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Phonemic Awareness and Assessment for Students with Learning Disabilities

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Phonemic Awareness and Assessment for Students with Learning Disabilities

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Article providing information and graphs on PA and Assessments for students with learning disabilities.

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This article defines phonological awareness and discusses historic and contemporary research findings regarding its relation to early reading. Common misconceptions about phonological awareness are addressed. Research-based guidelines for teaching phonological awareness and phonemic awareness to all children are described. Additional instructional design guidelines are offered for teaching children with learning disabilities who are experiencing difficulties with early reading.

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Recourse explain how ELL students learn Phonetic Awareness and some activities that can help.

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I have decided to build upon a deep discussion that the Literacy community have been discussing on teaching phonemic and phonological awareness . I recommend following the thread and exploring some of the links shared. These included:

As part of this discussion Jane Carroll shared an article, Do you speak Kiwinglish?: New Zealand's distinct linguistic identity. It helps you to understand the learning curve new arrivals to our country have to go through even if they already speak English.
Background
Phonemes are the smallest units making up spoken language. Depending on the particular dialect spoken, English has around forty-four distinctive sounds or phonemes. Phonemes combine to form syllables and words and make a difference to the meaning of words. For example, the word stop has four phonemes (s-t-o-p), while shop has three phonemes (sh-o-p).

Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to identify and manipulate these phonemes in spoken words. It is also the understanding that the sounds of spoken language work together to make words.
ELLs and Phonological and Phonemic Awareness
To add to this discussion I thought I would share a few pointers about ELLs and phonological and phonemic awareness. As I am no expert in this area I have gathered these from a number of websites which I have listed at the end of this update.

Phonemic awareness is difficult for ELLs because they may not yet have enough experience with English to be able to distinguish sounds that differ from those of their native language. ELLs cannot develop phonological awareness in English until they are familiar with the sounds of English. Children should have extensive experiences with fun and appealing songs, poems, chants, and read-a-louds that will allow them to hear and reproduce the sound patterns of English.

Most second language learners, especially in the early stages of learning the language, make use of the closest sound in their own language when the English phoneme is unfamiliar (and they probably "hear" it as the sound of their own language, too). Gibbons, P. (2002) Scaffolding language, Scaffolding learning pg 113.

1. Sounds that either don't exist in the first language or sounds that are perceived as different in English but the same in the native language can cause confusion for ELLs. Explicit instruction and opportunities to practice these sounds should be the focus of instruction. Because these differences vary from one language to another, teachers will have to become familiar with which sounds of English will need extra practice, depending on the language backgrounds of their students.

2. Once phonological awareness has developed in any language, it transfers to other languages that are learned. Therefore, students who are literate in their first language will not need to develop this skill again in English; they will only need to become familiar with the sounds of English and to learn to discriminate sounds that are different between their first language and English.

3. Some phonemes may not be present in ELLs' native language and, therefore, may be difficult for a student to pronounce and distinguish auditorily, as well as to place into a meaningful context. For ELLs it is important that instruction have meaning, so that the words and sounds students are manipulating are familiar. It is therefore necessary for ELLs to have knowledge of the English vocabulary words within which they are to understand phonemes. Teachers can teach phonemic awareness while also explicitly teaching vocabulary words, their meaning, and their pronunciation to ELLs.

4. ELLs respond well to meaningful activities such as language games and word walls, especially when the activities are consistent and focus on particular sounds and letters. Songs and poems, with their rhythm and repetition, are easily memorized and can be used to teach phonemic awareness and print concepts to ELLs (Hiebert, et al., 1998). These rhymes exist in every language and teachers can ask students or their parents to share these culturally relevant and teachable rhymes with the class, and build phonemic awareness activities around them

5. Students may not be able to "hear" or produce a new sound in a second language. Students who cannot hear and work with the phonemes of spoken words will have a difficult time learning how to relate these phonemes to letters when they see them in written words.

6. Students, who have not learned to read in their native language, may struggle to put together the sound/symbol correspondence concept, new words, and new sounds all at once.

7. For students with strong first language literacy skills, help them understand that they can draw upon their first language reading skills and apply them to learning to read and write in a second language.

8. Ells may find it hard to master English's stress system. In connected speech, many languages have equal stress on every syllable, whereas English stresses some syllables but not others.

Activities to teach sounds

Pauline Gibbons in her book Scaffolding language, Scaffolding learning (2002) pgs 114-116 suggests several good activities for focusing on sounds and providing practice.

Minimal Pair Exercises see this you tube clip on teaching minimal pairs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnH4w-4UDA8

Word Linking learners need to be able to recognize critical grammatical markers such as past tense ort plural endings. This may be difficult for some children who come from languages where final consonants are not fully "released." Many Asian speakers, for example, may have difficulties with the sounds /p/. /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/, in English when they occur at the end of a word. Learner's speech will be less 'staccato-like" in these contexts if you get them to consciously link the end of one word with the beginning of the next.

E.g. Get it out please. Ge-ti-tout please.

Put it in the bin. Pu-ti-tin the bin.

He said I could take it. He sai-dI-could-ta-kit.

Gibbons, P. (2002), page 115.

Say It Again In this activity students' watch video segments (or listen to audio-taped conversations) and repeat selected lines, attempting to imitate the exact wording, pronunciation, and intonation.

