John, thank you for this interview. It was a lot of fun thinking about the connection with Special Education.
I want to clarify one of my answers on the NRP. The focus on phonemic awareness in the Canon is that it is an integrated system with decoding. Phonemic awareness instruction should absolutely include letters, and we shouldn't wait to teach it until students know all their letters and letter-sounds. We know that phonemic awareness develops independently of phonological sensitivity (Brady, 2020). After the NRP report, a lot of us focused on PA as a continuum, or a hierarchy, starting with words, syllables, onsets-rimes, and then phonemes.
What is the takeaway?
Yes, phonemic awareness and decoding are reciprocal.
Children do not need to master phonological sensitivity (larger chunks) prior to working on phoneme-level skills.
DO add letters to phonemic awareness. In the NRP report, studies that included letters also included oral phonemic awareness. If you include oral only, add letters as quickly as possible.
I'd love to chat with folks reading the post about the topic, or anything related.
I am glad you provided this clarification. If I was an accomplished interviewer, I would have asked you about the point during the discussion! (Cue a sigh.)
Indeed, educators need to tie phonological activities to letters very early in literacy learning. .Letters shouldn't be withheld until students have mastered segmenting and blending orally (let alone all the 40-11 other forms of phonemic awareness).
tied
I think this re-emphasizes a point you made elsewhere: It's important not to fall into a trap and focus on one component of reading until it's mastered, then turn to another component and focus on it exclusively. The components may be isolable subsklls, but they are not employed independently during real reading. They interact (as you noted). They push and pull each other along. They are reciprocally related, not just sequentially related.
I'm reminded, in fact that even at higher levels of literacy, there are such reciprocal relationships. Decoding <--> comprehending of astrophysics.
John, thank you for this interview. It was a lot of fun thinking about the connection with Special Education.
I want to clarify one of my answers on the NRP. The focus on phonemic awareness in the Canon is that it is an integrated system with decoding. Phonemic awareness instruction should absolutely include letters, and we shouldn't wait to teach it until students know all their letters and letter-sounds. We know that phonemic awareness develops independently of phonological sensitivity (Brady, 2020). After the NRP report, a lot of us focused on PA as a continuum, or a hierarchy, starting with words, syllables, onsets-rimes, and then phonemes.
What is the takeaway?
Yes, phonemic awareness and decoding are reciprocal.
Children do not need to master phonological sensitivity (larger chunks) prior to working on phoneme-level skills.
DO add letters to phonemic awareness. In the NRP report, studies that included letters also included oral phonemic awareness. If you include oral only, add letters as quickly as possible.
I'd love to chat with folks reading the post about the topic, or anything related.
Paige, you are welcome!
I am glad you provided this clarification. If I was an accomplished interviewer, I would have asked you about the point during the discussion! (Cue a sigh.)
Indeed, educators need to tie phonological activities to letters very early in literacy learning. .Letters shouldn't be withheld until students have mastered segmenting and blending orally (let alone all the 40-11 other forms of phonemic awareness).
tied
I think this re-emphasizes a point you made elsewhere: It's important not to fall into a trap and focus on one component of reading until it's mastered, then turn to another component and focus on it exclusively. The components may be isolable subsklls, but they are not employed independently during real reading. They interact (as you noted). They push and pull each other along. They are reciprocally related, not just sequentially related.
I'm reminded, in fact that even at higher levels of literacy, there are such reciprocal relationships. Decoding <--> comprehending of astrophysics.
I was just working today on the multi-layer role of morphology. A discussion for another day!