Phonological Awareness Training practice (rhyme detection, blending, and segmentation activities for young children)¶

Element · All elements
Evidence · 10 claims (7 for, 3 mixed) · 3 studies (2 causal, 1 quant-synthesis), q2–q4 · 1 of 3 report an effect size · 10 claims rest on one study

Description¶

Phonological Awareness Training is a general practice aimed at enhancing young children's phonological awareness, defined as "the ability to detect or manipulate the sounds in words independent of meaning." It can involve activities teaching children to "identify, detect, delete, segment, or blend segments of spoken words" or to detect, identify, or produce rhyme or alliteration. Practices can be used by teachers with individual children, in pairs, or in small groups, generally as a supplement to the regular classroom curriculum. No single developer exists; the interventions in the reviewed studies were developed by the study authors.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Implementation in English in center-based settings with children ages 3 to 5 or in preschool, per the WWC review eligibility criteria
• Can be delivered by teachers or practitioners with children individually, in pairs, or in small groups, as part of the core curriculum or as a supplement

Constraints¶

• Information is not available about the costs of teacher training and implementation
• Information is not available on the number or demographics of children or centers using these practices
• No single developer provides materials; the reviewed interventions are not available for distribution through a common developer
• Cost information is not available about teacher or practitioner training and implementation

Target Learners¶

• preschool children ages 3 to 5
• children with learning disabilities or developmental delays
• preschool children with disabilities or developmental delays, including those with developmental delays and speech/language or learning disabilities

Target Learning Goals¶

• phonological awareness (detecting and manipulating sounds in words)
• precursor skills for reading
• phonological awareness: detecting, deleting, segmenting, and blending segments of spoken words; identifying or producing rhyme and alliteration

Claims¶

• Training effects were larger on outcome measures aligned with the trained skill (blending, segmenting) than on less aligned measures [+W]
• Phonemic segmentation training favored over rhyme/alliteration training on print knowledge, phonological processing, and early reading/writing (Yeh 2003), with substantively important but non-significant differences [~W]
• Phonological Awareness Training has positive effects on phonological processing in preschool children, averaging +27 percentile points [+W]
• Four of six standards-meeting studies showed statistically significant positive effects and two showed substantively important positive effects on phonological processing [+W]
• Sound box training favored over sound sort training on phonological processing (Maslanka & Joseph 2002), with substantively important but non-significant differences averaging +11 percentile points [+W]
• Blending-focused phonological awareness training produced statistically significant positive differences on blending outcomes in O'Connor et al. (1993) [+W]
• Phonological awareness training has potentially positive effects on communication/language competencies for preschool children with learning disabilities, with a small extent of evidence [+W]
• Tyler et al. (2003) found no statistically significant differences between phonological awareness training and a morphosyntactic intervention (indeterminate effect) [~W]
• Tyler et al. (2011) found no statistically significant differences between a phonemic awareness intervention and a morphosyntactic intervention at the US site (indeterminate effect) [~W]
• Phonemic Awareness Training Improves Reading [+M]

Related Elements¶

• Phonological Awareness Training plus Letter Knowledge Training practice for preschool early literacy

Examples¶

• Phonemic Awareness Blending And Segmenting
• Phonemic Awareness Drills
• Phonemic Awareness Instruction
• Assess all students and form small groups with similar abilities so phonological awareness instruction can be provided at the appropriate level
• Phonological Awareness Development through Rhyming
• Rhyming Games
• Phoneme Awareness Training
• Phonological and Metalinguistic Awareness Exercises

Key Sources¶

• What Works Clearinghouse, U.S. Department of Education. (2006). WWC Intervention Report: Phonological Awareness Training. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc
• Phonological Awareness Training. (2012). WWC Intervention Report, U.S. Department of Education. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc