Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Maggie.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: And I'm Nicole. Welcome to the DAC Dyslexia in Coffee Podcast. We're so happy you could join us. We're both moms and dyslexia interventionists who want to talk about our students and children. What dyslexia is, how it affects our kids, strategies to help and topics related to other learning disabilities will be covered in this podcast. Parents are not alone, and we want to give a voice to the concerns and struggles we are all having. This is a safe place to learn more about how to help our children grow and succeed in school, in the world. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the conversation.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Hi, everybody. So it is time for the concept of the week. That's our opportunity as practitioners to kind of peel back the curtain a little bit and let you into an intervention session. So today's concept of the week is a Greek combining form, but a specific one. So the Greek combining form, phon, or phone, means sound. And that does directly relate today to our topic, which is phonological awareness versus phonics.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: We thought maybe since we've been talking about these two things quite a bit, we might want to define phonics them a little bit better.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Yeah. And kind of. We do get asked this too. What? What's the difference between phonological awareness and phonics?
Can we interchange these two things? What's the deal with that? We do get asked quite a bit. So this is kind of one of those episodes that we're just gonna really define a lot of terms for everybody.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: So our first term is what is a phoneme?
[00:01:52] Speaker A: So a phoneme. Right. There's that phone card again. Right. So a phoneme is the smallest unit of sound which carries meaning in a given language.
So English has about 44 phonemes. It really depends on which researcher you ask.
44 is an approximation.
It's how we know the word pat is different than the word mat because the first sound is different in those words.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: So some definitions.
Phonological processing is the use of phonemes to discern and understand spoken and written language. It is an umbrella term that consists of phonological memory, phonological naming, and phonological awareness.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Yes.
So phonological awareness, one of those sub skills of phonological processing is the ability to perceive, receive, and manipulate sounds such as syllables, onset, rhyme, and then on the phoneme level within the language. So that sub skill of phonological processing, while it's not closely related to intelligence, it is most closely related to reading development.
So it's really an important underpinning skill for reading development. Hear me say again, not linked to intelligence whatsoever.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: Correct.
So what is an onset rhyme?
This is when there's a division of a syllable into two parts. So. So the onset of is part before the vowel and the rhyme is the vowel and whatever follows.
So imagine clap, the cl. Cl and then app. So app would be the onset rhyme.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: Yeah. So cl.
App. Cool is the onset.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: App is the rhyme.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: That's where we would teach kids groups like Clap Map. They both say app. Right. Those would be. That's where we kind of get that. That is what the rhyme part is. That last part, which does include the vowel always.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Right. Which I think some of our students get confused with that very much.
[00:04:53] Speaker A: And. And this is really hard and may not always develop with a dyslexic learner. Some of our dyslexic learners, even though we go over and over and over, still don't have a good grasp of this onset rhyme concept. Which doesn't mean we can't move on to work on phoneme level things.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Correct.
Phonemic awareness is a sub skill within the phonological awareness that relates specifically to perceiving and manipulating the phonemes in a word.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: Yes.
So there is kind of a hierarchy of skills when it comes to phonemic awareness.
So we're looking at the first, most simple task, if we're talking about phonemic awareness, is phoneme isolation. What's the first sound in map? Mmm.
What's the last sound in map?
So being able to just isolate a specific phoneme, that is the most simple task we ask of students.
Then comes blending. That would be where we give them maybe two. Working our way to at least three sounds in isolation and having that student blend those, ideally three or more sounds together into.
Into a word that they know.
Then comes segmentation. So the opposite of blending. It's a more difficult skill than blending.
So we'd have. In blending. We'd have.
And then they'd have to say map. Segmentation is the opposite. We would give them the word map and they would have to go app working kind of our way up in complexity. Then we would have addition.
So we might have.
Okay, so we have the word. Let's say nap.
[00:07:25] Speaker B: Nap.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Nap. Okay, now say nap and add a S before.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Oh, snap.
[00:07:37] Speaker A: We would do that in the beginning and then also at the end of these words.
And then we would do the opposite of that. We'd have a deletion task. So if we had snap, but now say snap, but don't say s. Nap.
And then finally, substitution.
So that is the hardest and the most complex phonemic awareness skill. That would be where we would have a substitution, exactly what it sounds like. We would give them a word and ask them to replace one of the phonemes in that word. So instead of say snap, but instead of the P, say K, now we have snap.
