Phonological Awareness

Phonological Awareness is an awareness of various speed sounds such as syllables, rhyme, and individual phonemes. Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness are often confused. Phonological awareness only deals with sound, with phonological awareness students learn to manipulate sounds. While phonemic awareness is the ability to manipulate individual phonemes in spoken languages (Templeton, S., Bear, D. R., Invernizzi, M., & Johnston, F). Phonemic awareness deals with individual phonemes in speech. But it’s confusing because phonological awareness is an umbrella term or the broad term. Within phonological awareness is phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary and oral language. Therefore, phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary and oral language make up phonological awareness. (Buechler, Anna)

Phonological awareness is a great predictor of students’ later reading success. Students that have lower levels of phonological awareness or phonemic awareness are at risk for having reading difficulty. But both phonological and phonemic awareness can be developed through activities. Students with difficulties in phonological or phonemic awareness will often express their frustration towards reading (Phonological and Phonemic Awareness). But teachers can get insight from some of the things students say. If students are saying they don’t understand words that rhyme, or have trouble with sounds within a word or trouble with syllables then that is an indication that the student has trouble with phonological or phonemic awareness. Learning insight on what students are struggling with will give teachers more guidance on what the teacher should give more explicit instruction on. Listed below are strategies and games that teacher can use in the classroom to help support students learning phonological and phonemic awareness. (Buechler, Anna)

Oral language development theorists-

Chomsky believed that children are preprogrammed and have an innate ability to acquire language while behaviorists focused on the importance of the language environment. Both Piaget and Vygotsky viewed the development of language as a complex interaction between the child and the environment, which is influenced by both social and cognitive development. Both believed that as children develop language, they are actively building a symbol system, which helps them to understand the word. But Piaget and Vygotsky differed on the way in which they viewed how language and thought interact with one another. Piaget believed that cognitive development led to the growth of language whereas Vygotsky viewed language as developing thought. Vygotsky’s theory stresses the importance of communication with other as a major factor of a child’s language development. (Close, N.)

Lap reading- Lap reading involves a fluent reader or adult reading to one or a few children. This is a more intimate reading involving only one or a few children and one adult. This kind of reading is common among parents and their children. When parents read to their children at a young age they are modeling fluent readers and peaking the children’s interest in books and reading. Lap reading is such an easy thing for parents to do to get their children excited about books. The attitude parents have about reading and books, will rub off on their children and the tone the parents read to the children will affect the way the child feels towards reading or books (Brown, H., & Mac, H).

Approaches- Phonological awareness should be taught explicitly through modeling.

Website- https://www.pre-kpages.com/phonemic_awareness/

This website was created for teachers that need to review or need more information about phonological awareness. This brief website gives a brief overview of what phonological awareness is, why it is important, and some examples of phonological awareness. This website would benefit teachers that need a quick refresher of phonological awareness or for parents that want to better understand what phonological awareness is and how to support it at home. This website also offers multiple downloadable activities that teachers can use in their classroom to help children work on phonological awareness. It also provides links to dvds that feature songs that additionally work on aspects of phonological awareness. These dvds have become resources for teachers to use within their classrooms or to get ideas from. This website aids teachers in finding new ways to promote phonological awareness within the classroom.

3 apps-

Phonological Awareness Lab (free)-

Phonological awareness lab is fun multi level game designed to improve phonological awareness in children. The science theme of this app creates a fun atmosphere for children to explore. Within the app there are four different phonological activities; the sentence experiment, decoding room, rhyming compound and syllable x-ray. In sentence experiment, the player is asked to count the number of words in a sentence. In the decoding room, the player chooses between blending syllables and blending sounds. In the rhyming compound there are three different activities, rhyming identification, rhyming selection, and rhyming match. Each of the activities become increasingly more difficult. In syllable x-ray the player must select the word with the correct number of syllables. This app allows for multiplayer mode and if a parent wishes to delete or add an account that is all possible. In each activity a visual representation shows the number of correct answers for each player. This is a fun way for students to practice phonological awareness. This app can be used in the classroom and in the home. Both would benefit from using this app. Teachers could easily implement this into their classroom when children have free time or the teacher is working in small groups. At home this game is a fun substitute to watching television. Children will have fun and learn while using this app. (Phonological Awareness Lab)

Hearbuilder Phonological Awareness (free)-

Hearbuilder is an app where students earn instruments and band members to form the rock band “The Phonemix” while learning to segment, blend and manipulate sounds. This app allows students to practice sentence segmentation, syllable blending, syllable segmentation, rhyming, phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation, phoneme deletion and phoneme addition. This app is multi level program that gradually increases in difficulty and meets the needs of children with different skill levels. Hearbuilder also monitors progress and provides frequent feedback. This would also be a fun way for parents to get their children excited about phonemic awareness and to practice. This could be implemented into the classroom as well if students have access to iPads. This would be an easy way to have students practice phonemic awareness while the teacher may be doing small group work or grading. (Bindel, A)

Rhyming Words by Teach Speech ($3.99)-

Rhyming words provides children ages four and above the opportunity to practice identifying different sounds that make up words in a fun way. This app has four activities: do these two rhyme?, find the picture that rhymes with the word, word families and identifying the rhyming pair from six pictures. This app was created to help children develop language and phonological awareness skills that are necessary for literacy success. The creators of the app know that phonological awareness is a strong predictor of later reading success and a critical skill for development of reading, which is why the app offers a quick start for young children to start early. The format of this app is so simple and easy to follow which makes it perfect for both children and adults. This app could easily be implemented in the classroom. This app would be an easy way for students to work on phonological awareness independently without help from their teachers. If students did need assistance the teacher is always available for help. But using this app in the classroom would free up time for the teacher to work in guided reading groups or getting grading done. (Rhyming Words by Teach Speech)