Phonemic Awareness

Supporting phonemic awareness development at home:

Important note: In these directions whenever you see a letter written with / / around it, you are to say the letter sound, not the letter name.

• Oral Sound Game: Gagen (2006) shares a fun game which suggests say a word to a child and ask them to think of other words that begin with the same letter. For example, say “man begins with /m/ what other words can you think of that begin with /m/?” Repeat this with different sounds. When students are doing well with beginning sounds, try it with ending sounds or even middle sounds.

• Silly Word Game: Another game is to have the child try saying a word or a name with a different beginning sound. For example, “James, what would your name be if it began with /p/?” “How about /t/, /s/, etc.” Continue trying this with words, and you can even ask if they made a real word or a silly word. Gagen (2006)

• Snail Talk: Provide your child with pictures of a few things such a sun, cat, dog, chair, etc. Tell your child you are going to use “Snail Talk” to say the word and see if they can figure out which word it is and point to the picture. Then say one of the words by saying sounds stretched out such as /sssssuuuuuunnnnn/. (Reading Rockets, n.d.) When they can do this easily, extend their learning by making the sounds more concise such as saying the individual sounds /s//u//n/. To further extend, remove the pictures. This activity involves blending sounds.

• Robot Talk: Shared by the Virginia DOE (1998), Using a robot voice, say “I am a robot, can you help me, can you tell me what I see?” “ I see a /d/ /o/ /g/? What do I see” Model as needed, and continue with a list of common one-syllable words that the child would be familiar with. This activity involves blending sounds. The child could do this as the robot and by stretching out and saying the sounds, they are segmenting the sounds.

• Which Item?: Provide your child with a bag, box, or pile of small items or pictures with simple corresponding words. Have your child secretly choose one and ‘sound talk’ (say the item name by stretched-out sounds such as /h/ /a/ /t/ )and you have to blend the sounds and guess the item. This is a segmenting activity. Reverse rolls and it becomes a blending activity.

• Rhyming: Rhyming is a phonemic awareness skill. Playing rhyming songs, reading rhyming books and poems are all good ways for a child to learn to recognize rhyming words. Practice identifying rhymes and generating rhymes whenever possible.

• • • • • Did you know?: This is a great activity for in the car, at the supermarket or on a walk. Find an object that you know a rhyme for such as a house and say “There’s a house, did you know that house rhymes with mouse?” Do this frequently and encourage your child to do the same.

        • Rhyming Cards: Many games can be played with rhyming picture cards. Cox (n.d.) provides free printable rhyming cards and ideas on games you can play. Visit Rhyming Cards to download the cards and learn about some great game ideas.