1

TE ACHING TIP

F REDS FAT FOOT

A BOU T AGA I N
Four Tips for Successful PA Lessons
Bruce A. Murray

T ELL M E

eri Murray, a doctoral student working on a pilot study of phoneme awareness (PA), wrote of her experience teaching a tongue tickler:

Four-year-old Jenny (a pseudonym) sat at a tiny table at her daycare center, curious about what Id brought in my bag. Hey! she said, spying my picture of a scary cat. It looks like my kitty, Julio! This kitty is mad and hes saying /f/, I said. I think this letter F looks like a mad kittys claw and F says /f/, like a mad kitty. Jenny clawed at me and went /f/, laughing wildly. I have a story for you today called Freds Foot Feels Fat. You are going to hear a lot of mad cat noise when I read this story. Make some mad cat noises with me, Fffreds fffoot fffeels fffat! She loved this and clawed like a cat every time I said /f/. Afterwards, Jenny stared at the story picture awhile, then she said, Tell me about Freds fat foot again. OK, only this time, pretend you are a mad kitty and say /f/ when you hear me read a word with the mad cat sound. (G.G. Murray, personal communication, January 18, 2012)

analysis of 52 experimental studies found that PA training raises early word-reading performance an average half standard deviation over controls, with larger effects in kindergarten and in relatively brief programs of 518 hours of instruction (National Reading Panel [NRP], 2000). However, applied onalarge scale in primary classrooms, the results have been disappointing. Although National Assessment of Educational Progress fourth-grade reading scores have crept upwards (Chudowsky & Chudowsky, 2010), we are not seeing the dramatic improvements in beginning reading promised by PA research. The recommendations in this article grow from a line of research first investigated by Byrne and Fielding-Barnsley in Australia (1991, 1995). Byrne and Fielding-Barnsley taught preschoolers only 9

In the 1980s and 1990s, researchers learned that teaching PA improves early reading success. An
The Reading Teacher Vol. XX Issue x pp. 16

Bruce A. Murray is an associate professor of reading education at Auburn University, Alabama, USA; e-mail murraba@auburn.edu.

DOI:10.1002/TRTR.01096

2012 International Reading Association

R T

T E LL M E A B OU T F R E D S FAT F O O T AG A I N: F OU R T I P S F OR S UCC E S SF U L PA LE SSONS

phonemes in 6 hours of instruction over 12 weeks, but the results were far reaching. Children who were taught phonemes not only surpassed a control group in early decoding in immediate posttests, but they also parlayed their initial PA advantage into long-term gains in reading comprehension in second grade. Byrne and FieldingBarnsleys insight was that PA requires learning the identities of the individual phonemes to be detected in spoken words. To understand how spellings map phonemes in written words, children must first detect the phonemes that are mapped. This article outlines four researchtested elements to include in PA lesson plans. First, effective PA lessons introduce a limited group of phonemes one at a time rather than expecting children to have a sudden, overarching insight or to gain a general sensitivity to all phonemes (Byrne, 1998; Murray, 1998). Second, effective lessons make each selected phoneme memorable to children and help them learn its vocal boundaries (Murray, 1998). Third, effective lessons arrange phonemefinding practice so that children learn to detect the phoneme in spokenword contexts (Murray, Smith, & Murray, 2000). Finally, effective lessons apply phoneme knowledge to partial alphabetic decoding, showing students how to springboard from PA to reading words (Ehri, 1998). (For a more thorough discussion of the theoretical background and supporting research, see Murray, 2006).

