Effective Strategies for Teaching Phonemic Awareness

Because phonemic awareness is a necessary pre-requisite to reading, it is important that it is included in early reading or pre-reading
instruction. While there are many ways to teach, the following proven strategies should be considered when teaching phonemic
awareness to young children.

Timing and Grouping

Phonemic awareness should be a priority in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and early first grade reading instruction. Studies have found
that young children benefit the most from short instructional sessions (up to 30 minutes long) offered in small group settings. Teachers
working with small groups should focus on between 2 and 3 phonemic awareness skills at a time to help children solidify these important
pre-reading abilities.

Teaching With or Without Letters?

While phonemic awareness is not dependent on print, children seem to benefit the most from instruction presented with written words.
At its very core phonemic awareness is a listening and speaking skill rather than a reading skill. Phonemes are, after all, sounds. Still,
research shows that teaching phonemic awareness using letters helps children solidify their skills. Print words allow them to see and apply
the connection between sound and letters necessary for reading. Adults working with young readers on developing their phonemic
awareness should make explicit connections between sounds and letters by not only including print words in instruction but also drawing
the children’s attention to sounds by saying and pointing to letters simultaneously.

Individualized Approach to Instruction

Children come to school with different phonemic awareness levels. Some may have a strong understanding of and ability to apply
knowledge of how phonemes function in words while others may have little to no phonemic awareness.

Just as with phonics instruction, phonemic awareness instruction should be individualized to meet the specific needs of each child in the
classroom.

Because it is the primary pre-requisite for reading and is such a strong indicator of future reading ability, the greatest attention should be
paid to those students with little or no phonemic awareness.

Clapping and Tapping

One of the easiest ways to help children realize that words are made up of several sounds and syllables is to allow them to “break up”
words by clapping or tapping out their syllables. Tapping can be performed with fingers, hands or an object such as a stick. When first
introducing this concept, adults should model clapping or tapping. For example, a teacher can show a child that the word “balloon”
has two syllables by clapping twice while reciting the word (/ba/ -clap- /loon/ -clap-). Once children understand the activity they should
be encouraged to perform it independently on a regular basis. This kinesthetic connection allows children to become actively engaged
with words.

Keyword Substitution

This activity aids children in developing an understanding of the role that phonemes play in the meaning of words. When a phoneme is
changed in a word, more often than not, the meaning changes. Keyword substitution activities use familiar songs as a basis for “playing”
with words. Adults can take the lyrics of a familiar song and create new lyrics that substitute words with small phonemic variations. For
instance, the chorus of “Pop Goes the Weasel” could be changed to “Hop Goes the Weasel”. After singing the song with the new lyrics
adults should discuss how changing a phoneme shifted the meaning of the song.

Picture Flashcards

Picture flashcards are excellent tools for helping children who do not have strong phonics skills work on their phonemic awareness. Adults
should create a series of flashcards featuring pictures that are familiar to the child. When using the flashcards the adult should ask the
child to name the picture featured on each card. After saying the word the child should be asked to identify the first and second sounds
(or phonemes) in the word. This activity helps children realize that words are made up of a series of independent sounds or phonemes.

Home-School Connection

Because phonemic awareness precedes actual text reading, it is most often developed at home. Parents play an important role in their
children’s phonemic awareness. Research has shown that children exposed to print-rich environments at home prior to entering school
show much higher levels of phonemic awareness. A print-rich environment is one where reading and writing are evident and important.
Parents can model phonemic awareness by reading aloud to their children and allowing their children to see them reading in authentic
ways. They can also give their children opportunities to practice language by talking, singing, reciting nursery rhymes, playing guessing
games and engaging in early writing activities. Almost any activity involving spoken or written language that parents engage in with their
children benefits their development of phonemic awareness.

https://www.k12reader.com/effective-strategies-for-teaching-phonemic-awareness/

Phonological Awareness: Instructional and Assessment Guidelines

By: David J. Chard and Shirley V. Dickson
This article defines phonological awareness and discusses historic and contemporary research findings regarding its relation to early
reading. Common misconceptions about phonological awareness are addressed. Research-based guidelines for teaching phonological
awareness and phonemic awareness to all children are described. Additional instructional design guidelines are offered for teaching
children with learning disabilities who are experiencing difficulties with early reading. Considerations for assessing children's phonological
awareness are discussed, and descriptions of available measures are provided.
Row, row, row your boat
gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily;
Life is but a dream
Bow, bow, bow your boat
bently bown the beam.
Berrily, berrily, berrily, berrily;
Bife is but a beam.
Sow, sow, sow your soat
sently sown the seam.
Serrily, serrily, serrily, serrily;
Sife is sut a seam.
Activities like substituting different sounds for the first sound of a familiar song can help children develop phonological awareness, a
cognitive substrate to reading acquisition. Becoming phonologically aware prepares children for later reading instruction, including
instruction in phonics, word analysis, and spelling (Adams, Foorman, Lundberg, & Beeler, 1998; Chard, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1998). The
most common barrier to learning early word reading skills is the inability to process language phonologically (Liberman, Shankweiler, &
Liberman, 1989). Moreover, developments in research and understanding have revealed that this weakness in phonological processing
most often hinders early reading development for both students with and without disabilities (Fletcher et al., 1994).
No area of reading research has gained as much attention over the past two decades as phonological awareness. Perhaps the most
exciting finding emanating from research on phonological awareness is that critical levels of phonological awareness can be developed
through carefully planned instruction, and this development has a significant influence on children's reading and spelling achievement
(Ball & Blachman, 1991; Bradley & Bryant, 1985; Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1989, 1991; O'Connor, Jenkins, Leicester, & Slocum, 1993).
Despite the promising findings, however, many questions remain unanswered, and many misconceptions about phonological awareness
persist. For example, researchers are looking for ways to determine how much and what type of instruction is necessary and for whom.
Moreover, many people do not understand the difference between phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics. Still
others are uncertain about the relationship between phonological awareness and early reading.
The purposes of this article are to (a) clarify some of the salient findings from research on phonological awareness and reading and (b)
translate those findings into practical information for teachers of children with learning disabilities or children who are experiencing delays
in early reading. To this end, we answer three questions:

1. What is phonological awareness, and why is it important to beginning reading success?

2. What are documented effective principles that should guide phonological awareness instruction?
3. What principles should guide the assessment of phonological awareness?

What is phonological awareness?

Phonological awareness is the understanding of different ways that oral language can be divided into smaller components and
manipulated. Spoken language can be broken down in many different ways, including sentences into words and words into syllables (e.
g., in the word simple, /sim/ and /ple/), onset and rime (e. g., in the word broom, /br/ and /oom/), and individual phonemes (e.g., in the
word hamper, /h/, /a/, /m/, /p/, /er/). Manipulating sounds includes deleting, adding, or substituting syllables or sounds (e.g., say can;
say it without the /k/; say can with /m/ instead of /k/). Being phonologically aware means having a general understanding at all of these
levels.

Operationally, skills that represent children's phonological awareness lie on a continuum of complexity (see Figure 1). At the less complex
end of the continuum are activities such as initial rhyming and rhyming songs as well as sentence segmentation that demonstrates an
awareness that speech can be broken down into individual words. At the center of the continuum are activities related to segmenting
words into syllables and blending syllables into words. Next are activities such as segmenting words into onsets and rimes and blending
onsets and rimes into words.
Finally, the most sophisticated level of phonological awareness is phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that
words are made up of individual sounds or phonemes and the ability to manipulate these phonemes either by segmenting, blending, or
changing individual phonemes within words to create new words. The recent National Research Council report on reading distinguishes
phonological awareness from phonemic awareness in this way:
The term phonological awareness refers to a general appreciation of the sounds of speech as distinct from their meaning. When that
insight includes an understanding that words can he divided into a sequence of phonemes, this finer-grained sensitivity is termed
phonemic awareness. (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998, p. 51)
Throughout this article we will use the term phonological awareness to mean an awareness at all levels from basic rhyme to phonemic
awareness. Only in some specific instances will we use the term phonemic awareness.
At this point, it is important to note that phonological awareness differs distinctly from phonics. Phonological awareness involves the
auditory and oral manipulation of sounds. Phonics is the association of letters and sounds to sound out written symbols (Snider, 1995); it is
a system of teaching reading that builds on the alphabetic principle, a system of which a central component is the teaching of
correspondences between letters or groups of letters and their pronunciations (Adams, 1990). Phonological awareness and phonics are
intimately intertwined, but they are not the same. This relationship will be further described in the following section.
Children generally begin to show initial phonological awareness when they demonstrate an appreciation of rhyme and alliteration. For
many children, this begins very early in the course of their language development and is likely facilitated by being read to from books
that are based on rhyme or alliteration, such as the B Book by Stanley and Janice Berenstain, 1997, or Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet
and Allan Ahlberg, 1979, (Bryant, MacLean, Bradley, & Crossland, 1990). As children grow older, however, their basic phonological
awareness does not necessarily develop into the more sophisticated phonemic awareness. In fact, developing the more complex
phonemic awareness is difficult for most children and very difficult for some children (Adams et al., 1996). However, it is a child's phonemic
awareness on entering school that is most closely related to success in learning to read (Adams, 1990; Stanovich, 1986).

Why is phonological awareness so important?

An awareness of phonemes is necessary to grasp the alphabetic principle that underlies our system of written language. Specifically,
developing readers must be sensitive to the internal structure of words in order to benefit from formal reading instruction (Adams, 1990;
Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, & Carter, 1974). If children understand that words can be divided into individual phonemes and that
phonemes can be blended into words, they are able to use letter-sound knowledge to read and build words. As a consequence of this
relationship, phonological awareness in kindergarten is a strong predictor of later reading success (Ehri & Wilce, 1980, 1985; Liberman et
al., 1974; Perfetti, Beck, Bell, & Hughes, 1987). Researchers have shown that this strong relationship between phonological awareness and
reading success persists throughout school (Calfee, Lindamood, & Lindamood, 1973; Shankweiler et al., 1995).
Over the past 2 decades, researchers have focused primarily on the contribution of phonological awareness to reading acquisition.
However, the relationship between phonological awareness and reading is not unidirectional but reciprocal in nature (Stanovich, 1986).
Early reading is dependent on having some understanding of the internal structure of words, and explicit instruction in phonological
awareness skills is very effective in promoting early reading. However, instruction in early reading-specifically, explicit instruction in letter-
sound correspondence appears to strengthen phonological awareness, and in particular the more sophisticated phonemic awareness
(Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).
Many children with learning disabilities demonstrate difficulties with phonological awareness skills (Shaywitz, 1996). However, many other
children have such difficulty without displaying other characteristics of learning disabilities. Although a lack of phonemic awareness
correlates with difficulty in acquiring reading skills, this lack should not necessarily be misconstrued as a disability (Fletcher et al., 1994).
More important, children who lack phonemic awareness can be identified, and many of them improve their phonemic awareness with
instruction. Furthermore, although explicit instruction in phonological awareness is likely to improve early reading for children who lack
phonemic awareness, most children with or without disabilities are likely to benefit from such instruction (R. E. O'Connor, personal
communication, June 2, 1998).
In short, success in early reading depends on achieving a certain level of phonological awareness. Moreover, instruction in phonological
awareness is beneficial for most children and seems to be critical for others, but the degree of explicitness and the systematic nature of
instruction may need to vary according to the learner's skills (Smith, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1998), especially for students at risk for reading
difficulties. With this in mind, we discuss documented approaches to teaching phonological awareness.

Teaching phonological awareness

There is ample evidence that phonological awareness training is beneficial for beginning readers starting as early as age 4 (e.g., Bradley
& Bryant, 1985; Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1991). In a review of phonological research, Smith et al. (1998) concluded that phonological
awareness can be developed before reading and that it facilitates the subsequent acquisition of reading skills. Documented effective
approaches to teaching phonological awareness generally include activities that are age appropriate and highly engaging. Instruction
for 4-year-olds involves rhyming activities, whereas kindergarten and first-grade instruction includes blending and segmenting of words
into onset and rime, ultimately advancing to blending, segmenting, and deleting phonemes. This pattern of instruction follows the
continuum of complexity illustrated in Figure 1. Instruction frequently involves puppets who talk slowly to model word segmenting or
magic bridges that are crossed when children say the correct word achieved by synthesizing isolated phonemes. Props such as colored
cards or pictures can be used to make abstract sounds more concrete. During the last few years, publishers have produced multiple
programs in phonological awareness, some of which are based on research. Two of these programs are Ladders to Literacy (O'Connor,
Notari-Syverson, & Vadasy, 1998) and Teaching Phonemic Awareness (Adams et al., 1996). Figures 2 through 4 are illustrations of
phonemic awareness lessons that are based on examples from these programs.
Figure 2. Instructional activity that teaches synthesis of phonemes into words.
Guess-the-word game
Objective: Students will be able to blend and identify a word that is stretched out into its component sounds.
Materials Needed: Picture cards of objects that students are likely to recognize such as: sun, bell, fan, flag, snake, tree, book, cup, clock,
plane
Activity: Place a small number of picture cards in front of children. Tell them you are going to say a word using "Snail Talk" a slow way of
saying words (e.g., /fffffllllaaaag/). They have to look at the pictures and guess the word you are saying. It is important to have the
children guess the answer in their head so that everyone gets an opportunity to try it. Alternate between having one child identify the
word and having all children say the word aloud in chorus to keep children engaged.
Figure 3. An Instructional activity that teaches segmentation at multiple phonological levels.
Segmentation activities
Objectives: Students will be able to segment various parts of oral language.
Activity:

a. Early in phonological awareness instruction, teach children to segment sentences into individual words. Identify familiar short
poems such as "I scream you scream we all scream for ice cream!" Have children clap their hands with each word.
b. As children advance in their ability to manipulate oral language, teach them to segment words into syllables or onsets and
rimes. For example, have children segment their names into syllables: e.g., Ra-chel, Al-ex-an-der, and Rod-ney.
c. When children have learned to remove the first phoneme (sound) of a word, teach them to segment short words into individual
phonemes: e.g., s-u-n, p-a-t, s-t-o-p.

