The Role Systematic and Explicit Phonics Instruction Has on Mastery of Phonics Skills in ELL's

Across the nation the average allotted time, per school day for phonics instruction is 20-30 minutes for elementary students (Shanahan, 2019). Although this is an average, the aforementioned amount of time is not an adequate amount of time to include all of the necessary components of effective phonics instruction (Shanahan, 2019). Furthermore, according to Education Week Research Center, only 86% of elementary teachers teach phonics which leaves 14% of teachers that are not providing explicit instruction to students on the foundational building blocks of reading (Ed Week Research Center, 2019). This dissertation project used explicit and systematic phonics instruction based on "From Phonics to Reading" by Wylie Blevins, and incorporated research-based instructional strategies to improve the phonemic awareness and phonics skills of English Language Learners. ELL students in a single first grade classroom were progress monitored using informal observations and weekly fluency and accuracy assessments to determine their progress on phonics skills. Pre and post assessments were given to each ELL student in the cohort in the following areas: Initial sounds, final sounds, medial sounds, segmentation, blending, phonemic manipulation and iReady diagnostic. The growth the ELL students made between their beginning of the year iReady diagnostic and their middle of their year diagnostic was compared to the growth of the rest of the ELL first grade students within the same building. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]