Phonemic Awareness Development

The article Supporting phonemic awareness development in the classroom shows many different techniques a teacher can use with students to develop their awareness of language. Yopp & Yopp did research and testing in many different classrooms and through their work at California State University at Fullerton found strategies that truly work in the classroom. Yopp & Yopp are highly published authors in the field of reading and phonemic awareness. The fourteen strategies are listed under four different categories; those focusing on rhyme, syllable manipulation, onset-rime manipulation, and phoneme manipulation. The authors also warn teacher to watch the students’ progress and to avoid strict sequence when teaching the strategies.

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Hallie Kay Yopp and Ruth Helen Yopp both teach in the Department of Elementary, Bilingual, and Reading Education at California State University at Fullerton. Throughout the article the authors cite their own original works to enforce what they write. There are five different works by the two authors that can be found in the references list. Within the article Hallie and Ruth Yopp included many pictures that they took during their experiences within the classroom; this shows that they not only write about phonemic awareness but have also tested their strategies. Many of the articles cited came from articles that can be found in The Reading Teacher journal. The article is published in The Reading Teacher which is a journal of the International Reading Association. This journal has a long list of editors and other staff, which shows that the articles that are within are picked because of their strength and validity.

Although the article had a list of twenty-seven references, five of them were written by the authors of the article and eight of the references were children’s books. Most of the article seemed to come originally from the authors. Generally only when the authors were giving a definition, such as phonemic awareness, did they cite an outside publication. The article included many pictures and examples from the authors’ personal experiences in the classroom setting. All of the activities included in the article did not have citations and seem to have been originally created by the authors.

The research was done at California State University at Fullerton and in other classrooms. The authors have spent many hours in the classroom testing

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their phonemic awareness strategies and working with children. The authors make several comments that lead the reader to believe they have worked in many different classrooms. One such comment reads, “we have seen time allocation requirements implemented in a number of school districts across the U.S” (Yopp & Yopp, 2000, p. 134). The authors give many examples of types of sound manipulations students should practice, as well as activities that focus on rhyme, onset-rime manipulation, and phoneme manipulation. The authors begin early in the article by telling the definitions of many of the terms that the authors use throughout the article, such as, auditory discrimination, phonetics, phonics, phoneme, and phonemic awareness.

This article stresses the support of phonemic awareness in the classroom. The authors state that phonemic awareness is just one piece in being literate but it is a large part because being able to manipulate the sounds that the alphabet makes allows students to express themselves through language more readily. Phonemic awareness activities are usually fun and engaging to students, which makes the students more willing to participate. The authors submit than songs, chants, and word-sound games are ideally suited to the sound structure of language (p. 132). The article shares fourteen different strategies for pre kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade classrooms that help to integrate phonemic awareness. The strategies are broken into four different groups: activities that focus on rhyme, activities with syllable manipulation,

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activities with on-set rime manipulation and activities with phoneme manipulation. The authors do not stress time limitations