Figure 4. An instructional activity that teaches phoneme deletion and substitution.

Change-a-name game
Objective: Students will be able to recognize words when the teacher says the word with the first sound removed.
Activity: Have students sit in a circle on the floor. Secretly select one child and change their name by removing the first sound of the
name. For example, change Jennifer to Ennifer or change William to Illiam. As you change the name, the children have to identify who
you are talking about.
Extension Ideas: As children become better at identifying the child's name without the first sound, encourage them to try removing the
beginning sounds of words and pronounce the words on their own.
After children learn how to remove sounds, teach them to substitute the beginning sound in their name with a new sound. The teacher
can model this, beginning with easier sounds (common sounds of consonant s, e.g., /m/, /t/, /p/) and advancing to more complex
sounds and sound blends (e.g., /ch/, /st/).
Most early phonological awareness activities are taught in the absence of print, but there is increasing evidence that early writing
activities, including spelling words as they sound (i.e., invented or temporary spelling), appear to promote more refined phonemic
awareness (Ehri, 1998; Treiman, 1993). It may be that during spelling and writing activities children begin to combine their phonological
sensitivity and print knowledge and apply them to building words. Even if children are unable to hold and use a pen or pencil, they can
use letter tiles or word processing programs to practice their spelling.
Instruction in phonological awareness can be fun, engaging, and age appropriate, but the picture is not as simple as it seems. First,
evidence suggests that instruction in the less complex phonological skills such as rhyming or onset and rime may facilitate instruction in
more complex skills (Snider, 1995) without directly benefiting reading acquisition (Gough, 1998). Rather, integrated instruction in
segmenting and blending seems to provide the greatest benefit to reading acquisition (e.g., Snider, 1995). Second, although most
children appear to benefit from instruction in phonological awareness, in some studies there are students who respond poorly to this
instruction or fail to respond at all. For example, in one training study that provided 8 weeks of instruction in phonemic awareness, the
majority of children demonstrated significant growth, whereas 30% of the at-risk students demonstrated no measurable growth in
phonological awareness (Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1994). Similarly, in a 12-week training in blending and segmenting for small
groups (3-4 children) in 2-minute sessions four times a week, about 30% of the children still obtained very low scores on the segmenting
posttest and 10 % showed only small improvements on the blending measures (Torgesen et al., 1994).
Torgesen et al. (1994) concluded that training for at-risk children must be more explicit or more intense than what is typically described
in the research literature if it is to have a substantial impact on the phonological awareness of many children with severe reading
disabilities. Therefore, we recommend two tiers of instruction. The first tier of instruction is the highly engaging, age-appropriate instruction
that we introduced earlier. The second tier of instruction includes more intensive and strategic instruction in segmenting and blending at
the phoneme level (e.g., Snider, 1995).
Beside content, another issue that requires attention in phonological awareness instruction is curriculum design. From research, we are
able to deduce principles for effectively designing phonological awareness instruction. These design principles apply for all students but
are particularly important for students who respond poorly to instruction. In the design of phonological awareness instruction, the following
general principles increase students' success (Chard & Osborn, 1998):

 Start with continuous sounds such as /s/, /m/, and /f/ that are easier to pronounce than stop sounds such as /p/, /b/, and /k/;
 Carefully model each activity as it is first introduced;
 Move from larger units (words, onset-rime) to smaller units (individual phonemes);
 Move from easier tasks (e.g., rhyming) to more complex tasks (e.g., blending and segmenting); and,
 Consider using additional strategies to help struggling early readers manipulate sounds. These strategies may include using
concrete objects (e.g., blocks, bingo chips) to represent sounds.

Research suggests that by the end of kindergarten children should be able to demonstrate phonemic blending and segmentation and
to make progress in using sounds to spell simple words. Achieving these goals requires that teachers be knowledgeable about effective
instructional approaches to teaching phonological awareness and be aware of the ongoing progress for each of their students. In the
next section, we describe effective ways to assess phonological skills and monitor progress in phonological awareness.

Assessing phonological awareness

Assessment in phonological awareness serves essentially two purposes: to initially identify students who appear to be at risk for difficulty
in acquiring beginning reading skills and to regularly monitor the progress of students who are receiving instruction in phonological
awareness. The measures used to identify at-risk students must be strongly predictive of future reading ability and separate low and high
performers. Measures used for monitoring progress must be sensitive to change and have alternate forms (Kaminski & Good, 1996). In this
section, we discuss only measures that have been demonstrated to be valid and reliable. We report the technical adequacy of the
measures in the Appendix, rather than in the narrative description of the measure.
As stated earlier, screening measures must be strongly predictive of future reading ability and must separate high from low performers.
Measures of automatized color, object, number, or letter naming meet these criteria (Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte, Burgess, & Hecht,
1997; Wolf, 1991). Segmentation is a second skill that is highly predictive of future reading ability (e.g., Nation & Hulme, 1997; Torgesen et
al., 1994; Vellutino & Scanlon, 1987; Yopp, 1988). Unlike rapid naming, segmentation is a skill that can be taught, and the instruction of
segmentation benefits reading acquisition.
Screening measures must also separate high from low performers. This means that they must address skills that are developmentally
appropriate. Phonological awareness skills seem to develop along a continuum from rhyme to segmenting. Typically, students develop
the ability to segment words into onset and rime during kindergarten and to segment words into separate phonemes between
kindergarten and first grade. Therefore, most first-grade students perform well on an onset-rime measure, whereas most kindergarten
students do poorly on a measure of segmenting into individual sounds. In either case it is difficult to separate low and high performers.
Although we know a great deal about identifying students at risk for reading difficulties, many questions remain unanswered. We
recommend that teachers use a variety of screening measures, including one that measures automatized rapid naming and one that
measures phonemic awareness sensitivity or segmenting.
Typically, kindergarten students are screened for risk factors in acquiring beginning reading skills in the second semester of kindergarten.
Appropriate screening measures for the second semester of kindergarten include measures that are strong predictors of a student's
successful response to explicit phonemic awareness instruction or beginning reading acquisition. Such predictors of successful response
to segmenting and blending instruction are the Test of Phonological Awareness-Kindergarten (TOPA-K; Torgesen & Bryant, 1993), a
Nonword Spelling measure (Torgesen & Davis, 1996), and the Digit Naming Rate (Torgesen & Davis, 1996). Predictors of the successful
acquisition of beginning reading skills include automatized naming of colors, objects, numbers, or letters (e.g., Wolf, 1991) and
segmenting ability (e.g., Nation & Hulme, 1997; Torgesen et al., 1994; Vellutino & Scanlon, 1987; Yopp, 1988). Other measures used during
the second semester of kindergarten to identify students at risk for not acquiring beginning reading skills include measures of phoneme
deletion.
The measures appropriate for identifying first-grade students at risk for not acquiring reading skills overlap those used in kindergarten. The
TOPA-K and onset-rime are no longer appropriate, as students should have developed these skills by the end of kindergarten, whereas
segmenting is still an emerging skill. However, tasks such as automatized naming of colors, objects, numbers, or letters remain predictors
for students at risk for not acquiring beginning reading skills, as do measures to determine whether students lag behind their peers in
phonological awareness, such as measures of segmenting.
When using screening measures, the teacher must establish decision rules for identifying students requiring phonological awareness
instruction. The decision rules vary. The TOPA-K has normed scores and provides information to help a teacher decide whether to provide
phonemic awareness instruction to students who score one or two standard deviations below the mean. However, there is little research
evidence to guide decision making about which children should receive the more intensive phonological awareness instruction.
A second use of measures is to monitor students' progress. Unlike the screening measures, progress-monitoring measures must be sensitive
to growth and require multiple forms. The Dynamic Indicators of Early Literacy (Kaminski & Good, 1996) fit this requirement and are
appropriate for kindergarten and first grade. After the first semester of first grade, teachers may also be interested in monitoring their
students' progress in generalizing phonemic awareness to reading and spelling. Two other measures of reading that are sensitive to
growth and have alternative forms are oral reading fluency (tasks) and nonsense word reading fluency (Tindal & Marston, 1990).
As with screening measures, teachers must establish decision rules about how to gauge the progress of their students. One way is to
establish a baseline by graphing three measurement points before the start of instruction, adding each subsequent data point to the
graph, and checking the slope of students' progress. If many students are making slower progress than necessary to reach the level of
their average-achieving peers, the teacher can modify the instruction by increasing one or more of the elements in the instructional
guidelines. For example, if students are not acquiring segmenting, the teacher may decide to add more scaffolds, such as cards that
the students can move as they segment words, thereby making segmenting instruction more explicit, or provide students with more
guided practice. If most students successfully respond to instruction but a few respond poorly or not at all, the teacher may decide to
place these students in a flexible group to receive more intense instruction. The teacher could also choose to provide some individuals
with more intense instruction throughout the day to keep them up with their peers. If the progress-monitoring measures indicate that the
first-grade students receiving instruction in phonological awareness lag behind their peers in reading or spelling, the teacher may choose
to increase the integrated instruction in letter- sound correspondence and to make stronger the links between segmenting and blending
skills and reading. Brief descriptions of the screening and monitoring measures that have demonstrated validity and reliability through
research follow. For each measure, we indicate the grade and purpose for which the measure is appropriate. Note that some measures
are appropriate for more than one grade level and for both screening and monitoring progress.
Test of phonological awareness- kindergarten
(Second Half of Kindergarten; Screen). This measure of phonemic sensitivity strongly predicts which students will demonstrate high
segmenting ability following small-group instruction in phonemic awareness (Torgesen & Davis, 1996). The measure consists of one form
with 10 items requiring students to indicate which of three words (represented by pictures) have the same first sound as a target word
and 10 items that require students to indicate which of four words (represented by pictures) begins with a different first sound than the
other three. The measure is administered to small groups of 6 to 10 children and is untimed. Students receive raw scores that are normed.
Nonword spelling
(Second Half of Kindergarten; Screen). This measure strongly predicts which kindergarten students will demonstrate growth in blending
and segmenting after small-group phonological awareness instruction. Five nonwords (feg, rit, mub, gof, pid) comprise the measure.
Students receive one point for each phoneme that they represent correctly in the spelling.
Digit naming rate
(Second Half of Kindergarten; Screen). This measure strongly predicts which kindergarten students are likely to demonstrate growth in
blending after small-group phonological awareness instruction. The measure consists of six rows with five single digits per row on an 8 " x
11 " card. The students are timed as they name the digits as fast as they can, beginning at the top and continuing to the bottom. Students
complete two trials using cards with differently arranged numbers. The score is based on the average time for the two series.
Yopp-SingerTest of phoneme segmentation
(Second Half of Kindergarten, First Grade; Screen). This test (Yopp, 1995) consists of 22 items and requires students to separately articulate
each phoneme in the presented words. The student receives credit only if all sounds in a word are presented correctly. The student does
not receive partial credit for saying /c/ or /c/ /at/ for cat. One feature that differentiates this screening measure from others is that
students receive feedback after each response. If the child's response is correct, the test administrator says, "That's right." If the student
gives an incorrect response, the examiner tells the student the correct response. Moreover, if the student gives an incorrect response,
the examiner writes the error. Recording the errors helps the teacher decide what remediation the student requires. The student's score
is the number of items correctly segmented into individual phonemes. The test is administered individually and requires about 5 to 10
minutes per child.
Bruce test of phoneme deletion
(Second Half of Kindergarten; Screen). The Bruce (1964) test assesses phoneme deletion, a more difficult and compound skill than
segmenting (Yopp, 1995). The measure consists of 30 one- to three-syllable words drawn from words familiar to children between the
ages of 5 and 61/2. The examiner asks students to delete one phoneme from the beginning, middle, or end of a word and to say the
word that remains. The positions of deleted phonemes are randomly ordered throughout the test. The test is individually administered
and requires 10 minutes to administer.
Auditory analysis test
(Second Half of Kindergarten; Screen). This measure (Rosner & Simon, 1971, cited in MacDonald & Cornwall, 1995) consists of 40 items
arranged in order of difficulty from deletion of syllables in compound words to deletion of syllables in multisyllabic words to deletion of
phonemes in beginning, middle, and end positions. The teacher asks the student to delete a syllable or phoneme and say the word that
is left. The measure is administered individually.
Rapid letter naming, dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills
(Second Half of Kindergarten, First Grade; Screen). The Rapid Letter Naming, DIBELS (Kaminski & Good, 1996) is another of many measures
used to assess the rapid letter-naming ability of students. The measure has 18 alternate forms and consists of 104 randomly selected
upper- and lowercase letters presented on one page. The measure is given individually, and students have 1 minute to name as many
letters as possible in the order that they appear on the page.
Phoneme segmentation fluency, DIBELS
(End of Kindergarten, First Grade; Screen, Monitor Progress). The Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, DIBELS (Kaminski & Good, 1996) is one
of many segmenting measures. The measure has 18 alternate forms. Each form consists of 10 words, each with two or three phonemes,
randomly selected from words in the pre-primer and primer levels of the Scribner basal reading series. The measure is administered
individually and is timed. Unlike the Yopp-Singer Test, students do not receive feedback on their responses but do receive scores for
partially correct answers. In other words, for cat, a student receives a score of 1 for saying /c/, a score of 2 for saying /c/ /at/, or a score
of 3 for saying /c/ /a/ /t/. Because this measure assesses the number of correct phonemes per minute, it is sensitive to growth and is,
therefore, appropriate for both screening and monitoring progress.