1. Play the excerpt to the students.

2. Select one or more lines spoken by the characters in the video selected. These are the lines that students are later going to practice. The lines should be in chronological order but should not all occur together. The scenes you select should be of high interest to the students and have some "memorable lines." Write the lines on a chart so there will be whole class focus on them.

3. Display the list of lines to be practiced. Before you play the tape, ask the students to say the selected phrases or sentences. Give simple paraphrases so that the students have a general sense of each _expression_.

4. Play the tape again while the students listen for the sentences. Have them raise their hand each time they hear one. Stop the tape at this point and ask them to repeat the line, exactly as it was said. Pay attention to all aspects of pronunciation, including stress, intonation and vowel weakening segment once to set the general scene. They may need several rehearsals with you!

5. Play the scene a third time. This time, stop the tape before the selected lines. The students say the line as you point to it. After several repetitions, continue the tape until just before the next line. Encourage students to say the lines in character, not simply to repeat them as an exercise.

Shadow Reading This activity can be used with an audio or video tape or tape a short story, and give students a copy of one paragraph from it. They first listen to the story all the way through. Then play only the paragraph, stopping after each sentence to give students a chance to repeat it. They should try to copy the pronunciation, stress, intonation, and pace as closely as possible. When the whole of the paragraph has been rehearsed in this way the students "shadow" the tape by reading along with it, remembering to pay attention to the stress and intonation patterns. This stage may be better done as individual work so that children can proceed at their own pace.

ESOL Online has a number of speaking and listening activities including a variety of different types of dictation.
Resources and links on phonological awareness and ELLs

English-Language-Intensive-Programme-ELIP-Years-7-13-Resource-Units:Phonemic Awareness (PDF 653KB) : This is an introductory guide to English letters, sounds and sentences. There is a student workbook containing approaches using the alphabet, vowel sounds, consonant blends, and dictation. The teacher notes include a programme which enables students to build their phonemic skills through the use of key strategies and approaches. It is best for older students. Can be downloadedhere.

7 Fun ESL Games to Practice Pronunciation on Busy Teacher

Shadow-reading in the ESL classroom: A brief report Millie Commander & María C. M. de Guerrero

English Language Learners and the Five Essential Components of Reading Instruction, by Beth Antunez on Reading Rockets

Phonemic Awareness, Multicultural & ESOL Program Services Education Dept. 12. This pdf has considerations for ELLs and several activities and poems etc.

What Does Research Tell Us About Teaching Reading to English Language Learners? By Suzanne Irujo, The ELL Outlook

Using the Language Transfer Supports The address language transfer issues between English and Chinese, Haitian Creole, Hmong, Korean Vietnamese, Spanish. It would be great to have something similar for the most common languages spoken in New Zealand.

Wikipedia on Answers.com: Non-native pronunciations of English

The speech accent archive

I would love to hear what activities and websites you have found to be particularly helpful for supporting ELLs' pronunciation of English.

Kind regards

Janet

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I have decided to build upon a deep discussion that the Literacy community have been discussing on teaching phonemic and phonological awareness . I recommend following the thread and exploring some of the links shared. These included: As part of this discussion Jane Carroll shared an article, Do you speak Kiwinglish?: New Zealand's distinct linguistic identity.

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Suggest Apps for building Kinders Phonological skills

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Suggest Apps for building Kinders Phonological skills

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Suggested apps that build phonemic awareness for Kindergarteners for all types of learners.

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Apps are fun and motivating for kids! Let Reading Rockets help you find the very best educational apps that provide practice with essential skills in print awareness, phonics, spelling, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing. We've also included apps for children with dyslexia, ADHD, and autism spectrum disorder that support organization and goal-setting, language and communication, and emotional regulation.

Find more recommendations, from the experts at Common Sense Education: Apps and Websites to Build Literacy Skills: Top Picks.

Recommended Apps by Topic

Apps that give kids tools for communicating with others, through simple pictures, picture-based stories, and text-to-speech. (Selected especially for children with autism or Aspergers.)

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Apps are fun and motivating for kids! Let Reading Rockets help you find the very best educational apps that provide practice with essential skills in print awareness, phonics, spelling, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing. We've also included apps for children with dyslexia, ADHD, and autism spectrum disorder that support organization and goal-setting, language and communication, and emotional regulation.

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Popular reading program that helps build literacy and encourage reading.

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Teaching Tools | Resources for Teachers from Scholastic

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Building Phonemic Awareness skills for beginning readers.

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Kids in pre-K and kindergarten can play with words, rhymes, and syllables they hear in everyday speech to prepare for reading. This is called phonological awareness.

Parents and caregivers can introduce phonological awareness during reading, singing, or play activities.

Kids who struggle with these kinds of activities may be showing early signs of reading issues.

There are a few ways kids in pre-K and kindergarten can get ready to read. One way is by noticing and playing with the words, rhymes, and syllables they hear in everyday speech. This called phonological awareness .

Kids also start to tune in to the individual sounds or phonemes in words. This is called phonemic awareness. The more you can build on these early "pre-reading" skills, the more prepared your child will be for the challenge of learning to read.

