Learn more about the development of phonological awareness skills in young children, why it’s so important to teach this skill, and the value of multisensory instruction. You’ll also find sample lessons for teaching phonological awareness.
The development of phonological awareness skills
Phonological awareness refers to a global awareness of, and ability to manipulate, the sound structures of speech.
The diagram below shows the development of phonological awareness in typical children, from the simplest, most rudimentary phonological awareness tasks, to full phonemic awareness.
Phonological awareness skills from simplest to most complex
Blending onset and rime Onset and rime completion Do words rhyme? Generating rhyming words
Complex
Phonemic awareness
Saying sounds in isolation Identifying sounds in words (e.g., first, last) Blending sounds to form a syllable Segmenting sounds in a syllable Manipulating sounds (adding, deleting, substituting)
Most complex
*Concept of word (counting words in a sentence) is not a phonological awareness skill but it is included in the continuum for a reason. Children with low-language skills and English language learners may struggle with language at this level, and it can affect their phonological awareness skills.
**The onset is the initial consonant or consonant cluster of a one-syllable word, and the rime is the vowel and any consonants that follow it.
Benefits of teaching phonological awareness
Our brains are wired to process the sounds of speech in oral language There is an area of the brain devoted to this task, which occurs unconsciously when we are listening. However, our brains aren’t pre-wired to translate the speech sounds we hear into letters. When children learn to read they must become consciously aware of phonemes, because learning to decode in English requires matching the sounds in spoken words to individual printed letters.
Children with dyslexia often struggle with phonological awareness. They have trouble processing the sounds in spoken language and need additional explicit instruction to strengthen their phonological awareness skills. Learn more about reading, the brain, and dyslexia in this article by Professor Guinevere Eden: How Reading Changes the Brain(opens in a new window).
Phonological awareness skills are best taught in kindergarten and early Grade 1 so they can be applied to sounding out words as phonics instruction begins. Research summarized in the National Reading Panel report suggested that even very modest amounts of instruction — as little as 5 to 18 hours in total — in phonological awareness at this stage can yield significant benefits to children’s reading and spelling achievement (Ehri, 2004).
Dr. David Kilpatrick identifies phonological awareness as the single most important factor in differentiating struggling from successful readers and in differentiating between effective and ineffective interventions. In Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties(opens in a new window) Kilpatrick (2015) tells us that research suggests that “phonological manipulation tasks are the best measures of the phonological awareness, skills needed for reading because they are the best predictors of word-level reading proficiency” because phoneme manipulation (adding, deleting, and substituting) is actually the layer of phonemic awareness that is the most closely related to reading connected text. Learn more in this article by Kilpatrick: Phonological Awareness & Intervention(opens in a new window).
Some children, particularly those who have serious decoding difficulties, may continue to need instruction to help strengthen phonemic awareness beyond an early Grade 1 level.
Intervention
The activities for teaching phonological awareness in intervention are the same as teaching it to pre-readers, although children who need intervention may require much greater intensity of instruction (e.g., smaller group size, more opportunities for practice) to develop phonological awareness. For children who are old enough for formal reading instruction (i.e., kindergarten and up), phonological awareness instruction should generally be integrated with phonics instruction.
For example, as children learn to segment spoken words into phonemes, they also learn to match the appropriate letters to those phonemes. The most important phonological awareness skills for children to learn at these grade levels are phoneme blending and phoneme segmentation, although for some children, instruction may need to start at more rudimentary levels of phonological awareness such as alliteration or rhyming. As skills are mastered, instruction moves to more difficult skills.
Blending sounds in syllables with Autumn, kindergartner
In this video, reading expert Linda Farrell works one-on-one with Autumn to master specific pre-reading skills, with a focus on strengthening her phonological awareness and giving Autumn extra practice with onset and rime. See more videos here: Looking at Reading Interventions.