Conclusion
As we noted at the outset of this article, efforts to understand the role of phonological awareness have far exceeded the efforts to relate
research findings to classroom practice regarding phonological awareness. This article is an attempt to pull together the valuable
information available on the role that phonological awareness plays in early reading development, the research-based teaching
strategies that address the needs of all children, the instructional design principles that address the needs of children experiencing delays
in early reading development, and the validated instruments available for screening and monitoring students' progress in phonological
awareness.
Our description of the role that phonological awareness plays in reading development conspicuously fails to address the connection of
phonological awareness and spelling. This failure is not an oversight, nor should it be perceived as a statement of our beliefs regarding
the importance of spelling. We firmly believe that findings from spelling research (e.g., Ehri, 1998; Templeton, 1995; Treiman, 1993)
represent such a significant part of our knowledge base about reading that they would go far beyond the length and scope of this
article.
Recent research on phonological awareness and phonemic awareness, including how to teach and assess them, has made an
extremely valuable contribution to our understanding of how to teach reading to children with learning disabilities or delays in early
reading. It is not, however, a cure for reading disabilities, but a significant advance in preventing and correcting reading difficulties so
that more children are prepared to learn how to read in our alphabetic writing system.

About the authors

David J. Chard, PhD, is an assistant professor of special education at The University of Texas at Austin. His current interests include research
in professional developmental in early reading and analysis of children's discourse in mathematics classrooms. Shirley V Dickson, PhD, is
an assistant professor of special education at Northern Illinois University. Her interests are in research on phonological awareness and
reading instruction and collaboration models in special education. Address: David J. Chard, University of Texas at Austin, Dept. of Special
Education, SZB 408, Austin, TX 78712.

Appendix
Table A. Technical Adequacy of Screening and Monitoring Measures

Measure Validity Reliability

Test of Phonological Awareness- Concurrent validity with segmenting and sound isolation(.50- Internal consistency (.90-
Kindergarten (Torgesen & Bryant, .55); Concurrent validity with word identification and word .91); Total score reliability
1993) analysis of Woodcock Reading Mastery Test-Revised (.60-.66); (Cronbach's Alpha = .91)
Predictive validity (.59-.75)

Nonword Spelling (Torgesen & Davis, Internal consistency (.88)

1996)

Digit Naming Rate (Torgesen & Split-half reliability (.91)

Davis, 1996)

Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Construct validity with subtests of California Achievement Test Cronbach's Alpha (.95)
Segmentation (Yopp, 1995) (.38-.78); Predictive of reading and spelling in Grades 1-6 (-.05-
.55; 16 of the 25 correlations were positive and significant)

Bruce Phoneme Deletion Test Predictive validity to learning to read novel words (.67) Cronbach's Alpha (.92)
(Bruce, 1964)

Auditory Analysis Test (Rosner & Predictive validity (accounted for 25% of the variance in word Cronbach's Alpha (.78)
Simon, 1971, cited in MacDonald & identification and spelling skills at age 17); Construct validity for
Cornwall, 1995; Yopp,1988) compound phonemic awareness

Rapid Letter Naming (DIBELS) Concurrent criterion-related with the Standard Diagnostic Spearman-Brown Prophecy
Reading Test (.50) and oral reading fluency (.45) formula (.83 for first grade)

Segmenting Fluency (DIBELS) Alternate form reliability (.60

Spearman Prophecy
formula)

Oral Reading Fluency (Children's Coefficient with Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test, Woodcock Alternate form reliability
Educational Services, 1987) Reading Mastery Test-Revised, and Peabody Individual (.97)
Achievement Test (.52-.91)

Nonsense Word Fluency (DIBELS; R. Criterion reliability with curriculum-based reading measures Alternate form reliability
H. Good, August 3, 1998, personal (.80) (high .80s)
communication)
This technique is recommended by research

Phonological Awareness has been recommended as a practice with solid research evidence of effectiveness for individuals with
Learning Disabilities by Council for Exceptional Children-the Division for Learning Disabilities (DLD) and the Division for Research (DR). To
learn more, please read Current Practice Alert: Phonological Awareness.

If you have students in your classroom who are English Language Learners, pay special attention to the section titled "What Questions
Remain."

http://www.ldonline.org/article/6254/

Sequencing Phonemic Awareness Skills

Phonemic awareness instruction typically spans two years, kindergarten and first grade. Oral activities in kindergarten focus on simple
tasks such as rhyming, matching words with beginning sounds, and blending sounds into words. In first grade, phonemic awareness tasks
are more advanced, focusing on blending ("Blend these sounds together "mmmm-aaaa-nnnn), segmentation ("What are the sounds
in man?), and the substitution and manipulation of phonemes (e.g., Change the first sound in man to /r/. What word do you have?").

Phonemic Awareness Development Continuum

Examples of Phonemic Awareness Skills

 Sound and Word discrimination: What word doesn't belong with the others: "cat", "mat", "bat", "ran"? "ran"

 Rhyming: What word rhymes with "cat"? bat

 Syllable splitting: The onset of "cat" is /k/, the rime is /at/

 Blending: What word is made up of the sounds /k/ /a/ /t/? "cat"

 Phonemic segmentation: What are the sounds in "cat"? /k/ /a/ /t/

 Phoneme deletion: What is "cat" without the /k/? "at"

 Phoneme manipulation: What word would you have if you changed the /t/ in cat to an /n/? "can"

Curriculum Maps

Phonemic awareness skills can be taught in a particular sequence that maximizes student understanding and instructional efficiency.
Phonemic awareness is only taught in kindergarten and first grade. By the end of first grade, students should have a firm grasp of
phonemic awareness.

Curriculum maps list specific skills that relate to each big idea. Each skill can be taught during at an optimal time during the school year.

Click here for an explanation of how to read curriculum maps.

TIP: Go to the Curriculum Maps page in the Resources section to view and download Curriculum Maps for each Big Idea and grade.
How to read curriculum maps

The numbers in the top row of the curriculum map correspond to the months of the school year. For example, if your school year begins
in September, then September would be month 1 on the map. If your school year begins in August, then August would be month one.

The shaded boxes marked with "X" represent the months in which a particular skill should be taught.

The map can be read using either a "horizontal trace" or a "vertical trace". To do a horizontal trace, you select a skill you are interested
in, then trace across the row to find the months marked with an "X" for that skill. This will tell you which months a skill should be taught. To
perform a vertical trace, select a particular month, then trace down the column to find the shaded boxes. The shaded boxes correspond
to the skills that should be taught that month.

http://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/pa/pa_sequence.php

Phonemic awareness instruction

Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words. Before children learn to
read print, they need to become aware of how the sounds in words work. They must understand that words are made up of speech
sounds, or phonemes.

Phonemes are the smallest parts of sound in a spoken word that make a difference in the word's meaning. For example, changing the
first phoneme in the word hat from /h/ to /p/ changes the word from hat to pat, and so changes the meaning. (A letter between slash
marks shows the phoneme, or sound, that the letter represents, and not the name of the letter. For example, the letter h represents the
sound /h/.)

Children can show us that they have phonemic awareness in several ways, including:

 recognizing which words in a set of words begin with the same sound ("Bell, bike, and boy all have /b/ at the beginning.");
 isolating and saying the first or last sound in a word ("The beginning sound of dog is /d/." "The ending sound of sit is /t/.");
  combining, or blending the separate sounds in a word to say the word ("/m/, /a/, /p/-- map.");
 breaking, or segmenting a word into its separate sounds ("up--/u/, /p/.").

Children who have phonemic awareness skills are likely to have an easier time learning to read and spell than children who have few or
none of these skills.

Although phonemic awareness is a widely used term in reading, it is often misunderstood. One misunderstanding is that phonemic
awareness and phonics are the same thing. Phonemic awareness is notphonics. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that the
sounds of spoken language work together to make words. Phonics is the understanding that there is a predictable relationship between
phonemes and graphemes, the letters that represent those sounds in written language. If children are to benefit from phonics instruction,
they need phonemic awareness.

The reason is obvious: children who cannot hear and work with the phonemes of spoken words will have a difficult time learning how to
relate these phonemes to the graphemes when they see them in written words.

Another misunderstanding about phonemic awareness is that it means the same as phonological awareness. The two names
are not interchangeable. Phonemic awareness is a subcategory of phonological awareness. The focus of phonemic awareness is
narrow--identifying and manipulating the individual sounds in words. The focus of phonological awareness is much broader. It includes
identifying and manipulating larger parts of spoken language, such as words, syllables, and onsets and rimes--as well as phonemes. It
also encompasses awareness of other aspects of sound, such as rhyming, alliteration, and intonation.

Children can show us that they have phonological awareness in several ways, including:

 identifying and making oral rhymes;

"The pig has a (wig)."
"Pat the (cat)."
"The sun is (fun)."
 identifying and working with syllables in spoken words;
"I can clap the parts in my name: An-drew."
 identifying and working with onsets and rimes in spoken syllables or one-syllable words;
"The first part of sip is s-."
"The last part of win is -in."
 identifying and working with individual phonemes in spoken words.
"The first sound in sun is /s/."

Phonological Awareness
Phonemic awareness is only one type of phonological awareness.

Broader phonological awareness

Identifying and making oral rhymes

Identifying and working with syllables in spoken words

Narrower phonological awareness

Identifying and working with onsets and rimes in spoken syllables

Identifying and working with individual phonemes in words spoken (phonemic awareness)

The language of literacy

Here are some definitions of terms used frequently in reading instruction.

Phoneme

A phoneme is the smallest part of spoken language that makes a difference in the meaning of words. English has about 41 phonemes.
A few words, such as a or oh, have only one phoneme. Most words, however, have more than one phoneme: The word if has two
phonemes (/i/ /f/); check has three phonemes (/ch/ /e/ /k/), and stop has four phonemes (/s/ /t/ /o/ /p/). Sometimes one phoneme is
represented by more than one letter.

Grapheme

A grapheme is the smallest part of written language that represents a phoneme in the spelling of a word. A grapheme may be just one
letter, such as b, d, f, p, s; or several letters, such as ch, sh, th, -ck, ea, -igh.

Phonics

Phonics is the understanding that there is a predictable relationship between phonemes (the sounds of spoken language) and
graphemes (the letters and spellings that represent those sounds in written language).
Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual sounds--phonemes--in spoken words.

Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness is a broad term that includes phonemic awareness. In addition to phonemes, phonological awareness activities
can involve work with rhymes, words, syllables, and onsets and rimes.

Syllable

A syllable is a word part that contains a vowel or, in spoken language, a vowel sound (e-vent; news-pa-per; ver-y).

Onset and rime

Onsets and rimes are parts of spoken language that are smaller than syllables but larger than phonemes. An onset is the initial
consonant(s) sound of a syllable (the onset of bag is b-; of swim, sw-). A rime is the part of a syllable that contains the vowel and all that
follows it (the rime of bag is -ag; of swim, -im).

What does scientifically-based research tell us about

phonemic awareness instruction?

Key findings from the scientific research on phonemic awareness instruction provide the following conclusions of particular interest and
value to classroom teachers:

Phonemic awareness can be taught and learned.

Effective phonemic awareness instruction teaches children to notice, think about, and work with (manipulate) sounds in spoken
language. Teachers use many activities to build phonemic awareness, including:

Phoneme isolation

Children recognize individual sounds in a word.

