CALT Phonological Awareness Skills 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A second-grade student with dyslexia performs well on rhyme recognition but poorly on phoneme reversal tasks (e.g., say 'top' backwards). This profile is MOST consistent with:
- A strength in all phonological awareness areas
- Preserved gross phonological awareness with deficits in complex phoneme manipulation (Correct answer)
- A language processing disorder rather than a phonological deficit
- Normal phonological development for second grade
Correct answer: Preserved gross phonological awareness with deficits in complex phoneme manipulation
Students with dyslexia often retain coarser phonological skills like rhyming but show pronounced deficits on tasks requiring complex phoneme manipulation such as reversal.
Question 2: Which phonological awareness skill is typically the LAST to develop in the normal sequence?
- Rhyme detection
- Syllable segmentation
- Phoneme manipulation (e.g., deletion, reversal) (Correct answer)
- Alliteration awareness
Correct answer: Phoneme manipulation (e.g., deletion, reversal)
Complex phoneme manipulation tasks such as deletion and reversal represent the highest level of phonological awareness and emerge latest in typical development.
Question 3: A CALT uses Elkonin boxes during intervention. The PRIMARY phonological awareness skill being targeted is:
- Rhyme production
- Phoneme segmentation (Correct answer)
- Syllable blending
- Onset-rime identification
Correct answer: Phoneme segmentation
Elkonin sound boxes are designed to help students segment words into individual phonemes by pushing tokens into boxes for each sound.
Question 4: During intervention, a CALT introduces spoonerisms (e.g., swap the first sounds of 'fish tank' to get 'tish fank'). This activity targets which phonological awareness skill?
- Phoneme isolation
- Phoneme transposition/substitution across words (Correct answer)
- Syllable deletion
- Rhyme judgment
Correct answer: Phoneme transposition/substitution across words
Spoonerisms require students to delete and transpose initial phonemes between two words, targeting complex phoneme manipulation at a high metalinguistic level.
Question 5: A student correctly identifies that 'cat,' 'cup,' and 'coat' begin with the same sound. This skill is BEST described as:
- Phoneme segmentation
- Alliteration awareness (initial phoneme identity) (Correct answer)
- Onset-rime blending
- Final phoneme isolation
Correct answer: Alliteration awareness (initial phoneme identity)
Recognizing that multiple words share the same initial phoneme is the definition of alliteration awareness, a form of initial phoneme identity.
Question 6: Which assessment finding would MOST strongly indicate that a student requires phonological awareness intervention before phonics instruction is introduced?
- Difficulty naming letters of the alphabet
- Inability to segment spoken words into phonemes despite adequate language comprehension (Correct answer)
- Poor sight word recognition
- Slow handwriting speed
Correct answer: Inability to segment spoken words into phonemes despite adequate language comprehension
Phoneme segmentation is a foundational prerequisite for phonics; a student who cannot segment spoken words will struggle to map graphemes to phonemes during decoding instruction.
Question 7: A CALT is selecting phonological awareness tasks for a kindergartner at the very beginning of instruction. Which sequence follows the recommended developmental order from easiest to hardest?
- Phoneme deletion → syllable counting → rhyme recognition
- Rhyme recognition → syllable counting → phoneme segmentation (Correct answer)
- Phoneme blending → alliteration → rhyme detection
- Phoneme segmentation → onset-rime blending → syllable awareness
Correct answer: Rhyme recognition → syllable counting → phoneme segmentation
The developmental hierarchy progresses from larger, easier units (rhymes, syllables) to smaller, harder units (individual phonemes), so rhyme recognition precedes syllable counting which precedes phoneme segmentation.
CALT Phonological Awareness Skills 5
A second-grade student with dyslexia performs well on rhyme recognition but poorly on phoneme reversal tasks (e.g., say 'top' backwards).
This profile is MOST consistent with: