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WHAT IT IS:
Phonemic awareness is the undersanding that spoken
words are made up of sounds (phonemes). It is the ability to pick out,
segment, manipulate and blend sounds in spoken words.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO TEACH:
It is a prerequisite to learning phonics: the tasks
do not yet involve reading. Children must perceive the sounds in spoken
words - for example, they must "hear" the "at" sound in "fat" and "cat"
and recognize that the difference lies in the first sound. Without this,
they will have difficulty decoding or "sounding-out" words in a rapid
and accurate fashion. Awareness of the sound structure of our language
is often taken for granted but many children do not develop this awareness
automatically.
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Classroom practices that support
the acquisition of phonemic awareness:
- Play listening games to introduce the children to
the art of listening actively, attentively, and analytically. For
example: Make common sounds from the classroom or the environment
and ask the children to identify them (these could be tape-recorded).
Then make the sounds in 2-4 sound sequences, and again ask the children
to identify the individual sounds. In another variation, make a sequence
of familiar sounds and have the children identify the sounds. Then
delete a sound from the sequence and ask to children to tell what
is missing.
- Read and recite nursery rhymes. Read the nursery
rhymes or other poems and drop your voice so children can fill in
the rhyming word. Ask children to "round up the rhymes" after listening
to a familiar story or poem. In "rounding up the rhymes" children
recall the rhyming words.
- Invent new rhymes and sing them. For example, use
the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It."
- Did you ever see a (bear) in a (chair)?
- Did you ever see a (bear) in a (chair)?
- No, I never, no, I never, no, I never, no, I
never No, I never saw a (bear) in a (chair). (Adams, 1998)
- Identify word breaks within a dictated message during
interactive writing. As the sentence is being repeated, ask the children
to raise a finger for each new word. Just as the fingers represent
individual words, the spaces between fingers also represent spaces
to define word boundaries.
- Pronounce a pair of words and ask the children which
word they think is longer. When the children have answered, show them
the words in print so they can check. It is important that this be
a listening exercise, and showing the printed words is only for the
children to learn a checking strategy. Word pairs such as bee & butterfly,
tree & flower or cow & ladybug might be used.
- Say the names of familiar objects. These could be
things found in the classroom or a specific room at home. Model for
children how to listen for the syllables or beats in the word. Show
an object and ask children to clap the number of syllables.
- Clap and count the syllables of a child's first name.
Ask the children to clap and count the syllables of their first and
last names. To reverse the process, clap a name and ask the children
to identify whose name you could be thinking of.
- Play "Guess whose name I'm going to say". Say only
the first sound of a child's name. You may need to repeat the phoneme
over and over, clearly and distinctly. If more than one name starts
with the same sound, encourage the children to name all possibilities.
This game can be extended to thinking of other things that start with
a particular sound, i.e. "I'm thinking of animal names that start
with /c-c-c-c-/."
- Using picture cards, say the names and model for
children different ways the cards might be sorted. Children might
sort all objects that start the same, end the same, or have the same
sound in the middle of their name.
- Call the children to line up by saying their first
names minus the first letter. The children will need to figure out
whose name has been called and what sound is missing.
- Teach children how to stretch words, saying them
slowly, so they can hear the sounds that make up a word. Demonstrate
the process. Invite the children to say the word slowly as they listen
for the individual phonemes. You may want to have the children "stretch"
a pretend rubber band as they say the word. Be sure the children are
actually saying the words. After children have learned how to say
the words slowly, use small colored blocks to mark the different phonemes.
Example: Say "go"-- "g…o" and use two different colored blocks to
represent the sounds. Later, ask children to tell how many blocks
they will need to represent the sounds in other words.
- Say the words slowly and "push the sounds" into Elkonin
boxes. (Draw a box for each phoneme in the word.) The boxes provide
an outside mediator to help the child to understand how to segment
words into sounds. Observe to see if the child is coordinating his/her
voice with the pushing. This might be done during an interactive writing
session.
- Read aloud literature that "plays with the sounds
of words". Books written by Denise Fleming, Dr. Seuss, Pamela Duncan
Edwards and Pat Hutchins might be used. ¨ Read and reread books that
are favorites so children have a chance to internalize the text and
join in on the refrains. Examples of such good books are Crocodile
Beat by Gail Jorgensen and Patricia Mullins and My Crayons Talk by
Patricia Hubbard. Encourage the students to identify words that start
the same, end the same, or are made by substituting sounds.
- Plan a variety of learning settings to teach these
Phonemic Awareness Tasks:
- 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 you put
these sounds together /s/, /a/, /t/?
- Sound isolation: What is the first sound in rose?
- Phoneme segmentation: What sounds to you hear
in the word hot?
- Phoneme counting: How many sounds do you hear
in the word cake?
- Deleting phonemes: What sound do you hear in
meat that is missing in eat?
- Odd word out: What word starts with a different
sound-bag, nine, beach, bike?
- Sound to word matching: Is there a /k/ in bike?
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