Teacher: What is the first sound in van?

Children: The first sound in van is /v/.

Phoneme identity

Children recognize the same sounds in different words.

Teacher: What sound is the same in fix, fall, and fun?

Children: The first sound, /f/, is the same.

Phoneme categorization

Children recognize the word in a set of three or four words that has the "odd" sound.

Teacher: Which word doesn't belong? bus, bun, rug. Children: Rug does not belong. It doesn't begin with /b/.

Phoneme blending

Children listen to a sequence of separately spoken phonemes, and then combine the phonemes to form a word. Then they write and
read the word.

Teacher: What word is /b/ /i/ /g/?

Children: /b/ /i/ /g/ is big.
Teacher: Now let's write the sounds in big: /b/, write b; /i/, write i; /g/, write g.
Teacher: (Writes big on the board.) Now we're going to read the word big.

Phoneme segmentation

Children break a word into its separate sounds, saying each sound as they tap out or count it. Then they write and read the word.
Teacher: How many sounds are in grab?
Children: /g/ /r/ /a/ /b/. Four sounds.
Teacher: Now let's write the sounds in grab: /g/, write g; /r/, write r; /a/, write a; /b/, write b.
Teacher: (Writes grab on the board.) Now we're going to read the word grab.

Phoneme deletion

Children recognize the word that remains when a phoneme is removed from another word.

Teacher: What is smile without the /s/?

Children: Smile without the /s/ is mile.

Phoneme addition

Children make a new word by adding a phoneme to an existing word.

Teacher: What word do you have if you add /s/ to the beginning of park?
Children: Spark.

Phoneme substitution

Children substitute one phoneme for another to make a new word.

Teacher: The word is bug. Change /g/ to /n/. What's the new word?
Children: Bun.

Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to read.

Phonemic awareness instruction improves children's ability to read words. It also improves their reading comprehension. Phonemic
awareness instruction aids reading comprehension primarily through its influence on word reading. For children to understand what they
read, they must be able to read words rapidly and accurately. Rapid and accurate word reading frees children to focus their attention
on the meaning of what they read. Of course, many other things, including the size of children's vocabulary and their world experiences,
contribute to reading comprehension.

Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to spell.

Teaching phonemic awareness, particularly how to segment words into phonemes, helps children learn to spell. The explanation for this
may be that children who have phonemic awareness understand that sounds and letters are related in a predictable way. Thus, they
are able to relate the sounds to letters as they spell words.

Some common phonemic awareness terms

Phoneme manipulation

When children work with phonemes in words, they are manipulating the phonemes. Types of phoneme manipulation include blending
phonemes to make words, segmenting words into phonemes, deleting phonemes from words, adding phonemes to words, or substituting
one phoneme for another to make a new word.

Blending

When children combine individual phonemes to form words, they are blending the phonemes. They also are blending when they
combine onsets and rimes to make syllables and combine syllables to make words.

Segmenting (segmentation)

When children break words into their individual phonemes, they are segmenting the words. They are also segmenting when they break
words into syllables and syllables into onsets and rimes.

Phonemic awareness instruction is most effective when children are taught to manipulate phonemes by using the letters of the alphabet.

Phonemic awareness instruction makes a stronger contribution to the improvement of reading and spelling when children are taught to
use letters as they manipulate phonemes than when instruction is limited to phonemes alone. Teaching sounds along with the letters of
the alphabet is important because it helps children to see how phonemic awareness relates to their reading and writing. Learning to
blend phonemes with letters helps children read words. Learning to segment sounds with letters helps them spell words.

If children do not know letter names and shapes, they need to be taught them along with phonemic awareness.

Relating sounds to letters is, of course, the heart of phonics instruction, which is the subject of the next section of this booklet.
Phonemic awareness instruction is most effective when it focuses on only one or two types of phoneme manipulation, rather than several
types.

Children who receive instruction that focuses on one or two types of phoneme manipulation make greater gains in reading and spelling
than do children who are taught three or more types of manipulation.

One possible explanation for this is that children who are taught many different ways to manipulate phonemes may become confused
about which type to apply. Another explanation is that teaching many types of manipulations does not leave enough time to teach any
one type thoroughly. A third explanation is that instruction that includes several types of manipulations may result in teaching children
more difficult manipulations before they acquire skill in the easier ones.

Questions you may have about

phonemic awareness instruction

Which activities will help my students acquire phonemic awareness?

Your instruction to increase children's phonemic awareness can include various activities in blending and segmenting words. Clearly,
however, you should provide your students with instruction that is appropriate for their level of literacy development. If you teach younger
children or less able, older readers, your instruction should begin with easier activities, such as having children identify and categorize
the first phonemes in words. When the children can do these activities, move them on to more difficult ones.

Which methods of phonemic awareness instruction will have the greatest impact on my students' learning to read?

You can use a variety of teaching methods that contribute to children's success in learning to read. However, teaching one or two types
of phoneme manipulation--specifically blending and segmenting phonemes in words--is likely to produce greater benefits to your
students' reading than teaching several types of manipulation.

Teaching your students to manipulate phonemes along with letters can also contribute to their reading success.

Your instruction should also be explicit about the connection between phonemic awareness and reading. For example:

Teacher: Listen: I'm going to say the sounds in the word jam--/j/ /a/ /m/. What is the word?
Children: Jam.
Teacher: You say the sounds in the word jam.
Children: /j/ /a/ /m/.
Teacher: Now let's write the sounds in jam: /j/, write j; /a/, write a; /m/, write m.
Teacher: (Writes jam on the board.) Now we're going to read the word jam.

Which of my students will benefit from phonemic awareness instruction?

Phonemic awareness instruction can help essentially all of your students learn to read, including preschoolers, kindergartners, first graders
who are just starting to read, and older, less able readers.

Phonemic awareness instruction can help most of your students learn to spell. Instruction can be effective with preschoolers,
kindergartners, and first graders. It can help children from all economic levels.

How much time should I spend on phonemic awareness instruction?

You do not need to devote a lot of class time to phonemic awareness instruction. Over the school year, your entire phonemic awareness
program should take no more than 20 hours.

Your students will differ in their phonemic awareness. Some will need more instruction than others. The best approach is to assess students'
phonemic awareness before you begin instruction. Assessment will let you know which students do and do not need the instruction,
which students should be taught the easier types of phoneme manipulation (such as identifying initial sounds in words), and which should
receive instruction in more advanced types (such as segmenting, blending, deletion/addition, and substitution).

Should I teach phonemic awareness to individual students, to small groups, or to the whole class?

In general, small-group instruction is more effective in helping your students acquire phonemic awareness and learn to read. Small-group
instruction may be more effective than individual or whole-group instruction because children often benefit from listening to their
classmates respond and receive feedback from the teacher.

Do we know enough about the effectiveness of phonemic awareness instruction for me to implement it in my classroom?

Yes. Bear in mind, however, that phonemic awareness instruction is not a complete reading program; it cannot guarantee the reading
and writing success of your students. Adding well-thought-out phonemic awareness instruction to a beginning reading program or to a
remedial reading program is very likely to help your students learn to read and spell. Whether these benefits are lasting, however,will
depend on the comprehensiveness and effectiveness of the entire literacy curriculum.
Summing up

Phonemic awareness is

 the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds--phonemes--in spoken words.

Phonemic awareness is important because

 it improves children's word reading and reading comprehension.

 it helps children learn to spell.

Phonemic awareness can be developed through a number of activities, including asking children to

 identify phonemes,
 categorize phonemes,
 blend phonemes to form words,
 segment words into phonemes,
 delete or add phonemes to form new words, and
 substitute phenomes to make new words.

Phonemic awareness instruction is most effective

 when children are taught to manipulate phonemes by using the letters of the alphabet.
 when instruction focuses on only one or two rather than several types of phoneme manipulation.

http://www.reading-skills-pyramid.org/reading-phonemic.htm

phonemic awareness instruction

Which activities will help my students acquire phonemic awareness?

Your instruction to increase children's phonemic awareness can include various activities in blending and segmenting words. Clearly,
however, you should provide your students with instruction that is appropriate for their level of literacy development. If you teach
younger children or less able, older readers, your instruction should begin with easier activities, such as having children identify and
categorize the first phonemes in words. When the children can do these activities, move them on to more difficult ones.

Which methods of phonemic awareness instruction will have the greatest impact on my students' learning to read?

You can use a variety of teaching methods that contribute to children's success in learning to read. However, teaching one or two
types of phoneme manipulation--specifically blending and segmenting phonemes in words--is likely to produce greater benefits to
your students' reading than teaching several types of manipulation.

Teaching your students to manipulate phonemes along with letters can also contribute to their reading success.

Your instruction should also be explicit about the connection between phonemic awareness and reading. For example:

Teacher: Listen: I'm going to say the sounds in the word jam--/j/ /a/ /m/. What is the word?
Children: Jam.
Teacher: You say the sounds in the word jam.
Children: /j/ /a/ /m/.
Teacher: Now let's write the sounds in jam: /j/, write j; /a/, write a; /m/, write m.
Teacher: (Writes jam on the board.) Now we're going to read the word jam.

Which of my students will benefit from phonemic awareness instruction?

Phonemic awareness instruction can help essentially all of your students learn to read, including preschoolers, kindergartners, first
graders who are just starting to read, and older, less able readers.

Phonemic awareness instruction can help most of your students learn to spell. Instruction can be effective with preschoolers,
kindergartners, and first graders. It can help children from all economic levels.

How much time should I spend on phonemic awareness instruction?

You do not need to devote a lot of class time to phonemic awareness instruction. Over the school year, your entire phonemic
awareness program should take no more than 20 hours.
 Your students will differ in their phonemic awareness. Some will need more instruction than others. The best approach is to assess
students' phonemic awareness before you begin instruction. Assessment will let you know which students do and do not need the
instruction, which students should be taught the easier types of phoneme manipulation (such as identifying initial sounds in words),
and which should receive instruction in more advanced types (such as segmenting, blending, deletion/addition, and substitution).

Should I teach phonemic awareness to individual students, to small groups, or to the whole class?

In general, small-group instruction is more effective in helping your students acquire phonemic awareness and learn to read. Small-
group instruction may be more effective than individual or whole-group instruction because children often benefit from listening to
their classmates respond and receive feedback from the teacher.

Do we know enough about the effectiveness of phonemic awareness instruction for me to implement it in my classroom?

Yes. Bear in mind, however, that phonemic awareness instruction is not a complete reading program; it cannot guarantee the reading
and writing success of your students. Adding well-thought-out phonemic awareness instruction to a beginning reading program or to
a remedial reading program is very likely to help your students learn to read and spell. Whether these benefits are lasting, however,will
depend on the comprehensiveness and effectiveness of the entire literacy curriculum.

Summing up

Phonemic awareness is

 the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds--phonemes--in spoken words.

Phonemic awareness is important because

 it improves children's word reading and reading comprehension.

 it helps children learn to spell.

Phonemic awareness can be developed through a number of activities, including asking children to

 identify phonemes,
 categorize phonemes,
 blend phonemes to form words,
 segment words into phonemes,
 delete or add phonemes to form new words, and
 substitute phenomes to make new words.

Phonemic awareness instruction is most effective

 when children are taught to manipulate phonemes by using the letters of the alphabet.
 when instruction focuses on only one or two rather than several types of phoneme manipulation.

https://lincs.ed.gov/publications/html/prfteachers/reading_first1.html

Chapter 1. Readiness/Phonemic Awareness

Teaching children to manipulate the sounds in language helps all types of readers learn to read. Phonemic awareness and letter
knowledge have been identified in several research studies (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkerson, 1985; Adams, 1990; Snow, Burns, &
Griffin, 1998) as the two key indicators of how well children will master beginning reading skills during the first two years in school. Because
it plays such a vital role in forming the foundation of reading development, phonemic awareness is the first thread in the tapestry of
reading. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate phonemes, which are the smallest part of a spoken language.
Phonemes are the element of language that allows discrimination and make a difference in the meaning of a specific word. In the
English language, it is generally accepted that there are anywhere from 41 to 51 phonemes in spoken speech. While there are words
with only one phoneme such as I or a, most words have more than one phoneme. More than one letter (such as in the phonemes “bl”
or “ch”) can also represent phonemes. Phonemes with more than one letter are usually referred to as blends, diphthongs, or digraphs
depending on their composition.
Instruction in phonemic awareness involves helping children examine and manipulate phonemes in spoken syllables and words. The
ability to recognize that words are made up of discrete sounds and that these sounds can be changed is essential to success in learning
to read (Lundberg, Frost, & Petersen, 1988; Hoffman, Cunningham, Cunningham, & Yopp, 1998). Beginning readers must also be able to
make the connection that words are made up of sounds and that sounds are made up of letters and letter combinations (Gunning,
1996). This understanding is the foundation on which to build solid reading skills.
One of the major components that determines a child's readiness to learn to read is his or her understanding of how the sounds work
together. Children learn that words are made up of individual phonemes that help to make one word distinguishable from another word.
For example, the words cat, sat, and rat have the same phoneme sound “at” at the end of the word but because of the initial phoneme
difference, a listener interprets very different meanings for each word. Phonemic awareness is this ability to take words apart, to put them
back together again, and to change them to something else. It is a foundational skill around which the rest of the threads of reading are
woven.
In addition to understanding sounds, a child also needs to understand the concept of a word, how the position of a word (first word or
last word) makes a difference in a sentence, and that words consist of individual letters. Children must also understand that letters have
positions in words (first letter, middle letters, or last letter) and that some of these letters form syllables.
Some ways to help students develop their phonemic awareness abilities are through various activities that identify phonemes and
syllables, sort and classify phonemes, blend phonemes to make words, break apart words into their various components, and interchange
phonemes to make new words.