Good phonological awareness starts with kids picking up on sounds, syllables and rhymes in the words they hear. Read aloud to your child frequently. Choose books that rhyme or repeat the same sound. Draw your child's attention to rhymes: "Fox, socks, box! Those words all rhyme. Do you hear how they almost sound the same?"

It also helps to point out repeated sounds. For example, if you're reading One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, ask your child to listen to the /fffff/ sound in fish. (Really stretch the sounds out at first.) Outside of story time, try pointing out other words that start with the /fffff/ sound, just like in the book.

Ask your child to pick out the rhyming words in books without your help. Ask, "Did you hear a word that rhymes with fox?" Teach your child nursery rhymes and practice saying them together. Or say four short words, like log, cat, hog, frog. See if your child can pick out the word that doesn't rhyme.

Make syllables easier to understand by clapping the "beats" your child hears in words. Let's say you choose the word elephant. Pause as you say each syllable - e-le-phant - and clap out each syllable together. You can also get your child up and moving by having your child stomp or jump with each syllable.

Guessing games such as "I spy" can be used to work on almost any phonological skill. Want to practice noticing what sounds word begin with? Try "I spy something red that starts with /s/." Want to work on rhymes? "I'm wearing something warm that rhymes with boat."

Singing in general is a great way to get kids rhyming. There are also good songs teachers use to focus on other kinds of phonological and phonemic awareness skills. "Apples and Bananas" is a fun one. You can search online for more songs about phonemic awareness or ask your child's teacher for recommendations.

Sound blending is an important skill for early readers. They need to put sound units - phonemes - together to be able to read a word smoothly. You can help your child start working on this by putting together sounds of different words. Ask your child to connect the beginning sound with the rest of a word. For example, say, "Start with /p/ and add /ig/. What do word do you hear if you put them together?"

Have your child work on hearing a word and taking it apart. Start by using compound words such as cowboy, baseball or firefly. Tell your child, "Say the word cowboy. Now take away boy. What word is left?"

You can also use LEGO bricks to make this point. Give your child two attached LEGO bricks to represent parts of the word. Then have your child physically take the LEGO pieces apart while removing part of the word.

8. Get creative with crafts.

Kids respond to hands-on learning. Try making a collage of items that start with the same sound using pictures from magazines. Sock puppets can be another fun way to work on these skills. Make one that likes to munch on words that start with a certain sound. Let your child have fun "feeding" the puppet different objects or pictures that start with that sound.

There are many resources and ideas online to work on phonological and phonemic awareness skills. Check out YouTube for teaching videos, Pinterest for games and crafts, or the app store for nursery rhymes, sound games, and songs.

Whatever you do, keep the activities short and fun. If your child finds one activity too difficult or boring, try something different. If you find that activities of this type are too hard, talk to your classroom teacher . Your district's early childhood department may also be able to help you get extra help.

There are many ways to include sound play in your daily routine with your child.

Kids who play with sounds, syllables and rhymes when they are young are gaining important reading readiness skills.

If these skills are really difficult for your child, you may want to seek extra support in this area.

About the Author

About the Author

Kelli Johnson, MA is an educational speech-language pathologist, working with students from early childhood through 12th grade.

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9 ways to build phonological awareness in pre-K and kindergarten

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Kids in pre-K and kindergarten can play with words, rhymes, and syllables they hear in everyday speech to prepare for reading. This is called phonological awareness. Parents and caregivers can introduce phonological awareness during reading, singing, or play activities. Kids who struggle with these kinds of activities may be showing early signs of reading issues.

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LD for beginning reader and Phonemic Awareness 

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LD for beginning reader and Phonemic Awareness 

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Article on how to teach PA to students with learning disabilities.

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By: ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation

Learning to read begins well before the first day of school. When Ron and Donna tell nursery rhymes to their baby, Mia, they are beginning to teach Mia to read. They are helping her to hear the similarities and differences in the sounds of words. She will begin to manipulate and understand sounds in spoken language, and she will practice this understanding by making up rhymes and new words of her own. She will learn the names of the letters and she will learn the different sounds each letter represents. As she gets a little older, Ron and Donna will teach her to write letters and numbers that she will already recognize by their shapes. Finally, she will associate the letters of the alphabet with the sounds of the words she uses when she speaks. At this point, she is on her way to learning to read!

When she tries to read books with her parents, at school, and on her own, Mia will learn how to learn new words by sounding them out. With more practice, she will begin to recognize familiar words easily and quickly, and she will know the patterns of spelling that appear in words and the patterns of words as they appear in sentences. She will be able to pay attention not just to the letters and words, but to the meanings they represent. Ultimately, Mia will be able to think about the meaning of the text as she reads.

Where does phonological awareness fit into this process?

Key to the process of learning to read is Mia's ability to identify the different sounds that make words and to associate these sounds with written words. In order to learn to read, Mia must be aware of phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest functional unit of sound. For example, the word cat contains three distinctly different sounds. There are 44 phonemes in the English language, including letter combinations such as /th/.

In addition to identifying these sounds, Mia must also be able to manipulate them. Word play involving segmenting words into their constituent sounds, rhyming words, and blending sounds to make words is also essential to the reading process. The ability to identify and manipulate the sounds of language is called phonological awareness.

Adams (1990) described five levels of phonological awareness ranging from an awareness of rhyme to being able to switch or substitute the components in a word. While phonological awareness affects early reading ability, the ability to read also increases phonological awareness (Smith, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1995).

