Debunking Common Myths Around Phonemic Awareness With Christina Winter

Sara
Hey there, friend, thank you so much for tuning in today. I always love that we get to connect through these podcast episodes.

Sara
And I am especially excited that you are tuning in because we are getting ready to start our first deep dive into the five pillars of reading. Now, if you listen to last week’s episode, then you know that I did the big intro to talking about the Big Five in reading which are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

Sara
And in that episode, I let you know that we’re going to be doing a longer series here where we’re going to dig deep into each part of the big five. This is like the foundation of reading. And so it’s so important as educators that we really have a strong understanding about each of the five pillars and what that looks like in our classroom.

Sara
So to kick it off, I have my very good friend, Christina Winter, who also happens to be a literacy expert. Christina is obsessed with all things related to the science of reading, especially with learning and sharing the reading research. She’s got quite a long list of credentials that talks about her experience.

Sara
She is a member of the reading science academy, she’s completed countless hours of webinar training and courses, including the reading teachers top 10 tools, and she’s in the process of completing her letters training. And for those of you that have done letters, you know that it is pretty serious, and it is jam packed with information.

Sara
So Christina is going to come on today. And we’re going to talk about phonemic awareness, specifically some myths that surround this really important pillar. Really phonemic awareness is where it all begins in terms of reading. And unfortunately, there are maybe some common misunderstandings or myths out there. But Christina is going to debunk all of those and really set us up for success when it comes to making sure that we are providing our students with a strong phonemic awareness foundation.

Sara
So I am so glad that you are joining me today. Let’s go ahead and jump right into the conversation.

Sara
Hi, Christina, welcome to the show. I am so so so excited to have you on today.

Christina
Hi Sara. I couldn’t be more excited to be here today. Thank you so much for having me.

Sara
So Christina is one of my favorite people in real life. And she also happens to be an incredible literacy expert. And so I feel very fortunate we have many conversations off the podcast just about reading and literacy and the science of reading. And so of course, I wanted to have her come on and share some of her knowledge with my audience. So super excited that we get to chat today.

Sara
Now we are going to talk a little bit about phonemic awareness which full disclosure is not like my area of strength. So I’m so excited that Christina gets to share a lot about phonemic awareness with my listeners today.

Sara
Now we know phonemic awareness is a part of like the big five, right? So we’ve got phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. But I feel like phonemic awareness, at least for me, like that’s a term where I’m like, Yeah, I remember hearing about it in college, like I kind of know what it is.

Sara
But can you go ahead and give a really good definition of what phonemic awareness is so my listeners are like, we’re all on the same page when we get started with this conversation here?

Christina
Yeah, Sara, so funny that you bring up that you heard about it in college, because I didn’t hear about it in college. Yeah, it wasn’t until like I really started diving into like the reading research and the science that I really understood the importance of phonemic awareness.

Sara
I think I must have gotten lucky because now there’s a lot of things I did not learn in college, but when I was in college, I remember we read through the National Reading Panel, that whole document booklet pamphlet thing and they like I learned about the Big Five in college. So like, like I said, I’ve heard about it.

Christina
You’re such an expert in literacy, you had like amazing headstart. The National Reading Panel is not a really fun thing to sit and read.

Sara
I remember it was really hard, but I it gave a good foundation so.

Christina
Well, exactly what is phonemic awareness? And this is a really good question because sometimes there’s confusion between phonological and phonemic awareness. Those two things often get interchanged or mixed up.

Christina
So first of all, phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the spoken part of sentences and words. It’s like, if you’ve seen that umbrella graphic, that’s phonological awareness. And then like one little arc of phonological awareness is a phonemic awareness.

Christina
And so phonemic awareness is the ability to notice think about to work with the individual sounds in our spoken words. So that could be things like isolating sounds, blending, segmenting, and even advanced skills like deleting sounds, adding substituting sounds in words. So that’s the differentiation.