So kind of some ways that we work on this, ideally when we are working on phonemic awareness only, we're not spending a ton of time in our lessons doing this. It's important to build the skill, but it is not the bulk of our lesson.
We want to make sure that we're making this multisensory so that we are building that skill. We do say this is kind of the part of the lesson that, you know, you could maybe do with your eyes closed if we want to get really automatic at that. But from some of our students, almost all of them come to us with an underlying issue with phonemic awareness. And so in order to build that skill, we want to make that multisensory.
So some ways that we can do that is introducing a manipulative, like a little bingo chip, or.
I mean, that could be really just about anything.
Having them push those bingo chips around.
Right. Having students tap sounds with their fingers.
I have. I have a student that we have to take a word walk.
She has to, like, jump from. I have, like, little Elkona boxes on the floor, and she has to kind of jump from box to box when she's segmenting and blending.
So just trying to kind of get that in there.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: So while early phonological awareness activities are important for young children, activities in which children manipulate larger chunks of language is also important.
So like that onset rhyme, being able to divide into syllables and it. It may not directly improve reading and spelling at first, but it is a good way for them to build more skills.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Yeah. So onset rhyme and syllable manipulation are not tasks we are going to work on them. But if a student is really unable to get automatic at those levels, this is the one place where we are not going to get stuck there then, because the research tells us that that is actually the least important skill in terms of how it translates into reading and spelling skills. What's far more important is that we get to the phoneme manipulation, addition, segmenting, and blending really is.
Are the most important skills. So we're not going to kind of bog ourselves down on those onset, rhyme, or syllable tasks if really, truly that student's just not getting it. We're not going to get the impact on reading and Spelling that we might expect.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: And while phonemic awareness skills can be explicitly taught, there currently is less evidence that means scientific evidence that phonological memory and phonological naming can also can be taught.
These are some sub skills that should not consequently are not a target of treatment, but they're impacted by treatment.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: Just not a lot of evidence to suggest that sitting here on memory tasks or trying to force rapid automatic naming leads to good results.
Those skills tend to improve with good phonemic awareness drills and good phonics instruction.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: So research says that those things may indirectly lead to improved phonological memory and naming skills.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: That's exactly right.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
So now, so that was, you know, what is phonological awareness? So now what is phonics?
[00:13:04] Speaker B: So phonics refers to the study of the relationships between letters and the sounds letters represent.
So teaching a student that ch says ch.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: Exactly. So, so that phonics part is where we take the phonological oral, Right. Auditory component and we match it with the letters. So we're matching it with, we're matching phonemes with graphemes and we're investigating the relationships between those two things. That is phonics.
[00:13:44] Speaker B: And what's a grapheme again, for our listeners? Oh, yes.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: So a grapheme, remember, is the picture that we have. In other words, it might be a letter or a group of letters. Right. So something like this. Right. Ch, that's the grapheme, the sound. Ch, that's the phoneme. We're matching those two together.
That's phonics.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: And so there's a lot of controversies within phonological awareness. Yes, obviously.
Yeah, obviously there's. There is. Right.
So should phonemic awareness activities be completed with or without letters?
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, and then how effective are those advanced phonemic awareness skills and activities?
A lot of this does come from the work of David Kilpatrick.
He is a pretty well known researcher who came out with a not really curriculum, but a kind of what he calls like the equip for reading success where he looked at some research on how kids develop their phonemic awareness. And that research wasn't as robust as he kind of purported it to be. And so the consequence of that is that some of these phonics programs were spending so much time just on phonemic awareness and not pairing it with the graphemes which would be phonics. And so there is this kind of like, well, wait a minute, should we even do phonemic awareness at all?
Or should we just go straight to that phonics where we're pairing it with letters. And really the idea is that both, we do need both those phonemic awareness drills where we are just. We're not looking at letters. We are just kind of like the, the things that we could maybe do with our eyes closed.
We do need in. If our student has that as a deficit skill which most do, that is a one to two, maybe three minute drill.
But we are then bringing in those graphenes and, you know, the rest of our lessons basically are all what would be considered phonics.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: Another question that has come up in the sciences. Should phonemic awareness be completed with or without letters?
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So the National Reading Panel reported that phonemic awareness training, which integrates letters, has nearly twice the effect size for reading and for spelling as just phonemic awareness training done without letters. Right. So that's kind of conclusive evidence that it's really important that we are adding in letters. We're not spending.
We're not spending 20 minutes every single classroom day, which some of the bigger phonics programs we're doing.
