Spiral of Inquiry - Developing a hunch around Phonemic Awareness

Developing a hunch
How are we contributing to the situation? "Hunch" is an important word – hunches may not be totally accurate, but it is essential to get them all on the table because they guide the focusing. Sometimes they might be well-established routines of the school or the classroom, and be relevant to your own school. Hunches need testing.

Overarching inquiry

What strategies are most effective when supporting WRS learners with reading?" 

Sub-question Two:

Will regular phonemic awareness sessions improve students letter/sound identification? 

In your book, you wade into the reading wars and argue that the debate over phonics vs. whole language is largely to blame for the poor reading skills of American students. But you say it's not a question of "either/or." Kids need to be exposed to great books and rich literature and they need to know the symbols and sounds of letters. Where are we on that front? from The Gap Between The Science On Kids And Reading, And How It Is Taught

Over the years I have mostly sat in the 'whole language' camp for literacy learning. It wasn't till I completed a paper with Massey University entitled "Foundations to Literacy" where I explored Louise Moats' resources on phonological awareness where I truly looked into the impact this might have on children's learning.

This article written by Louisa has a host of reasons why phonemic awareness is important for reading, this quote "Instruction in speech-sound awareness reduces and alleviates reading and spelling difficulties (Adams, Foorman, Lundberg, & Beeler, 1998; Gillon, 2004; NICHD, 2000; Rath, 2001). Teaching speech sounds explicitly and directly also accelerates learning of the alphabetic code. Therefore, classroom instruction for beginning readers should include phoneme awareness activities" suggests that including these types of learning engagements/systematically in daily routines will help children with reading and decrease the likelihood of later reading difficulties.

So what might this look like in practice?
From the very first day of school, I have implemented a range of 'alphabet/phonics' work in our daily routines, including phonics songs, alphabet card games and sound bingo. Most recently we have started to use Yolanda Soryl phonics resources to support children with their letter/sound correspondence.

Alphabet Card game

Invite children to sit with their alphabet card and ask questions like "Can you find the S sound?" or "The first one to find a K" etc. 

Sound Bingo Game

Encourage children to listen to the sounds and identify them, first one to fill their card with counters wins.!

My hunch: 

My hunch is that daily work on letters and sounds will help children become more conversant in recognising letters/words. However, this will complement the vast range of stories and literature in the classroom. In contrast to my previous thinking on Guided Reading groups, I would also like to look at 'flexible' learning groups as a way of supporting all of our learners. I hope for the work of Professor Christine Rubie-Davies’ High Teacher Expectation Project to inform me in my thinking around this.