|
|
"For the first time, we now have guidance based on
evidence from sound scientific research
on how best to teach children to read"
Director of the National Institute
of Child Health and Human Development
In order to read, the student must
learn phonics, which is the sound
to symbol association and the skill of
blending these sounds together to make a word.
In addition, they need to understand
phonemic awareness, which is the ability
to hear sounds within a spoken word and to understand
that the sounds correspond to letters.
Teacher of
the Year – Testimony before U.S. House of Representative –
9-26-2000
Children with phonemic awareness are
able to discern that camp and soap end with
the same sound, that blood and brown begin with
the same sound, or, more advanced still, that removing the /m/
from smell leaves sell.
National Research Council Committee on
the Prevention of Reading Difficulties
Converging evidence from all research
centers show that deficits in phonemic awareness reflect the core
deficit in reading disabilities.
Synthesis of Research - National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Phonemic awareness is the most
potent predictor of success in learning to read--even
more powerfully predictive than I.Q. Conversely, lack of
phonemic awareness is the most powerful
determinant of failure to learn to read.
National Adult Literacy and Learning
Disabilities Center
About
2 in 5 children have some level of difficulty with phonemic
awareness. For about 1 in 5
children phonemic awareness does not develop or improve over
time. These children never catch up
but fall further and further behind in reading and in all
academic subjects.
Synthesis
of Research - National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development
…
research repeatedly demonstrates that, when steps
are taken to ensure an adequate awareness of phonemes,
the reading and spelling growth of the group as a whole is
accelerated and the incidence of reading failure is diminished.
...
instruction in alphabetic literacy, particularly regarding the correspondences
between letters and phonemes, in turn appears to
facilitate further growth in phonological (especially phonemic)
awareness.
...
it is important to bear in mind these powerful reciprocal
influences of reading skill and phonological (phonemic)
awareness on each other.
National
Research Council Committee on the Prevention of Reading
Difficulties
©Copyright 2001 - 2003: Training Wheels for Literacy & Implicity