Christina
Phonological Awareness tasks also include the bigger units. So think phonemic sounds are small, phonological, those bigger units like word activities, syllable onset rhyme. And then again, phonemic awareness is that little arc of just sound.

Sara
I think that’s super helpful to really distinguish because I know that I’ve used those terms interchangeably. And of course, as I learned, I’m like, oh, wait a minute, like phonemic awareness is a smaller part of phonological awareness. But I love that sort of visual of like, the big umbrella is phonological awareness. And then one small part of that is phonemic awareness. And it is really with like the individual sounds.

Sara
So why is it important that like, how does phonemic awareness help students when it comes to reading? Especially because I think a lot of the teachers in my audience are upper elementary. And when we’re in upper elementary, we’re thinking like words and sentences, like we don’t get down to those individual sounds. And so can you explain how does phonemic awareness help students when it comes to reading?

Christina
Well, the reading research, I mean, sometimes research is not exact. We know science is evolving, changing, always not exact. But the one thing I mean, Dr. Staller from the reading science academy shows the whole thing about this and she was like steadfast like, there is one thing that we know that phonemic awareness is the foundation of reading, and it is very critical.

Christina
In the year 2000, the National Reading Panel identified it as one of the five the Big Five, the research shows that students who have difficulty with phonemic awareness is a predictor of their development of poor reading, poor spelling development. And then likewise, kids who have really good phonemic awareness skills are really proficient readers.

Christina
So that is something that we know like, without a doubt, from the science from the research, it’s just really critical that our students can match those speech sounds to print with automaticity.

Christina
And maybe you’ve read the book, David Kilpatrick’s book Equipped for Reading Success. When he teaches us that in order for kids to be able to orthographically map words, and that’s that mental process of storing those words so that we can effortlessly retrieve words we can read words by sight, right,

Christina
In order for that actually to happen, that we have to have letter sound knowledge and phonemic awareness skills. So that is really, I mean, that’s like why it’s so critical for our students to have phonemic awareness.

Sara
And it totally makes sense. It’s right, it’s like before we can get to the matching of the sounds with the letters, it’s like, we need to have an understanding of the individual sounds.

Sara
So it totally makes sense. And I feel like it is one of those things, though. I mean, I, you know, have been out of the classroom for a while, but I was a first grade teacher, a second grade teacher and a fourth grade teacher. And for the most part, like, I remember teaching, first grade and second grade, and we had a decent phonics program, but I don’t ever remember being given resources to really support phonemic awareness. And I’m just like, Oh, great. We were missing something major in first grade.

Christina
You’re not alone, which this is like a perfect segue into what we want to talk about next.

Sara
So with that shift, right, we know like now we know that phonemic awareness is important. And I know many schools are starting to shift from balance literacy to structured literacy, which means you know, teachers are becoming aware how critical phonemic awareness is.

Sara
However, I know that there are a lot of myths out there or misunderstandings when it comes to like what effective phonemic awareness instruction looks like. So can you just walk us through? Like, what are maybe some myths or misunderstandings around phonemic awareness? And really, what does the research support when it comes to effective instruction?

Christina
Yeah, so again, the reading research is so clear about how to make phonemic awareness instruction. the most effective. Again, if we go back to the year 2000, the National Reading Panel, the findings were steadfast and studies thereafter, I mean, 2000 was a lot of years.

Sara
I was gonna say it feels like just yesterday, but it was a long time ago.

Christina
Think about that, but the studies they’re after or continue to say the same thing and the recommendations from research. So I wanted to share with you with the listeners, six things that we really have to keep in mind to make our instruction most effective. So first of all, we must prioritize phoneme level skills.

Sara
And can I ask you to define just to make sure because I know sometimes these word like phoneme is again, I’m like, this is a term that we should have know, but it’s so easy to forget what that is. So what is a phoneme?

