Why is Phonological Awareness So Important?

Did you know that when emergent readers have a solid foundation in phonological awareness it sets them up for success throughout their reading experiences? When I first started teaching, I had no idea how to teach phonological awareness. Honestly, I didn't even know what it was. What I did know was that it was IMPORTANT and that I needed to teach it to my first graders. I also knew that I needed to find fun and engaging activities for my students.

So what is Phonological Awareness?

In a nutshell, it is a skill that allows students to recognize and manipulate sounds of the spoken language. Most people think that reading instruction should begin with letters and sounds. But most kids are preparing to read LONG before they learn their letters and sounds. Reading actually starts when kids begin to pay attention to the sounds of spoken words. So let's take some time to break it down.

There are several components to phonological awareness and each level is important to a student’s development. 

Rhyme- Hey diddle diddle the cat and the........ FIDDLE! Rhyme is important because it gets children thinking about playing with words. But most importantly, it teaches them the structure of words, which is a prerequisite for learning to read word families and decode and spell words.

Word Awareness- I like to call this sentence segmentation. /I like to eat pizza./ This sentence has five words. Students who have word awareness will recognize that pizza is one word even though it has two syllables.

Syllables- When students are able to count syllables in words, they become better decoders, spellers and writers.

Phonemic Awareness- Is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the smallest units of spoken sound. For example: cat has three sounds /c/ /a/ /t/.

In order to be successful, students should have the ability to blend, segment, and manipulate phonemes. When students are first learning this skill, it may be difficult for them to hear individual sounds. Therefore, you may want to start at the onset rime level. Here are some examples:

Onset Rime Level:

Blending- "I am going to say two word parts and I want you to put them back together to solve the mystery word" /c/ /at/. The word is cat!

Segmenting- "I am going to say a word and I want you to separate it into two word parts. Are you ready?" /bag/ The student responds /b/ /ag/.

Individual Phoneme Level:

Once students are able to understand the onset rime level of phonemes, it is time to move to the individual phoneme level. Here are some examples. 

Blending- "I am going to say three word parts (sounds) and I want you to put them back together to solve the mystery word" /c/ /a/ /t/. The word is cat!

Segmenting- "I am going to say a word and I want you to sound it out by saying each sound in the word. Are you ready?" bag. Student responds /b/ /a/ /g/.

Once students have a solid foundation of blending and segmenting phonemes, it is time to work on manipulation, addition, and deletion. Here are some examples of each. 

Phoneme Deletion: Say /stop/ now say stop again but without the /s/ (top)

Phoneme Addition: Say /tone/ now say tone again but this time add the /s/ sound at the beginning (stone)

Phoneme Manipulation: Say /rose/ now say it again but instead of /r/ at the beginning say /n/ (nose)

Now that you know a little bit about Phonological Awareness you may be wondering where to start. I have created this simple assessment to help get you started. In the next couple of days, I will be sharing all about this assessment and how to use it. Stay Tuned!