Why Is Phonemic Awareness Important?

According to the National Reading Panel Report (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000), the level of
phonemic awareness that children possess when first beginning reading instruction and their knowledge of letters are the two best
predictors of how well they will learn to read during the first two years of formal reading instruction. Researchers Adams, Foorman,
Lundberg, & Beeler (1998) tell us that before children learn to read, they must understand that the sounds that are paired with the letters
are the same as the sounds of speech they hear. They state, “For those of us who already know how to read and write, this realization
seems very basic, almost transparent. Nevertheless, research shows that the very notion that spoken language is made up of sequences
of these little sounds does not come naturally or easily to human beings” (p. 1). A strong understanding of phonemic concepts must be
solidly in place prior to formal instruction in reading. It is critical that a child make the association that words on the page are simply “talk
written down.”
Children form concepts about literacy by observing adults in their environment and by interacting with print during their own early
attempts at reading and writing (Sulzby & Teale, 1991). The first signs of phonemic awareness usually appear in children between the
age of two and three years old when they begin making rhymes out of words that they know. For example, children may sing, recite
rhymes, or make a game out of saying words like “sat, fat, cat, rat, bat, at.” An extensive exposure to alliterative texts and rich oral
environments during these early years helps ensure that this connection develops.
Young children start out believing that the “story” in a book is in the pictures. As they mature, they develop the understanding that while
they cannot read the words, it is the words and not the pictures that carry the important meaning of the book (Snow, Burns, & Griffin,
1998). This is an important developmental milestone. Four- and five-year-old children can be observed to “read” books that adults have
frequently read to them with increasing intonation and phrasing even though they are in reality only “pretend reading” a memorized
book. Children frequently use certain patterns that they have learned from listening to children's books such as “once upon a time” or
“the end” while pretend-reading their own books. In their early stages of writing development, these are also the styles that children will
mimic in their own attempts at story writing.
Young children also develop some understanding of letters as they “write” on paper. At the age of two or three, many children have
observed adults writing—so they make their own attempts at writing by making squiggles on paper. Often children can even “read” the
message to anyone who asks for a “translation.” In later stages of development, the squiggles the child makes may even become
recognizable letters or letter strings. This development should be encouraged and supported in the preschool classroom and in the family.
It is foundational development in the understanding of the link between writing and word messages.
Because they often hear stories being read aloud, young children may believe that “reading” only occurs when words are being spoken.
When watching an adult read silently, the child may insist that something must be spoken for reading to be taking place (Ferreiro &
Teberosky, 1982). Five year olds who have observed adults read silently will often engage in intense scrutiny of the pictures page by page
as if reading silently before “reading” the page to another person. As children make more intense connections between the print and
the “message” of the book, they will begin to attend more to the print on the page and less and less to the pictures. This transition seems
to mark a period of time when children are assimilating knowledge about how print and speech are linked. This too is a developmental
milestone on the road to fluent reading.
As children listen to adults read, they begin to develop the understanding that the adults are interpreting the message on the page
through symbols. At quite a young age, children grasp the notion that an object or symbol can stand for a concept (Marzolf & De
Loache, 1994). For example, children recognize that the “golden arches” stands for McDonald's restaurants long before they can read
the name on the building. The interpretation of the child's own written symbols indicates that the child has made a connection between
“talk” and the letter symbols on the page. This signals an emergence of sound-symbol awareness in the young child's mind.
Many children come from print-rich, literate homes and can have more than a thousand hours of exposure to reading and literacy-
building activities before they enter formal school. In these homes, reading is a priority and parents have spent many hours reading to
their children or playing language-building games such as singing, reciting rhymes, or playing word and letter games. Electronic letter
identification technology, letter flash cards, and word games also abound in these homes. Writing is also encouraged and children have
many opportunities to try a hand at scribbling, coloring, or working with magnetic letters. These children often “pretend read” a
memorized book to their proud parents and “write” a love note to mommy or grandma. Their phonemic awareness skills are firmly in
place by the time they enter formal schooling and they are ready to move into more formal reading activities.

What Happens When Phonemic Awareness Is Missing or Underdeveloped?

While phonemic awareness is easily taught to children in the early years, the absence of strong oral language, reading, and word play
in the home can lead to reading difficulties and a failure to progress in reading development (Hammill & McNutt, 1980; Scarborough,
1998). The level of phonemic awareness that a child possesses accounts for as much as 50 percent of the variance in reading proficiency
by the end of 1st grade (Blachman, 1991; Juel, 1991; Stanovich, 1986; Wagner, Torgeson, & Roshotte, 1994). The degree of phonemic
awareness that the child has developed upon entry into school is widely held to be the strongest single determinant of the child's reading
success (Adams, 1990; Stanovich, 1986; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).
Poorly developed phonemic awareness skills distinguish low socioeconomic preschoolers from their more advantaged peers (Liberman,
Rubin, Duques, & Carlisle, 1985). According to researchers Snow, Burns, & Griffin (1998), “Cognitive studies of reading have identified
phonological processing as crucial to successful reading and so it seems logical to suspect that poor readers may have phonological
processing problems.” Between 40 and 75 percent of preschoolers with early language impairments develop reading difficulties and
other academic problems as they enter formal schooling (Aram & Hall, 1989; Brashir & Scavuzzo, 1992). Other factors besides an
impoverished oral environment in the preschool years, such as attention deficit disorder or hyperactivity disorders, can also impair early
success in reading development.
As many as 31 percent of the children who enter kindergarten with attention deficit or hyperactivity disorders will have difficulty learning
to read. Initial problems in reading usually do not go away without intensive intervention and individualized tutoring. By 9th grade, over
50 percent of students with attention deficit or hyperactivity disorders will have developed moderate to severe reading delays or other
reading problems (Shaywitz, Fletcher, & Shaywitz, 1994; 1995). Early monitoring and early support for these students is critical if they are
to progress with their age peers.
One sometimes overlooked problem that makes it difficult for some children to learn distinguishing characteristics of words is the dialect
of adult speakers who instruct them. Adult speakers often enunciate sounds differently based on their dialectic patterns and personal
speech habits. This can make it difficult for a struggling child to clearly hear the word that the adult is trying to say. When an adult uses a
different dialect than the child, special care must be taken to enunciate the phonemes clearly and distinctly.
Another reason that some children can be delayed in phonemic awareness skills is due to poor or slowly developing oral language skills.
Sometimes children are not able to enunciate all of the phonemes they may be exposed to in oral language. Children who have had
many ear infections or tubes in their ears as an infant, sometimes cannot discriminate all of the phoneme sounds in the English language.
In addition to not being able to hear these sounds, children sometimes are not able to orally form some of them. Speech articulation is
tied to developmental stages so children are not able to form all sounds by the same age. If there are concerns about a student's ability
to discriminate or enunciate certain sounds, a speech pathologist should be consulted. In most cases, all sounds should be fully
developed and present in a child's speech pattern by the age of eight or nine at the very latest. Failure to note these difficulties and
seek advice could contribute to delays in the development of solid phonemic awareness skills in young readers.

Letter-Sound Identification
Once a child has a strong sense of phonemics, the learning of the letter names and their corresponding sounds can begin to take root.
Learning letter sounds by associating the sound with something concrete such as an animal name or other concrete object is the quickest
and most long-lasting method for learning the letters and their corresponding sounds. Teaching the letter names and letter sounds
themselves is the beginning stage of phonics instruction.
The development of solid phonemic awareness skills should be the main goal of the preschool and kindergarten years. Early instruction
in phonemic awareness should be primarily oral with the exception of some beginning attempts to write the letters themselves. There is
a hierarchy of understandings that must be mastered at the foundational level (Treiman & Zukowski, 1991). The first understanding is the
concept of a “word” followed by the concept of rhyme and how to make rhymes. After mastering these concepts, students must learn
to segment syllables, hear the onset and rime in a word, and then learn to segment and blend sounds into words. Each child must be
able to identify individual sounds within a word, recognize the same sounds in different words, and be able to distinguish between the
same or different sounds in words. Children must also be able to combine sounds to form various words and to isolate separate sounds
in words. Manipulating letters, sounds, and phonemes is the heart of learning to read.
An easy test to determine a child's readiness for beginning reading instruction is the letter identification test. Asking students to name
letters and sounds given in random order is as good a predictor of reading readiness as is giving an entire reading readiness battery to
the student (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Developing phonological awareness consists of helping students understand the rhythm,
pattern, and beauty of the language. Solid readiness skills consist of several factors. First, children must understand the concept of
directionality. This understanding includes the concepts of left to right; front to back; and top to bottom. Second, they must learn to see
and recognize patterns and develop an interest in the rhythm of language. According to Adams (1990), “Reading depends on a system
of skills whose components must mesh properly.” Understanding how print works and that it has predictable patterns help children learn
to embrace print as enjoyable and helpful.
Children come to formal schooling with a wide range of background experiences and developmental milestones. Children should be
taken from where they are and advanced in their reading development process. If kindergarten children already possess sound
phonemic awareness skills when they come to school, then they are ready for more challenging work and more formal reading
instruction. If they do not have this background, then we must provide this background knowledge and support before continuing with
more advanced reading instruction.
Students who are extremely delayed or who come from severely impoverished homes may need additional tutoring or individual support
to become proficient in letter-sound relationships. If children are having difficulty learning the letter names, we should teach the letters
in unlike pairs such as x and o or nand p. Once the children have mastered the unlike letters, then they can advance to finer
discriminations such as c and o, r and n, m and n, b and d, or p and q.
The phonemic awareness and extensiveness of the vocabulary that a kindergartner brings to school are two of the strongest predictors
of future reading achievement (Juel, 1991; Scarborough, 1989; Stanovich, 1986; Wagner, Torgeson, & Roshotte, 1994). There is also a high
correlation between letter identification skills and success in beginning reading (Scanlon & Vellutino, 1996). One of the main goals of the
preschool and kindergarten years should be to have every child develop strong phonemic awareness skills and to master letter-sound
identification. Beginning instruction in phonics prior to when the child has acquired phonemic awareness and letter identification skills is
ineffective. Ensuring that these two foundational understandings were in place by the end of the kindergarten year would go a long
way toward helping 1st graders develop solid beginning reading skills. Some activities to help students develop letter identification and
letter-sound identification skills, are the following:
Letter Sort
Give students magnetic letters, lettercards, or letter tiles. Ask students to sort the letters by various categories such as letters with curves,
letters with circles, long letters, tall letters, short letters, upper case, lower case, vowels, consonants, letters with short sticks, letters with
long sticks, and so forth. This activity will help students visually identify the characteristics of the various letters and will reinforce the
concept of sorting based on specific attributes.
Forming Letters
Ask students to form letters using various manipulative materials. Substances that can be used are clay, dough, sand, salt, or shaving
cream. Grocery store meat trays work well as individual “drawing boards” for letter experimentation. Many grocery stores will give unused
styrofoam meat packing trays to teachers free of charge or at a very minimal cost if you ask the store manager. Place alphabet stamps
with blank paper in another center for student experimentation with letters. Cookie cutters to make letters from clay or play dough can
also be available for making words in another classroom center.
Ordering Letters
Use a pointer often to help young children learn left-to-right tracking and sweep. Sing the alphabet song while pointing to the letters with
the pointer. When lining up to leave the classroom, hand each child an alphabet letter. Sing the alphabet song with children and invite
children to line up when the class sings their letter. After the children have lined up, double check that they are in ABC order by again
singing the song and pointing to each child. If students are not in the correct place, ask them to determine what is wrong and how to fix
it. Give them the opportunity to think through the process and to repair the problem.
Class Murals and Books
Create a class alphabet mural with each letter illustrated with a picture of an object that goes with each letter. Create class versions of
alphabet books around themes such as holidays, animals, or circus items. Laminate the books and place them in centers for students to
read and examine often.
Name Displays
Take a picture of each child in the class. Place the names of each student on a large word card and display the pictures and the name
cards in alphabetical order on a bulletin board. Place letters that do not have student names associated with them on cards and place
these in the proper order as “placeholders” in the alphabetic sequence. Spend time going over the various initial and interior sounds of
the student names with the class until students have a good understanding of the components of each name. When students can't
remember how to write or pronounce a particular letter, have them refer to the wall chart. For example, you could say, “That letter is
written like the “b” in Bobby's name. Can you find his name on our wall alphabet chart?”
Word Transformations
Older struggling students can also work with manipulative words to get a better sense of letter relationships and patterns. Using a set of
individual letters (magnetic, paper, or letter tiles), have small groups of students experiment with the letters to make lists of words that
can be made into other words by either adding or subtracting one letter. Some examples would be trip to rip; blend to lend;
and light to flight. See which group of students can find the longest list of words. A more advanced game would be to add two letters
to the root word to create a different word. Letters can be added as either initial sounds, final sounds, or as a combination of both initial
and final sounds.