Christina
Okay, phoneme is the smallest unit of sound. So when I say that’s the sound, the letter, the grapheme we would write for k would be a C, or a K, or a C, K, right. So it’s the sound perfect.

Christina
So prioritizing the phoneme level skills. Now there’s this like misconception and again, many people many of the listeners have probably seen this like staircase thing, that showing that students have to make progress up this staircase through these larger phonological units. Remember, word awareness, syllable onset rhyme, like all of that, say a compound word cup cake, put it together cupcake.

Christina
But the research says that those tasks do not directly relate or correlate to becoming a proficient reader. So the research instructs us or recommends is that we focus on three things at phoneme level skills. Three things are the ones that matter.

Christina
Phoneme isolation. So what’s the beginning you hear of cat? Isolate the sound. Blending teacher says, ah, and the student says frog. Or segmenting. Teacher says tree student says, Are you right? So, phoneme isolation, blending and segmenting. That is where the money is at. Those are the skills that we need to spend our instructional time on.

Sara
Yeah, so as one I think like this, if anything is like good news for teachers, because I feel like especially even you know, it’s interesting that you say that, because I, you know, I can’t remember what book it was, but something that I’ve read recently, even listed out so many of those extra things.

Sara
And, you know, as a teacher, it’s like, wait a minute, I don’t have time to do these, all of these extra things, or how do I do this? Or how do I prioritize it. So I think if anything for teachers, it’s really good news to know that like, you can provide really effective phonemic awareness instruction by focusing just on those three things, the isolation, the blending, and the segmenting.

Christina
Right. And that takes me to point number two or recommendation number two, that our instruction should focus on just one or two phoneme level task again, blending segmenting our isolation within our single lesson.

Christina
There’s a really popular phonemic awareness program out there that a lot of schools, a lot of districts, a lot of teachers even have purchased. And this program has been doing 10 different sets of activities. So for asking kids to identify rhyming words, or tell me the onset rhyme, and then now we’re asking them to delete phonemes and blend. It’s like, I mean, can you imagine being like a 6 year old, and like, you’re switching task, every five words, that is a lot.

Sara
I mean, even for not even just a five year old, like even for a fourth grader, right? Like, that still is a lot. For a teacher to be like, wait a minute, like, now my brain needs to shift, you know, that still is just a lot of task switching.

Christina
And what we see is that, you know, the kids who have strong phonological phonemic awareness skills already, aren’t needing that, actually, the training, the kids who are weaker at it are actually the kids who need it, but it’s like task changing so much that it’s really not beneficial for them.

Christina
And I think what I keep reading in like Facebook groups within my community, like out in social media is teachers are like, Oh my gosh, this program is so amazing. My kids are so good at it. And I just keep reminding teachers, like we don’t want kids to be good at a phonemic awareness task.

Sara
Yeah.

Christina
What is our end goal?

Sara
Reading.

Christina
Reading. Yeah, yeah, we want kids to be proficient readers. We want them to be skilled readers. So great. If they get like, if they understand how to do these tasks like to play the game. That’s really not what we want. We want them to be able to take the skills, blending, segmenting isolation, and move into reading.

Sara
That is such a good reminder and I’m glad you brought that up because I think it it can feel so tempting as an educator, it’s like when you put a new program in place, and you see your students are doing well with that program or that routine, or whatever it is, it’s like, oh, my students are doing great.

Sara
But it’s like, okay, are they doing great with the program? Or are they doing great with like, real reading? It’s like, we constantly have to go back to like, evaluating are the materials I’m using. And the tasks that I’m having my students do is that resulting in real actual reading, as opposed to success with an individual program?

Christina
Right. And that’s the end goal, right? And I get it, like, you’re busy teacher in the classroom, you haven’t had something all these years. Now somebody has like, said that this is what we need to do. And now you have this and wow, look at your, you know, your universal screening scores are way up, and you’re like, This is amazing. My kids are, you know, but again, we got to go back to what is it that the research tells us?

