Literacy
Phonological Awareness
Children begin developing phonological awareness in infancy. Some children need more practice developing phonological awareness.
*Listening: one to one matching of sounds such as a tap, repeating sounds, words, sentences
*Rhyme and Alliteration: recognizing rhyming words and alliteration
making rhymes and alliteration (same sounds at the beginning of words)
*Sentence Segmentation: identifying the separate words in a sentence, first with one syllable words and later with multisyllabic words included
*Syllables: -when given syllables blend them saying the whole word altogether
-identifying each syllable in a word (syllable segmentation)
-given a word say it without one of the syllables (syllable deletion)
*Onset and Rimes: listening to the first sound(s) of a word and then the rest of the word and say the word as a whole
*Phonemes are the basic unit of sounds and has a whole category called Phonemic Awareness (also part of phonological awareness)
Phoneme Identification: -Shown a picture of an object and the name identify the first sound
-Identify the word out of 3 words that begins with a given sound
-Identify the word out of 3 words that ends with a given sound
-Identify the first sound in a given word
-Identify the last sound in a given word
-Identify the middle vowel sound in a given word
Phoneme Segmentation: -Begin with words with 2-3 sounds (by end of k) and increase to at least 5 sounds ( end of 1st)
Phoneme Blending: -start with onsets and rimes (noted above)
-blend 2-3 sounds into a word (by end of k) and increase to at least 5 sounds (end of 1st)
-we often start with objects to represent sounds before moving on to just listening
Phoneme Manipulation: - delete first sound in word then delete the last sound in a word (1 syllable) (by end of 1st)
-change 1st sound in a word (by end of k)
- delete 1st sound in a word that begins with a consonant blend (ex: bl, cr, sm) (by mid-1st)
- change middle vowel sound (by end of 1st)
-delete 2nd sound in a word that begins with a blend (by end of 2nd)
-change 2nd sound in a word that begins with a blend (by end of 2nd)
-change the last sound in a word (by end of 2nd)
Please contact me if you'd like to discuss further examples of any phonemic awareness skills.
Sounds, Letters, Words
Phonics is a way of learning to read by matching sounds (phonemes) and the symbols that represent them (graphemes which are letters and letter groups).
Children are taught letter sounds by thinking about what sound a word starts with, saying the sound out loud and then recognizing how that sound is represented by a letter(s). Children see a letter and then say the sound it represents out loud. (decoding)
Next children need to go from saying the individual sounds of each letter, to being able to blend the sounds and say the whole word. This can be a big step for many children and takes time. While they are learning to say the sounds of letters out loud, they earn to write letters (encoding). They are taught where they need to start with each letter and how the letters need to be formed.
In the beginning there is a focus on reading/decoding three-letter words that have a consonant, vowel, consonant pattern (CVC words). Often, they will be given letter cards to put together to make CVC words which they will be asked to say out loud.
Children learn about consonant digraphs ( two consonants that make one sound) such as ch, ck, sh, th, wh, ph and use these sounds in words such as chin, ship, thin, whit.
In first grade, children learn about consonant blends: two consonants together in a word, such br, cl, st, lk. They learn to read words with CCVC words (consonant, consonant, vowel, consonant) such as trap, stop, plan. They will also read a range of CVCC words (consonant, vowel, consonant, consonant) such as milk, fast, cart.
Next they are taught the vowel-consonant-e pattern in which the vowel says its name and the "e" is silent and apply the pattern to decoding words such as safe, Pete, pine, nose, and rule.
Later they are also taught about vowel digraphs: (two vowels that make one sound) such as ai, ay, ee, ie, oa, ui. Examples: paid, way, jeep, pie, road, suit
As children are learning to decode (read) words, they continue to practice forming letters and work on spelling (encoding) words. Children start to produce their own short pieces of writing spelling the patterns taught the "dictionary way".
Reading many texts (books, magazines, etc) as often as possible will support children in their learning to reading and spell for a purpose (entertainment, learning information).