Phonemic awareness is a strong predictor of reading development; however, it is not the only factor contributing to reading success. Early intervention phonemic awareness instruction provides the most impact (Bus & Van Ijzendoorn, 1999). Research proved phonemic awareness had a large effect size and the success transferred as the students became readers. The effect size in kindergarten was the largest and decreased with each grade. This is possibly resulting from the fact that younger students …show more content…
Phonemic awareness and letter knowledge are strong indicators of success during the first two years of instruction. Mnemonics is a great strategy to link letters to sounds. Once students have a strong base of letters and phonemic awareness, students need to learn concepts of print and how to decode (Ehri, 2001).
Two groups of students benefit the most from phonics instruction. Research indicates phonics instruction is considered particularly beneficial to children with reading problems because poor readers have extreme difficulty decoding words. Research also indicates that phonics instruction is very valuable with younger readers as they learn the alphabetic system verses with older readers and trying to relearn a new approach and influence how they currently read (Ehri, 2001).
Phonics instruction plays an important part in helping students become readers (Stahl, Duffy-Hester & Dougherty Stahl, 1998). Phonics instruction is more successful if students are building upon strong phonemic awareness. Good phonics instruction builds on concepts of print students already have (Stahl, 1992). Teachers will need to differentiate phonics instruction based on the students’ …show more content…
Phonics instruction is most successful when taught explicitly (Stahl, 1992). Systematic phonics instruction teaches the correlation of grapheme-phoneme and how to use these to decode and compose words. Reading words by sight, meaning the reader is able to read the word immediately, is gained by using the grapheme-phoneme connection (Ehri, 2001). A good phonics program helps teach students become aware of sounds (simple and complex) in words (Stahl, Duffy-Hester & Dougherty Stahl, 1998). Phonics instructions includes both analyzing and manipulating phonemes (Ehri, 2001). Phoneme isolation, phoneme identity, phoneme categorization, phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation, and phoneme deletion can fall under phonics instruction once letters are connected to the sounds (Ehri, Nunes, Willows, Schuster, Yahhoub-Zadeh, & Shanahan, 2001). Onset and rime instruction helps students process syllables in words. Phonics programs students recognize words based on the structure of words (Stahl, 1992). Reading words within and outside of text is a goal of phonics instruction. Although reading nonsense words is a common assessment practice, this practice should not be used when teaching students how to read words (Ehri,