Transcript
Blending Sounds in Syllables with Autumn, Kindergartner
Music
Linda Farrell: Autumn, I’m so glad you’re here for this lesson. We are going to work on syllables …
Autumn: And, and letter sounds.
Linda Farrell: … and some letter sounds.
Reading expert Linda Farrell has helped thousands of children across the country. Today she’ll be working one-on-one with Autumn, who is in kindergarten at Windy Hill Elementary School in Calvert County, Maryland.
Ms. Farrell will be helping Autumn with the pre-reading skills that have to do with sounds, what’s known as phonological awareness. Autumn needs to understand that most words are composed of individual sounds — like /c/, /a/, and /t/ — and then she needs to learn how to combine those sounds to form a word, like cat. Ms. Farrell starts by seeing if Autumn can blend two or three spoken syllables into words.
Linda Farrell: Autumn, I’m gonna give you two parts of a word, and you’re gonna tell me what the word is. Watch this: /tay/, /bul/. What’s the word?
Autumn: Table!
Linda Farrell: You got it. Let’s try this one: /com/, /pu/, /ter/.
Autumn: Computer!
Linda Farrell: You’re so good I can’t even teach you that. You already know syllables.
Linda Farrell: Autumn was a master at that. She could do that beautifully. The next level is onset/rime. And that means … can you take the first part of the word, everything before the vowel sound and then take the vowel sound and everything after and put those together and make a word? So that would be /s/, /alt/. What’s the word?
Linda Farrell: Alright. Let’s talk about first sounds. This is a bat.
Autumn: /b/, /b/
Linda Farrell: /b/ is the first sound. This is a ball.
Autumn: /b/, /b/
Linda Farrell: This is hat.
Autumn: /h/, /h/
Linda Farrell: Okay, this is mouse.
Autumn: /m/
Linda Farrell: House.
Autumn: /h/, /h/
Linda Farrell: Mop.
Autumn: /m/
Ms. Farrell is making sure that Autumn can isolate the first sound in a word, what’s called the onset. If Autumn can do that consistently, then she’s ready to start blending onset and rime.
Linda Farrell: Cake.
Autumn: /k/, /k/
Linda Farrell: Alright. We are now gonna put together two parts of a word again. I’m gonna see if you can tell me what it is.
Autumn: Syllable.
Linda Farrell: We just did syllables! We just did syllables! We’re gonna do something called onset/rime right now.
Linda Farrell: Watch this. This is /s/, /un/. What’s this?
Autumn: /s/
Linda Farrell: What’s this?
Autumn: /un/
Linda Farrell: What happens if I put it together?
Autumn: /sun/
Linda Farrell: /m/
Autumn: /m/
Linda Farrell: /eik/
Autumn: /eik/
Linda Farrell: What is it when I put it together?
Autumn: Ache!
Linda Farrell: /eik/ is this part! Watch me. What’s this part?
Autumn: /m/, /eik/
Linda Farrell: This is /eik/. Can you say /m/, /eik/? You point to each one.
Autumn: /m/, /eik/. Ache!
Linda Farrell: This part’s /eik/. This part is /eik/. Watch this. /mmmmmmmm-eik/.
For a lot of children, blending onset and rime is much harder than blending syllables. And that makes sense, says Ms. Farrell.
Linda Farrell: Syllables are very easy to hear. You can feel syllables. They have acoustic clues for you: /com/, /pu/, /ter/. They break cleanly. When I go and I do /sh/, /irt/, I don’t really say /sh/, /irt/. I say shirt. It’s one acoustic clue. Some people’s brains just don’t get that automatically: Oh, I can break up a syllable into two parts? And we have to teach them. So the way we teach them is by taking the beginning, onset, and rime, and we ask them to blend it.
Linda Farrell: Okay. You do it! Go /mmmmmm/, /meik/.
Autumn: Okay. /mmmmm/, /meik/.
Linda Farrell: Okay. So what’s this part?
Autumn: /m/
Linda Farrell: What’s this part?
