East Central BOCES Announcements

READ Act Literacy Updates 

September 2024 

Bookmark us! http://www.cde.state.co.us/coloradoliteracy/resources  

There have been a lot of conversations about phonemic awareness lately. There are lots of questions about when to teach it, who needs phonemic awareness, and whether to incorporate letters. This newsletter update will help provide answers to some of those questions.  

Dive into your new school year with the tools you need to effectively teach phonemic awareness. This edition of the READ Act Literacy Updates Newsletter highlights research in podcasts, videos, blogs, and other resources.  

Not ready to dig in right now? Our newsletters are archived for easy access.  

Click here (Better yet, bookmark it!) to access both current and past newsletters! 

Listen  

Melissa and Lori Love Literacy Ep. 183:  

Aligning Phonemic Awareness Instruction to Research  

Listen to the experiences of two teachers as they share their journeys to better instructional practices in phonemic awareness. Both offer practical tips for phonemic awareness instruction that aligns to research and highlights key skills that move students in the right direction during reading instruction. 

Melissa and Lori Love Literacy Ep. 181:  

What Research Says about Phonemic Awareness Instruction with Matt Burns  

Matt Burns, Professor at the University of Florida, shares what the research says about phonemic awareness. Key takeaways are a definition of phonemic awareness, why it is important to teach, and which phonological and phonemic awareness skills to prioritize in your instruction.  

Read 

Blog Post: Shanahan on Literacy 

 “Letters in Phonemic Awareness Instruction or the Reciprocal Nature of Learning to Read”  

In this blog post Tim Shanahan addresses using letters in phonemic awareness instruction. Also, Shanahan stresses the importance of instruction that incorporates both phonemic awareness and phonics skills in addition to other literacy skills. 

Blog Post: Joan Sedita 

 “Developing Phonemic Awareness Using Letters”  

Sedita highlights that after children know letter names, letter sounds, and understand the alphabetic principle, instruction should focus on identifying letter sounds, blending, and segmenting sounds using letters.  

Resources  

Teaching Phoneme Awareness in 2024: A Guide for Educators  

This newly updated guide written by Ashby et al. describes phonemic awareness instruction, including the skill of phoneme deletion and provides lesson routines. This guide is research based and includes information on dialect and English language learners.  

The CDE website has a variety of Phonological Awareness Resources. On the website you will find consonant and vowel phoneme charts, a developmental continuum of skills, phoneme articulation cards and more. Interested in the phoneme similarities and differences in the Spanish and English languages? On the website you will find a document that highlights the shared and language-specific phonemes.  

CDE Website Updates 

READ Act Handbook 

The ELSR Office at CDE has recently compiled READ Act guidance documents into one easy-to-access READ Act Handbook! The handbook includes all the information needed to help guide READ implementation in districts and is organized to follow READ Act requirements throughout the school year. Also included in the handbook are newly revisedREAD plan templates, including a brand-new version specific to the needs of Multilingual learners.  All documents are fully accessible. Take a moment to check it out! 

Watch 

In this webinar presented by the Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network (PaTTAN) Dr. Jane Ashby and Dr. Meghan Martin demonstrate phonemic awareness routines, share the importance of phonemic awareness in learning to read and connect phonemic awareness to phonics instruction.  

For More Information 

Do you have a colleague with whom you would like to share these resources?  

Feel free to forward the newsletter, or have them sign up to receive the newsletter here!  

If you have general questions or need assistance, find our contact information here:   

http://www.cde.state.co.us/coloradoliteracy/contactus  

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Because of their potential interest or usefulness to the education community or the general public, the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) occasionally provides links from this site to external web sites. It attempts to monitor such links on a regular basis. However, the Department cannot be responsible for the content of any site external to its own.  

Further, by linking to other sites, CDE is not endorsing any particular product, practice, service, provider or institution, nor does it necessarily endorse views expressed or facts presented on these sites.   

In addition, neither CDE nor any of its employees makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information linked to from this site.