Teaching Students to Recognize Syllables

Once students understand what words are, they are then ready to move to understanding that words are made up of syllables. When
students understand that words contain one or more syllables, they can then master the concept of rhyme. Helping students examine
small parts of words as individual syllables will help students make the link between being able to hear and manipulate phonemes. This
skill forms the backbone of phonemic awareness in children. Some strategies to teach the syllable concept are:
Word Comparisons
To increase student awareness of the number of syllables in a word and how this affects the number of letters it will contain, show students
two words of various lengths that they cannot yet read. Pronounce the two words and ask students to predict which word belongs to
which spoken word. For example, show the written words “pen” and “pencil” to students, asking students to identify which word they
think would be pencil. When students guess, model sounding out the phonemes so that the students can verify their prediction.
Counting Syllables
Show students various pictures of objects that they recognize. Help them to categorize the pictures by the number of “claps” (syllables)
they hear when they speak this word. Words can easily be displayed in a pocket chart for all students to see or students can sort the
words with word cards at their desks or in a center.
Getting the Beat
Have students listen for syllables in words by beating on a drum for each syllable or using some other percussion instrument such as a
xylophone or even maracas. Older students can be asked to simply make a slight chopping motion in the air to indicate the end of each
syllable as they repeat the word. Have students clap, snap, pat, rap, stomp, or tap while saying the syllables in a word. Students can also
be asked to put their hands below their chins to see how many times the chin drops while saying a given word. Students can test the
syllables in words they are learning as well as in their own first and last names.

Segmenting and Blending Words

Good readers parse letter strings to extract the meaning. Unlike a poor reader, the good reader does not say, “cuh-a-tuh” as separate
phoneme sounds, but instead pronounces the entire one syllable of cat as one parsed sound. Although word recognition per se is not
the goal of reading, comprehension does depend on having ready recognition of words so that short-term memory can extract
meaning. Information the reader obtains from the print interacts at every level with stored knowledge to form the basis of comprehension.
Unless children have a strong awareness of the phonemic structure of the English language firmly in place, asking the child the first letter
or sounds of a word is to no avail. For this reason, the wise teacher begins with oral word play and word games rather than worksheets
that ask students to “ring the sound” they hear.
The two most crucial skills for building solid phonemic awareness are the ability to segment words into their phonemic parts and to blend
the parts into whole words (Yopp, 1988). Knowledge of segmenting words is also a predictor of success in reading (Gillet & Temple, 1990).
Concentrating on developing segmenting and blending skills is more effective than a multi-skilled approach to phonemic instruction
(National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). Some activities to help students learn to segment and blend
phonemes include the following:
Secret Word
Students will love to play a game called “Secret Word” with other members of the class. The game can be played with partners or in
small groups. Each student is given a group of cards from a deck of picture cards. The first student looks at the picture on the card in
private and makes an identification of the picture. He or she then pronounces the name of the picture by stretching out the word,
phoneme by phoneme, for the other students playing the game. The other students listen and try to put the sounds together fast to
identify the “secret word.” Students alternate turns giving the “secret word” for others in the group to guess. In a whole-class version,
have students stand in a circle. Slowly pronounce the words. Everyone is instructed to think about what the “secret word” might be. At
a signal from you, the child who guessed the last word correctly gently tosses a beanbag or beach ball to another person in the circle.
After the receiving person catches the tossed object, she has to “snap” the word together and tell the word as it is normally pronounced.
Longer words such as television or November are good for this game.
I'm Thinking Of . . .
Play the “I'm thinking of” game by saying a word such as an animal name very slowly, sounding out each part. Students are asked to
guess what you are thinking of. As students become more sophisticated with the game, have them look into a box or bag in which you
have placed a special object. The student stretches out the object's name so that other students guess the identity of the mystery object.
Alphabet Wheel
Show students ending phonemes and demonstrate that changing the initial consonant can change the entire meaning of the word.
Construct and demonstrate how to use an alphabet wheel with the letters from A to Z to “match” new initial consonants to the given
phonemes to see if a new word they recognize can be made. For example: bat, cat, mat, fat, hat, rat or ox, fox, box or day, hay, may,
pay, ray, say, way, etc. In a more advanced version of the game, ask students to identify words with blended phonemes to develop
their skills: “br” as in break, breakfast, bridge, brother, etc. Students can later take similar words and make books about the words such
as “I went for a walk and I saw something funny. I thought it was a . . . but it was a . . . .”
Creating New Words
Write a phoneme grouping such as “at” on an index card. Give the student individual letter pieces to place at the beginning of the word
to create new words such as bat, cat, sat, and so forth. The same technique can also be used with initial phonemes such as “th” or “br”
with students adding the endings to the words. Be sure to point out beginning, middle, and end sound positions to students as the various
components are manipulated.

Identifying Beginning, Medial, and Ending Sounds

Because it is easier to distinguish beginning sounds than medial or final sounds, we should begin instruction with the beginning sounds
and introduce the medial and final sounds after the child has mastered the beginning sounds. To teach the sound, select words that are
one syllable in length that isolate the initial letter so that children can clearly hear the individual sound being made. Good words to use
would be words similar to cat or pat, because each phoneme sound can be clearly and distinctly heard. As the word is spoken, draw
out the sound of the letter being introduced so students can clearly hear the sound as it is being enunciated. Emphasis should be placed
on how the phonemes feel in the mouth as they are formed. Continually draw students' attention to the position of the lips, tongue, and
teeth while they are saying the sound. Students should then be asked to compare letters with very different mouth formations so that
they clearly see the differences in articulation and mouth formation. Good comparison letters would be “m” and “o,” for example, since
the mouth is in very different positions for the formation of each letter. We should always model our own thinking aloud and ask students
to frequently verbalize what they are doing so that others can also hear this information. For students who are having difficulty, provide
mirrors so the students can self-monitor as they say certain words. Putting a hand in front of the lips as the word is spoken is also a helpful
suggestion for students. Another strategy is to ask students to lightly touch their larynx as they pronounce different sounds so they can
feel the sound that is being made. Students who lack phonemic awareness skills often try to memorize the visual aspects of a whole
word. This is often what is happening when a child laboriously sounds out a word correctly but then guesses a word that is totally unrelated
to the sounds that have been produced. While visual identification works for some children, for most children it is not a foundational
strategy on which to build solid reading skills. Children should therefore be encouraged to continue to self-monitor their speech formations
and patterns whenever possible. To help students identify beginning, medial, and ending sounds, try the following activities:
Matching Sounds
Ask students to find something in the classroom that begins with the same sound as their own name. The students say the sound that their
own names begin with and then name the corresponding item that matches their initial sound. This is a good dismissal activity as students
return to their seats from circle time. A more advanced version of this game is to have children match verbs with their names. An example
is “Mary can march,” or “Tommy can tumble.”
Real or Not?
Show students a specific rime pattern such as “ing.” Place individual consonant letters adjacent to the rime pattern and ask students to
determine whether the newly constructed word is a real word or not. For example, placing the letter s with the rime pattern would
produce sing while placing the letter f would produce fing. Emphasis should be placed on helping students understand the importance
of initial sounds in making sense out of the words we hear. This is especially important for second-language learners.
Sorting Sounds
Give students a set of pictures that have two initial consonant sounds such as “c” and “r.” Ask students to group the picture cards into
the appropriate stack according to the initial consonant sound. Picture cards can also be sorted by medial or final sounds.
Alliterative Stories
Read alliterative stories to students stressing the alliterative sounds the author has provided. Ask students to develop sentences built
around the initial sound of their own names. For example, a student named Dan might write, “Dandy Dan dallies daily during dinner.”
Have class challenges to see who can develop the longest, alliterative sentence. Older students can be challenged to develop whole
alliterative stories.
Beginning, Middle, or End?
Give children a special snack such as crackers, gummy bears, or raisins, and two paper cups of different colors. Have students line up
the cups with one color placed on the left for when they hear the sound at the beginning of the word and the other on the right for
when the sound is at the end of the word. Give a word and ask children to listen for a specific sound in the word such as the sound of
the letter d. When the “d” sound is heard at the beginning, the children place a treat in the cup on their left. If the children place the
treat in the correct cup, they are allowed to eat the treat. Words that have both a beginning and ending “d” sound such as the
word dad are even more fun as both cups get a treat at the same time. Cleanup is never a problem with this activity since children are
happy to help eat the manipulatives. The game can also be played with buttons or other markers if you do not wish to use snack items
during the activity.
Name Game
Sing the “Name Game” song as a line up song. As a student comes up to join the line, a rhyme is made with the “banana fana. . .”
endings as in the song. Another version, called “Listen for the Sounds,” asks students to line up if their name includes a sound. For example,
if the sound given were “t”, then Tim, Betty, and Brent could all line up because their names contain the sound.
Birthday Wish
Have students sit in a circle and give one student a beanbag. The student with the beanbag starts the game by saying “For my birthday,
I want a _____.” The other students should be listening to the final sound of the word given and thinking of an object that starts with that
sound. For example, one student might say, “For my birthday, I want a bear.” The student would then toss the beanbag to another
student in the circle. The next student who receives the object might then say, “For my birthday, I want a radio.”
Match Game
Purchase or make sets of picture cards with common objects that the students will recognize. Have students sort the picture cards into
piles by the same initial or final consonant sounds. Students can also play a matching game with a matched deck of picture cards. Have
students begin with a partner by laying all of the cards face down and then selecting two cards in a “match game” format. If the two
cards have the same initial sound, then a “match” is made and the student gets to hold the card set. Play continues until all matches
that can be made have been made.
Who Has the Card?
Pass out pictures of common objects. Play the game “Who Has the Card?” Say, “Who has the card that begins with the “d” sound and
ends with the “g” sound?” The child who has the “dog” card should produce the card when it is identified. Children at higher stages of
development can later be given word cards instead of picture cards and asked to play the same game by looking at the words they
are holding.
Sound of the Day
For some special fun with primary students, the students or you can select a “sound of the day” to use during the day. For example, on
the “t” day, students would start all of their noun words with a “t” sound instead of the letter that the word would normally start with. For
example, say “took” instead of book or “tarry” instead of “Mary.” Students will have fun trying to match the special sound of the day to
the nouns they use around the classroom that day.
Listen, Listen
Help students look at words and isolate the sounds or phonemes that they hear in various parts of a word. For example, “Listen for words
that start with the sound of “m.” Have students raise their hands as they hear the “m” sound in a story that you read to the class. Waxed
pipe cleaner strands can also be used to ring the special letters on the big book page as the class listens to the material. The same
strategy can also be used for medial or final sounds or any other special features you want to point out to students.
Word Boundaries
As students write sentences, ask them to use a different color crayon to write each word on their paper. This will help them think about
the boundaries for each word as they are writing the word.
What's My Label?
Labels around the room help students link objects with the concept of a word. Point to the labels and help students read the word labels
and identify the object that matches the label.
One to One
Draw horizontal dash lines on a paper or on the overhead to represent the sounds that students hear in a word. Push pennies, buttons,
or paper clips into the line spaces as each sound is said so that students see a representation of the sound as it is made. After students
have mastered the basic level of this activity, they can move to more complex forms where they are asked to compare the lengths of
 two words as they push their manipulatives into the line spaces. An even more advanced version of this activity can also be done. Ask
students to use their manipulatives to signal syllables for longer words in a given sentence. This is a good activity to practice after students
have grasped the concept of phonemes in words.

