PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS

Phonological Awareness:

In this area of the subject we do some activities of the “Phonological Awareness Package” compiled by Jane Sheils & Ynonne Sawyers.

Now, I show you at least one activity of each of these nine levels.

Level 1: Exposure to Nursery Rhymes.

Hearing, learning and reciting nursery rhymes can help young children toward becoming proficient readers.  They also develop early literacy skills.

Help children develop an ear for rhyme by:

1. Telling children that the words sound the same at the end;

2. Reading aloud and reciting to children and having the children themselves recite and sing nursery rhymes and poems.

It’s important to use care when selecting nursery rhymes.

First, select poems and rhymes that actually do contain rhyming words.

Second, it is easier for young children to hear words that rhyme if they are in close proximity to one another. It is easier for young children to hear rhyming words that are situated in closer proximity.

Here we have some nursery rhymes:

Level 2: Word Awareness.

The activities in this section help children to identify words within sentences.  When speaking, children do not usually concentrate on individual words, but this is necessary when they are learning to read.  In these activities children will develop an awareness of words in spoken and written sentences and understand that word order has an effect on sentence meaning.  Compound words are introduced to encourage the child to look within the word for meaningful parts.

Because words and syllables are more salient and more directly perceivable than individual phonemes, activities that involve counting the number of words in a sentence or syllables in a word can be used as initial steps leading to isolated phoneme synthesis and segmentation.

In this level I do the activity "COMPOUND WORDS" Click here!  
We use pictures to discuss compound words, they are words created by bringing two words together. For example, rain bow. Teacher holds two pictures together and children discover it can make the word rainbow. 

Level 3: Recognition and Production of Rhyme.

Rhyme activities introduce children to the sound structure of words.  Especially when rhyme recognition skills are not well established, the visual representation of the words provides great assistance. Once the skill is firmly in place, the task may be made more difficult by presenting the words completely orally.

To be aware that words can have a similar end-sound implies a critical step in metalinguistic understanding – that of ignoring the meaning of a word in order to attend to its internal structure.  This leads to a new classification system, one in which words are classified according to end-sound rather than meaning.  Children as young as three or four years can make judgements such as – when words rhyme, and when they begin with the same sound. The sensitivity to rhyme makes both a direct and indirect contribution to reading.  The child’s subsequent sensitivity to common letter sequences then makes a significant contribution to reading strategy development.  Indirectly, the recognition of rhyme promotes the refining of word analysis from intra-word segments (such as rhyme) to analysis at the level of the phoneme.

In this level I do the activity "BODY NAME GAME" Click here! 

Begin by modelling how to rhyme.  Point to parts of your body; say a rhyming word and your child should say the body part.  This puts rhyming into their ears with a visual cue (pointing).  If you point to your nose and say rose, they will automatically say nose.  

Also I do the activity called "PUT YOUR THUMBS UP" Click here! 

Children identify words that rhyme in a series of activities.  For example, “Put your thumbs up if these two words rhyme, red – bed. 

And I do the activity called "RHYME HUNT" Click here!

Tell the children that “we’re going on a rhyme hunt’, and ask them to find something in the room that rhymes with a given word.  For example what rhymes with bear (chair).

Level 4: Recognition and Production of Syllables.

In this section children divide spoken words into syllables or ‘beats’- a task which is easier than finding the individual sounds within words.

In the early activities children are provided with visual representations for the syllables to make the task more concrete.  They should also be encouraged to move their body, clap, tap etc., to help them find the syllables as they day the words.  Later, spelling is facilitated by matching syllables found in spoken words to their written equivalents.

In this level I do the activity "TEACHER MAY WE?" Click here! 

As in the game Mother May I? Have your students line up some distance away and face you.  Give directions that require the children to count the number of syllables in a word. E.g. “You must count the syllables in the word “book” – jump that many spaces forward.  Children respond “Teacher may we?”  With your affirmative response the children say “book” and each child jumps one space forward.  Vary the number of syllables and the type of movements.  The first student to reach you is the winner. List of suitable words 

Level 5: Recognition and Production of Initial Sounds.