Autumn: /eik/
Linda Farrell: What’s the word?
Autumn: Make!
Linda Farrell: Okay. Let’s try this one. /sss/. Got it?
Autumn: /s/
Linda Farrell: /ik/
Autumn: /eik/
Linda Farrell: Say /ik/.
Autumn: /eik/
Ms. Farrell uses blank pieces of felt to represent each of the sounds. The felt helps Autumn think about parts of words and how she can blend them together, as she’ll need to do once she’s reading.
Linda Farrell: Okay. Watch me. Let’s do this. /ssss/. Touch it.
Autumn: /ssss/
Linda Farrell: /ik/
Autumn: /ik/
Linda Farrell: Now watch this: /sssssssssss-ik/.
Autumn: /ssss-sit/
Linda Farrell: Can you say … you’re saying sit. Say sick.
Autumn: Sick.
Linda Farrell: Okay. Now what’s the word? This is /s/, /ik/. Touch and say.
Autumn: /s/, /ik/. /si/, /b/?
Linda Farrell: What was the word?
Autumn: Sit.
Linda Farrell: Sit would be /s/, /it/. We’re gonna try this a different way. We’re gonna go like this.
Linda Farrell: Okay. Let’s try this. Go /siiiii/.
Autumn: /sit/
Linda Farrell: Now when we learn that children have trouble blending the first part of a word, onset, with the rest of the word … we took the small felt that was onset, it would be /s/, /ik/. The big felt was /ik/. I moved those around and I took the big part of the word and blended it with the small part of the word. So instead of /sik/, I tried to do /siiiii/, /k/. We’re giving the child a /siiiii/ … they can blend a continuant sound — a vowel is always continuant — into any consonant. It doesn’t matter what consonant it is. So /siiii/, /k/.
It’s all part of a process of helping Autumn understand that words are made up of component sounds.
Linda Farrell: Let’s do this one. Are you ready? Okay. This is /raaaaaa-t/. You do it.
Autumn: /raaaaaa-t/. Rat!
Linda Farrell: You got that one so fast! Tell me the parts again.
Autumn: /raaaaaa-t/. Rat!
Linda Farrell: Oh, my gosh. Should we try another one? Okay. /shaaaaa-p/.
Autumn: Strawberry.
Linda Farrell: Strawberry starts with an ‘s’ and shop starts with an ‘s.’ Let’s try this again. Okay. Here we go.
Linda Farrell: Autumn, as a pre-reader, is already exhibiting some signs of things we see in readers, and that is she’s a guesser. When she doesn’t know an answer, she’s very quick to just say something. What’s /s/, /ik/? Sit. And she just wants to get there real quickly. And sometimes we think, well, is she really guessing or is she, oh, my gosh, is she guessing or is she just really almost there? And then when she went, “Strawberry!” … that confirmed that she’s just saying the first thing that comes to her mind. And she’s tired. We’ve been working on the same skill for a while, and her guesses get less and less close to what the reality is. With many children you’ll see guessing happening. And we have to first break the guessing habit, and that’s another thing that our routine would say. If you aren’t sure of the answer, say, “I need help.” Because we want children to be confident of their answers, and if they’re not, to ask us for help.
Linda Farrell: You got it. Let’s try this one. Okay. Got another one. You ready? /maaaaaa-p/. Wait a minute. /maaaaaa-p/. You touch each one and tell me the sounds.
Autumn: /maaaaaam/, /p/. Mom!
Linda Farrell: Get that /p/ at the end. Can you say /p/ at the end?
Autumn: /p/
Linda Farrell: Now go /maaaaa/, /p/.
Autumn: Okay. /maaaaa/, /p/. Mom! /p/
Linda Farrell: What’s the word?
Autumn: Mop.
Linda Farrell: And I’m gonna ask you something. If I show you a picture right here, can you find that? Yes! It’s right there. Say the word.
Autumn: Mop.
Linda Farrell: It is. Show me the parts in mop.