Many children with learning disabilities have deficiencies in their ability to process phonological information. Thus, they do not readily learn how to relate letters of the alphabet to the sounds of language (Lyon, 1995). For all students, the processes of phonological awareness, including phonemic awareness, must be explicitly taught.

Children from culturally diverse backgrounds may have particular difficulties with phonological 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).

How is phonological awareness taught?

To teach phonological awareness, begin by demonstrating the relationships of parts to wholes. Then model and demonstrate how to segment short sentences into individual words, showing how the sentence is made up of words. Use chips or other manipulatives to represent the number of words in the sentence. Once the students understand part-whole relationships at the sentence level, move on to the word level, introducing multisyllable words for segmentation into syllables. Finally, move to phoneme tasks by modeling a specific sound and asking the students to produce that sound both in isolation and in a variety of words and syllables.

It is best to begin with easier words and then move on to more difficult ones. Five characteristics make a word easier or more difficult (Kameenui, 1995):

1. The size of the phonological unit (e.g., it is easier to break sentences into words and words into syllables than to break syllables into phonemes).

2. The number of phonemes in the word (e.g., it is easier to break phonemically short words such as no, see and cap than snort, sleep or scrap).

3. Phoneme position in words (e.g., initial consonants are easier than final consonants and middle consonants are most difficult).

4. Phonological properties of words (e.g., continuant such as /s/ and /m/ are easier than very brief sounds such as /t/).

5. Phonological awareness challenges. (e.g., rhyming and initial phoneme identification are easier than blending and segmenting.)

Examples of phonological awareness tasks include phoneme deletion ("What word would be left if the /k/ sound were taken away from cat?"); Word to word matching ("Do pen and pipe begin with the same sound?"); Blending ("What word would we have if we blended these sounds together: /m/ /o/ /p/?"); phoneme segmentation ("What sounds do you hear in the word hot?"); phoneme counting ("How many sounds do you hear in the word cake?"); and rhyming ("Tell me all of the words that you know that rhyme with the word cat?") (Stanovich, 1994).

Beginning readers require more direct instructional support from teachers in the early stages of teaching. This is illustrated in the following example: The teacher models the sound or the strategy for making the sound, and has the children use the strategy to produce the sound. It is very important that the teacher model the correct sounds. This is done using several examples for each dimension and level of difficulty. The children are prompted to use the strategy during guided practice and more difficult examples are introduced. A sequence and schedule of opportunities for children to apply and develop facility with sounds should be tailored to each child's needs, and should be given top priority. Opportunities to engage in phonological awareness activities should be plentiful, frequent, and fun (Kameenui, 1995).
References
References

Adams, M.J. (1990) Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kameenui, E.J. (Winter, 1996). Shakespeare and beginning reading: The readiness is all. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 27 (2).

Lyon, G. R. (1995). Toward a definition of dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia, 45, 3-27.

Lyon, G.R. (1994). Research In Learning Disabilities at the NICHD. Technical document. Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.

Smith, S.B., Simmons, D.C., & Kameenui, E.J. (February, 1995). Synthesis of research on phonological awareness: Principles and implications for reading acquisition. (Technical Report no. 21, National Center to Improve the Tools of Education). Eugene: University of Oregon.

Stanovich, K.E. (1994). Romance and reality. The Reading Teacher, 47, 280-291.

A companion digest, #E539, and a companion ERIC minibibliography are available on request. ERIC Digests are in the public domain and may be freely reproduced and disseminated. This publication was prepared with funding from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under contract no. RR93002005. The opinions expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of OERI or the Department of Education.

The ERIC Clearinghouse on Disabilities and Gifted Education, The Council for Exceptional Children, 1920 Association Drive Reston, VA 22091

ERIC Digest #E540 December 1995

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Beginning Reading and Phonological Awareness for Students with Learning Disabilities

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LD OnLine is the leading website on learning disabilities, learning disorders and differences. Parents and teachers of learning disabled children will find authoritative guidance on attention deficit disorder, ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, dysnomia, reading difficulties, speech and related disorders.

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Teacher uses Haggerty Phonemic Awareness to teach sounds and blending to her class.

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Phonemic Awareness Lesson | For Teachers: Lesson Ideas, Class Activities | Preschool & Kindergarten

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Example of assessing Phonological Awareness skills.

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Worksheets and activities for teaching.

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Worksheets for Kids & Free Printables | Education.com

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Worksheets and printables that help children practice key skills. Download, print & watch your kids learn today!

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Phonemic awareness Lessons for Kindergarten Teachers

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Phonemic awareness Lessons for Kindergarten Teachers

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Information, suggestions, and activities for teachers.

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Phonemic awareness is the recognition of basic speech sounds. Phonemic awareness activities help young children know that words are made of sounds.

It is the skill of noticing, thinking about and working with individual sounds in words. Separating a spoken word, like cat, into three distinct sounds (or phonemes) requires a child to exercise phonemic awareness.

As children learn to hear, copy and play with separate sounds, they begin to understand letter-sound relationships.

The three kinds of activities below stimulate early literacy in preschool and kindergarten and help children get ready for reading.

