Difficulty: Medium

Average Score: 59%

A second-grade teacher reads aloud a short story from the English language arts textbook.

Which teacher note best records evidence that a student is experiencing difficulty in learning a phonemic awareness skill?

Rationale

Was unable to correctly clap to identify each sound heard in 5 of 8 spoken words.

This evidence directly relates to a student's phonemic awareness, as clapping to identify sounds is a common activity used to assess a child's ability to segment sounds in spoken words. Struggling with this task indicates difficulty in recognizing and manipulating phonemes, a critical skill in early literacy development.

A (given 5 written stimulus words was unable to encode a rhyming word for each) YOUR ANSWER

This choice reflects a student's challenge with rhyming, which is a component of phonological awareness but not specifically focused on phonemic awareness. While encoding rhymes can indicate some difficulties, it does not directly assess a student's ability to recognize individual sounds in spoken language.

B (incorrectly identified the number of words in 3 of 6 sentences read aloud by the teacher.) YOUR ANSWER

This scenario highlights issues with word counting, which relates more to overall comprehension and listening skills rather than specifically measuring phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness focuses on the sounds within words rather than the understanding of word quantity.

C (was unable to correctly clap to identify each sound heard in 5 of 8 spoken words) CORRECT

This choice effectively documents a student's difficulty in identifying sounds, which is the essence of phonemic awareness. Clapping for sounds directly measures a child's ability to break down words into their constituent phonemes, making this evidence most relevant to the question.

D (did not recognize “th” as a single sound when reading a list of 20 vocabulary words 8 of which contained the letter combination) YOUR ANSWER

While this choice pertains to sound recognition, it specifically addresses the understanding of digraphs rather than broader phonemic awareness skills. Recognizing “th” as a single sound is more about decoding and less about the ability to manipulate individual phonemes in different contexts.

Conclusion

Identifying difficulties in phonemic awareness is crucial for early literacy intervention. Among the options, the inability to clap for sounds indicates a direct challenge in recognizing and manipulating phonemes, which is essential for reading success. The other choices, while indicative of related skills, do not provide as clear evidence of phonemic awareness difficulties.

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