Useful Links & Resources

First Sound Fluency and Phonemic Awareness

In Montessori Primary classroom, children start at the age of three, developing Phonemic Awareness.  Phonemes are the sounds in the English language.  Children start with the first sound they hear in a word.  Soon, they begin to hear the final or ending sound in a word.  Before long a child will hear all the sounds in a word.  c-a-t.  A well developed sense of phonemes or the sounds you hear in a word, is directly related to a child's ability to decode and read words.  

The sound or the phoneme is different from the name of a letter.  

One game we play in Montessori Primary Classrooms is called "I Spy".  A number of familiar objects are chosen and laid out in front of the child.  Each object is chosen for it's first sound.  If a child struggles with phonemic awareness, we might choose several objects with the same first sound.  After naming each object, the adult will say, "I spy something that starts with the sound.....sss."  The child will point to the object that starts with that sound. ex: sun, sandcastle, stone, snake

You can play: What's the First Sound You Hear?  This again is not the same as the first letter or the name of the name of the letter.  Your child simply needs to listen and repeat the sound they hear.  Ask your child, what's the first sound you hear when I say the word, car?  What's the first sound you hear when I say the word, tent? This also works with words that start with phonograms. A phonogram is usually 2 or more letters that make a new sound.  Ex: th, sh, ch, wh, ph, or, ar, er, ea, etc.  Even before they know how to "spell" the phonogram, they can learn to "hear" it and say it.

When we get to words with beginning and ending blends we want our students to hear all the sounds separately.  If the word is twist, I want the child to hear: t-w-i-s-t.

Rhyming games, poems, songs, nursery rhymes are great ways to help increase phonemic awareness.  Children need to be able to recognize a rhyme and produce their own rhyme.  Nonsense words count!  "fork, zork" counts.  Plus it's funny!