Sara
Well, and it’s like, if you do have a program that has some of those extra things, it’s like, just focus on the blending or the segmenting or the isolation and only do one of those, you know, per like, lesson. So just sort of forget the extra and do the stuff that we know really works.

Christina
Exactly. That’s the recommendation I’m always making the teachers because, you know, they’re like, I have to use this program. Well, continue to use it.

Christina
Another huge misconception that’s out there is that phonemic awareness is it can be done in the dark.

Sara
I’ve heard that a lot, right. It’s oral only like you just the whole hearing.

Christina
Oral only and the research, it’s so clear that we need to integrate letters. And so what that means is, again, the phoneme is the sound, the grapheme are the letters. So we need to include the letters when we can during our explicit instruction, or small group, whole group, however, you’re doing it.

Christina
Doing things like phoneme grapheme mapping, that’s just matching sound to letter, do word chains, do word building activities, that’s going to build phonemic awareness skills for your students. So it doesn’t need to be done in the dark. You know, this misconception it is it’s, it’s it becomes phonemic awareness with phonics.

Sara
But I think that is, you know, again, I feel like such a good reminder. And I, I’ve always sort of struggled with this, but I feel like we try to teach things in isolation, right? Like, I’m teaching phonemic awareness. And now I’m teaching phonics. And now I’m teaching vocabulary. And now I’m teaching fluency. And you know, right, we want to separate things, because it’s easy to, you know, plan for that is to cross it off our list.

Sara
But it’s just like, everything is so integrated in literacy, and everything is so interconnected. And I think sometimes it’s hard to wrap our minds around where it’s like, what I’m doing could be phonics, and phonemic awareness, like at the same time, but like it is, they don’t have to be like very separate or isolated, you can be hitting on multiple aspects of literacy in a single lesson.

Christina
Exactly. And actually, that takes me to my next point, or the recommendation from the reading research is that our phonemic awareness instruction should align with our phonics scope and sequence.

Christina
So Louisa Moats, she’s awesome. She said that by focusing on the phonemes first, you’re gonna warm up the students ears for what they’re going to see in print. So they’re really making again, that connection between the sound and the symbol, the sound, the sound of the letter, right.

Christina
So if you’re working on short, A in my class in first grade, you know, beginning of the year, we’re doing short a word study, right? We’re gonna do phonemic, awareness task, blending, segmenting words that have the short vowel a sound in them. It just naturally makes sense, right. And again, there’s that integration piece that you’re talking about.

Sara
I love that sort of just like analogy, or, you know, visual is not the right word. But that analogy of like, phonemic awareness is like we’re warming up our students to the sounds that they’re going to see in print. And it totally makes sense. If they can hear it, it’s gonna be easier for them to see it and hear it and it will be easier for them to write it and read it. You know, all of that. They have to be able to hear it first.

Christina
Yeah, I’m always like, visualizing, I don’t know how this got stuck in my head, but like a waterfall sound, then letter, word, then phrase and sentence then paragraph, like, like this falling of like you’re giving kids the tools to do all of those things and put it all together. And the end goal again, is reading, right?

Sara
Yeah. Reading and writing because that’s the other thing. phonemic awareness doesn’t just benefit reading. It’s necessary for writing as well.

Christina
Yeah. I have two more. Yay. So the other recommendation from the research is that we should be starting early and giving explicit instruction ror everyone. Obviously structured literacy, we know explicit systematic and all that.

Christina
But the research shows that we need to be starting in our lower grades as far back down as preschool or pre K, kindergarten in first grade. And really, if we have solid instruction in kindergarten and first grade, and students are progressing, they’re not struggling than they really aren’t going to need a lot of phonemic awareness training into second grade. That’s what the research really shows with us.

Sara
I want to ask a question about this. Because again, a lot of the teachers, my audience, our upper elementary teachers, I also know that they have a lot of students like so many teachers have been saying, especially since COVID, that they have students that are on, you know, kindergarten, first grade, like non readers in their classrooms.