Children are learning to:

hear rhyming words e.g. hit, bit, sit, lit

break words into syllables e.g. hel i cop ter

hear some beginning sounds e.g. Peter Pumpkin picked...

blend sounds together to make words j-um-p

hear beginning and ending sounds e.g. pen starts with p; ends with n

delete a beginning or end sound to make a new word. e.g. meat eat or bump bum

Rhyme

Phonemic awareness early literacy activities are fun for children if you turn them into games. Begin with rhythm and rhyme as it helps children develop auditory discrimination and awareness. There are many commercial games and supplies available for rhyming activities.

Rhyming games

Use your imagination to make up simple games. A stack of rhyming cards and a title is generally enough to hold the students' attention when teaching phonemic awareness rhyming activities. See the example below.

Game - Build a Rhyming Road

Materials:

commercial or other rhyming cards

Procedure:

separate the matching rhyming cards into two piles, one pile would have hat, the other pile would have the matching card, rat

have the children sit in a circle on the carpet

give each child a rhyme card from the first pile

the teacher holds the other matching rhyming cards from the second pile

the teacher places the first card on the carpet, the child with the matching card places his/her card next to the teacher's card, starting a row

as each new teacher rhyming card is placed on the rug, the child with the matching card takes a turn placing his/her card beside it to "build a road"

the teacher prompts when necessary

the children like to make the roads twist and turn all over the carpet

Kindergarten children are easily motivated to play games, just change the names and format often to keep their attention.

Rhyming puzzles

Rhyming puzzles also help children to grasp the concept of rhyme. In the beginning of the year, remove all but 4 or 5 sets of cards from the puzzle boxes as some children get overwhelmed by the number of choices a whole box offers.

Pocket chart activities

Use your pocket chart for teaching rhyme. Use pictures that are clearly identifiable to children sitting the farthest away. Sit on the carpet yourself and check the pictures from a student's viewpoint. Children like to take turns placing their cards next to the correct rhyming cards in the pocket chart. Change the cards with themes, literature and seasons.

The pictures in many rhyming puzzles and games are clear, colorful images and are the perfect size for a pocket chart.

Although the cards and puzzle pieces may be designed for teaching rhyme, the individual picture puzzle pieces can also be used to teach many other aspects of phonemic awareness, such as beginning or ending sounds.

Other areas of phonemic awareness

I have only touched on a small portion of phonemic awareness here. For more information on rhythm, teaching parts of a word, sequencing sounds, separation of sounds and manipulation of sounds I recommend Getting Ready to Read: Independent Phonemic Awareness Centers for Emergent Readers (I Can Read! (Creative Teaching Press).

My class enjoyed playing these games and regular playing of the games ensured that all students got sequential teaching in phonemic awareness.

It is fairly time consuming to make the games but I had a wonderful parent who volunteered to construct and laminate most of the games.

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PHONEMIC AWARENESS - Kindergarten Lessons

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Phonemic awareness is the recognition of basic speech sounds. Phonemic awareness activities help young children know that words are made of sounds. It is the skill of noticing, thinking about and working with individual sounds in words. Separating a spoken word, like cat, into three distinct sounds (or phonemes) requires a child to exercise phonemic awareness.

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Charts, suggestions, and resources for teaching blending and segmentation for Phonemic Awareness.

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Phonological skill develops in a predictable progression. This concept is important, as it provides the basis for sequencing teaching tasks from easy to more difficult. Table 1 outlines the relative difficulty of phonological awareness tasks. Table 2 is a more specific synthesis of several research reviews and summaries (Adams et al., 1998; Gillon, 2004; Goswami, 2000; Paulson, 2004; Rath, 2001) that ties specific ages to the typical accomplishment of those phonological awareness tasks.

Prerequisite to phonological awareness is basic listening skill; the acquisition of a several-thousand word vocabulary; the ability to imitate and produce basic sentence structures; and the use of language to express needs, react to others, comment on experience, and understand what others intend.

Table 1. Phonological skills, from most basic to advanced

Word awareness

Tracking the words in sentences.

Note: This semantic language skill is much less directly predictive of reading than the skills that follow and less important to teach directly (Gillon, 2004). It is not so much a phonological skill as a semantic (meaning-based) language skill.

Responsiveness to rhyme and alliteration during word play

Enjoying and reciting learned rhyming words or alliterative phrases in familiar storybooks or nursery rhymes.

Syllable awareness

Counting, tapping, blending, or segmenting a word into syllables.

Onset and rime manipulation

The ability to produce a rhyming word depends on understanding that rhyming words have the same rime. Recognizing a rhyme is much easier than producing a rhyme.

Phoneme awareness

Identify and match the initial sounds in words, then the final and middle sounds (e.g., "Which picture begins with /m/?"; "Find another picture that ends in /r/").

Segment and produce the initial sound, then the final and middle sounds (e.g., "What sound does zoo start with?"; "Say the last sound in milk"; "Say the vowel sound in rope ").

Blend sounds into words (e.g., "Listen: /f/ /ē/ /t/. Say it fast").

Segment the phonemes in two- or three-sound words, moving to four- and five- sound words as the student becomes proficient (e.g., "The word is eyes. Stretch and say the sounds: /ī/ /z/").

Manipulate phonemes by removing, adding, or substituting sounds (e.g., "Say smoke without the /m/").