We don't need to be doing that. That's not as effective.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: So a recent meta analysis concluded that struggling readers benefited from 10.2 hours of auditory only phonemic awareness activities, but only made progress when the activities were paired with letters. That's a 2024.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Study. So basically a meta analysis for those that are not journal readers all the time.
That's when they would look at a lot of different studies and then kind of study the studies, so to speak.
So, you know, most authors acknowledge that phonemic awareness is extremely important in learning to read and developing that alphabetical principle.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: And screening students for weaknesses in phonemic awareness can help determine which students are at most risk for reading disabilities.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely.
There's a reason that's one of the big things we would take a look at if someone is in our office for a dyslexia assessment, that's a big area that we look at, is that phonemic awareness piece.
Students should be taught to recognize the sound structure of words. Right. And then link those sounds to the letters. That's what's called the alphabetical principle.
And then that segment and blending those two phonemic awareness skills are the ones that are most closely related to reading and spelling, which is no surprise to me as a, as a practitioner. Right. That's we're teaching. Right. That segmenting really is kind of how we are decoding a difficult word. Right. And that blending piece is kind of where we are encoding that word. So not particularly surprising to me as a practitioner that those are the two that are most important that we target.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: However, some authors are concerned by the recent trend of auditory only advanced phonemic awareness activities. So like the skills blending and cementing, going past that and then only doing that without the graphemes.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So like too much focus on something like a substitution or a deletion task that isn't as linked to that reading and spelling success.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: The National Reading Panel reported that interventions focused on blending and cementing demonstrate a strong, stronger effect than those focused on other phonemic awareness skills.
So for reading it was 0.67 and for spelling 0.79 versus for those more advanced ones it was 0.27 for reading and 0.23 for spelling.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Yes, that's a pretty big difference if we're looking at efficacy here. Correct. So that's about as clear as it gets in reading research, folks, that those are some pretty big discrepancy numbers there.
There's also considerable evidence that advanced phonemic awareness skills develop in response to learning to read and spell rather than the other way around. So actually focusing on let's get those decoding skills on board and let's get those encoding skills on board, that's when we're going to see the jump in the more advanced phonemic awareness skills, which as a practitioner also, that makes a lot of sense to be. That's when you get those kids that are learning something like let's use the example slap, right? And they're like, oh, wait, if I just change that to a K. Oh, then I have to add that ck and now it's, you know, they really start to go, oh, if I change this, this one thing now I'm really getting at those different words. That's what's telling me as a practitioner. Okay, those phonemic awareness skills are now coming along because you're able to recognize what we're doing.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: So regardless of who's, there's lots of stuff going on. But authors disagree with Kirkpatrick's interpretation of the existing research and they include conclude that just as rapid auditory autonomic naming is not recommended as a target of intervention, advanced phonemic awareness skills should not be a target of intervention until research more definitively links these skills to improve reading and spelling outcomes. So they're not saying not to not do it completely. It says it needs more research.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly that. I mean, I very full disclosure, I still use Kilpatrick's work in the office. I do use his advanced phonemic skills.
I typically these phonemic awareness skills Are this mostly used as a warm up? Really? And they are literally one minute drills. They actually are called one minute drills in the book. So yes, I full disclosure, I do still use Kilpatrick's work. I'm not saying we have to throw that whole thing out. I think this is just a lesson for all of us, even in the science of reading community that, you know, Kilpatrick is a big name and people really just kind of followed what he found without.
Without some more scrutinized look, which was kind of the whole problem with the balanced literacy world. Right. So it's just important for all of us to keep in mind just because it's somebody's big name doesn't mean that they are right or their interpretation of the data is correct. It does take a more discerning look at things. So.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: And newer research may show something different anyways. Right. Because depending on we find out things all the time.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:21] Speaker B: That changes. So that is just one of those things where, you know, you have what you have at the time and then you look at it and you interpret it, you know.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: And none of the research says that these one to two minute drills on advanced phonemes is harmful to students.
If it did, then that would be a whole, that would be a whole different ball of wax. So none of these things have been shown to showed harm. They just didn't show as good great of an effect when we have, you know, I'll just use only our office time as a metaphor here.
