patterns through sorting and categorizing pictures. Students made words with word cards and magnetic letters. The students in the contemporary group performed better on literacy assessments than those in the traditional group.
They concluded that children try to make sense of words in reading and writing. Children construct a network of information about letters. Some children learn much of what they need to know from exposure; but most need support. Support can be in context, embedded phonics instruction; analogy based or direct instruction.
Because children construct knowledge about words, it confirms why differences among phonics programs are small. It does not matter how much you teach it, as long as it is early, systematic good instruction.
Foster W. & Miller M. (2007) completed a study to develop a course for phonics and comprehension of children from Kindergarten through third grade. The findings were similar to Xue and Meisels. High literacy readiness groups entering Kindergarten exhibited higher scores than the average and low readiness groups.
A startling finding from their data revealed a literacy gap that begins when students enter Kindergarten which impacts third grade reading. The phonics gap begins when students enter Kindergarten and does not close until third grade. Unfortunately by his point a comprehension gap has begun. Foster and Miller’s research proves the need to address a strong phonics program and early interventions in Kindergarten.
Bloodgood and Perney (2003) found that Kindergarten pre-reading tasks predict reading and achievement at the end of first and second grade. They discovered that certain pre-reading tasks exert maximum power at certain times of the year. They sampled students from four different classes with various SES populations. Students were assessed individually at five points in their first three years of school, Sept., Feb., and May of Kindergarten, May of first grade, and May of second grade. Students were assessed on alphabet recognition, beginning consonant awareness, concept of a word, spelling, phoneme segmentation, and word recognition.
At the beginning of Kindergarten, alphabet recognition and concept of a word were 2 significant predictors of 1st grade reading, with alphabet recognition being more important. In the middle of Kindergarten, letter recognition and spelling were good predictors of reading. At the end of Kindergarten, letter recognition was no longer the most important predictor. Word recognition and spelling were the best predictors. Of the 6 Kindergarten abilities measured, only alphabet recognition and concept of a word predicted 1st grade reading achievement at the beginning, middle, and end of Kindergarten. Spelling was significant at the middle and end of Kindergarten. Word recognition and consonant awareness are predictors at the end of Kindergarten. Phoneme segmentation was NOT a significant at any point in the year in Kindergarten. I found this information significant because it mirrors the timeline in which Kindergarten students as assessed in these six predictor areas in our county.
Alphabet knowledge and recognition influences all aspects of print knowledge and is a variable for richness in preschool literacy experiences. Concept of a word is a vehicle that allows emerging phonological and letter sound knowledge to be used in the act of reading. If children cannot accurately point to words while reading, they will have trouble establishing initial sight words and letter/sound cues to decode words. Alphabet knowledge is a precursor to beginning consonant awareness. Strong alphabet knowledge seems to be the baseline for determining student’s reading success in later years.
Spelling is a big predictor for pre-reading children; it is a type of phoneme segmentation. It measures a simpler form of phoneme segmentation which is more sensitive to early literacy development. Oral segmentation of 3 phoneme words is an abstract and artificial task for pre-reading kindergarteners. Nowhere in his/her past has a child been asked to think about speech in a decontextualized way. Spelling words is not as challenging. Students are familiar with paper pencil and as children write letter by letter, it slows down the process of phoneme segmentation. After the child writes the first letter it freezes in place so he can focus on the other phonemes. In later developing students beg/ending consonants would not be a good predictor until the end of the year. For fast developing students beginning and ending sounds is not a good predictor because students “top out’. Spelling with beginning, middle, and ending sounds is a better predictor.
Their findings concluded that alphabet recognition and spelling predicted whether students could or could not read at the end of first grade. The research shows that we are empowered with knowledge to identify our “low level” learners based on these predictors. This means children at risk for reading failure can be identified at midyear Kindergarten and placed in individual or small group interventions to improve their chances for success.
One article I researched shared a point of view very different from many other researchers. In the article “A new factor in the phonics debate”, Gibson F. (1991) shares his phonics experience in his first grade classroom. He compared his students who attended the reading specialist for forty minutes per day with the remaining twenty-two students in the class in a systematic phonics program. At first the twenty-two students seemed to make excellent progress. As time passed, however, a few students began to falter. As students began to fall behind, they were sent to the reading specialist. He sent five more students to the reading specialist and kept the remaining seventeen students. At the end of the year, all students took the California Achievement Test. He predicted that the phonics group would make outstanding progress, which they did. He was surprised that the students that did not fare well in phonics also made good progress in reading. The specialist used a fun and games approach which he had, never considered.
Gibson (1991) concluded that some students are phonetic learners and some are not. He quoted, ” No study that fails to take differences in learning styles into account can possibly yield valid results except by chance.” If most of the students in the phonics group happen to be non-phonetic learners they will not succeed, because each student’s learning style, not the method will be the determining factor. Further observations concluded that phonetic learners have great difficulty with non-phonetic approaches, yet when changed to a systematic program make dramatic gains. This leads to the need to identify who is a phonetic learner and who is not. I found this interesting because our phonics program utilizes a multisensory approach for all learners and I never thought of it from this angle.
As I reviewed the literature, I used the information I gathered to help me think about my research study. I found similar threads about the importance of the alphabetic principle and the factors that predict reading ability in later years. I am interested to see how successful my low level learners become and how long it takes them to fluently master the alphabet and alphabet sound.
I am curious to see if this phonics program will continue to hold the interest of my high level learners who already know the alphabet. Will they be bored? I am interested to see if the majority of my students have mastered the alphabetic principle by the end of my study.
Methods
Subjects:
I conducted my research study in a regular education Kindergarten class with 20 students (10 boys and 10 girls). Through parent surveys and observations I learned that the majority of my students are visual and auditory learners who enjoy music. Ethnic backgrounds include 16 Caucasian, 1 American Indian, 1 African American, 1 Hispanic, and 1 Bi-Racial student.
Student cognitive, social, and overall academic abilities vary drastically. One student is repeating Kindergarten, one student is a special needs student, one student receives ELL services, and two students receive speech services. Several students visit the Library weekly and enjoy listening to stories. Nine students entered with no Literacy background knowledge. These students identified less than eight letters on the K-2 Literacy assessment. 17 of the 20 students could not identify any letter sounds and 3 students identified most or all of the 26 letter sounds.
Data:
I obtained data from a variety of resources. I began by conducting the letter recognition and letter sounds component of the K-2 Literacy Assessment in early September. Students were given the 26 lowercase alphabet letters in random order. Students were then shown the 26 uppercase letters in random order and were asked to point and identify. Students achieved a score based on the number correct out of 52 letters (26 uppercase and 26 lowercase).
Letter sounds were assessed by showing the student the lowercase letters in random order and asking them to point and give the letter sound. One point was awarded for each sound given correctly. Students scores were based on the number correct out of the 26 letter sounds.
I organized my data in a spreadsheet so I could look at the whole class as well as individual students. I used the spreadsheet to create a graph with the data so I can share the information with parents in a way that would have more meaning. I sent the graphs home every nine weeks to show student growth.
Data was obtained from the Book and Print Awareness section of the K-2 Literacy test. Students were given a book to identify their familiarity with print. Pieces of the assessment included parts of the book, identifying letters, identifying punctuation, voice print match, directionality, concept of first and last, and differentiating between letters and words. Students were given one point for each answer correct out of a possible 20 points.