CALT Phonological Awareness Skills 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Phonological awareness exists on a developmental continuum. Which skill is typically the last to develop?
- Word awareness identifying words in sentences
- Syllable segmentation
- Rhyme recognition
- Phoneme manipulation including adding, deleting, or substituting individual phonemes (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Phoneme manipulation including adding, deleting, or substituting individual phonemes
Phoneme manipulation is the most sophisticated phonological awareness skill and develops last on the continuum.
Phonological awareness develops along a continuum from larger to smaller sound units. Word awareness develops earliest followed by syllable awareness, onset-rime awareness, and finally phoneme-level awareness. Within phoneme-level skills, phoneme manipulation is the most advanced, requiring explicit awareness of individual phonemes and the ability to mentally rearrange them. This skill is highly predictive of reading success.
Question 2: The task asking a student to say sunlight and then say it without sun assesses:
- Phoneme deletion
- Syllable deletion (Correct answer)
- Onset-rime awareness
- Rhyme production
Correct answer: Syllable deletion
Removing a whole syllable from a compound word is a syllable deletion task, a mid-level phonological awareness skill.
Syllable deletion tasks ask students to produce a word after removing one of its syllables. In the example, sunlight minus sun equals light. This assesses awareness at the syllable level, which is a larger unit than individual phonemes. Syllable deletion is an intermediate phonological awareness skill that typically develops before phoneme-level tasks.
Question 3: Which instructional approach is most effective for developing phoneme awareness in students with dyslexia?
- Implicit, discovery-based phonics programs
- Explicit instruction connecting phonemes to their written letters (Correct answer)
- Listening to audiobooks
- Whole-language reading programs
Correct answer: Explicit instruction connecting phonemes to their written letters
Research shows phoneme awareness instruction is most effective when phonemes are explicitly connected to the letters that represent them, not taught as purely oral tasks.
While phoneme awareness can be developed as a purely oral skill, research demonstrates that instruction is significantly more effective when phonemes are connected to their graphemic representations. When students simultaneously work with sounds and the letters that spell them, they develop both phoneme awareness and phonics knowledge in a mutually reinforcing way. This integration is a core feature of structured literacy instruction.
Question 4: A student can identify and produce rhymes but struggles with phoneme segmentation. This suggests the student:
- Has mastered all phonological awareness skills
- Has developed earlier-emerging phonological awareness skills but not the more advanced phoneme-level skills (Correct answer)
- Has no phonological awareness
- Has a hearing impairment
Correct answer: Has developed earlier-emerging phonological awareness skills but not the more advanced phoneme-level skills
Rhyme awareness develops earlier on the phonological continuum than phoneme segmentation, so this pattern shows the student has foundational but not advanced phonological awareness.
Rhyme recognition and production are among the earliest-developing phonological awareness skills, emerging in the preschool years. Phoneme segmentation is a later-developing, more analytically demanding skill. A student who can rhyme but not segment phonemes has progressed along the phonological continuum but has not yet reached the phoneme level. This profile is common in students with dyslexia.
Question 5: The phonological awareness skill of blending requires a student to:
- Separate a word into its individual phonemes
- Combine separately presented phoneme units into a recognizable word (Correct answer)
- Identify the first sound in a word
- Change one phoneme in a word to make a new word
Correct answer: Combine separately presented phoneme units into a recognizable word
Blending involves combining individually presented phonemes in sequence to form a complete word.
Phoneme blending is the ability to combine a sequence of separately spoken phonemes into a complete, recognizable word. Blending is one of the key phonological awareness skills assessed in batteries like the CTOPP-2 and is important for decoding. It is generally easier than segmentation for most students.
Question 6: Which activity is the best example of a phoneme substitution task?
- Clapping the syllables in elephant
- Say cat and then say it again but change the k sound to b: what word do you get? (Correct answer)
- Does top rhyme with mop?
- How many sounds do you hear in fish?
Correct answer: Say cat and then say it again but change the k sound to b: what word do you get?
Phoneme substitution asks the student to replace one phoneme in a word with a different phoneme, producing a new word.
Phoneme substitution requires the student to mentally hold a word, identify a specific phoneme, remove it, insert a new phoneme in its place, and produce the resulting new word. Substituting the b sound for the k sound in cat produces bat. This is a sophisticated phonological manipulation task that is a strong predictor of reading development.
CALT Phonological Awareness Skills 2
Phonological awareness exists on a developmental continuum.
Which skill is typically the last to develop?