First Sound Fluency: Data-Based Phonemic Awareness Instruction at the Beginning of Kindergarten
This is the beginning of a blog series about four common universal screening measures. Universal screeners are an important type of literacy assessment used in grades K-6. If you missed my last blog post about the different types of assessment, you can read about them here. It will give you an overview of universal screeners and their importance.
The four universal screening measures we will talk about in the series are:
FSF (First Sound Fluency): assesses basic phonemic awareness at the beginning of Kindergarten.
PSF (Phoneme Segmentation Fluency): assesses phonemic awareness from the middle of Kindergarten through the beginning of first grade.
NWF (Nonsense Word Fluency): assesses basic phonics from the middle of Kindergarten through the beginning of second grade.
ORF (Oral Reading Fluency): assesses advanced Phonics, word attack skills, fluency in connected text, and reading comprehension from the middle of first grade through the end of sixth grade.
As you can see, from FSF to ORF, these four measures align with the progression of early literacy skills from grades K-6, and are indicative of reading performance at any given time in a school year. All students must take the same route to reading—first they must be able to identify and manipulate sounds in words (phonemic awareness), simultaneously they need to be able to map those speech sounds to the letters or letters that represent them and then blend those sounds together to read words (phonics), they then need to be able to attack unfamiliar words in connected text, read fluently (fluency), and understand what they are reading (comprehension). Each of the above measures have been shown through research to correlate with the essential early literacy skills mentioned above—that is, skills students need to become proficient readers.
This post will discuss FSF, or first sound fluency (often called beginning sound fluency or beginning sound isolation). In First Sound Fluency, students isolate and produce the first sound in a word. If you say the word “cat”, the student should tell you that the first sound is /c/. There will be a separate post for each of the remaining measures. We’ll begin by discussing the importance of and research behind phonemic awareness.
What is phonemic awareness and why is it so critical?
Phonemic awareness is an essential early literacy skill. That means that children must develop this skill to become a proficient reader. According to the National Early Literacy Panel (2020), the two most important phonemic awareness skills are segmenting and blending. This is because these two skills have a causal effect on learning how to read and spell. Blending (along with letter sound correspondence knowledge and knowing the meaning of the decoded word) causes children to read words. Segmenting (along with letter sound correspondence knowledge) causes children to spell words. Blending is being able to hear the individual sounds in a word and blend those sounds together to produce the correct word. Segmenting is being able to hear a word and break it apart into its individual sounds. Blending facilitates the ability to read and segmenting facilitates the ability to spell. The ability to perform the skills of blending and segmenting require that a student is able to detect individual phonemes in words. Since this is not a natural skill it needs to be explicitly taught to most children.
Coarticulation
For some students, especially those with dyslexia, learning to blend and segment is extremely challenging, especially in words that include consonant blends, liquid sounds, or nasal sounds. This is because in these words, some of the sounds “bleed” into the next sound, making it harder for our students to pull the sounds apart. The short e sound at the beginning of the word “elephant” bleeds into the /l/ sound because /l/ is a liquid sound. /e/ and /l/ are individual sounds but in the context of a word they run together. Consider a word like “train”. Many emerging spellers will hear the word “train” and spell it ch-r-ai-n. This is because of a phenomenon called co-articulation. The first sound, /t/, is coarticulated, or spoken together with the sound /r/. We hear “/chr/” because the mouth is preparing to say /r/ as it finishes producing the /t/ sound. This happens in a fraction of a second when we speak the word “train”, but when spelling the word “train”, students have to be able to pull each sound apart, and connect the sound to the letters that represent it. Drawing students attention to how these sounds are coarticulated is the type of instructional detail we must include if we want our students to be on track.
All this to say, getting to the stage where our students are able to accurately and fluently blend and segment words with 2, 3, 4 & 5 sounds doesn’t happen overnight. And, if you teach Kindergarten, chances are, your students have minimal to no concept of a phoneme and no experience breaking words into their sounds and blending them back together. For this reason, typically we have to begin phonemic awareness instruction with a more basic phonemic awareness skill called beginning sound isolation. Depending on your universal screener, this is also called first sound isolation, or beginning sound identification. Beginning sound isolation (and medial and final sound isolation) is a stepping stone to blending and segmenting.
If we think of our end goal as blending and segmenting for phonemic awareness (in service of the ultimate outcome of reading and spelling words), we can think of beginning sound isolation as an important checkpoint for reaching that goal. Both sound isolation, and blending and segmenting, have been shown by research to be predictive of future reading outcomes (NELP, 2008; NRP 2020), so we definitely want to be teaching these skills.
Boxed Phonemic Awareness Programs
So…why aren’t we? The problem is, with the growing attention toward the importance of phonemic awareness, also came the influx of big box programs attempting to provide a one stop shop for teaching phonemic awareness. These programs are problematic because they divert the teacher away from data-based phonemic awareness instruction. Instead of providing a pathway for teachers to meet students where they are—whether it be at the beginning sound stepping stone or perhaps beginning to learn how to blend and segment words with two sounds, they include a myriad of random phonological awareness skills that ask students to perform tasks with larger phonological chunks of language such as syllables (fan-tas-tic or onset and rime (ch-ip). While it might be necessary to take another step back and teach students how to blend and segment words via onset rime or syllables, we must remember that getting students to blending and segmenting the individual sounds in words is the ultimate phonemic awareness goal. Reading and spelling words is the ultimate literacy goal and reason we teach phonemic awareness.