Developing the Concept of Words

One of the crucial understandings that beginning readers need to develop is the concept of a “word” as a collection of sounds that
together provide meaning. Students need to understand that while a few words consist of a single phoneme, most words contain more
than one phoneme. They also need to learn that words come in various lengths and that they can be organized into sentences that
together give a message. When young students first begin to write, they often do not understand the idea that spaces separate words,
so they run all of their words together on the page. Teachers often offer the suggestion that children place a finger on the paper before
writing the next word to help them understand that words have space boundaries. The more students are exposed to playing with words,
the sooner they will develop understandings around words. Some ideas to help students examine words follow:
Counting Words
Give students a sentence and have them match counters with the number of words they see in the short sentence. Counters can be
either nonedible such as buttons or plastic chips or edible such as raisins, grapes, or crackers. The children can place beans or buttons
into a cup as the words in the sentences are indicated.
Building Sentences
Display several sentences in a pocket chart with a blank pocket above each sentence. Make duplicates of the sentences and cut them
up into their individual words. Give each group of students one set of words that makes up one of the sentences in the pocket chart.
Students must put the individual words into the proper order and then place them correctly above the sentence that corresponds to the
sentence they are reconstructing. This activity can also be a good one for children to do as a center activity on their own.
Same or Different?
Show students two words with one written above the other. Ask students to compare the letters in each word and to decide if the words
are the same or different. Example: Compare mouse with house. Compare run with run. Compare want with went. Ask students to
describe what is different about the words if they think they are different. Ask, “How do you know?”
Word Thoughts
Play a game with students called “I'm thinking of a word.” Give students clues to help them identify the word. For example, “I am thinking
of a word that ends in ‘ice’ and are small, furry animals that like cheese.” Picture cards can also be used to show students that their
guesses are correct or incorrect. A variation of this game is to give the entire word by the elongated phoneme components (such as
/m/i/suh for the word mice) and then ask students to consolidate the phonemes and guess the word. Students can also play “What's in
my birthday package?” by listening to elongated words to guess the mystery item. This game can also be played with a box by asking,
“What do I have in the box?”
What Doesn't Belong?
Students can play “What doesn't belong?” by being shown three picture cards with the same phoneme components. One word should
be different from the featured phonemes so students can identify the word that doesn't belong. After each word, ask the student to
explain why it does not belong with the other two words in the group.

Developing the Concepts of Print

During the early stages of phonemic awareness, it is also desirable to help students begin to understand the concepts of print. Students
need to understand that print conveys meaning. They also need to understand how print is processed, how we interpret the symbols on
the page, and how a book is read by the reader. To help students develop these associations, point out and model the various
components for the students as they listen to a book being read. According to Marie Clay (1993), some understandings that we would
want students to develop at this stage include the following:
 Readers begin reading at the left of the line of print and progress across the page to the right.
 A return sweep of the eyes is made to the next line of print at the left side of the page.
 Readers begin reading at the top of the page and work downward on the page.
 Readers begin at the front of the book and read to the back of the book.
The following activities will help students develop an understanding of the concepts of print.
Special Student of the Day
Place all of the children's names in a hat and draw one name out each day. This child becomes the “Kindergartner of the Day” or “1st
Grader of the Day.” As a result, the child gets to do special things all throughout his or her “special day,” such as sit in a special chair, be
the line leader, or be the messenger. Write a class poem or story about the student of the day. Students can help you create each
sentence by suggesting where to start, what letter to start with, what letter comes next, and so forth. After the message is written, ask
students to help you analyze the sounds and letters in the message. Have the “student of the day” point to the words with a pointer as
the class reads back the story. Leave the writing on the chart stand during the day so that other students have an opportunity to come
up and use the pointer to read the story themselves. At the end of the day, the special student takes the poem or story home. The stories
about each child can also be typed and placed into a book. A digital picture of each child can complete the page. The book should
be laminated, spiral bound, and placed in the student reading center for all to enjoy.
Featured Books
Using a big book version of a story that all students can see, lead a discussion with students on the title, cover art, and illustrations of the
book. Invite students to predict the storyline, and then read the story to the students, stopping at key points to ask for predictions. On a
subsequent lesson, ask students to retell the story from looking at the pictures. Use the same book to highlight different word structures or
patterns. Cover word parts with sticky notes and ask students to predict what word is under the sticky note. Have children join in the
rereading either chorally or in small groups. After several books have been used in this way, ask students to choose which book will be
“featured” for the day. If possible, have smaller versions of the big books available in the free reading areas for children to reread on
their own during the remainder of the day.
Building Books
Construct alphabet books by asking students to draw pictures for each letter using themes such as space, hobbies and games, or
animals. Students will enjoy looking at the books over and over again. This is also a great way to build a collection of inexpensive big
books that children will love to read and reread.
Finding Patterns
Find books, songs, and poems that have rhyme, alliteration, or assonance. Point out the unique patterns that the material contains as
the text is read. Even when children cannot yet read the words themselves, use a pointer with big books to “follow along” with the words
as they are being read from the book. Ask children to complete pages for a book with a simple sentence and an illustration that matches
the sentence. Some books that might be made are alphabet books, or books on topics such as “things in the room,” “things I like to eat,”
“people who are important to us,” and “animals we like.”
Parents and early primary teachers must help students discover the richness of language by surrounding children early in life with as much
language and oral richness as possible. As children see print and hear adults make associations between the spoken word and symbols
on the page, children will begin to recognize that there is a relationship between the symbols they see on the page and the spoken
sounds they hear. By listening to a large number of stories where words are used in creative ways and by “playing with words” through
rhymes, poems, riddles, songs, finger plays, and games, children can fine tune their phonemic awareness skills. With a solid foundation of
phonemic awareness, children will be able to build a tight weave with the other threads of reading.

Developing a Sense of Rhythm and Rhyme

Another way to foster a child's fascination with print is by extensive reading of books that have a strong sense of rhythm, pattern, and
predictability. Developing a sense of rhythm is beneficial to learning to read. Researchers from the University College in London.
(Goswami, et al., 2002) found that children who read very well for their age had a strong ability to spot rhythms and beats. Children with
dyslexia had difficulty identifying the rime in words such as fit and fat. Researchers concluded that an awareness of beat and rhythm
could influence the way children process speech patterns. This in turn, can affect their reading and writing skills. Training in rhyme and
beat can help develop this distinction in young children as their reading skills emerge.
Nursery rhymes, chants, songs, poetry, and predictable print books all have the types of patterns necessary for building strong talk-print
linkages. Teachers in grades K-1 should often use books that contain either predictable pictures or predictable word patterns. Use “sticky
notes” to cover a predictable word and ask students to guess the hidden word. This strategy will help students develop strong decoding
and prediction skills. Dr. Seuss books, ABC books, or repetitive books such as Bill Martin's Brown Bear, Brown Bear (1970) or Margaret Weis
Brown's Goodnight Moon (1947) are also helpful for teaching a sense of rhythm and pattern. More complex books should also be read
so that children continue to expand their vocabulary and sense of language development.
Phonemic awareness activities should be short, fast paced, varied, and, above all, fun for the children. We should choose books that
are well written and clearly illustrated. At the beginning, the books should not have too much print so that students can learn to “read
along with” the reader as the story is read to them. Strong repetitive patterns that stress rhyming words, such as Dr. Seuss' There's a Wocket
in My Pocket(1996) are good choices to use at this level. Another strategy is to take “picture walks” through the book prior to reading
the book for the first time. Ask children to make predictions based on the pictures about what might happen in the story. After reading
for enjoyment, have children play with the language and even act out portions of the story. Try the following techniques to help children
develop a sense of rhythm and rhyme:
Rhymes and Rhythms
Use a big book, such as Mrs. Wishy-Washy (1987) by Joy Cowley, with a specific rhyme pattern featured throughout the book. Have
students listen to the rhymes and identify the rhyming word sounds. Students can also be asked to make predictions about what words
might be used in each sentence. Stop to recap and highlight rhymes with students on a frequent basis. The more it is put in an enjoyable,
game-like context, the more students will enjoy finding rhymes and rhythms.
Rotating Rhymes
Help students develop a strong sense of rhyme and pattern by reading repetitive or predictable stories chorally. For example, students
in half of the class would read with you, “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe” and the second half of the class would then
read, “She had so many children she didn't know what to do.” Rotation continues throughout the story with the class switching parts. The
children will love being active participants in the reading of the story.
What's Different?
Read familiar nursery rhymes or short stories to the children but change something about the sentences as they are read. For example,
“the moon jumped over the cow” (reverse words); “little boy green” (substitute words); “Mary had a little ram” (change the consonants);
“little Miss Tuffet sat on a muffet” (change the sequence or order of events in the story). Children should be listening attentively to spot
the problems. When they identify a problem, they should be asked to explain why it is incorrect and what the correct response should
be. This game sharpens student's awareness of phonology, words, syntax, semantics, and listening attentiveness.

Writing Helps Establish Strong Phonemic Awareness Connections

Writing is important to developing strong phonemic awareness skills. Inventive spelling provides us with much insight into the development
of a child's phonemic understanding. Morris and Perney (1984) have identified four stages of spelling development in children: pre-
phonemic, phonemic, transitional, and correct spelling. Children begin their writing attempts as pre-phonemic spellers. In this stage,
spellers perceive and represent initial and final consonants by one-syllable words, often using letter names to represent phonemes. For
example, the child might write j, js, or jc for the word dress. Children who advance to the phonemic stage begin to use short vowels as
phonologically appropriate substitutions. For example, the child might write sek for sink or fet for feet. Spellers in the transitional stage
begin to represent short vowels correctly, but the vowel markers may be incorrectly placed such as sied for side. Correct spelling is when
the child nearly always spells the words in the conventional manner when writing.
As children become more proficient writers, they often go through a period of time when they reject inventive spelling and insist on
writing a word the “right way” (Sulzby, 1996). This too is a characteristic of children who are about to move from the transitional stage to
the correct spelling stage.
We can also help develop the link between oral and written language by creating shared writings around a common theme. An example
is to make a chart or an illustrated student-authored big book using the starters “I can ...” or “I like ...” or a similar sentence stem. Students
add their own ending and the class chorally reads and practices the writing. Students can be asked to reflect on what they “notice” in
the writing that they are reading. Writing as much as possible, even when students are still at the “scribble” stage, helps build a strong
sense of phonemic awareness.

Weaving the Thread of Phonemic Awareness

When children have phonemic awareness they understand that the sounds of spoken language fit together to make words and that
those words convey meaning. Beginning readers must learn that reading is the process of acquiring meaning from text. There are many
skills that children must learn as they begin to make sense of the various symbols and arrangements of words and letters. They need to
understand the connection between the sounds that they hear in everyday language and the letters that they see on a page. They also
need to understand how sounds fit together to form words and they must be able to manipulate the various parts of words and syllables
to create new words. They need to understand how print is processed and that books and writing can be wonderful sources of
knowledge and entertainment in their lives. With solid phonemic awareness skills, students are then ready to begin formal instruction in
phonics.
http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/103316/chapters/Readiness~Phonemic-Awareness.aspx

Phonemic Activities for the Preschool or Elementary Classroom

By: Marilyn J. Adams, Barbara Foorman, Ingvar Lundberg, Terri Beeler

Activities that stimulate phonemic awareness in preschool and elementary school children are one sure way to get a child ready for
reading! Here are eight of them from expert Marilyn Jager Adams.

RELATED

Sounds and Symbols (Launching Young Readers series)

Blending and Segmenting Games

How Now Brown Cow: Phoneme Awareness Activities

This article features activities designed to stimulate the development of phonemic awareness in preschool and elementary school
children. The activities originally appeared in the book Phonemic Awareness in Young Children: A Classroom Curriculum.

Listening to sequences of sounds

From chapter 3: Listening games

Objective

To develop the memory and attentional abilities for thinking about sequences of sounds and the language for discussing them.

Materials needed

Objects that make interesting, distinctive sounds. Some examples follow:

banging on wall/table/lap
opening window or drawer
blowing
pouring liquid
blowing a whistle
ringing a bell
blowing nose
rubbing hands together
clapping
scratching
clicking with tongue
sharpening a pencil
closing purse
slamming a book
coloring hard on paper
smashing crackers
coughing
snapping fingers
crumpling paper
stamping
cutting with a knife
stirring with teaspoon
cutting with scissors
tearing paper
dropping (various things)
tiptoeing
drumming with fingers
turning on computer
eating an apple
walking
folding paper
whistling
hammering
writing on board
hopping
writing with a pencil
noisy chewing

Activity

In this game, the children are challenged first to identify single sounds and then to identify each one of a sequence of sounds. Both will
be very important in the language games to come. The children are to cover their eyes with their hands while you make a familiar noise
such as closing the door, sneezing, or playing a key on the piano. By listening carefully and without peeking, the children are to try to
identify the noise.

Once the children have caught on to the game, make two noises, one after the other. Without peeking, the children are to guess the
two sounds in sequence saying, "There were two sounds. First we heard a ____, and then we heard a ____."

After the children have become quite good with pairs of noises, produce a series of more than two for them to identify and report in
sequence. Again, complete sentences should be encouraged.

Remember that, to give every child the opportunity to participate mentally in these games, it is important to discourage all children from
calling out their answers until they are asked to do so. In addition, both to support full participation and to allow assessment of individual
students, it is helpful to switch unpredictably between inviting a response from the whole group and from individual children of your
designation.

Note: Because of the importance of the skill exercised through this game, invest special care in noting every child's progress and
difficulties. Extra opportunities should be created to work with children who are having trouble with the concept of sequences or in
expressing their responses.
 Variations

 With the children's eyes closed, make a series of sounds. Then repeat the sequence, but omit one of the sounds. The children must identify
the sound that has been omitted from the second sequence.