Table 2. Ages at which 80-90 percent of typical students have achieved a phonological skill

4

Rote imitation and enjoyment of rhyme and alliteration

pool, drool, tool
"Seven silly snakes sang songs seriously."

5

Rhyme recognition, odd word out

"Which two words rhyme:
stair, steel, chair?"

Recognition of phonemic changes in words

" Hickory Dickory Clock. That's not right!"

Clapping, counting syllables

5½

Distinguishing and remembering separate phonemes in a series

Show sequences of single phonemes with colored blocks: /s/ /s/ /f/; /z/ /sh/ /z/.

Producing a rhyme

"Tell me a word that rhymes with car." ( star)

Matching initial sounds; isolating an initial sound

"Say the first sound in ride (/r/); sock (/s/); love (/l/)."

6

Compound word deletion

"Say cowboy. Say it again, but don't say cow."

Syllable deletion

"Say parsnip. Say it again, but don't say par."

Phoneme segmentation of words that have simple syllables with two or three phonemes (no blends)

"Say the word as you move a chip for each sound."

6½

Phoneme segmentation of words that have up to three or four phonemes (include blends)

"Say the word slowly while you tap the sounds."

Phoneme substitution to build new words that have simple syllables (no blends)

"Change the /j/ in cage to /n/.
Change the /ā/ in cane to /ō/."

7

Sound deletion (initial and final positions)

"Say meat. Say it again, without the /m/."
"Say safe. Say it again, without the /f/."

8

Sound deletion (initial position, include blends)

"Say prank. Say it again, without the /p/."

9

Sound deletion (medial and final blend positions)

"Say snail. Say it again, without the /n/."
"Say fork. Say it again, without the /k/."

Paulson (2004) confirmed the hierarchy of phonological skill acquisition in 5-year-olds entering kindergarten. Only 7 percent of 5-year-olds who had not yet had kindergarten could segment phonemes in spoken words. The production of rhymes was more difficult for 5-year-olds than commonly assumed, as only 61 percent could give a rhyming word for a stimulus. Only 29 percent could blend single phonemes into whole words. Although some young students will pick up these skills with relative ease during the kindergarten year - especially if the curriculum includes explicit activities - other students must be taught these metalinguistic skills directly and systematically.

Moats, L, & Tolman, C (2009). Excerpted from Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS): The Speech Sounds of English: Phonetics, Phonology, and Phoneme Awareness (Module 2). Boston: Sopris West.

For more information on Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) visit Voyager Sopris .

For any reprint requests, please contact the author or publisher listed.

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Basic listening skills and "word awareness" are critical precursors to phonological awareness. Learn the milestones for acquiring phonological skills.

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videos, suggestion, and activities, on the area of Phonemic awareness: Sounds and Symbols.

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About the Program Word play and rhyming games can prepare children to become readers by developing their ear for language. The games you play with your child are more than just fun. In fact, they will get your child started on the road to reading. Word games build what’s called phonemic awareness —…

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Reach Workshop Series: Phonemic Awareness

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Reach Workshop Series: Phonemic Awareness

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Teachers show activities and explain the levels of Phonemic Awareness for Kinder students learning to read.

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REACH Workshop Series: Phonological Awareness

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Engaging Phonemic Awareness Activities for Kindergarten grades

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Engaging Phonemic Awareness Activities for Kindergarten grades

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Steve Brostowitz shares engaging hands on activities for students to learn letter sounds.

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Kindergarten Phonological Awareness Activities : Early Education

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This Stay at Home Mom former teacher discusses Phonemic Awareness, why it is important, and adds activities to help teach.

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Have you ever heard the term phonemic awareness and wondered what it is?

I get a lot of emails from parents who are ready to teach their child how to read. They tell me that their children know their letters and their sounds, therefore they are Ready to READ! "Where do we start and what do we do next?" they ask.

I LOVE their enthusiasm! I LOVE their willingness to dive right in.

However... diving into a full-blown reading curriculum at that early stage is not the next step. Instead, to build a strong foundation for reading success, children need to master Phonological/Phonemic Awareness.

What is Phonological/Phonemic Awareness?
Phonological and Phonemic Awareness is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate sounds (phonemes). This skill provides a strong foundation for early reading success. As students become more proficient in hearing, identifying and manipulating sounds, they can successfully move onto segmenting and blending words. Therefore, a systematic and cohesive approach to teaching phonological awareness can build confident readers who are less likely to struggle with decoding and spelling skills. Students with strong phonemic awareness are much more likely to be successful readers.

Who Can Benefit from Phonological/Phonemic Awareness?
Reading instruction is important for all students. A strong foundation in phonological/phonemic awareness can benefit:
*Beginning Readers
*Struggling Readers
*Students with autism or other developmental disabilities
*Pre-Kindergarten, Kindergarten and 1st Grade Students

Authentic Phonemic Awareness is done without printed words. It is all about the sounds that letters make. It gives students the ability to work with sounds, manipulate sounds and master these sounds in a variety of ways. When students are able to do these skills successfully, they are able to jump into phonics with a lot less struggle. Phonics (not Phonemic Awareness) works with connecting the sounds to printed letters and words. When you target phonemic awareness first, it allows a child to focus on one thing...sounds. However, when you try to teach both phonemic awareness (sounds) and phonics (linking sounds to letters and words), it can be overwhelming and frustrating for children learning to read.