Shifting Toward Data-based Phonemic Awareness Instruction
Instead of using a program to teach phonemic awareness, I believe we need to analyze our phonemic awareness data from our universal screeners to plan our instruction so that we meet the need of each individual student. I believe it so much that I wrote this blog post about it ;). Teaching it this way tightens up our core instruction, making our Tier 1 instruction more intentional and data-driven, and increasing our chances of getting ALL students on track by the end of K. Instead of using a program as a catch all and having all students learn all phonological awareness skills, we look at our universal screening data to see what specific skills they need.
Since we know that at the end of first grade if students are still behind, the chances of them catching up are slim, I think we owe it to our students to build our phonemic awareness instruction based on data, rather than using a program as a catch all and blindly hoping the program is working. I’ve heard many teachers say that they use phonological awareness programs and that the results are amazing, but I have to wonder, what results are they talking about? Are students just really great at deleting syllables? Or does their screening data show that they are at benchmark on FSF or PSF (phoneme segmentation fluency)? We want to know if they are at benchmark so that we can have confidence that they will be successful readers in the future.
Analyzing FSF Data
The beginning of Kindergarten is typically when FSF is assessed and basic phonemic awareness is taught. When students take the FSF measure, you say a word and ask them to give you the first sound they hear in that word. If you say the word “mat”, they should tell you that the first sound is /m/. Students who are at or above benchmark in this skill will be able to give you the first individual sounds in words, automatically. Students who fall below benchmark may make a number of different errors. Students who are at or above benchmark should receive blending and segmenting instruction, and students who are below benchmark should receive instruction in sound isolation. I’m going to go over possible error types below, with instructional tips following for each error.
Error Type #1: Let’s use the word “mat” as our first example.
If the student says /m/. They are correct.
If the student says /ma/, they are incorrect. This error indicates that the student is pulling sounds apart, but isn’t yet able to pull the first two sounds apart. Since /m/ is a continuous sound, they are struggling with continuous sounds and should work toward isolating beginning sounds in words with continuous sounds first. Then they can move to isolating beginning sounds in words with stop sounds. All vowels and the following consonants are continuous: f, h, l, m, n, r, s, v, w, y z. The following consonants are stops: b, c, d, g, j, k, p, qu, t.
For instruction: Model holding onto the first sound, since it is a continuous sound. You can say watch me say the word mat. I’m going to stretch out the first sound like this. /mmmmmmmmmat/. Then say, the first sound I hear in the word “mat” is /m/. Then try one together. Say to the students: everyone say the word “sat”. (students say “sat”). Now let’s stretch out the first sound and say the word “sat”. Everyone should together say /sssssssssssssat/. Then ask the students what sound they heard at the beginning (/s/). Repeat this several times. It’s easiest to begin by using words with continuous sounds.
My beginning sounds slides pictured below are what I use to teach and practice this skill!
Show the picture, ask students to say “vine”. Then ask, what’s the first sound you hear in “vine”? Students should say /v/. Then ask, what letter spells /v/? Students should say “v!” Display the slide that incorporates the letter. Adding letters to phonemic awareness instruction will get your students reading and spelling faster, and is shown to be more effective than not using letters! (NRP, 2020).
I also use these beginning sound strips for guided and independent practice. I love them because they integrate phonemic awareness, phonics, and handwriting!
Error Type #2:
The word is “brush”. The student says “/br/. This is similar to error number one, but the difference that it includes a consonant blend (br). Consonant blends are tricky for students to pull apart because they are co-articulated.
For instruction: Model the articulation for each sound /b/ and /r/ for the student. Show the student what your lips, tongue, and teeth are doing for both sounds, and how the sounds are smushed together when pronounced within a word. Tell the student that when we hear “/br/” it’s actually /b/ and /r/ together, and that /b/ is the first sound. Practice isolating the first sounds in words with blends.
Take the same approach if a student struggles to pull apart a three consonant blend. For example, for the word “strap”, the student says “/str/”.
Above are the two main error patterns you’ll find on FSF. You might also have students who have no concept of a phoneme, and therefore misunderstand the task. You’ll start at the beginning of this progression below:
Phonemic awareness instruction from easiest to most complex skills:
Words that begin with a continuous sound (e.g at, or sun)
Words that begin with a stop sound (e.g tap or band)
Words that begin with a consonant blend (e.g brush)
Words that begin with a vowel followed by a nasal or liquid consonant (e.g and or elephant)
To figure out where to start in this progression, examine student errors. For example, did they error on words that mostly begin with stop sounds, but did well on words that begin with continuous sounds? Start your instruction by teaching words with stop sounds.
Once students reach the FSF benchmark, move to teaching segmenting and blending phonemes. We’ll talk about implications for segmenting and blending instruction on the next post!
