Phonological Awareness

Challenges with Phonological Awareness

Phonological Awareness is an important skill that students develop in the early years that is essential to reading develop. Phonological awareness involves manipulating distinguishing, and blending sounds in words, sentences and individual sound groups. Phonological awareness is the broad umbrella term that encompasses many concepts such as phonemic awareness, rhyming, syllables, blending sounds (Dyslexia Help). The problem with phonological awareness is that many phonemes and sounds are different in English and in French, so while parents can help their child develop phonological awareness skills in English, this is not always the case in French. Rhymes, syllables, and sound blends are different in French. The following resources are great resources to share with parents that can help parents work on phonological awareness at home and that can be used in the classroom!

Lalilo

Lalilo is a free phonics and comprehension online program. The program is offered in English and in French! This is a perfect program for kids from kindergarten to grade 3. The teacher sets up a classroom account and selects the appropriate grade level. Once students log in, they progress through various phonics activities, comprehension activities, rhyming activities that build their phonological awareness skills. What is great is that students can access this program at home and teachers have access to a "Teacher Dashboard" where they can monitor the progress of each student! Students can work on this independently at home.

Click here to access Lalilo.

FouFou Channel

FouFou Channel is a French Youtube Channel for children. The content ranges from videos that focus on vocabulary and pronunciation, videos that work on sound blending and reading and writing French syllables, and videos that focus on French sounds and phonics. These are very useful videos to share with parents as students can review content covered in class and parents can ensure that students are working on appropriate pronunciation of phonemes and vocabulary.

Click here to access FouFou.

French Phonics Poems/Songs

French songs and poems are a great way to work on phonics and phonological awareness in an age appropriate way. The channel that is linked contains wonderful poems and songs that focus on phonics. A great way to use these poems and songs is to introduce them in the classroom, focus on the particular sounds, and then as you are working on each song/poem send home a link of the video to the parents in your class. This way the students can continue practicing and learning at home!