Episode 2: Phonological Awareness
Phonological Awareness: An Introduction
Phonological awareness is the beating heart of reading. It’s where a reader’s journey first begins, and it’s of the utmost importance. As educators, we are called to introduce phonological awareness as our readers set out on their reading adventures.
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Phonological Awareness
What is it?: Phonological awareness is the ability to manipulate and recognize the spoken parts of sentences and words. It is a continuum of skills that develop over time that are crucial to reading and spelling success. Examples: rhyme, alliteration, sentence segmentation, and identifying syllables.
Why is it important?: Phonological awareness skills are the center of learning as students learn to decode and spell print words. These skills are especially important in the early years - pre-k, kindergarten, and first grade. Early, explicit teaching of phonological awareness skills alleviates future struggles for readers.
The Scoop:
The left side of the umbrella is phonological awareness learned in the early years. These include early skills such as rhyming, syllable counting, word awareness/sentence segmentation).
The right side of the umbrella is phonemic awareness learned “later” on with phonics instruction. This side includes blending, segmenting, deleting, adding, etc. It is best to put these into print practice as early as possible.
Kids with this foundation can clap out syllables in a word, make oral rhymes, and recognize words with the same initial sound (“cat” and “cane”, “hat” and “harp).
Phonological awareness is an umbrella term that’s all-encompassing. It has two sides: phonological awareness and phonemic awareness.
Parts of Phonological Awareness
Word Awareness (Sentence Segmentation)
Level 1: Repeating Sentences (celebrity sentences activity)
Teacher: “Repeat my sentence: I like pizza.”
Students speak into their imaginary microphones: “I like pizza.”
Level 2: Sentence Segmentation
Using manipulatives (chips, mini erasers, etc.), they drag down a chip for each word they hear.
Standing on the carpet, they hop out each word in the sentence.
While transitioning from carpet to desk, students take one step for each word they hear in the sentence.
Teacher: “Can you help me count the words in my sentence? I like cookies. I hear three words in that sentence. Do you?”
Level 3: White space between words
Teacher: “I’m going to write a sentence on the board. The sentence is ‘I see the dog.’ Can you come up and circle the white space between the words?”
Students: Circle or underline the white space between words.
Rhyme
Level 1: Repeating Rhyme
Discuss how these words rhyme at the end.
Teacher: “I have two words: cat / hat.”
Students: “Cat / hat.”
Level 2: Identifying Rhyme
Teacher: “I have three words: cat / hat. Cat / dog. Which pair rhymes?”
Students: “Cat / hat!”
Level 3: Producing Rhyme
Teacher: “I’m going to say a word. Can you tell me a word that rhymes with ‘map’?”
Students: “Sap! Lap! Gap!”
Syllables
Level 1: Compound words
Start by using compound words they’re familiar with. They are able to first take two words they know and put them together to make a word.
Teacher: “What word am I saying: pop / corn.”
Students: “Popcorn!”
Teacher: “Foot / ball.”
Students: “Football!”
Level 2: Syllable blending
Teacher: “Listen to my word. Mon / key.”
Students: “Monkey!”
Level 3: Syllable segmentation
Transition times: students hop back to their desks the number of syllables in your word.
Syllable Sock-It: students put one sock on their hand and clap out the word.
Teacher: “My word is a / maz / ing. How many syllables?”
Students: “Three!”
Teacher: “My word is fan / tas / tic.”
How and When to Teach Phonological Awareness:
The Scoop:
It used to be believed that if children don’t understand the beginning parts of phonological awareness (rhyming, syllables, etc.), then we had to stay there. But that’s actually damaging to students. We should not stay at these early skills until mastery is achieved.
Blending and segmenting are the most important phonics skills, and we want to introduce these skills as soon as students are ready.
How to frontload early skills (without sacrificing blending and segmenting):
Morning Meetings:
Read a rhyming book together and have students help you read it.
Thumbs up/thumbs down - teacher says two words that may or may not rhyme and students give a thumbs up or thumbs down accordingly.
Read a book and segment the sentences together by counting how many words are in the sentence. For each word, they count, have them stand for one word, and squat for another. This works best during carpet time.
Lining up:
Tie in syllable counting while students are lining up for lunch, recess, or another class. “If you are wearing yell-ow, please line up. If you’re wearing pur-ple, it’s your turn to line up.”
Additional Resources & References:
Resources:
References:
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