Autumn: /m/.
Linda Farrell: This is /maaaa/.
Autumn: /maaaaaa/, /p/.
Linda Farrell: Autumn was obviously still learning this. Sometimes she could to do it, and sometimes she can’t. We want to make sure that Autumn has mastered all the pre-reading skills before we ever ask her to read, before we ask her to blend letter sounds … /s/, /i/, /t/ into “sit.”
Linda Farrell: If I’d had more time with her, I would have done about five words with her: “This is /mooo-n/. Do what I do.” … and try to get her brain just to feel what it feels like. What I do know is that Autumn will master onset rhyme. When she has that, because she will know beginning sounds and ending sounds and she understands that you can break a syllable apart, blending phonemes will not be difficult for her at all.
The key, says Ms. Farrell, is to give children the time they need to fully master each skill. That includes having the teacher model the skill and having students repeat what the teacher says. That reinforcement allows students a chance to gradually master a concept that initially might be hard.
Linda Farrell: In working with students like Autumn who are so good at one level with a skill and then at the next skill level need a lot of practice, it’s important to remember that we’re working incrementally, we don’t go from what they know to what they don’t know to what they don’t know, to what they don’t know, to what they don’t know. We’re always trying to stay in teaching on the verge between what they do know and what they don’t know. We want to keep their brains open to learning, which means I can learn, which is why I would go back to syllables, maybe start every lesson with blending a few syllables, just making them harder, more than two syllables. Maybe three and four. She’s really good at those. And then move to something that’s easy for her in onset/rime and then get a little more difficult. So it’s incremental. Autumn will be a reader.
Linda Farrell: Okay? We’re gonna try one more. Are you ready to try one more? Let’s do this. Okay. /s/.
Autumn: /s/
Linda Farrell: /op/
Autumn: /op/. Soap!
Linda Farrell: That was so fast. It’s time for our lesson to end, so let’s go back to class, okay?
Autumn: Okay.
Linda Farrell: Thank you.
Music
We’d like to thank the wonderful students and families at Windy Hill Elementary School in Calvert County, Maryland. We hope that sharing these experiences will help other children who are learning to read.
Special thanks also to Kelly Cleland, Julie Donovan, Joanne Harbaugh, and their outstanding colleagues at Windy Hill Elementary … and to Leanne Meisinger at Calvert County Public Schools.
We are deeply grateful to Linda Farrell, Michael Hunter, and Nicole Lubar of Readsters for their invaluable contributions to this project.
Produced by Noel Gunther
Edited by Christian Lindstrom
Graphic Design: Tina Chovanec
Camera: Richard Chisolm
Audio: Dwayne Dell
For more information about teaching reading, please visit
Instruction is supported by using the body and manipulatives. Students benefit from watching our mouth positions. They can also watch their own mouths with hand mirrors. Instruction is described in detail in the In-Practice section of this module.
Phonological awareness lessons
Phonological awareness lessons occur concurrently with teaching letter names and sounds. Teaching should include the following elements, taught concurrently:
Orthographic Pre-reading Skills
Phonological Pre-reading Skills
Skill
Activity
Skill
Activity
Letter names: small
Printing small letters
Syllable Activities
Single phonemes (no print)
Letter names: capitals
Printing capital letters
Teach consonant sounds, and identify each consonant in the initial and final position
Onset-rime
Teach each short vowel sound, label each one, and identify each one in the initial position
Teach the long vowels, label each one, and identify each one in initial and final position
Phonemic Awareness
Teach the r-controlled vowels, label each one, and identify each one in initial and final position *
Teach other vowels (e.g., /oy/, label each one, and identify each one in initial and final position *
* Teaching r-controlled and other vowel sounds in isolation can wait until after phonics instruction has started — this may depend on the amount of time available and whether students have mastered prior skills.
