Joseph Torgensen's Phonemic Awareness

On the same day as I researched Florida Center for Reading Research: Phonemic Awareness, I also looked into Joseph Torgensen's article on Phonemic Awareness. Fortunately, this provided me with insightful information, which I was in need of when planning my lesson plan for Monday.

When reading the article by Joseph Torgensen, he states “Phonological ability, or talent, is a trait that is strongly heritable. In other words, children can vary in their talent for processing the phonological features of language in the same way they vary among one another in musical ability, height, or hair color.” He also states that this has been proven in a study of twins shows variations in linguistically related to phonological skills in inherited.

 

I must keep in mind, that not all children at a preschool age or even kindergarten age will be able to manipulate phonemes. However, with practice they will be able to improve their ability to decipher individual phonemes. It is hard to believe that such a skill can actually be inherited, however as I read more in his article and my own personal reflection/experiences this does make sense. Just as some children perform better in writing versus reading-- some children have a greater or lesser ability to decipher individual sounds. 

 

   

Phoneme Manipulation

Over the weekend I began researching the Florida Center for Reading Research website which provided meaningful lesson plans in teaching phonemic awareness.  Some of the lesson plans I looked at looked slightly difficult for some of the children in my classroom, as they are at the very beginning stages of gaining phonemic awareness. However, I know that this is a very important skill to obtain upon entering kindergarten and ultimately, it is up to me to foster this skill in the classroom.

On Monday I implemented the lesson plan, without high expectations. The lesson plan I chose was entitled Phoneme Manipulating-- Phoneme Swap.   In this lesson, students decide which phoneme has been changed by comparing two pictures. For example, students say the name of the picture ("boat" and "coat") and then determine what sound has been changed by saying those two sounds (/b/ to /k/). Then the child will state where the sound was changed-- in this case, the beginning.

Half of the class understood what was being asked of them, whereas the other half was confused and unsure of where the sound was swapped. Coincidently, the children who successfully completed this lesson plan was those whom associate letters with letter sounds. The others, who had difficultly, do not quite have this skill down pat.

I hope to continue implementing lesson plans such as this in the classroom more frequently and observe their progress.