Initial sound activities show children that words contain phonemes and introduces how phonemes sound and feel when spoken in isolation.

Individual phonemes are more difficult to specify because their acoustic values vary with the phonemes that precede and follow them in a word (co-articulation), whereas syllables have relatively constant values in a word and hence are more readily recognised.  The fact that consonants are “folded” into vowels can be understood by noting the different tongue positions for the beginning /d/ sound when it is followed by /oo/ and by /i/.

In this level I do the activity "PHONEME TRAIN" Click here! 

To introduce the concept of phoneme boxes display a picture of a train with an engine, a passenger car and a caboose.  Explain that the words have a beginning, middle and an end just as a train has a beginning, middle and an end.  Articulate CVC (e.g. /c/c…/a/…/t/) and point to the box corresponding to the position of each sound in the word.  Ask children to show where they hear the /t/ in cat.  Could also use a picture of cat cut into three and ask children to stick each piece of the appropriate section in the train.

Also, I do the activity called "GOING SHOPPING" 

Children sit in a circle.  A child goes shopping.  The teacher gives this child a basket, who then goes shopping.  The shopper says “Who has something that begins with /  /  naming a phoneme.  Each child who has cards beginning with that sound holds them up and as the ‘shopper” comes to them, says the name of their item and puts it in the basket.

Level 6: Recognition and Production of Final Phonemes.

Initial sound activities show children that words contain phonemes and introduces how phonemes sound and feel when spoken in isolation.

Individual phonemes are more difficult to specify because their acoustic values vary with the phonemes that precede and follow them in a word (co-articulation), whereas syllables have relatively constant values in a word and hence are more readily recognised.  The fact that consonants are “folded” into vowels can be understood by noting the different tongue positions for the beginning /d/ sound when it is followed by /oo/ and by /i/.

In this level I do the activity "LAST SOUND LAST" Click here! 

Ask children to listen to the following set of words:  house, bus, mess.  Point out that all these words end with the same sound.  This sound is /s/.  Tell children that you want them to listen carefully to each set of words you say.  They are to then tell you what the last sound is in these words.  Finish the activity by having children state other words that end with the sound.

Level 7: Blending Phonemes to Make Words.

Level 8: Phonemic Segmentation.

Blending Phonemes to make words: a word is presented, with the individual phonemes isolated.  The child needs to put the phonemes together to make the word.

Phonemic segmentation:  a child is given a word and is required to isolate the individual phonemes.  Please not: these tasks can be presented as onset and rime e.g. /p/ar…k/ or phoneme by phoneme e.g. /p/. /ar/ . /k/

In most children the ability to synthesise (blend) sounds into words occurs earlier than analytic (segmentation) skills. Thus it is easier to respond to the word “cat” when presented with the sounds c- at or c-a-t, than it is to supply c-a-t when asked to tell what sounds you hear in “cat”.

In these levels I do the activity "MAIL GAME" 

Use a large box or container as a post box.  Give children picture cards.  To ensure familiarity go through the cards with the class naming the objects.  The objects should be single syllable words such as the following:  cup, ring, flag, street, rug, dog, cat, plum and brick.

Teacher says a name of the object and the child with that card has to segment the word either with onset and rime or phoneme and then post it into the box. 

Level 9: Phonemic Manipulation.

Phoneme manipulation is the ability to delete initial and final phonemes in words, to delete the first phoneme of a consonant blend as well as substitute one phoneme for another.  Because sound deletion tasks require this manipulation of phonemes in words, they are considered to be more difficult than other types of phoneme awareness tasks.   Cole and Mengler (1994) sited in approximately 7 years of age that children are able to perform phoneme deletion tasks adequately.  The actual task of deleting a sound from a word can be made easier by building on earlier segmentation practice.

In this level I do the activity "SIMON SAYS" Click here!

This game is also used for syllable recognition however; to introduce the idea of deleting parts of words it can be revised.

“Simon says say hotdog without the dog.” Other words are bookmark, rainbow, doorway, sunshine, toothbrush, postbox, snowball, friendship.