When a child struggles with reading, the gaps are often connected to a lack of phonemic awareness skills. Fortunately, going back and reinforcing these skills can help fill in the gaps and build stronger readers.

Within my Phonemic Awareness Bundle, I have provided an opportunity to practice many skills necessary to give children a strong foundation with sounds. Let's take a look at this bundle, see how it works and why it is an important component to reading success.

The pictures and activities that I am about to show you below are all stored in my Phonemic Awareness Kit. This is EASY to set up and just requires a box and some file folders. This method keeps me organized and all of my materials are in one place. When my teaching materials are organized, I am more equipped to meet the needs of those that I am teaching.

In this post, I will show you 13 different activities to help build phonemic awareness.

Also Included in the Bundle:

This bundle has everything that you'll need to set a strong foundation for reading readiness. In addition to the activities, the bundle includes pre-assessments, quarterly scopes, lessons plans, post-assessments and progress trackers.

The mid-assessments help you to identify the pace of a student's learning, while the post-assessment gives you the opportunity to gage mastery of the skills that have been taught. The assessment trackers allow you to easily identify small groups and students who may benefit from scaffold or extension activities.
Scope:
The scope gives you a brief outline of the skills that will be introduced and reviewed on a weekly basis.
Lesson Plans:
Each lesson plan offers a brief introduction or review that can be implemented in a large or small group. This lesson is then followed by an activity to allow students to practice what they have learned. A section of anecdotal notes to assist in your teaching.
What are the Components to Phonemic Awareness?
I like to start with and include the following packets when teaching phonemic awareness:

Let's start with Beginning Sounds. This is a great place to start, but it is typically the only component of phonemic awareness that many people implement.
1. Beginning Sounds Pocket Chart
Once you print out the letters and picture cards, it is a great idea to set them up and get them organized. Therefore, I print, laminate and cut out all of the pieces.

Although you typically don't want to use printed letters or words when teaching phonemic awareness, I found it helpful with the pocket chart cards. It lays a great foundation for beginning sounds.

Each set of pocket chart cards has a picture of the beginning sound for every letter of the alphabet.

Once the cards have been printed and laminated, I like to keep them stored and organized in a file folder system. This allows me to keep the contents of my Phonemic Awareness Kit organized and ready to use.
This is how I store the Beginning Sound Pocket Cards...
I started by purchasing file folders and library cards. The library cards below are a peel and stick kind. That makes it easy for me to place 6 cards on one file folder.

I will have a total of 5 file folders for this activity:

Once the cards and the file folders are ready to go, simply paperclip the picture cards to the back of each set and slip them into the library card envelope. This system keeps you organized and makes the cards easy to access.

Each of the five file folders look like this...

First, when you teach the beginning sounds, start with one sound at a time. Introduce the letter and sounds that the letters make. I like to use a pocket chart system for this packet. This is a portable one, but you can use any size pocket chart you have.

When students become more proficient in mastering the letter sounds, they increase the difficulty of the activity by having them sort two or more sets at the same time. For example, you might have individually taught the beginning sounds for b and d. You can up-level the activity by having all the pictures for these two sounds out and have the student sort the picture cards next to the correct letter.

Put 5-6 letters out that correspond with the specific beginning sound the students are working on. Students say the beginning sound for each picture and then cover it with their marker. For example.../d/../d/...dog. Just like the traditional Tic-Tac-Toe game, 3 in a Row wins the round. If a student wins the round, they take the letter d. Whoever wins the most letters, wins the game!

Next, you want to further support beginning sounds with the
3. Beginning Sounds (Cut and Paste) Packet
This packet also has two options: a colored version and a black and white version.

You can keep this set organized in your in a file folder system as well.

You will need 2 file folders and paperclips to organize all of those little pictures.

The cards the sets are numbered. This will help you keep the sets together and in case they get scattered (which they will) you can place them back with their set. This system helps you keep everything organized. Organization is KEY!

Now that your child/student has fully mastered their beginning sounds, they are able to move onto middle and ending sounds. By practicing, isolating and mastering these sounds, students are getting ready to move onto phonics. This is where they will be able to connect the sounds of spoken language to the printed letters.

Therefore, the next step in the process would be to work on the
4. Middle Sounds (Medial) Cut and Paste Packet
Hearing the middle sounds in a word can be challenging for kids. While they are practicing hearing the middle (medial) sound, they are also working on the beginning sound. They are isolating the beginning in order to hear the middle. Therefore, you are essentially enforcing the concept of sounding out words, which is a skill needed for phonics.

For example, the upper row of pictures are:

Each short vowel sound is represented on each set.

Now students work to hear and match a picture that has the same vowel sound.

This simple skill is helping prepare students to sound our simple CVC ( consonant-vowel-consonant) words when they begin to work on phonics.

Likewise, this simple skill can be implemented with a pocket chart to teach or practice middle sounds.

After Middle (Medial) Sounds, students work to hear the ending sounds.