Sara
So like, what’s the recommendation if you know for like an upper elementary classroom? Like whole group phonemic awareness is not necessary? Or is it necessary but with like, the more advanced word parts? Or are we only want to do phonemic awareness for the students that are really struggling with reading? What are your thoughts on the role that it plays in an upper elementary classroom?

Christina
Well, for sure, with that teacher, I would definitely say that the first step is to do like a universal screener, which is just looking at where are the children? And then from there, we do that diagnostic. And that’s like a deeper dive, like, let’s check, we see that there’s a problem. Let’s check and see what exactly is the problem?

Christina
So if you have a great amount of students, if you look at like your tiers, you know, and you have a great amount of students who would benefit who are lacking, then yeah, you’re going to go back to that.

Christina
A great recommendation is David Kilpatrick’s the past, you can go to thepast.com and you can download his diagnostic screener for free. He even has in there where you can like it tells you how to score it, if you’ve taken letters, you’re very familiar with it, because there’s like a whole module on that. But it can really pinpoint what skills and go back to that lowest deficit skill for those kids.

Sara
So like, in an ideal world, if students come to, you know, teachers, like third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, and everybody is like, on level fluent readers, then phonemic awareness isn’t necessarily something that needs to be a part of their instruction, right?

Christina
Right. Yeah, in the upper grade.

Sara
But if you have students that are struggling with reading it 100% needs to be a part of the instruction.

Christina
Yeah, if they’re struggling with like the word recognition pieces of the reading rope, right? If they, if they’re struggling with like, reading words, then we’ll definitely look there.

Sara
Okay. Super helpful I feel like.

Christina
Yeah, so starting early, explicit instruction for everybody. Again, the misconception is that there needs to be like this long amount of practice, again, how you were saying, like, our day is split up into these nice little quadrant, right? No, the National Reading Panel found, the study found that we really just need six minutes a day.

Sara
I’m like that’s the best news ever for teachers. If they’re like, I’ve got students who struggle with reading and I don’t have enough time, it’s like, no, you have six minutes, like you can totally do something in six minutes, that will support their phonemic awareness, which will have a huge impact on their growth.

Christina
Yeah. Okay, so the last recommendation, as a teacher, I’m struggling with this. So let’s chat about it. Yeah, the last recommendation is that phonemic awareness is best taught in small group.

Sara
So that’s like, what research supports?

Christina
That’s what the research supports. And it makes sense, right? Because when you have like four or five students in front of you, you can really monitor their responses. You can provide feedback, you can scaffold, you can support students as necessary. That’s in a perfect world.

Christina
But if you’re thinking about your tier one instruction, going back to that short, a lesson that I was talking about, with my first graders, I’m going to want to teach my phonemic awareness as my warm up and all of that, and then support in small group. That’s really how I feel it needs to be because also you’re thinking about your time, like why would you want to be doing several lessons, the same lesson over and over in small group.

Sara
That makes sense to me from like, both an instructional standpoint, and like a time standpoint, like if you’re doing you know, the first time you’re doing short a phonemic awareness activities, you do it with the whole group, and then I’m assuming, you know, like, of course, with everything and you know, tier one, tier two, it’s like the students who need the remediation like continue to support and small group but I mean, I can see how it would be beneficial whole group, even if their support small group, maybe both whole group and small group.

Christina
Yeah. And for sure, you know, your at risk children, you’re going to be meeting them every single day, and you’re going to give them extra doses every single day. But I just see like you can get the most bang for your buck, right? Your whole group, and then follow up in your small group.

Sara
Do additional small group practice with whatever that group specifically needs. Yeah, yeah.

Christina
So those are the six recommendations from the research and some clearing up of the misconception.

