Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness is the ability to consciously manipulate individual phonemes in a spoken language and the ability to match sounds with alphabet letters (Templeton, S., Bear, D. R., Invernizzi, M., & Johnston, F). . When instructing students to on phonemic awareness it is very important children are hearing, watching, and feeling the sounds and how they are made and the connection to the letters themselves. Phonemic awareness is also a great predictor of reading and spelling acquisition and also a predictor of their later reading level. It’s important to note as well that there are 26 letters in the alphabet, but there are 46 sounds. Children need to learn all the letters along with their corresponding sounds, as well as sounds that letters make together. Phonemic awareness should be taught explicitly as part of a balanced literacy program (Buechler, Anna).

During the emergent stage, students learn the alphabetic principle. The alphabetic principle states that letters represent sounds in a systematic way and words can be segmented into sequences of sound from left to right. In order for students to master reading and spelling English, letters of the alphabet and individual speech sounds must be understood as discrete units that match in a systematic way. That systematic way is the alphabetic principle. The alphabetic principle helps students understand that there is a system where letters correspond with a sound and words can be segmented in order to be decoded (Templeton, S., Bear, D. R., Invernizzi, M., & Johnston, F).

Order of Introducing Letters-

Some teachers believe it makes the most sense to introduce the letters from A-Z but others believe there is a more systematic way. Many believe it is easiest to introduce words that make the same shape with their mouth or the same way the tongue hits the teeth inside your mouth (Readiness/Phonemic Awareness).

Concepts of print- Concepts of print are the basic aspects of a book. Students should get to know these concepts, so they can utilize them and find exactly what they are looking for. For example, some would be, the title, author, chapter headings, reading left to right, or words that convey meaning (Buechler, Anna notes).

Website- http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/103316/chapters/Readiness~Phonemic-Awareness.aspx

ASCD.org offers an incredibly in depth look at phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is essential for children learning to read. This website is extremely beneficial for teachers, because not only does it go in depth about what phonemic awareness is but it also goes on to say why its important, what happens if its under developed in students and gives multiple games and strategies that teachers can use. This website would be beneficial for parents as well because they are able to learn about phonemic awareness and they could use some of these games at home if to help build phonemic awareness. When reading this website it’s a guarantee that you’ll learn something.

3 apps-

Kids Sound Lab Pro ($3.99)-

Kids sound lab targets children ages four and above. This app was designed to give students a head start with pronunciation of English sounds. Parents are able to control the difficulty level and begin by practicing easier sounds. Using this app children are taught to make the sounds in isolation and then practice the sounds in syllables and words. Each sound on the app has three interactive game activities at the end of each level. This app give descriptions of how to produce all the sounds provided with engaging characters. Consonant sounds are listed in the main menu in developmental order of sound acquisition. This app gives scores and tracks each child’s progress. Scoring is provided for each sound with a date, numbers and percent correct. The app gives the option of sending the scores to an email for parents. This app seems to be targeting parents and the use of this app at home. Parents may enjoy this app because they are able to track their child’s progress and it’s a fun way for children to learn phonemic awareness. This app would also greatly benefit students that have English as a second language (Kids Sound Lab Pro on the App Store).

Blending Sounds 1 ($16.81)-

Blending sounds targets beginning readers, students with reading difficulties and students learning English as a second language. This app helps children identify words based on letter sounds and hopes to help students get a jump start at decoding. Blending sounds are trying to help children realize that words are made up of speech sounds and how these sounds are represented by letters. This app helps children practice blending individual sounds together to create an unknown word. The teaching system automatically identifies what a child knows, what the child does not know, and what confuses the child. This information helps adapt the words for the child to better learn. This app is fully customizable which makes it easy to set up custom activities to teach the children specific word types. This app focuses on young readers and gives children practice while in the comfort of their home. Parents may like this app to help their children get extra practice or a head start at blending and decoding words (Blending Sounds 1).

Word Sounds/ Phonemes ($3.99)-

Word sounds is an interactive app that helps individuals learn about phonemes in fun and engaging ways. This app includes four activities: segmenting words, blending words, how many sounds and identify the number of sounds with the number of letters and syllables provided. The goal of this app is to try and teach phonemic awareness to young children. The creators of the app hope that this app helps develop skills needed to understand the relationship between written and spoken language through counting, blending and segmenting phonemes. This app targets students age four and older. The app works on developing reading, spelling, listening, and language skills, enriching vocabulary, and has multi-sensory learning, by combining seeing and hearing (Word Sounds / Phonemes).