Tip 1: Focus ontheIndividual Phoneme

Phonemes are subtle vocal gestures that vary in salience (Liberman & Liberman, 1992). Some, such as /s/ and /t/, make clear sounds and are visible in the mouth, but others, such as /r/ and /l/, are indistinct and hidden. Complicating the subtlety of phonemes is their seamless flow. Unlike syllables, phonemes have no distinct vocal boundaries; they are coarticulated in speech. To understand coarticulation, try this experiment: First, get your mouth ready to say tick. Now change your mouth so it is ready to say trick. Why do we purse our lips? The reason is that we begin to say /r/ even before saying /t/. The phoneme flow is also extraordinarily rapid, in the range of 1020 phonemes per second in normal speech. Thus a simple sentence, He stuck in his thumb and pulled out a

plum, which takes about 2 seconds to say, contains 28 phonemes. The speech stream is a veritable cascade of phonemes. Given the subtle identities of phonemes, their coarticulation, and their rapid production, it is no wonder that PA is not a general sensitivity that develops naturally. Children need to get a feel for each phoneme, one at time. Phonemes that make clear, continuous sounds, where the vocal production is clearly visible, such as /s/, /m/, and /f/, make good beginnings. Consonants that are quite frequent in English are good candidates for instruction, including both distinct, visible stops, such as /t/ and /k/, and more subtle consonants, such as /n/, /l/, and /r/ (Crystal, 2010). After learning a solid nucleus of high-frequency phonemes, acquiring additional phonemes gets easier and easier (Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1991). Thus it would be reasonable to teach a dozen phonemes thoroughly, devoting 20 minutes daily for 3 to 5 days to each target phoneme. Later phonemes can be learned much faster, and some (e.g., /ng/) need not be taught to beginners.

Tip 2: Make the Phoneme Memorable

To understand how spellings map phonemes in written words, children must first detect thephonemes that are mapped.
R T
The Reading Teacher Vol. XX Issue x Xxxxx 2012

Young children need vivid ways to make phonemes familiar and memorable (Murray, 1998). Asking children to find phonemes they have not been taught is frustrating, with the result that teachers may have to provide

T E LL M E A B OU T F R E D S FAT F O O T AG A I N: F OU R T I P S F OR S UCC E S SF U L PA LE SSONS

extraordinary scaffolding for students (McGee & Ukrainetz, 2009). In working with prealphabetic readers at Auburn University, we link each phoneme to background knowledge with an illustrated sound analogy coupled with its main letter or digraph.

Linking the phoneme to background knowledge depends on identifying a sound analogy, such as the hiss of a snake.

Analogies, Illustrations, and Gestures

As a simple introduction using Figure1, we might say: S is like a silly, sneaky snake. It not only looks like a silly, sneaky snake, but it sounds like a silly, sneaky snake, /s/. Can you make your hand slither from side to side like a silly, sneaky snake? Linking the phoneme to background knowledge depends on identifying a sound analogy, such as the hiss of a snake. Children may supply other analogies, such as the sound of hairspray or sizzling sausages, and teachers can easily download and print

images of their favorites. The name of the sound analogy need not begin with the letter; if we said that s is for sun, children would need PA to detect /s/ in sun, which is the goal of the lesson. A hand gesture like slithering provides a simple and engaging response that is always, literally, on hand.

Graphemes
Effective phoneme illustrations include the most common grapheme (letter or digraph) for the phoneme (Hohn & Ehri, 1983). Teaching phonemes without letters limits the effectiveness of instruction. The National Reading Panel (2000) found doubled effect sizes on word-reading outcomes in PA teaching experiments that used letters. Why do letters help? Letters are visible, permanent symbols for phonemes that comprise a range of sound and mouth movement. For example, the phoneme /d/ sometimes makes a clear knocking sound (as in door), but it sometimes sounds almost like /j/ (as in drive). The letter d shows the unity among the variations in sound and vocal gesture. In addition, the principal phoneme is usually prominent in the letter name (e.g., em, eff, or ess). By implication, letter names are usually important phoneme clues.

Figure 1 Sound Analogy for /s/ as Silly, Sneaky Snake

A promising technique for learning phonemes is to study the kinesthetics of production using mouth pictures and mirrors (Castiglioni-Spalten & Ehri, 2003). For instance, to recognize the phoneme /l/ in fill, we might ask students to put their tongues behind their top teeth and turn their voices on. With lay, they can discover how the tongue flops down. Studying articulation is especially promising for teaching hearing-impaired children to decode. These students are missing the sound cues to phonemes, but they can learn more reliable cuesthe vocal gestures that define phonemes (Bergeron, Lederberg, Easterbrooks, Miller, & Connor, 2009).

