Phonological Phonological AwarenessAwareness

Phonological Phonological AwarenessAwareness

By: Christine McCreary, Marissa By: Christine McCreary, Marissa Abram & Ting Ting ChouAbram & Ting Ting Chou

Phonological Awareness

• Defined as the understanding of the sound structure of oral language

• Ability to manipulate the sound structure of spoken language

Phonemic awareness• Is a sub-category of phonological

awareness• Knowledge that spoken words are

composed of different sounds

Phonics

• Is the relationship between sounds and their symbols (letters), and the methods of instruction used to teach those relationships

What?• Phonological awareness

/m-an/ > remove m add p > /p-an/

• Phonemic awarenesssay man: /m/ /a/ /n/

• Phonicswhen you see the word (date) you can tell me the sound /d/ /ae/ /t/

Why is Phonological awareness important?

• Phonological awareness in Kindergarten has been established as the single best predictor of reading and spelling achievement

• Children who are aware of phonemes move easily and productively into inventive spelling and reading

• Phonemic awareness enables children to grasp the alphabetic principle, the concept that letters in written words correspond more or less to sounds in spoken words

Steps for using the strategy in a classroom:

Intervention should proceed in logical sequence of

activities

Core of Phonological awareness

• Rhyming• Blending• Segmentation

Rhyming• Rhyming consists of chants,

alliteration, and language play• least difficult skill• Don’t need a lot of cognitive

resources

Blending• Isolating sounds• Example:

– Win-dow– Syllable plus phoneme C-a-t– Individual sounds f-oo-d

Segmentation• Deleting and substituting sounds• Heavy demand on working memory:

capacity to execute multiple cognitive operations

• Allows the child to become familiar with task

• Should use 2 segment compound words what starting i.e. Ice-cream

Phonemic Awareness in Young Children

The goal of this program

• Is to that cognitively prepares them for learning develop children’s linguistic awareness to read and write

• Focuses on the sounds opposed to the spelling and the meaning of a word

• Shifting attention from the meaning of language to its form and structure

Step 1: Listening Games

• Goal: to sharpen children’s ability to attend selectively to sounds

• Example– Listening to everyday sounds– Learning to listen to what they

actually hear, not expect

Step 2: Rhyming• Goal: To use rhyme to introduce

the children to the sounds of words and to also focus their attention on similarities and differences between the sounds

• Example:– Cat and mat

Step 3: Words and Sentences

• Goal: to develop children’s awareness that language is made up of strings of words

• Example:– Distinguish between a string of words

and a sentence

Step 4: Awareness of Syllables

• Goal: To develop the ability to analyze words into separate syllables and to develop the ability to synthesize words from a string of separate syllables

• Example:– Clapping Names (Chris- tine)

Step 5: Initial and Final Sounds

• Goal: to show the children that words contain phonemes and to introduce them to how phonemes sound and feel when spoken in isolation

• Example:– Guess Who: discriminating phonemes

and connecting them to the names in which they belong to

Activity: Identifying beginning sounds

Tune: “Are you sleeping—Brother John”

Your name’s MichaelYour name’s MichaelThe first sound is /m/The first sound is /m/

Can you say it with me Can you say it with me

/m/ /m/ /m//m/ /m/ /m/

Step 6: Phonemes• Goal: to develop the ability to analyze words

into a sequence of separate phonemes and to develop the ability to synthesize words from a sequence of separate phonemes

• Example:– Ice: Having a picture that represents a word, for

example ice, and use different colour blocks to distinguish how many sounds are in the word (place the blocks underneath each picture as a visual)

Step 7: Introducing Letters and Spellings

• Goal: To introduce the relation of letters to speech sounds

• Example: – Guess Who: “I am thinking of

someone’s name that begins with the letter __. Raise your hand if you know whose”

Think, Pair, Share!

Ideas for classroom design to foster phonological awareness

Possible problems in using the strategy within a classroom context

• Many teachers find that the strategies given to them contain lots of materials and therefore the teacher is reluctant to use the strategy. Activities with fewer materials would allow for easier execution.

• Instruction of strategies may need to be more intense • Smaller group size instruction• Research done has focused on small groups versus an actual class

size • Children with learning disabilities may not get the direct, specialized

learning they need to succeed• Teachers lack the skills needed to deliver the material (don’t feel

confident)• A thorough assessment of the child’s phonological awareness abilities

is important which is important when creating specific objectives for your program

• Consistent use

References…

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