Mastering short vowels and reading whole words with Calista, first grader
In this video, reading expert Linda Farrell works one-on-one with early stage reader Calista on short vowel sounds, blending and manipulating sounds, reading whole words, and fluency. See more videos here: Looking at Reading Interventions
Transcript
Mastering Short Vowels and Reading Whole Words with Calista, First Grader
[Music]
Linda Farrell: What do we call that vowel sound? You say …
Calista: Short ‘o.’
Linda Farrell: You got it!
Calista is in first grade at Windy Hill Elementary School in Calvert County, Maryland. She’s an early stage reader who sounds out letters accurately. And she can blend those letters together to form words.
Linda Farrell: Calista, could you please read this column.
Reading expert Linda Farrell is helping Calista take the next step toward fluent reading … reading each word as a whole rather than one sound at a time. Their time together will include work on short vowel sounds, blending and manipulating sounds, reading whole words, and fluency. Ms. Farrell starts by making sure Calista has a strong foundation in her short vowel sounds.
Linda Farrell: We’re gonna learn some motions. Can you hold an apple in your hand? And when I ask you the short ‘a’ sound, you’re gonna say, /aaa/. Say it.
Calista: /a/
Linda Farrell: Now watch me. /Aaaaaa-pul/. You do it.
Calista: /Aaaaaa-pul/
Linda Farrell: Okay. That is going to remind you of the short ‘a’ sound. That’s our motion, so say, /aaa/.
Calista: /a/
Linda Farrell: And when I ask you what the short /a/ sound is, you’re gonna go /aaaa/. Do it.
Calista: /aaa/
Linda Farrell: For short ‘e,’ go like this. Watch me. Go /eeeeeh-j/.
Calista: /eeeeh-j/
Linda Farrell: So we want to start out by making sure she’s solid with her short vowel sounds. So that’s the first thing we did. And she did know her — when I said, “What’s short ‘a’?”, she knew it. She had to think a little bit. So what we did is we want her to — when she can’t remember the vowel sound real easily, we want to not have to give it to her. We want her to have a scaffold to learn it. So we taught Calista the motions that go with the vowel sound, so that if she can’t remember a vowel sound — what is the short ‘o’ sound? — then all she has to do … I can go like this and remind her, or she can go, oh, it’s /ah/, it’s octopus.
Linda Farrell: I tell you what we’re gonna do. We are gonna go to short ‘o.’ Are you ready? Okay. Here we go. /Aaaaahc-tuh-pus/.
Calista: /aaaaahc-tuh-pus/
Linda Farrell: Now we’re not gonna say the /k-tuh-pus/ part. We’re just gonna say /aaah/.
Calista: /aaah/
Linda Farrell: What’s the short ‘o’ sound?
Calista: /aaah/
Linda Farrell: And make the motion.
Calista: /aaah/
Linda Farrell: What’s the short ‘a’ sound?
Calista: /aaa/
Linda Farrell: Short ‘o’?
Calista: /aaah/
Linda Farrell: Okay. Now we’re gonna learn short ‘u.’ You ready for short ‘u’? /Uuu-p/. Do it.
Calista: /uuu-p/
Linda Farrell: And the first sound in up is /uuu/.
Calista: /uuu/
Linda Farrell: What’s the short ‘u’ sound?
Calista: /uuu/
Linda Farrell: Short ‘a’?
Calista: /aaa/
Linda Farrell: Short ‘o’?
Calista: /aaah/
Linda Farrell: Short ‘u’?
Calista: /uuu/
Linda Farrell: The vowel motions that we teach are purposefully motions. They aren’t static, because if I say /a/, /eh/, /i/, /ah/, /u/, you can hardly hear the difference between those sounds. /A/, /eh/, /i/, /ah/, /u/. And children who have phonological awareness difficulties, which is the biggest one of the — it is the biggest problem in reading issues — they don’t hear the vowel sounds easily. Listen to this: /aaaa/, /eeeeh/, /iiiii/, /aaah/, /uuuu/. They sound different. So we want to encourage the children not to say /a/. We want them to say /aaaa/; therefore, the motion that we use — which is holding an apple and then move it across the front of your body, left to right, motion of reading, /aaa/, and then /pul/ is what the rest of the word is, but we only say the first sound — everything encourages them to draw out that sound.
