EDER530 - Phonemes and Phonics: Instruction and Assessment

Year

Credit points

Campus offering

Prerequisites

Nil

Incompatible

EDER652 From Phonemes to Phonics: Theory, Research, Differentiated Instruction and Assessment

Unit rationale, description and aim

The ability to automatically connect a letter or sequence of letters (graphemes) to sounds (phonemes) is crucial for reading words accurately and lays the foundation for reading fluency and comprehension. Phoneme awareness and phonics (teaching the connection between sounds and letters) are identified as critical components of literacy instruction in every Australian primary school curriculum. The Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) accreditation requirements also mandate that teacher education programs include evidence-based approaches to teaching phonological awareness and phonics. It is therefore critical that teachers working with developing readers understand how phonological awareness and phonics are conceptualised in reading research and can analyse research on effective instruction on them. It is also essential that teachers know how to design systematic, explicit, and evidence-based adaptive phonics instruction for their students, how to assess their students’ developing decoding skills, and how to evaluate the effectiveness of their phonics instruction. 

This unit examines how phonemic awareness and phonics are conceptualised in reading acquisition theories, why they are important for learning to read, and how we can teach and assess them effectively. 

The aim of this unit is to provide students with the knowledge and skills to lead their colleagues in developing effective phonics instruction and assessments for students with diverse needs. 

Learning outcomes

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.

Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.

Explore the graduate capabilities.

Australian Professional Standards for Teachers - Highly Accomplished

In connection to the learning outcomes, on successful completion of this unit, pre-service teachers should have developed the following industry specific knowledge based on the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers - Highly Accomplished standards:

Australian Professional Standards for Teachers - Lead

In connection to the learning outcomes, on successful completion of this unit, pre-service teachers should have developed the following industry specific knowledge based on the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers - Lead standards:

Content

Topics will include:

Phonological and phonemic awareness and their role in learning to read

• Structure of spoken words
• Phonemic features in Standard Australian English
• What phonemic awareness is, and how it differs from phonological awareness and phonics
• Phonemic awareness in theories of reading development
• The reciprocal relationship between phonemic awareness, phonics and spelling
• Evidence for phonemic awareness instruction using letters
• Evidence for phonemic awareness instruction without letters
• How to integrate teaching phonemic awareness into teaching letter-sounds
• Examples of effective teaching sequences for blending and segmentation

The English writing system and how phonemes are represented in alphabetic writing systems

• The difference between alphabetic and nonalphabetic writing systems
• Representation of speech in different writing systems
• Systematic relationship between letters and sounds in alphabetic writing compared to meanings
• Graphemes in Standard Australian English
• Common spelling patterns in English

Phonics and its role in learning to read

• Phonics in different reading acquisition theories
• Grapheme-phoneme and phoneme-grapheme relationships and their critical role in decoding and spelling

Evidence-based approaches to teaching phonics

• Systematic phonics vs. non-systematic phonics
• Synthetic phonics vs. analytic phonics
• Scope and sequence of grapheme-phoneme correspondences, and the speed of introduction
• Use of decodable books
• Use of high-quality children’s literature to teach phonics
• Set-for-variability/flexible phonics
• Adaptive instruction of phonics to support advanced, EAL/D and struggling readers/spellers

Assessment and progress monitoring

• Assessment of phonemic awareness
• Assessing phonics knowledge and decoding success
• Phonics screeners
• Decoding assessments
• Progress monitoring 

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

This unit is offered in online unscheduled format and supported by a unit Learning Management System (LMS) site. The students are required to use the online learning platform that provides asynchronous access to lectures, readings, and quizzes. The students are required to participate in four interactive online workshops in addition to regular online learning. The unit uses an active learning approach to support students in acquiring, exploring, and analysing the essential knowledge associated with phonics instruction and assessment. Students will engage in an experiential learning cycle of conceptual learning and inquiry; engagement with existing research; active experimentation in their classrooms; and collecting and evaluating evidence.

Engagement for learning is the key driver in the delivery of this unit. The unit will facilitate active participation in pedagogical approaches that demonstrate alignment of teaching, learning and assessment and incorporate: 

• Online digital resources, including reference readings, database and document searches, and recorded lectures from experts;
• Online small group collaborative learning to foster reflective practice following the personal analysis, evaluation and synthesis of relevant literature and instructional and assessment practices in different schools; 
• Online forum and chat tools to build a community of learners; and 
• Problem-based learning sessions to develop necessary skills and analyse and apply learning to school case studies. 

Assessment strategy and rationale

In order to successfully complete this unit, the students need to pass five multiple-choice assessments and complete one written assignment. The multiple-choice assessments build on short mastery-learning quizzes provided after each topic that allows students to continuously monitor their own learning of the core content. The five multiple-choice assessments assess students' understanding of the English writing system, graphemes and phonemes; phonological awareness and phonics and their place in reading acquisition theories; research on effective instruction; and the available assessments and progress monitoring methods best suited for their students. Each multiple-choice assessment is worth 10% of the final mark.

The written assignment task is worth 50% of the final mark and allows students to show their skills in designing effective phonics instruction, including the scope and sequence, and assessment practices for their students and schools. The written assignment is related to knowledge of evidence-based instruction and assessments and requires the students to apply their knowledge and skills to designing evidence-based phonics instruction and assessment for their current or future students.

Overview of assessments

Representative texts and references

Phonemic Awareness

Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: Reading acquisition from novice to expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19, 5-51.

Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Willows, D. M., Schuster, B. V., Yaghoub‐Zadeh, Z., & Shanahan, T. (2001). Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel's meta‐analysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 36(3), 250-287.

Honig, B., Diamond, L., Gutlohn, L., Cole, C. L., Hudon, R. F., Lane, H. B., Mahler, J., & Pullen, P. C. (2018) Teaching reading sourcebook (3rd ed.). Academic Therapy Publications.

Phonics

Colenbrander, D., Wang, H.-C., Arrow, C., & Castles, A. (2020). Teaching irregular words: What we know, what we don’t know, and where can we go from here. The Educational and Developmental Psychologist, 37, 97-104. https://doi.org/10.1017/edp.2020.11

Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Stahl, S. A., & Willows, D. M. (2001). Systematic phonics instruction helps students learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel’s meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 71(3), 393-447.

Mesmer, H. A. E., & Griffith, P. L. (2005). Everybody's selling it—But just what is explicit, systematic phonics instruction? The Reading Teacher, 59(4), 366-376. doi:10.1598/RT

Share, D. L. (1999). Phonological recoding and orthographic learning: A direct test of the self-teaching hypothesis. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 72(2), 95-129. DOI: 10.1006/jecp.1998.2481

Stuart, M., & Stainthorp, R. (2015). Reading development and teaching. London: Sage. Doi: 10.4135/9781473920170

Sunde, K., Furnes, B., & Lundetræ, K. (2020). Does introducing the letters faster boost the development of children’s letter knowledge, word reading and spelling in the first year of school? Scientific Studies of Reading, 24(2), 141-158. DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2019.1615491

Torgerson, C., Brooks, G., Gascoine, L., & Higgins, S. (2019). Phonics: Reading policy and the evidence of effectiveness from a systematic ‘tertiary’ review. Research Papers in Education, 34(2), 208-238. DOI: 10.1080/02671522.2017.1420816