When beginning readers start to read, they often delete the ending sound and make up their own sound. For example, if they see (or even sound out) the " ca.." in a word, they automatically assume that it must be the word CAT. They don't take time to sound out the ending sounds. Beginning readers often make up words as they go. However, by strategically focusing on ending sounds, you can eliminate this problem, and help students to hear the ending sounds in each word. By focusing on this skill of isolation sounds, you are helping to prepare a student to read successfully and with a lot less struggle. You are laying a foundation for success when they start to learn phonics.
#5 Ending Sounds (cut and paste) Packet
Keep the picture cards organized in a file folder system.
For the ending sounds packets, you will need 2 file folders.

Once students have worked to hear and isolate each individual sound, they can move on to segmenting and blending sounds.

#6 Segmenting and Blending Cards (Push and Blend)
This is a FUN packet to work with as students use hands-on manipulatives to hear each sound and blend the sounds together. This task really helps set students up for success when it comes to phonics and sounding out words. I like to use these counters when segmenting and blending sounds in a word.
This is a picture of a rat. Even the word mouse would work.
The word rat has three sounds /r/ /a/ /t/....rat.
Students put a counter up for each sound they hear. This helps them isolate each sound in the word. If there are 3 circles, that means they must hear and isolate those 3 sounds. This really helps students to and isolate every sound.
Once they finish pushing up the counters for each sound, they sweep their finger across the arrow to blend the word.

This packet contains 240 words for students to segment and blend! This provides them with a LOT of opportunities to practice and master that necessary skill of segmenting and blending phonemes (sounds) to make a word.
This packet works with words that have 2, 3, 4, and 5 phonemes (sounds).
#7 Counting Syllables (Visual and Tactile)
The Counting Syllables Packet allows students to work with and master syllables in words. When a student can successfully chunk words into syllables, it also helps with decoding and spelling. When they begin to learn more phonics rules, they are able to implement those rules into the chunks they hear. When a child knows how to decode syllables, they become more fluent readers who can better comprehend the text they are reading.

#8 Counting Syllables Sorting and Clip Cards
The Counting Syllables Sorting and Clip Cards are similar to the Visual and Tactile packet, except this activity include numerals to note how many syllables are in the word.

The counting syllable cards can be used in two ways:
Option #1
Sort into containers by the number of syllables. NOTE: If students are struggling to hear the number of syllables in a word, have them place their hand under their chin. The mouth will open and the jaw will drop with each syllable. Once the student feels the jaw tap their hand, they know that is one syllable sound.I use four containers to sort the syllable cards.
Option #2
Use clothespins to clip the correct number of syllables for each picture.

With the time to rhyme cards, students work on hearing the ending sounds to identify a rhyme.
In the example below, the following words rhyme:
All of these activities are great for small groups or reading intervention.

I like to use the pocket chart with this activity as well.

Once again, storing and organizing the sets is key to success!

For instance, you can keep the Time to Rhyme mats on a ring, flip and practice.
How do I organize this set?
I use two file folders to place the little cards in:

File folder #1: Sets 1-12

File Folder #2: Sets 13-25

The mini picture cards get paperclipped inside the file folder. Underneath each set of cards, I have them labeled. I simply pull the set out that I need for each Time to Rhyme card.

Once I am finished with the set, it goes back into my Phonemic Awareness Kit.
#10 Rhyming Strips (Odd One Out)
In this activity, students focus on hearing the rhyme in two pictures and identifying the "odd one out." Although this seems like such a simple activity, it is one that many students really struggle with.

Students flip and name the picture on the strip. In this case, they would say:

mop, hat, cat. They identify the rhyming set (cat and hat), and mark the odd one out (mop).

This simple task helps students to hear rhyming words, an important skill for reading success.
Here is one more example:
The words corn, horn and lamp. The odd one out is lamp.

Each set of rhyming strips is labeled with numbers. I printed the Rhyming Strips Answer Keys on colored paper to match each Rhyming Strip Set. The answer keys correspond with the set numbers.
It tells you what the pictures are and which one is the odd one out.

Therefore, this set up makes it EASY for YOU (the teacher) and students can successfully move through the lesson without any delays.

Once they have been printed out, you can place the colored pages in a binder or spiral bind them.

Then, once you are done using this activity,

you can also put it back into your Phonemic Awareness Tool Kit!
#11 Phoneme Substitution Cards
This packet is an extension to the Segment and Blend Cards. Students segment a simple CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) word and change the beginning, medial or final sound of the word to create a new word.

As an extension activity, add magnet letters to practice sounding out and spelling the words. Adding letters helps make the connection from phonemic awareness to beginning phonics and reading.
#12 Break the Code Sound Cards
In this fun puzzle game, students identify the initial sounds of each picture, then decide what word the initial sounds form.

Add magnet letters as an extension for beginning reading:

Once students have a good grasp on how to manipulate sounds, segment and blend, and chunk sounds into syllables, they are ready for Onset and Rime Cards. In this activity, students complete the word by adding a word family to the initial letter.

I hope that this post is helpful in showing you how to successfully implement Phonemic Awareness.

Each packet is sold separately or you can purchase
Where do I go after this?
After the Alphabet Curriculum, here is the next stop:
CVC Word Families
Learning to read should be such a special time for kids!
Keep enjoying the journey!
Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.
Annie

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What is Phonemic Awareness and Why Teach it?

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Have you ever heard the term phonemic awareness and wondered what it is? I get a lot of emails from parents who are ready to teach their child how to read. They tell me that their children know their letters and their sounds, therefore they are Ready to READ!