Linda Farrell: Now we’re gonna learn short ‘i.’ Are you ready for short ‘i’?
Calista: Mm-hmm.
Linda Farrell: Okay. Watch this. I went stomping … I went hiking, and I stomped and tromped in some poison ivy, and, boy, do I /iiiiiii-ch/. Do it. Do this.
Calista: /iiiii-ch/
Linda Farrell: /Iiiiiii-ch/. Do it.
Calista: /iiiii-ch/
Linda Farrell: Now, you have to smile real big when you say itch. Go /iiiiiiiii-ch/.
Calista: /iiiiiiii-ch/
Linda Farrell: Do it again. Short ‘i’ sound.
Calista: /iiiiiiii-ch/
Linda Farrell: Okay. And itch is the guide word. I made a mistake. I should have told you that /i/ is just like this: /iii/. We don’t even say the /ch/ part, just do this: /iii/.
Calista: /iii/
Linda Farrell: What’s the short ‘i’ sound?
Calista: /i/. /iii/.
Linda Farrell: Make it go /iiiiii/.
Calista: /iii/
Linda Farrell: What’s the short ‘a’ sound?
Calista: /aaa/
Linda Farrell: Short ‘i’?
Calista: /iii/
Linda Farrell: Short ‘i’?
Calista: /iii/
Linda Farrell: Short ‘a’?
Calista: /aaa/
Linda Farrell: Short ‘o’?
Calista: /aaah/
Linda Farrell: Short ‘u’?
Calista: /uuu/
Linda Farrell: You know your short vowel sounds!
Linda Farrell: Calista was very confident with her vowel sounds. She knew them. I would still have worked on them a little bit more, but she was confident enough for me to move on to the next step. So the next step with a kid who’s reading sound by sound isn’t really intuitive. It’s often a phonological problem. It isn’t a problem with the letters. The kid knows the letters. I know the letter sounds. I can blend the letter sounds into a real word. What they aren’t doing is thinking the sounds in their mind. They’re turning that word — if it’s hug, they look at it and they go /h/, /u/, /g/. And they are never getting the full visual picture of that word. To them it’s always an ‘h-u-g,’ a /h/, /u/, /g/. Not hug. So they haven’t moved to where they can read the whole word without breaking it into phonics. And that’s a step that we’re going to have to teach her to do, which is one of my favorite things to do, because it’s just, they just go from being really slow readers to just being normal readers once they can get this phonological representation.
Linda Farrell: We’re going to do something that we call sound chaining. Okay? I’m going to show you how it works. So I say, “Miss Linda, show me the sounds in ‘lip,’” so I go /l/, /i/, /p/, lip. You touch and say.
Calista: /l/, /i/, /p/, lip
Linda Farrell: Okay. What’s the first sound in lip?
Calista: ‘l’
Linda Farrell: ‘L’ is the name of the letter. What’s the sound?
Calista: /l/
Linda Farrell: What’s the next sound in lip?
Calista: ‘i’
Linda Farrell: ‘I’ is the name of the letter. What’s the sound?
Calista: /i/
Linda Farrell: Okay. And when I ask you, you point to it, okay? So what’s the first sound in lip?
Calista: /l/
Linda Farrell: What’s the next sound in lip?
Calista: /i/
Linda Farrell: And the last sound in lip?
Calista: /p/
Linda Farrell: And what’s the …
Calista: lip
Linda Farrell: Okay. So that’s lip. If I want to change lip to sip, I take out the /l/, and I put in a /s/. Touch and say sip.
Calista: /s/, /i/, /p/, sip
Linda Farrell: What if I wanna change sip to tip?
Calista: You take away this one and add this one.