Sara
That’s super helpful for me. And I feel like I’ve learned, like I said, you know, I first heard about phonemic awareness back in college, so I’m not like a stranger to it. But I feel like I’ve even learned some of the things that you mentioned, and so many good reminders.

Sara
You know, especially, I love what you said, how it’s like, our end goal is always to get students to become proficient readers and writers. And so we really have to make sure that we’re not focused on getting students to master a program to master a specific task and stop there. Like we always want to see is it continuing on to their actual reading and writing that is like, the end goal always and we need to keep that forefront of our mind as much as possible.

Sara
What encouragement or advice would you give to teachers, you know, if I have listeners who are like, Okay, I’m just learning about phonemic awareness for the first time I have students who are struggling with word recognition. I don’t have a phonics scope and sequence or I, you know, have no idea where to get started, like, what advice or encouragement would you give to somebody who literally is starting at the beginning, and maybe has little, little support little resources available to them?

Christina
Okay, well, I’ll just promote myself, hop on over to my website, I know you’re gonna put in the show notes, because I have it all broken down, like exactly like what we’re talking about the difference between phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, broken down and all the things that you should be doing. And then you can download, like a free set of lessons that you can try out in your classroom that aligns with the research all the things that we’re talking about.

Christina
But just keeping in mind, first of all, as teachers, if you’re shifting, if you’re making the shift right now, from balance literacy, if you’re unlearning and relearning new things, please give yourself grace. Yes, take little bites, you know, but just keeping in mind that the research is so clear that explicit systematic instruction, and aligning everything we do within our word study, it needs to be aligned to your scope and sequence, ever scope and sequence if you don’t have one, and get one on my website, too.

Christina
And then if you are one of those teachers who has a required program, and you’re like, Oh, these tasks 15 minutes a day, and you’re like, I need to, first of all, like 15 minutes a day is not going to hurt anybody or children by giving them too much phonemic awareness and phonological training is not going to hurt them.

Christina
But we could better use those minutes on other things, right. So like you were saying earlier, Sara is pull out those blending segmenting isolation skills. Or I tell teacher set a timer, you know, set a timer and that’s the amount of time you’re going to use. And then you’re going to move on to the next part of your lesson.

Sara
I love that very helpful things I think, especially for teachers who are just getting started. As always, Christina, you seriously are a wealth of knowledge and information. I am so grateful for your friendship. First of all, I feel like you’ve encouraged me so much through my own literacy learning journey. And I’m so glad that you’re able to encourage my listeners now as well.

Sara
How can my audience connect with you after this interview if they want to continue learning from you if they want to check out some of your resources what you have to offer? Where’s the best way that they can get in touch with you after this conversation?

Christina
Well I hope they’ll visit my website thisiswinter’sbliss and connect with me there. The most reliable way to like connect with me is through my email family because you know, social media, we don’t always see the posts or all the things but emails generally get delivered to your inbox and I have fun emails so please burn you there.

Christina
Yeah, and on Instagram, @mrswintersbliss you can find me there. If you send me a DM I always answer DMS you might hear my voice because talking easier than typing. But yeah, I would love to connect with any of your listeners, whether they be you know, lower primary or upper primary.

Christina
If I don’t know the answer. I know a lot of people who are amazing just like Sara, who I can send, you know, send send you on your way there. But yeah, this is super fun, Sara. Again, I feel fortunate that we are friends. But I just I love our friendship because you’re an amazing woman. But I also love that we are literacy nerds.

Sara
I know, this very well could have just been like a normal conversation that we’re having. And we just happen to record it. So well, thank you so much for coming on today. We will link to all of those things that she mentioned in the show notes, definitely follow her on Instagram, check out her website.

Sara
She has a ton of resources both for lower elementary but if you are even an upper elementary teacher who has students who struggle with reading, check out a lot of the things that she has to offer. So again, Christina, thank you so much for joining me today. This was such a great conversation.

Christina
So much fun, Sara, thank you again.