Research has shown that phonological and phonemic awareness are a great predictor of future reading success. Being phonologically aware prepares children for later reading instruction in phonics, word analysis, and spelling (Adams, Foorman, Lundberg, & Beeler, 1998; Chard, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1998).
But, recent research from the National Reading Panel has shown that adding letters to phonemic awareness instruction had even better results than the old “phonemic awareness can be done in the dark” idea. (NRP, 2000)
Phonological awareness includes identifying and manipulating pieces of oral language, such as words, syllables, onsets, and rimes. Children who have phonological awareness are able to identify and rhyme, clap out the number of syllables in a word, and recognize words with the same initial sounds as ‘farm’ and ‘father.’
Phonemic awareness is the most advanced level of phonological awareness. This is the awareness of individual phonemes, or sounds, in spoken words and the ability to manipulate those sounds. Phonemes combine to form syllables and words. For example, the word ‘sat’ has three phonemes: /s/ /a/ /t/. There are 44 phonemes in the English language.
Beginning readers NEED systematic, explicit phonemic awareness instruction. Children should be given opportunities to apply and develop facilities with sounds. As a matter of fact, phonemic awareness has been found to predict reading success in later grades. This has to be a priority for primary teachers.
Examples of phonemic awareness include:
- phoneme counting : “How many sounds do you hear in the word cape?”
- onset: rime manipulation: “Add /k/ to the beginning of at.”
- syllable awareness: “How many syllables in the word watermelon?”
- word to word matching: “Do mat and men begin with the same sound?”
- rhyming: “Tell me all of the words that you know that rhyme with the word cat?”
- blending: “What word would we have if we blended these sounds together: /t/ /o/ /p/?”
- phoneme segmentation: “What sounds do you hear in the word sun?”
- phoneme deletion: “What word would be left if the /k/ sound were taken away from cap?”
- phoneme manipulation: “Say track without the /r/.”
- Teachers should recognize that acquiring phonemic awareness is a means rather than an end. Phonemic awareness is not acquired for its own sake but rather for its value in helping learners understand and use the alphabetic system. This is why it is important to include letters when teaching children to manipulate phonemes and why it is important to teach children explicitly how to apply phonemic awareness skills in reading and writing tasks.
- Students will differ in their phonemic awareness abilities and some will need more instruction than others. In kindergarten, most children will be nonreaders and will have little phonemic awareness, so phonemic awareness instruction should benefit everyone. In other grades, skills will vary. The best approach is for teachers to assess students’ phonemic awareness skills before starting instruction. This will indicate which children need the instruction and which do not, which children need to be taught earlier levels, such as segmenting initial sounds in words, and which children need more advanced levels involving segmenting or blending with letters.
- Phonemic awareness is just one of the 5 pillars of early literacy and doesn’t constitute a “reading program”. You still need to teach the other pillars of phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency.
- Length of time teaching phonemic awareness and whether it’s taught in large or small group need to be studied more according to the National Reading Panel. I think teachers should make decisions about length and presentation after assessing their class.
Note: Children from culturally diverse backgrounds may have difficulties with phonemic awareness. Exposure to language at home, exposure to reading at an early age, and dialect all affect the ability of children to understand the phonological distinctions on which the English language is built. “Teachers must apply sensitive effort and use a variety of techniques to help children learn these skills when standard English is not spoken at home “(Lyon, 1994).
Finding a curriculum for phonemic awareness can be difficult. There are many products that have bits and pieces of the components of phonemic awareness, but teachers don’t want to {or have time to} piecemeal a program. Their are programs that say phonemic awareness and then only teach rhyming. Teachers want to be sure they are teaching effectively and efficiently.
After spending months looking for a program, I decided to develop a resource for teachers. We have been using it successfully in my school for years now. This program provides 10-15 minutes of daily instruction plus TONS of activities to do as intervention. Of course, an assessment of all the components of phonemic awareness is included to allow teachers to target remediation.
Click here to snag two weeks of lesson plans and activities so you can see how easy it is to fit phonemic awareness into your daily schedule.
What I love about this resource is it is all-encompassing – every aspect of phonological and phonemic awareness is included. There is daily instruction for the year. It has PowerPoint slideshows to practice skills and incorporate technology. There are games. It has activities with Jenga, dot paint, cones, and play dough. This resource has words for kindies and words for second graders. It’s perfect for third graders who need additional support. It has it all.
Download the freebie and check it out right now!
I love our phonemic awareness mats that allow students to practice skills independently. Once I showed my first graders how to use these, they were able to complete them all by themselves. They work on rhyming, isolating sounds, syllables, segmenting and blending, onset-rime identification, phonemes in the inital, final, and medial positions and more are coming!
Click here to snag two weeks of lesson plans and activities so you can see how easy it is to fit phonemic awareness into your daily schedule.
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