Linda Farrell: Okay. So what did I take out? Sip to tip. Say sip to tip.
Calista: Sip to tip
Linda Farrell: Which one did I take out? If this is sip, take out …
Calista: The /s/ and add the /t/.
Linda Farrell: Okay. Now I wanna change tip to Tim.
Calista: Hmm.
Linda Farrell: So let’s touch and say tip.
Calista: /t/, /i/, /p/, tip
Linda Farrell: Now touch and say Tim.
Calista: /t/, /i/, /m/, Tim
Linda Farrell: Which one’s different?
Calista: The last one.
Linda Farrell: So what do I take out of tip to change tip to Tim?
Calista: The last one.
Linda Farrell: And what sound do I take out?
Calista: ‘p’
Linda Farrell: ‘P’ is the name of the letter. What’s the sound?
Calista: /p/
Linda Farrell: Okay. Take it out. And what do I put in to make it Tim?
Calista: ‘m’
Linda Farrell: ‘M’ is the name of the letter. What’s the sound?
Calista: /m/
Linda Farrell: Okay. So now I’ve got Tim. Touch and say Tim.
Calista: /t/, /i/, /m/, Tim
Linda Farrell: I wanna change Tim to Tom.
Linda Farrell: When we work with sound-by-sound children, we make sure that they know the difference between letters and sounds and that they can manipulate sounds. Once they can blend and segment sounds confidently, we move to manipulating. How do we do that? We work with colored tiles. They don’t have letters on them, because we want the child to have no distraction with letters. What we want is the child to be thinking about sounds.
Linda Farrell: Touch and say tap.
Calista: /t/, /a/, /p/, tap
Linda Farrell: Can you change tap to tape?
Ms. Farrell gives Calista plenty of quiet time to think about which sounds are changing.
Linda Farrell: Let’s check that because … one thing you did right is there’s always only one tile that changes. Let’s touch and say tap.
Calista: /t/, /a/, /p/, tap
Linda Farrell: Touch and say tape.
Calista: /t/, /ay/, /p/, tape
Linda Farrell: Which one’s different?
Calista: Hmm. Middle.
Linda Farrell: Yeah. What sound do you take out of tap?
Calista: ‘a’
Linda Farrell: ‘A’ is the name of the letter. What sound do you take out of tap?
Calista: /a/
Linda Farrell: Okay. Take it out. And what sound do you put in to make tape?
Calista: /ee/
Linda Farrell: Say tape.
Calista: /t – ayp/
Linda Farrell: Touch and say.
Calista: /t/, /ay/, p/, tape
Linda Farrell: What sound was that?
Calista: /ay/
Linda Farrell: It was /ay/. Okay. So you put in the sound /ay/. If I want to change tape … sorry, yes … tape to take, which one do I change?
Calista: This one.
Linda Farrell: Yes. What sound do I take out of tape?
Calista: ‘p’
Linda Farrell: What sound?
Calista: /p/
Linda Farrell: Yeah. Okay. And what sound to I put in to make it take?
Calista: /k, k/
Linda Farrell: Now this time, when I ask you to make a change, keep your mouth closed and think about it. Okay? Okay. So don’t open your mouth. You can think the sounds in your head. So we’ve got take to make. Okay. Look down. You can look down. Take to make. Can you say take to make?
Calista: Take to make.
Linda Farrell: Okay. Which one changes? Keep your mouth closed. Don’t … you have to think the sounds, okay?
Calista: /t/
Linda Farrell: Okay. So take out /t/. And what are you going to put in for make? What sound?
Calista: /m/
Linda Farrell: /M/. Okay. Can you change … now, again, mouth closed. Okay. But I’m gonna ask you to say make to mate. Say that. Make to mate.
Calista: Make to mate.
Linda Farrell: Okay. Close your mouth, and think about which one. When you know, touch it.
Calista: [points to the letter]
Linda Farrell: Okay. What sound comes out of make?
