The Effects of Supplemental Phonemic Awareness and Phonics Instruction on Kindergarten Students’ Writing Performance

Abstract

The 2021 U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress for Writing reveals that up to 75% of students struggle to write at a basic level (Dunn, 2021). This deficiency in writing ability may be linked to a disconnect between phonemic awareness and phonics instruction in primary classrooms. (Cuffari, 2015). Many classrooms focus on teaching these skills for decoding words in reading, neglecting the crucial connection to writing. Balanced literacy, incorporating phonics instruction, is fundamental in primary classrooms to establish a robust foundation for reading and writing skills (Sohn, 2020). Transferring knowledge gained in phonemic awareness and phonics instruction to subsequent reading and writing sessions is crucial. In kindergarten, where students use invented spelling, phonemic awareness and phonics skills become essential for successfully spelling words phonetically in their writing endeavors.The purpose of this study was to determine how supplemental phonemic awareness and phonics instruction in small groups can impact kindergarten struggling writers’ writing performance and examine how struggling writers’ knowledge of phonemes and graphemes connects to their writing performance. Data collection and analysis resulted in the following conclusions: (1) Supplemental phonemic awareness and phonics instruction leads to an increase in students’ grapheme and phoneme knowledge. (2) Supplemental phonemic awareness and phonics instruction improves struggling writers’ encoding skills. (3) Supplemental phonemic awareness and phonics instruction improves students’ writing.