We're not even dealing with all the things that school has to deal with. Right? But when we have a student, the way we see students here is 50 minute sessions. If I'm taking one or two of those moments to, to work on those advanced skills, that is effective use of my time. If I am using 10 minutes to work on those skills, that is 20% of my time tied to something that we know is not as effective. So Alice practitioners, these are the things we have to think about.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: Right? And really, if you follow the kind of how we laid it out at the beginning, if you start with just the blending and the segmenting and that's what you're practicing that minute, which is what you do at the beginning of even his program, those one minute exercises, your student is advancing as you're advancing those. So depending on where they're at, right. It can be very, you know, and.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: Decoding and encoding skills have improved. So therefore they may have access to those more advanced skills like a substitution or deletion.
I think another reason I continue to use those drills, and I think that's a really good point, Nicole, that I'm not doing this with. I'm not doing the advanced skills with a student who can't segment or blend. That is ridiculous.
We have a scope and sequence for everything.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:51] Speaker A: I'm not doing that. But also, a lot of our students actually really like that drill.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: They do.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: It is a good way to warm up. It gets kind of that phonological brain online a little bit. That is not a scientific term, friends.
But I kind of. I think it gets them in the mindset that we're going to be talking about sounds. We're manipulating sounds. Here we go.
And then typically, the very next drill I do is right away that visual drill where I am showing them a grapheme and they're telling me a sound. So, yes. Do I use these phonemic awareness drills? I do, but I also. Then right away, we're pairing it with that grapheme. And here we go.
Now the rest of the lesson is all basically phonics.
We do lots of other things here, but now we are working on that phonics piece.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense.
What is happening beyond dyslexia?
[00:28:06] Speaker A: Yeah, that is a really good question.
As we record this, it is the day after St. Patrick's Day, and my kids had a lot of fun with that this year.
[00:28:18] Speaker B: I don't.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: That is not really something I grew up with. We're not.
We're not, I don't know, super Irish, I guess. And I don't think it was as big of a deal for kids when I was growing up. Unless.
Unless you were Irish or had some kind of family tradition, which I just don't.
But my kids spent, I think, all of Sunday, the day before St. Patrick's Day, trying to set a trap for the leprechaun and totally on their own. This is my favorite kind of thing that I had nothing to do with.
I did not have to instigate or plan or follow through with anything. But they had so much fun just working together with silly things to trap a leprechaun. They used their piggy banks as bait.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: That's cute.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Millie drew a rainbow. So they used this kind of like Rubbermaid tub, I guess, as kind of the. The trap Aiden set up, like his. One of his trucks that has a remote control.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:29:35] Speaker A: That would, like, drive away and then.
[00:29:36] Speaker B: It would fall down.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: Fall down.
All their idea, there was a whole thing. But, yeah, she drew like, a rainbow on some paper and taped it to the tub and they. Yeah. They put their piggy banks for the bait, and they had a whole bunch of fun with it, which was great. More power to them.
[00:29:58] Speaker B: Yeah, no kidding.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Um, we didn't really do much for that. Um, we actually. So it's weird. Our kids are off on spring break this week.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: Oh, interesting.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: And everybody else is next week.
[00:30:13] Speaker A: Yeah, ours is next week.
[00:30:14] Speaker B: Um, so we decided to go bowling, which was actually pretty cool because there was nobody there.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: Um, and at first they were like, oh, bowling. And then they got really into it, which was really kind of fun.
[00:30:28] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: And just.
They had a blast. And it was kind of funny because, you know, when it's not busy and it's. It's really different than when you're going there when it's full of people and. Yes, we got to take our time. We got to eat our pizza and, you know, not.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: Yeah. That's.
[00:30:51] Speaker B: Worry about being in somebody else's way.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: And I feel like bowling has really made kind of a comeback.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:58] Speaker A: I think that kind of like, no one was bowling for a while, and now I feel like there's. There's a lot, and it's kind of hard to get. You can't get in because there's so many weeks and stuff.
[00:31:09] Speaker B: Exactly. Which is why we haven't gone for so long, because there's always a league on the weekends.
[00:31:14] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:31:15] Speaker B: So it was really nice to go on a Monday. Oh, my gosh.
[00:31:18] Speaker A: Oh, how fun. How fun.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: So just for next week, if you want something to do that was a good activity that really did not cost as much as some of the other things that you could do around here for little kids.
[00:31:30] Speaker A: So much money. Oh, my gosh.
Yes. Well, thank you, everybody, for listening.
Please follow us on social media and reach out if you have any questions or would like us to discuss a topic. I would love any and all topic ideas. If you do like our show, be sure to follow us and rate us on your favorite podcast player. This is how we reach more listeners and get to help more families. Thanks, everybody.
[00:31:58] Speaker B: Thank you.
