California Preschool Learning Foundations - ECEZero2Three ...

than they do phonemes that are not in
a cluster. For instance, children may
be able to identify the three phonemes
in pop but have difficulty in identifying
the four phonemes in plop because the
onset of the word contains a consonant
cluster. The foundations address
these variations in the level of difficulty
of phonological awareness tasks by
focusing the harder operations (e.g.,
deleting parts of words and blending
phonemes) on the initial parts of words
(deleting onsets rather than deleting
rimes) and on simple words (blending
of words that have a limited number
of phonemes and do not contain
clusters).
One additional source of variation
relates to the amount and kind of supports
provided to children so that they
can perform these tasks. For example,
when asking children to delete the
onset of a word, the teacher can provide
pictures of stimuli to reduce the
level of difficulty of the task. This
approach helps children to remember
the different words and enhances their
performance compared with having
them perform this task without picture
stimuli. When needed, the foundations
emphasize phonological awareness
performance within the context
of support, and the expectation is that
children will demonstrate mastery in
the context of the support provided by
pictures, props, objects, or other valid
supportive context. This is the case
for the foundations that involve the
manipulation of smaller units of sound
within more difficult forms of cognitive
operations (e.g., deletion of a word’s
initial phoneme).
Phonological awareness is an important
area of early and later reading
instruction (Bowers 1995; Bowers
and Wolf 1993; Lonigan, Burgess, and
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81
Anthony 2000; Report of the National
Reading Panel: Teaching Children to
Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment
of the Scientific Research Literature
on Reading and Its Implications for
Reading Instruction 2000; Prather,
Hendrick, and Kern 1975; Templin
1957; Wagner, Torgesen, and Rashotte
1994; Wagner and others 1997). Phonological
awareness plays a key role
in several of the components that help
children become skilled readers, such
as understanding the alphabetic principle
(Burgess and Lonigan 1998; Ehri
1991, 1995), decoding printed words
(Beck and Juel 1999; Bradley and Bryant
1985; Byrne and Fielding-Barnsley
1993, 1995; Demont and Gombert
1996; Tunmer, Herriman, and Nesdale
1988), spelling (Bryant and others
1990; Gentry 1982; Read 1975), and
reading comprehension—although this
relation with reading comprehension is
not direct (Tunmer and Nesdale 1985).
Given the importance of phonological
awareness to early and later
literacy achievement, these foundations
emphasize attention to its development
for older preschool children.
They do not include, however, specific
indicators for younger children, as is
explained next. First, evidence suggests
that phonological awareness
is not consistently mastered by children
under four years of age (Lonigan,
Burgess, and Anthony 2000),
although performance at three years
of age can be assessed and targeted
through instruction. Second, vocabulary
is highly related to children’s
acquisition of phonological sensitivity
(Burgess and Lonigan 1998; Chaney
1992; Lonigan and others 1998; Lonigan,
Burgess, and Anthony 2000).
Most probably, the positive effect of
vocabulary on phonological awareness
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