Phonemic awareness

We're going to work phonics with the Phonological Awareness Package, that is divided into 9 levels.

 

• First level: Nursery Rhymes

Hearing, learning and reciting nursery rhymes can help young children toward becoming proficient readers. Not only do children experience the pleasure of words but 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 is important to use care when selecting nursery rhymes, jingles, finger plays, and poems to use in phonemic awareness activities. 

 

 

Which word does not rhyme?

Which word has a different end sound?
Can you think of a word that rhymes with___?

• Second level: Word awareness

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.

Use pictures to discuss compound words, they are words created by bringing two words together. E.g. rain bow.
Teacher holds two pictures together and children discover it can make the word rainbow. Teacher: “Say rainbow. Now say it again but don’t say “bow” Students “rain”

 

Rain (bow)	Broom (stick)	Grass (hopper)	Star (fish)
Door (step)	Moon (light)	Lip (stick)	Foot (ball)
Pig (tail)	Sun (shine)	Pan (cake)	Bus (stop)
Stop (watch)	Gold (fish)	Tea (spoon)	House (boat)
Book (case)	Eye (ball)	Paint (brush)	Sun (hat)
Ball (boy)	Back (door)	House (guest)	Fish (tank)
Bulls (eye)	Movie (star)	Hat (band)	Door (bell)
House (full)	Door (knob)	Watch (band)	Eye (lid)
Straw (broom)	Basket (full)	Spoon (full)	House (work)
Light (house)	Tug (boat)	Cup (board)	Ward (robe)

 

• Third level: Recognition & 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, as the child is then free to concentrate totally on the recognition of rhyme, without straining to recall the words presented. Once the skill is firmly in place, the task may be made more difficult by presenting the words completely orally.

Body Name Game:

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. Some examples are below:

Deer – ear    Nail – pail     Go –toe     Bye – eye     Bear – hair     Peek – cheek   Sack – back     Gum – thumb    See – knee     band – hand     Feel – heel

• Fourd level: Recognition & Production of syllables

In this section children divide spoken words into syllables or ‘beats’.
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.

To count syllables in words, activities such as clapping hands, tapping the desk, or marching in place to the syllables in children’s names (Ma-ry), items in the environment (win-dow), or words from a favourite story (wish-y, wash-y), allow the child to learn through a kinaesthetic approach. Initially two syllable words should be targeted, building up to three.

 

• Fifth level: Recognition & Production of Initial sounds

Initial sound activities show children that words contain phonemes and introduces how phonemes sound and feel when spoken in isolation.
With this activity, I spy with my little eye something that starts with ... children guess the object that starts with that sound.

 

• Sixth level: Recognition & Production of Final sounds

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

Beginning Middle or End?:
Requirements: blank 3 x phoneme box card and a counter for each student.
Tell students that you are going to say a list of words. All the words contains /s/. Some words have /s/ at the beginning, some in the middle and some at the end. If students hear the /s/ sound at the beginning of the word they put the counter in the first box, if they hear the /s/ sound in the middle, they put the counter in the middle box and if they hear the /s/ sound at the end of the word they place the counter in the last box.

 

• Seventh and eighth level: Blending and 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. 

Drawing Lines on Pictures:
An example is given below of how to represent the phonemes in words by drawing lines through a picture. Many pictures can be collected from magazines or anywhere and mad into activities. Children can use counters on top of the pictures or just point as they say the word.

•  Ninth level: 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.

Switcheroo:

Explain to the children that you will say a word. You want them to listen carefully to the phonemes in the word. You will then play switcheroo with on of the phonemes. That is you will change one sound in the word: initial, medial, final. You want them to tell you which sound was switched.