Calista: /k/
Linda Farrell: Yep. What sound goes in for mate?
Calista: /t/
Linda Farrell: Okay …
Linda Farrell: One of the things Calista does is I say, “What’s the first sound?” and she gives me the name of the letter. And we’ve got to get sound-by-sound children to think in terms of … there are letter sounds, and there are letter names, because the name of the letter, the first letter in phone is ‘p,’ but the first sound in phone is /f/. And if she doesn’t get the difference automatically and quickly, she’ll always be struggling with reading. It’s easy to teach. It’s no big deal. And I think that you see Calista make great strides in her reading.
Now we’re at the point where Ms. Farrell will push Calista to a higher level of reading — from reading words sound by sound to reading whole words.
Linda Farrell: Students who read sound by sound see a letter, make it a sound, see a letter, make it a sound, see a letter, make it a sound. So this is what’s happening. What that keeps her from being able to do is develop a visual imprint of words and word patterns on her brain. And you never look at the word as a whole. We’re trying to get Calista to look at the word as a whole, as opposed to looking at it letter, by letter, by letter.
Linda Farrell: Now what I’d like you to do is I want you to go back, and this time keep your mouth closed before and think the sounds and don’t open your mouth until you know what the word is and can read it. Okay?
Calista: Did.
Linda Farrell: Keep going.
Calista: Add. Pal. And. Mud.
Linda Farrell: Okay. Phew. You got pretty good there, didn’t ya, closing your mouth.
You can sense the wheels turning in Calista’s mind as she works silently to sound out the letters and put the sounds together into a word. Next comes work on fluency.
Linda Farrell: Let’s start right here.
Calista: Can. The. Lad.
Linda Farrell: Okay. Now go back and read it. Again.
Calista: Can. The. Lad.
Linda Farrell: Now can you go back and read it, Can the lad? Okay. Read it.
Calista. Can the lad.
Linda Farrell: Okay.
Calista: Be. In. The. Mud.
Linda Farrell: Okay. Read it like you’d say it.
Calista: Be in the mud.
Linda Farrell: Okay. Now read the whole sentence.
Calista: Can the lad be in the mud.
Linda Farrell: Okay. Can you read that one?
Calista: Kim was hot. And got a fan. Kim was hot and got a fan.
Linda Farrell: Okay. We’re gonna go and read a couple of sentences now. Those were phrases, and they turned into sentences. Could you please read this sentence?
Calista: Gus. Got. Mud. On. The. Rug.
Linda Farrell: Okay. And now we’re gonna go read a passage. Okay. What’s the title?
Calista: Don and Pip.
Linda Farrell: Okay?
Calista: Don was a lad. Pip was a pup. Don and Pip had a run. The sun was hot.
Linda Farrell: She was getting faster as she closed her mouth. She made more mistakes than she would make if she read sound by sound. She didn’t make that many mistakes, but she did make more mistakes. But that’s okay, because that’s what happens when you start changing a habit, is you go backwards a little bit. She’ll eventually, and I think fairly quickly, be a much faster reader and a much more proficient reader.
Linda Farrell: Do you ever read a book that you like?
Calista: Mm-hmm.
Linda Farrell: Calista made a lot of progress in this lesson, and she is on her way to being a top-notch reader.
Music
We’d like to thank the wonderful students and families at Windy Hill Elementary School in Calvert County, Maryland. We hope that sharing these experiences will help other children who are learning to read.
Special thanks also to Kelly Cleland, Julie Donovan, Joanne Harbaugh, and their outstanding colleagues at Windy Hill Elementary … and to Leanne Meisinger at Calvert County Public Schools.
We are deeply grateful to Linda Farrell, Michael Hunter, and Nicole Lubar of Readsters for their invaluable contributions to this project.
Produced by Noel Gunther
Edited by Christian Lindstrom
Graphic Design: Tina Chovanec
Camera: Richard Chisolm
Audio: Dwayne Dell
For more information about teaching reading, please visit
