What is Phonological Awareness?
Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate sounds and sound patterns in oral language. It included 2 primary considerations:
-isolation -substitution -blending -segmenting -deletion Word Study
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Phonological
Awareness tasks develop simultaneously. Mastery in one task is not
needed before introducing students to other tasks.
Phonological manipulation tasks introduced at any point along the sound continuum have been shown to be beneficial to future reading ability. |
Word Study is a fantastic tool for increasing phonological awareness in the classroom! I used it throughout my Action Research intervention and saw student phonological understanding increase significantly. Below is a link to a PowerPoint I created and shared with colleagues to demonstrate the many uses of Word Study in pre-kindergarten classrooms.
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Hallie Kay Yopp and Ruth Helen Yopp are Education and Literacy professors who work closely with teachers, and have spent decades studying phonological and phonemic awareness development in young children. Here are links to two excellent articles they've written to assist teachers in understanding and strengthening these areas in the classroom.
https://www.naeyc.org/files/yc/file/200901/BTJPhonologicalAwareness.pdf http://literacyhow.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/SupportingPhonemicAwarenessDevelopmentintheClassroom.pdf |
Phonological Awareness on the Go for Families!
Enhancing Phonological Awareness can be fun when you work it into your everyday routines! Here are some ideas to get you started:
When driving or waiting in line:
At the grocery store:
When driving or waiting in line:
- Rhymes: "I'm thinking of a color that rhymes with bed."
- Beginning Sounds: "I spy with my little eye something that starts with the /m/ sound."
- Blending: "I am a ro-bot at the zoo. What an-i-mal do I want to see: /ti/-/ger/" (/d/-/uck/, /c/-/a/-/t/). Next, give your child a chance to pretend to be the robot and segment words for you to blend! You can take this same idea and change it to use foods the robot wants to eat, people it wants to visit, etc!
At the grocery store:
- Sound hunt: Give your child a specific sound to hunt for as you shop. For instance, the /s/ sound could be found in soap, cereal, soup, and celery.
- When putting away groceries, consider using the task of segmentation to ask your child to hand you specific items. "Please pass me the /m/-/ilk/. How about the /ch/-/eese/?" Back it up to use syllables if your child is unsuccessful with onset-rime segmenting (/crack/-/ers/, /ce/-/re/-/al/).