We know phonemic awareness is one of the biggest predictors of reading success. Often, when we jump right into phonemic awareness we can be met by blank stares from kids. Without a foundation of phonological awareness, kids will have no idea what you’re asking about when you suddenly say, “what is the middle sound in ‘cot’? What are the sounds in ‘cat’? What is the last sound in ‘mad’?”
Phonemic Awareness, the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in spoken words, is a subset of Phonological Awareness. Phonological Awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate units of sounds in spoken language. They are nearly the same thing and are often used interchangeably. The big difference is that phonological awareness is the working with units or parts of words (think syllables) while phonemic awareness is focused solely on individual sounds. In order to get to phonemic awareness and those sounds we have to practice first with bigger units of sound. Phonological awareness is a precursor to phonemic awareness.
Phonological awareness can start to be built when kids are toddlers and should continue through early elementary school as needed. If you work on phonological awareness with your toddler their journey to learn to read will be much easier! Here are the skills, and some activities to go with them, kids need to build to gain phonological awareness:
- Word Awareness is the understanding that sentences are made of words. To build this knowledge you can first model these activities and then let the child try independently
-clap once for each word in a sentence while you say it
-count the number of words in a sentence on your fingers
-use a manipulative like cubes or stickers and put one down for each word in the sentence as you say it.
- Rhyming and Alliteration are the next steps in building phonological awareness. Most kids get exposure to rhyming through nursery rhymes. Nursery rhymes are great for building vocabulary as well. The more nursery rhymes the better!
-One great way to practice nursery rhymes is to start signing it and then stop when it’s time for the rhyming word and let the child fill in the blank. Once kids are good at this you can do more rhyming games, like this one here, or you can encourage them to create their own rhymes.
Alliteration is when we have the same beginning sound at each word or nearly each word in a sentence, “Sally sells seashells by the seashore.”
-Start with reading books or poems with alliteration in them and point out the words are all starting with the same sound.
-Then, start defining if a sentence has alliteration or not. Give examples of alliteration and no alliteration to see if the child can differentiate between the two.
-Lastly, when the child is ready you can ask what the beginning sound is in the alliteration.
- Syllables are a unit of a word with at least one vowel sound. For example, “sad” has 1 syllable: /sad/, “index” has 2 syllables: /in/ /dex/, “computer” has 3 syllables: /com/ /pu/ /ter/. Some fun ways to practice syllables are:
-secret box: put a few toys or objects in a box or bag that are “secret,” give the child the syllables and have them guess the word to discover what’s in the box and take it out. For example if you have a dinosaur in the box you would say “/di/ /no/ /saur/ what is it?” The child would say dinosaur and get to have the toy. To make this more challenging, have the child take the toy out first, and then tell you the syllables.
-Clapping, stomping or jumping them out with one clap per syllable
-Jumping up and down once for each syllable
-Use an instrument-bang a drum or press a key on the piano for each syllable
- Onset-rime: the onset of a word is the beginning sound or blend (2 sounds) of a word, the rime is the chunk of the word that follows, For example: bat /b/-/at/, block /bl/ /ock/, tree /tr/ /ee/, fight /f/ /ight/. To practice onset-rime:
-Start with saying the onset and then rime: /b/ /at/ and then asking the child what word it is?
-Use manipulatives like blocks or magnatiles to demonstrate: first, model the onset and then rime and putting or blending them together. Once students are good at this, give them the magnatiles all put together and ask them to segment or break the onset and rime.
These activities are best done for 5-10 minutes chunks of time. A little bit goes a long way! You can begin preparing your child to read in 10 minutes a day and reap big results. Start with these phonological awareness skills and once they are built move onto phonemic awareness. Add in some letter names and sounds and kids will be reading before you know it!
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