Tongue Ticklers
To learn a phoneme, especially those as variable as /d/ or /l/, children need to sample it in a variety of word contexts. Wallach and Wallach (1979) developed the idea of using alliterations, which they termed tongue twisters, to experience a phoneme at the beginnings of different words. The name tongue ticklers redirects the focus to the repeating motions of the tongue or lips in reciting the alliteration. A simple tongue tickler for /k/ is Caring cats kiss crying kittens. Note that the spelling of the target phoneme doesnt matter as long as the phonemes are consistent (/k/ in cats and kittens) because ticklers are usually presented orally.

Exploring Articulation
Because a phoneme is a vocal gesture, children need to examine what the tongue, lips, and vocal cords are doing in producing the phoneme.

www.reading.org

R T

T E LL M E A B OU T F R E D S FAT F O O T AG A I N: F OU R T I P S F OR S UCC E S SF U L PA LE SSONS

With tongue ticklers, four or five example words are plenty; if ticklers are too long, they are hard for children to remember. Ticklers work best as alliterations, repeating the target phoneme at the beginnings of several words. Using words with consonant clusters, such as crying, challenges students to probe the vocal range of the phoneme, which may vary with different phoneme neighbors. If the tickler can be introduced with a brief story, the message of the alliteration becomes more meaningful and easier to remember. For example, the teacher might explain, Some kittens were playing in the yard until they became hungry, tired, and scratched. When they cried at the door, their Mommy and Daddy cats let them in, gave them milk, and licked their fur. Those caring cats kissed their crying kittens. Heres our tickler: Caring cats kiss crying kittens. The tongue tickler works together with the sound analogy, gesture, illustration, and letter. Figure 2 shows an illustration that could be used to introduce /m/ as mmm-m (pronounced with falling pitch). After a conversation about what foods are mmm-m, children can practice saying a tickler like Moms muffins melt in my mouth by stretching /m/ in the

alliterative words while dabbing at the corners of their mouths with imaginary napkins.

Invented Spelling
Once students recognize letters and associate them with phonemes, they can practice PA by writing with invented spellings. Daily writing with invented spelling has been found to improve spelling and decoding ability in lowreadiness first graders (Clarke, 1988). To invent a spelling is to transcribe its phonemes, which means invented spellers are practicing detecting phonemes. To invent a spelling for bicycle, for example, a beginner stretches the pronunciation and writes letters for mouth moves, perhaps coming up with BSKL. Spellings that represent more and more of the phonemes in a word indicate growing PA.

Figure 2 Sound Analogy for /m/ as Mmm-m

Tip 3: Help Children Detect the Phoneme in Spoken Words

PA is the ability to detect phonemes in spoken words, the natural environment. In a validation study of the Test of

Phoneme Identities (Murray et al., 2000), the ability to select which word has a phoneme was a better predictor than two comparison PA tests for predicting kindergartners progress on an early decoding task. The crucial practice activity is to check words for phonemes (e.g., to decide whether /m/ is in lamp). Modeling is at the heart of explicit instruction (Duffy, 2009). Explicit teachers dramatize a beginning level of performance by posing a problem and then solving it with a think-aloud revealing how the solution is reached. To reveal the hidden operations in PA, teachers show how to stretch the word to decide aloud whether the phoneme is present. For example, to model finding the phoneme /m/, the teacher might say, Lets see if mmm-m is in lamp. Ill know its there if my lips come together and hum. Lll-a-a-a-mmm...Hey, in the middle, my lips came together to say /m/. That was mmm-m! We do say /m/ in lamp. Modeling both examples and nonexamples (e.g., Lets see if /m/ is in belt ) helps children detect when the phoneme is not in a word. One factor that complicates finding phonemes in words is the need to make a metalinguistic shiftliterally, to stand beside language, shifting from the meaning to the spoken form. When Stahl (1992) asked first-grader Heather to say coat without /k/, she said jacket. Heather had trouble making the shift from meaning to form.

