Phonological Awareness

Phonological and Phonemic Awareness

Phonological awareness allows children to recognize and work with the sounds they hear in language. It includes the ability to distinguish individual words in a sentence, rhyming, and blend, segment, and manipulate (adding, deleting or substituting) syllables and phonemes (individual units of sound). Your child will regularly participate in Phonemic Awareness activities in the Reading Lab. These activities focus on hearing the parts or sounds in words. This is done as an auditory activity where your child will need to carefully listen to the words and sounds to blend, segment and manipulate the sounds in different ways. At times some hands on manipulatives and hand movements will be used to help the children master these phonemic awareness skills. Phonological awareness is a vital aspect in teaching your child to read. It is a strong predictor of reading success. Phonological awareness is a key aspect in the early stages in building a foundation for reading. During these activities we will work on manipulating the sounds we hear in words through adding, deleting and substituting the sounds or word parts as well as blending and segmenting sounds and word parts. Some of the areas we will focus on are:

• Compound words

• Onset (sounds before the vowel)

• Rime (vowel and everything after)

• Body (all of the sounds through the vowel)

• Coda (the sounds after the vowel)

• Phonemes (the individual sounds)

• Blends (two sounds that glide together) Ex. bl, sl, dr, sk etc…

• Initial, Final and Medial sound manipulation

• Syllables

• Digraphs (sh, th, ch)

One way you can help your child understand is through talking about the words they hear in spoken language. They are made up of parts and sounds. You can begin building phonological awareness in your child by:

• Reciting nursery rhymes

• Reading books with rhyming words

• Playing rhyming games in the car- I’m thinking of a word that rhymes with…

• Playing with alliteration and tongue twisters (words that begin with the same sound)

  • Seven silly sisters said surprise!

  • Silly sally sings songs about snakes and snails.

• Reciting tongue twisters with a focus on individual sounds in words.

  • Example: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

• Practice combining words and syllables

• Play syllable shopping - While at the grocery store, have your child tell you the syllables in different food names. Have them chop each word part with their hand like a chopping knife. Eggplant = egg-plant, two syllables. Pineapple = pine-ap-ple, three syllables. Look at the sign and read the word together.

• Sound Games- Practice blending sounds into words. Ask "Can you guess what this word is? /m/ - /o/ - /p/." Hold each sound longer than normal.

• I Spy with sounds- I spy something that starts with /m/.

• I Spy Blending - While driving or walking, you can say, “I see a sign that says /s/-/t/-/o/-/p/” Then your child has to blend the sounds to guess your word — stop. (Remember to say only the sounds in the word — not the letters.) Keep the words short, moving from two to three to four sounds depending on your child’s skill level.

• Sound counting - using counters, legos, blocks, or pop it fidgets to have your child slide and count the number of sounds he/she hears in the word as they slowly say and break the word up into sounds. Then tap each object as they say the sounds of the word and blend it back together.