Phonemic Awareness for Older Kids
Having recently reviewed Literary Resources LLC Bridge the Gap (Heggerty), I wanted to share my own approach to teaching phonemic awareness to older kids. My reading interventions provide a 5 minute daily phonemic awareness activity, designed for students ages 8-adult in reading intervention. Given that phonemic awareness is essential to decoding and that older students who struggle with reading generally lack this ability to hear and manipulate discrete speech sounds.
“There is no age where a student is ‘too old’ for phonemic awareness training‒if the skills have not been mastered, the student should get training” (Kilpatrick, David A., 2016, Equipped for Reading Success).
By providing an instructional alternative to the Heggerty program, I want to assure you that nothing is wrong with the Bridge the Gap program; however, it is an add-on instructional component. In contrast, the 5 minute phonemic awareness instruction is the first of 5 Daily Google Slide Activities in my two reading intervention programs and seamlessly integrates the focus phonemes into the second activity i.e., Blending, Segmenting, and Spelling. For example, if introducing the long /e/ sound-spellings in the second activity, the example words used, say in phoneme isolation, will include those long /e/ sounds. For my money, the more connected the program components, the better students master the instructional objectives. My integrated phonemic activities seem to apply the following recommendations to the letter:
According to Louisa Moats and Carol Tolman, “Instruction that enhances awareness of speech sounds is relevant for older students who are inattentive to the internal details of spoken words. These students may show all the symptoms listed for younger students, including poor spelling, inaccurate decoding of new words, mispronunciation of words, and difficulty remembering or recalling new words. Direct teaching with a vowel chart and a consonant chart is quite possible with students at fourth grade and up, and many can improve substantially in PA with structured practice” (Reading Rockets).
I provide two evidence-based reading intervention programs for older students: 1. Teaching Reading Strategies (Intervention Program) 2. The Science of Reading Intervention Program. The first is a comprehensive, full-year word recognition and language comprehension program (55 minutes per day). The second is the word recognition component of the first and can be implemented as a semester class (55 minutes) or a pull-out or early-late option for the whole year (30 minutes per day).
Both programs include the interactive 5 Daily Google Slide Activities (print copies also work just fine). Each of the 54 Google slide activities include practice 
with phoneme isolation, addition, deletions, substitution, manipulation, segmentation, and reversals. The teacher completes 3 of these lessons per week (typically Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday). The teacher displays the slide for in-class instruction or shares the screen for ZOOM instruction, reads the slide information, and provides cues for unison responses. No prep required. Only teacher slides are provided for this activity. If you would like to preview the 5 Daily Google Slide Activities, including the phonemic awareness drills, check out this video.
The Science of Reading Program Phonemic Awareness Activities
The first 6 lessons focus on phonological awareness, the alphabetic code, and the history of the English language. These lessons also include links to the Animal Chants YouTube videos. The Vowel Valley Animal Chant and the Consonant Sounds Animal Chant introduce students to the proper mouth positions and sound articulations for each of the English phonemes with catchy songs and rhymes. The rest of the lessons focus on the previous day’s sound-spellings, and so provide excellent review and practice with these phonemes.
These daily lessons are profitable for all ages 8-adult struggling readers. However, some of your students will require additional concentrated phonemic awareness instruction. Plus, if teaching a full-year reading intervention program, some of your students will have been assigned to your care later in the year and will not have had the benefit of the daily lessons. For these students, the diagnostic Phonemic Awareness Assessments (see below to receive a free download right in your mailbox) will produce the relevant data to determine what needs to be taught to whom, and just as importantly, what does not need to be taught to whom. The comprehensive Teaching Reading Strategies (Intervention Program) provides the individualized or small group instructional activities students need to master phonemic awareness.
The Teaching Reading Strategies (Intervention Program) is designed for non-readers or below grade level readers ages eight–adult. This full-year, 55 minutes per day program provides both word recognition and language comprehension instructional resources (Google slides and print). Affordable, easy-to- teach, and science of reading-based, featuring the Sam and Friends Phonics Books–decodables designed for older students. The word recognition activities and decodables are also available as a half-year option in The Science of Reading Intervention Program.
PREVIEW TEACHING READING STRATEGIES and THE SCIENCE OF READING INTERVENTION PROGRAM RESOURCES HERE.
Get the Phonemic Awareness Assessments FREE Resource:
