What is It?
Phonological awareness are wide-ranging sills that includes identifying and manipulating parts of oral language. The umbrella visual is a fantastic representation of all the units phonological awareness includes.
What does Research Say?
Phonological awareness is a critical component in a person’s education because it is the pathway to reading and spelling success.
Children who are unable to characterize and manipulate the sounds with spoken words struggle recognizing and learning the essential print=sound relationship that is crucial to proficient reading and spelling success.
Phonological Awareness includes four developmental levels that are found in the Phonological Awareness umbrella. These levels are:
- Word Awareness
- Syllable Awareness
- Onset-rime Awareness
- Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness is the hardest and most advanced level of phonological awareness. It specifies to a child’s awareness of isolating phonemes – the smallest unit of sound in spoken words and having the ability to manipulate those sounds.
Strategies for Phonemic Awareness
Early childhood is the best time to introduce phonological awareness to students. There are many, many strategies a teacher or parent can use to practice phonemic awareness skills. I am providing 5 easy strategies that can be implemented to create rich phonological awareness skills.
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Listen Up
Read aloud to your child or students frequently. Good phonological awareness begins with children picking up on syllables and rhymes that they hear. Choose rhyming books or books that repeat the same sounds. |
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Focus on Rhyming
Study nursery rhymes that are full of rhyming words. See if the child can pick out the words that sounds the same. Create words lists of 4 word groups. Make 2 of the words rhyme and have the child identify the two correct words. |
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Follow the Beat
Teach students about syllables by clapping the “beat” he/she hears in words. Let’s use the words hippo. Pause as you both say each syllable and clap out each syllable together. Stomping or jumping to the syllable sounds is a great option as well. |
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Get into Guesswork
Guessing games are a fun way to practice noticing what sound words begin with. “I spy” something yellow that starts with /b/. |
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Carry a Tune
Who doesn’t love singing? It’s fun and is a great way to get children to rhyme words. The internet is a fabulous source to find kid friendly songs that a packed with rhyming phrases. |
Example Video
The link below is to a fun video to practice phonological awareness.