R T

The Reading Teacher

Vol. XX

Issue x

Xxxxx 2012

T E LL M E A B OU T F R E D S FAT F O O T AG A I N: F OU R T I P S F OR S UCC E S SF U L PA LE SSONS

Preschool and early kindergarten are prime times for teaching PA to lay the groundwork for decoding.

To challenge students metalinguistic focus, we can ask students to search words related in meaning (e.g., Does your mouth say /s/ in dirt or sand? In sun or moon?). After finding phonemes in the salient initial position, they can search elsewhere in the word: Is /s/ in horse or dog? In lost or found? Phoneme-finding activities invite a teacher to be creative. For example, the teacher might say, Ill name some food. If they have /m/ in them, say mmm-m. If they dont, say yuck. The teacher could challenge students metalinguistic focus by asking about ham, fish, lima beans, chocolate cake, and marshmallows.

initial letter to distinguish an example word from a rhyming word. For example, after introducing angry cat in Figure 3, the teacher could display FOG and model how to decide whether it is fog or dog: The F tells me to say /f/, like an angry cat. So this word must be fff-og, fog. After modeling phonetic cue reading, we want students to practice it to distinguish rhyming words. To focus on the identity of the phoneme /f/, one of the choices should begin with F, for example, FIX: Is this fix or mix? MEET: feet or meet? FAKE: fake or make?

Practical Matters
Preschool and early kindergarten are prime times for teaching PA to lay the groundwork for decoding. My recommendation is to give PA a central curricular emphasis in kindergarten during the first semester with a brief daily instructional periodperhaps

Tip 4: Apply PA to Reading

The final step in teaching PA is to show children how it helps them read words. Teaching students to apply PA in reading and spelling tasks is rare in the PA teaching literature. Cunninghams (1990) study was a notable exception: She found larger effects on reading when children were taught how to apply PA in reading words. How do children bridge the gap between learning to detect phonemes and learning to read words? A key activity is to have students decode using beginning letters as phoneme signals. Ehri (1998) called this rudimentary level of decoding phonetic cue reading. Teachers can introduce phonetic cue reading by modeling how to use the

1020 minutes. Teachers can introduce phonemes to the class with brightly colored visuals of sound analogies, engaging stories to help children learn tongue ticklers, and hand gestures to practice detecting phonemes in ticklers. For further PA work, teachers should identify children who have not mastered PA for special instruction. Children whose invented spellings do not map phonemes well, or who score low on the Test of Phoneme Identities (free at www.auburn.edu/rdggenie), would be prime candidates for more intensive instruction. The PA group could practice with ticklers, learn how to test words for phonemes by following teacher models, and see how to use beginning letters as phoneme symbols to distinguish rhyming words. Illustrations can accumulate in the classroom as children build their knowledge of phonemes, inspiring language play and guiding invented spelling. In a culture in which children become phoneme detectives, phonemes can become familiar features of the literacy environment, enriching a childs world with the building blocks of reading instruction.
R E F E R E NC E S Bergeron, J.P., Lederberg, A.R., Easterbrooks, S.R., Miller, E.M., & Connor, C.M. (2009). Building the alphabetic principle in young children who are deaf or hard of hearing. The Volta Review, 109(23), 87119. Byrne, B., & Fielding-Barnsley, R. (1991). Evaluation of a program to teach phonemic awareness to young children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83(4), 451455. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.83.4.451 Byrne, B., & Fielding-Barnsley, R. (1995). Evaluation of a program to teach phonemic awareness to young children: A 2-and 3-year follow-up and a new preschool trial. Journal of Educational Psychology, 87(3), 488503. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.87.3.488 Byrne, B. (1998). The foundation of literacy: The childs acquisition of the alphabetic principle. Hove, UK: Psychology. Castiglioni-Spalten, M.L., & Ehri, L.C. (2003). Phonemic awareness instruction: Contribution of articulatory segmentation to novice beginners reading and spelling.

