Curriculum Corner- Phonemic Awareness

by Leigh Volkers
Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words, and the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds. In other words, it is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words. Basic levels of phonological (phonemic) awareness activities include listening to, recognizing, and completing rhymes; segmenting spoken words in sentences and syllables in words; and recognizing onset and rime in word families (such as rat, pat, chat). It is important to note that phonemic awareness is not the same as phonics. Phonemic awareness is auditory and does not involve letters in print. Research has shown that children who have mastered phonemic awareness activities will have an easier time learning to read. As a beginning reader, your child will need to be able to blend sounds together to read words. To decode a word, children must be able to say the sound of each letter in the word and then blend those sounds together. For example, /c/ + /a/ + /t/ = cat (where /c/ stands for the sound that the letter c makes, /a/ represents the sound that the letter a stands for, etc.). Even before a child begins to associate particular sounds with particular letters, the skill of blending sounds together to form words can be practiced. This is a skill that is a focus of instruction during the first trimester of Kindergarten. Please also work on this skill at home (or in the car, at the grocery store, anywhere that you find you have an extra 3 minutes). You can use the following format to give your child additional practice in blending sounds: I am going to say a word, but I am going to break up the sounds. I want you to tell me what word I am saying. Here are the sounds, /t/ /u/ /b/, what word is that? If your child cannot tell you the word then repeat the sounds and tell your child the word afterwards. The goal is for your child to blend three sounds together to form a word. Here are some words to get you started with this game: goat, bat, map, tap, flag, phone, rope, milk, duck, and smile. This game can be played with any words, be creative! ____________________________________________________________________________________ Here is another fun phonemic awareness game, titled Initial Sound Switcheroo. This game will provide your child with practice hearing and manipulating sounds in words. Explain to your child that you are going to play a word game. Your child will make new words by replacing the first sound in each word you say with the sound /s/. For example, if you say the word hand your child will make the switch and say the word sand. Continue with these other words: hit, well, funny, bun, mad, bend, rat, rope If your child has difficulty with this skill, model it for your child. For example, explain that you are going to take a word and make new words from it. You might say I can make a new word. I can take the /s/ off sit, put on a /p/, and I have a new word- pit. Can you take the /s/ off sat and put on a /m/ to make a new word? What is the new word? (mat).

We play a similar game with the childrens names at school in which we switch all of the beginning sounds to a new letter sound. For example, when we are using /J/ as the initial sound, Sophie becomes Jophie and Carly becomes Jarly. We refer to these as our silly rhyme names. After your child becomes skilled at substituting initial consonant sounds, repeat the same activity, but this time have your child substitute final consonant sounds. For example, replace the last sound in man with the sound /p/ to get map. Finally, have your child replace the middle sound. For example, replace the middle sound in ride with /o/ to get rode.