Connector RGR

Phonemic Awareness and Phonological Awareness are the same thing.

• True

• False

Answer explanation

False. Phonological awareness is an umbrella term that includes phonemic awareness. Phonological awareness also includes practice with: sentence level, word level, onset-rime, syllables, and phonemes. Phonemic awareness is the most advanced of all of these, but it is also the last to develop.

Only younger students need phonological awareness.

• True

• False

Answer explanation

False. Phonological awareness is a critical skill because it activates the same part of the brain as skilled reading. The majority of struggling readers have weaknesses in this area and it is one of the major reasons they haven’t been able to gain ground in their reading abilities. This is not a skill set that should be overlooked and it's not something that we can assume a child knows based on their age.

Words are stored visually as whole words.

• True

• False

Answer explanation

False. If this was the case, you wouldn't be able to read different handwriting and fonts. While some words can be memorized, there is a cap to this method of learning. It is much more efficient to teach decoding with tricky parts of words marked. More to come on this in today's PD!

The ability to segment and blend phonemes supports students' ability to decode words.

• True

• False

Answer explanation

True. Phonemic isolation, segmenting and blending are the most foundational skills that lead to skilled decoding. Once students master oral segmenting and blending, students can move into building words using the sounds they've learned.

The word, "go", is an open syllable.

• True

• False

Answer explanation

True. An open syllable is a syllable that ends in a vowel. The vowel is therefore long and says its name.

Closed syllables are the most common syllable type.

• True

• False

Answer explanation

Closed syllables make up about 50% of the English language.

A closed syllable ends with a consonant and has a short vowel sound.

Examples:

bet

cat