Figure 3 Sound Analogy for /f/ as Angry Cat

www.reading.org

R T

T E LL M E A B OU T F R E D S FAT F O O T AG A I N: F OU R T I P S F OR S UCC E S SF U L PA LE SSONS

Scientific Studies of Reading, 7(1), 2552. doi:10.1207/S1532799XSSR0701_03 Chudowsky, N., & Chudowsky, V. (2010). Rising scores on state tests and NAEP. Washington, DC: Center on Education Policy.

MORE TO EX PLORE
ReadWriteThink.org Lesson Plans Alliteration All Around by Rebecca Olien Hey Diddle, Diddle! Generating Rhymes for Analogy-Based Phonics Instruction by Gigi Bohm

IRA Journal Article Using Sound Boxes Systematically to Develop Phonemic Awareness by Patricia A. McCarthy, The Reading Teacher, December 2008 IRA Book Learning About Print in Preschool: Working With Letters, Words, and Beginning Links With Phonemic Awareness (2nd ed.) by Dorothy S. Strickland and Judith A. Schickedanz

Clarke, L.K. (1988). Invented versus traditional spelling in first graders writings: Effects on learning to spell and read. Research in the Teaching of English, 22(3), 281309. Crystal, D. (2010). The Cambridge encyclopedia of language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Cunningham, A.E. (1990). Explicit versus implicit instruction in phonemic awareness. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 50(3), 429444. doi:10.1016/0022-0965(90)90079-N Duffy, G.G. (2009). Explaining reading: A resource for teaching concepts, skills, and strategies (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford. Ehri, L.C. (1998). Grapheme-phoneme knowledge is essential for learning to read words in English. In J.L. Metsala & L.C. Ehri (Eds.), Word recognition in beginning literacy (pp. 340). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Hohn, W.E., & Ehri, L.C. (1983). Do alphabet letters help prereaders acquire phonemic segmentation skill? Journal of Educational Psychology, 75(5), 752762. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.75.5.752 Liberman, I.Y., & Liberman, A.M. (1992). Whole language versus code emphasis: Underlying assumptions and their implications for reading instruction. In P.B. Gough, L.C. Ehri, & R. Treiman (Eds.), Reading acquisition (pp. 343366). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. McGee, L.M., & Ukrainetz, T.A. (2009). Using scaffolding to teach phonemic awareness in preschool and kindergarten. The Reading Teacher, 62(7), 599603. doi:10.1598/ RT.62.7.6

Murray, B.A. (1998). Gaining alphabetic insight: Is phoneme manipulation skill or identity knowledge causal? Journal of Educational Psychology, 90(3), 461475. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.90.3.461 Murray, B.A. (2006). Hunting the elusive phoneme: A phoneme-direct model for learning phoneme awareness. In K.A. Dougherty Stahl & M.C. McKenna (Eds.), Reading research at work: Foundations of effective practice (pp.114125). New York: Guilford. Murray, B.A., Smith, K.A., & Murray, G.G. (2000). The test of phoneme identities: Predicting alphabetic insight in prealphabetic readers. Journal of Literacy Research,32(3),421447. doi:10.1080/10862960009548087 National Reading Panel. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Stahl, S.A. (1992). Saying the p word: Nine guidelines for exemplary phonics instruction. The Reading Teacher, 45(8), 618625. doi:10.1598/RT.45.8.10 Wallach, M.A., & Wallach, L. (1979). Helping disadvantaged children learn to read by teaching them phoneme identification skills. In L.B. Resnick & P.A. Weaver (Eds.), Theory and practice of early reading (Vol. 3, pp. 197215). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

R T

The Reading Teacher

Vol. XX

Issue x

Xxxxx 2012