Monday, October 8, 2012

Phonemic Awareness: The First Component of Literacy

Phonemic Awareness
 
 
 


Phonemic Awareness:  the understanding that spoken words are made up of separate units of sound that are blended together when words are pronounced. However, it can also be thought of as skill at hearing and producing the separate sounds in words, dividing or segmenting words into their component sounds, blending separate sounds into words, and recognizing words that sound alike or different. 
Phonemes themselves are the sounds that make up spoken words.  They are also the smallest segments of sounds within spoken language.  
*** It is important to remember that phonemes are speech sounds not letters.  The symbol, a, is not a phoneme, but a letter that has been chosen to represent the phoneme/a/.
 
How Can We Tell if Students are Developing Phonemic Awareness?
Phonemic Awareness Task
Demonstration Activity
Example
Isolating Phonemes
Students identify specific sounds at the beginning, middle, and end of words.
Q: What is the first sound in the word cat?
A: /c/
Blending Onset-Rimes
Students blend onset-rimes to form real words.
Q: What word can you make by blending these two sounds together? l… and
A: land
Blending Phonemes
Students blend phonemes to form real words.
Q: What word is made from blending these sounds? /r/a/g
A: rag
Deleting Phonemes
Students identify the word that remains when a phoneme is removed or deleted.
Q: What word is left when we drop the /s/ from the word spot?
A: pot
Segmenting Words into Phonemes
Students break a word into its individual sounds by counting the sounds or by moving a marker for each sound. 
Q: Show me how many phonemes there are in the word cake.
A: three- c/a/k
Adding Phonemes
Students make new words by adding a phoneme to a word. 
Q:  What word do you make when you add a /b/ to the word ring?
A: bring
Substituting Phonemes
Students make a new word by replacing a phoneme with another phoneme.
Q: Say the word bat.  Now change the /b/ to a /c/.  What is the new word?
A: cat
 
 
Why is Phonemic Awareness Importance in Literacy Learning?
-Phonemic awareness helps young children use more advanced ways of learning unfamiliar words.
-Children will be able to use phonemes in decoding what they read.
- Students can use phonemes in new word learning. 
 
What Can You Do to Help a Child Develop Phonemic Awareness?
·         Assess what kinds of phonemic awareness tasks students are able to perform and then plan what they need to work on.
·         Focus on one or two phonemic awareness skills.  Research shows that that is more effective than teaching too many at once, as students might get overwhelmed or confused.
·         Emphasize dividing words into phonemes.
·         Use letters when teaching about phonemes.
·         Connect phonemic awareness instruction to reading and writing.
·         Focus attention on how the mouth changes when pronouncing different phonemes.
·         Use spelling to teach phonemes. 
 
Having Fun with Phonemic Awareness:
Online Games/Resources for Children
 
Clifford's Sound Game:  Find items that start with the same sound as the picture and drop them in the box; audio.
 
Diagraphs: Movies -
 
 
Elmo Rhymes:  Find the rhyming words; or watch as Elmo finds them.
 
Fuzzy Lion Ears:  Auditory discrimination; children must select missing letter. With mouse over letters, audio is heard.
 
 
Pounce:  A lion cub has to pounce on the word that is given; audio.
 
Reggie the Rhyming Rhino:  A rhyming game that can be played online; need audio.
 
Sounds of the Letters: Each letter is named along with its sound and a picture association.
 
StarfallConsonants Game:  Click on one of the letters to see a "story" about that letter. In the story see 3 pictures that begin with the letter, and sort upper and lower case letters.

 


 

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