 Invite the children to make sounds for their classmates to guess.

 These games also offer good opportunities to review, exercise, and evaluate children's use of ordinal terms, such as first, second, third,
middle, last. It is worth ensuring that every student gains comfortable, receptive, and expressive command of these terms.

Nonsense

From chapter 3: Listening games

Objective

To develop the children's ability to attend to differences between what they expect to hear and what they actually hear.

Materials needed

Book of familiar stories or poems

Activity

Invite the children to sit down and close their eyes so that they can concentrate on what they will hear. Then recite or read aloud a
familiar story or poem to the children but, once in a while, by changing its words or wording, change its sense to nonsense. The children's
challenge is to detect such changes whenever they occur. When they do, encourage them to explain what was wrong. As the game is
replayed in more subtle variations across the year, it will also serve usefully to sharpen the children's awareness of the phonology, words,
syntax, and semantics of language.

As illustrated in the following list, you can change any text in more or less subtle ways at a number of different levels including phonemes,
words, grammar, and meaning. Because of this, the game can be profitably and enjoyable revisited again and again throughout the
year. Even so, in initial plays of the game, it is important that the changes result in violations of the sense, meaning, and wording of the
text that are relatively obvious. Following are some examples of the "nonsense" that can be created within familiar poems and rhymes:

Song a sing of sixpence Reverse words

Baa baa purple sheep Substitute words

Twinkle, twinkle little car Substitute words

Humpty Dumpty wall on a sat Swap word order

Jack fell down and crown his broke Swap word order

One, two shuckle my boo Swap word parts

I'm a tittle leapot Swap word parts

The eensy weensy spider went up the spouter wat. Swap word parts

One, two, buckle my shoe

Switch order of events
Five, six, pick up sticks

Little Miss Muffet, eating a tuffet

Switch order of events
Sat on her curds and whey

Goldilocks went inside and knocked on the door. Switch order of events

The first little piggy built himself a house of bricks. Switch order of events

Note: Don't forget to switch unpredictably between asking the whole group or individual children to respond.

Clapping names

From chapter 6: Awareness of syllables

 Objective

To introduce the children to the nature of syllables by leading them to clap and count the syllables in their own names.

Activity

When you first introduce this activity, model it by using several names of contrasting lengths. Pronounce the first name of one of the
children in the classroom syllable by syllable while clapping it out before inviting the children to say and clap the name along with you.
After each name has been clapped, ask "How many syllables did you hear?"

Once children have caught on, ask each child to clap and count the syllables in his or her own name. Don't forget last names, too! It is
easy to continue clapping other words and to count the syllables in each. If a name has many syllables, you may need to let children
count the syllables as they are clapping.

Variations

 Ask the children to clap and count the syllables of their first and last names together.

 After determining the number of syllables in a name, ask the children to hold two fingers horizontally under their chins, so they can feel
the chin drop for each syllable. To maximize this effect, encourage the children to elongate or stretch each syllable.

 As follows, this activity can be done to a rhythmic chant, such as "Bippity, Bippity Bumble Bee":

Bippity, bippity bumble bee, Tell me what your name should be.

(Point to a child; that child responds by giving his name. Class repeats name out loud. Continue with one of the following:)

o "Clap it!" (Children repeat name, enunciating and clapping to each syllable.)

o "Whisper it!" (Children whisper each syllable while clapping.)

o "Silent!" (Children repeat name, silently enunciating syllables with mouth movement.)

Finding things: Initial phonemes

From chapter 7: Initial and final sounds

Objective

To extend children's awareness of initial phonemes by asking them to compare, contrast, and eventually identify the initial sounds of a
variety of words.

Materials needed

Picture cards

Activity

This game should be played as an extension of Activity 7B: Different Words, Same Initial Phoneme. [Editor's note: this activity is found in
the authors' book]. Spread a few pictures out in the middle of the circle. Then ask the children to find those pictures whose names start
with the initial sound on which they have just been working. As each picture is found, the child is to say its name and initial phoneme as
before (e.g., f-f-f-f-ish, /f-f-f-f/, fish).

Variations

 As the children become more comfortable with the game, spread out pictures from two different sets, asking the children to identify the
name and initial phoneme of each picture and to sort them into two piles accordingly.

 Pass pictures out to the children; each must identify the initial phoneme of her or his picture and put it in the corresponding pile. This
game works well with small groups.

 Sound-traition: Pass pictures of objects or animals to the children, naming each picture and placing it face down on the table or carpet.
Children take turns flipping pairs of pictures right side up and deciding if the initial sounds of the pictures' names are the same. If the initial
sounds match, the child selects another pair; otherwise, another child takes a turn. This game works well with small groups.

Word pairs I: Take a sound away (analysis)

From chapter 7: Initial and final sounds

Objective

To help the children to separate the sounds of words from their meanings.

Activity

By showing the children that if the initial phoneme of a word is removed a totally different word may result, this activity further helps
children to separate the sounds of words from their meanings. With the children seated in a circle, explain that sometimes when you take
a sound away from a word, you end up with a totally different word.
 To give the children an example, say "f-f-f-ear," elongating the initial consonant, and have the children repeat. Then say "ear," and have
the children repeat. Ask the children if they can determine which sound has been taken away and repeat the words for them (i.e., f-f-f-
f-ear – ear – f-f-f-f-ear – ear).

In this way, the children are challenged to attend to the initial phonemes of words even as they come to realize that the presence or
absence of the initial phoneme results in two different words. Across days, gradually work up from the easier initial consonants to harder
ones. Sample word lists are provided at the end of the chapter.

Note: Most children can identify the "hidden word" but have a great deal of difficulty in identifying what is taken away. Children may
also be inclined to produce rhyming words rather than to focus on initial sounds. With this in mind, take care not to flip back and forth
between the activities involving rhyming and initial sounds.

Variations

 To help the children notice that the initial sound makes a big difference in the words' meanings, ask them to use each word in a sentence.

 When the children are comfortable with this game, play it with game 7I: Spider's Web. [Editor's note: this activity is found in the authors'
book].

 Call the children to line up by naming their first names without the initial sound (e.g., [J]-onathon). The children have to figure out whose
name has been called and what sound is missing. You may want to delete initial blends as a unit until after blends have been introduced
in Chapter 8 (e.g., [St]-anley).

Word pairs II: Add a sound (synthesis)

From chapter 7: Initial and final sounds

Objective

To introduce children to the challenge of synthesizing words from their separate phonemes.

Activity

Seat the children in a circle, and begin by explaining that sometimes a new word can be made by adding a sound to a word. As an
example, say "ox," and have the children repeat it. Then ask what will happen if they add a new sound to the beginning of the word
such as f-f-f-f-f: "f-f-f-f-f…ox, f-f-f-f…ox, f-f-f-f-ox." The children say, "fox!" You should then explain, "We put a new sound on the beginning,
and we have a new word!"

Until the children catch on, you should provide solid guidance, asking the children to say the word parts with you in unison (e.g., "ice…m–
,–,–,…ice…m-m-m-ice…mice"). Again, it is appropriate to work up gradually, across days, from the easier initial consonants to harder
ones and, only after the latter are reasonably well established, to consonant blends (e.g., mile-smile).

Variations

 Invite the children to use each word of a pair in a sentence to emphasize the difference in their meanings.

 When the children are good at this, play it with 7I: Spider's Web. [Editor's note: this activity is found in the authors' book].

Two-sound words

From chapter 8: Phonemes

Objective

To introduce the children to the challenges of analyzing words into phonemes and of synthesizing words from phonemes.

Materials needed

 Blocks

 Two-phoneme word cards

Activity

These two-sound games serve to introduce the procedure and logic of the more difficult phonemic analysis and synthesis activities that
follow. In addition, two-sound words provide an unfettered medium for giving children practice with the sounds of the various phonemes,
both in isolation and as blended together in phonologically minimal words.

In view of this, it is more helpful to revisit them as needed by individuals or by the group than to dwell too long in any given session.
Because of their foundational importance, however, it is critical that every child grasp this concept before moving on to the more
advanced activities.

On the first day, it is sufficient to do analysis only. On subsequent days, begin with analysis and shift to synthesis. Similarly, for the first few
days, it is wise to separate play with initial consonant words from play with final consonant words for clarity. Once the children have
caught on, the two types of words could be freely intermixed. Finally, because the short vowels are so much more variable and less
distinctive in both sound and articulation, their introduction should be deferred until the children are reasonably comfortable with long-
vowel words.
 Again, to clarify the children's image of the phonemes and to support their ability to distinguish them one from another, it is valuable to
ask them to feel how their mouths change position with each sound or to look at their mouths in a mirror while saying the words. In
addition, as in all of the phonemic awareness activities, it is important to ensure that the students are familiar with each word used in
these exercises. If you suspect that any of your students are not, it is wise to review the word's meaning and usage.

Note: To play these games, each of the children should have two blocks. In addition, you should have two blocks of your own and a set
of pictures of two-phoneme words. Also, before beginning, it is important to have read the introduction to this chapter.

The analysis game

A child picks a card and names what it depicts. For this example, let us assume that the child chooses a picture of a hair bow. You would
repeat the word, but slowly and with a clear pause (about a half-second interval) between its two phonemes (e.g., "b…ō"). Then all the
children should repeat the word in this same manner, "b…ō…." To show that the word bow consists of two separate sounds, the teacher
now places blocks in two different colors underneath the picture as she enunciates the sound represented by each.

The children then repeat the word sound by sound while representing the sounds of the word, left to right, with their own blocks. The
children should repeat the sounds while pointing to the respective blocks and then the word, pausing slightly less between phonemes
with each repetition. (e.g., "b…ō…, bow, b…ō…, bow, b…ō, bow, b-ō…bow").

The synthesis game

This game is just the reverse of the analysis game and likewise requires that you model the procedure before turning it over to the children.
Choose a picture and place it face down so the children cannot see it. Then name the picture, phoneme by phoneme (e.g., "b…ō"),
while placing the blocks beneath the picture. While pointing to their own blocks, the children must repeat the phonemes over and over
and faster and faster as they did in the analysis game. When they believe they know the identity of the picture they should raise their
hands. The teacher may then ask the group or any individual to name the picture. After resolving any disagreements, the picture is held
up for all to see.

After modeling several words in this way, pass the challenge to the children. For each new picture, help them agree on its name and
give them time to analyze it on their own. To gain a good sense of who is and is not catching on, ask one or more individuals to share his
or her solution to each word. Then the whole group should repeat the solution together, voicing the separate phonemes of the word as
they point to their corresponding blocks.

Variations

 Extend the exercise to unpictured words. At the outset of each analysis challenge, be sure to use each word in a sentence for the sake
of clarity (e.g., "Chew. Please chew your food before you swallow it. Chew.") Similarly, ask the children to use each word in a sentence
as part of the wrap-up of each synthesis challenge.

 Later, this game can be used to teach the alphabetic principle by replacing the colored block with letter tokens. If you choose to do so,
however, bear in mind that to convey the essential logic of the alphabetic principle, it is best that all words include one letter for each
sound, left to right. With this in mind, avoid words with silent letters or digraphs. Use only short vowel words, and, among those, only those
that are spelled with two letters (e.g., in and am are fine, but not edge or itch).

Note: All of the words in the following lists consist of only two phonemes. Nevertheless, due to the vagaries of English, the spellings of
many involve more than two letters. For this reason, showing the words' spellings will only confuse the issue for now. The following are
examples of two-sound words with initial consonants and long vowels:

bee bye bow /bō/ boo

fee die doe chew
day
gee guy go coo
hay
he hi hoe do
jay
knee lie low goo
may
me my mow moo
pay
pea pie no shoe
ray
see rye row /rō/ two
say
she sigh sew /sō/ who
way
tea tie show you
we why toe zoo

The following are examples of two-sound words with final consonant sounds and long vowels:

ace
ache
age each
oak
aid ease
ice oat
ail eat
own
aim eel
ape
eight

The following are examples of two-sound words with final consonant sounds and short vowels:
 ick
add
if
am
ill odd
an edge up
in off
as Ed us
is on
ash
it
at
itch

Troll talk II: Phonemes

From chapter 8: Phonemes

Objective

To reinforce students' ability to synthesize words from their separate phonemes.

Activity

This activity in analogous to that presented in 6E: Troll Talk I: Syllables, [Editor's note: this activity is found in the authors' book] except that
the troll describes his treats phoneme by phoneme instead of syllable by syllable. Everyone sits in a circle, and the teacher tells a tale:

Once upon a time, there was a kind, little troll who loved to give people presents. The only catch was that the troll always wanted people
to know what their present was before giving it to them. The problem was that the little troll had a very strange way of talking. If he was
going to tell a child that the present was a bike, he would say "b–i–k." Not until the child has guessed what the present was would he be
completely happy. Now I will pretend to be the troll. I will name a surprise for one of you. When you figure out what it is, it will be your
turn.

Choose one child and pronounce the name of the present, phoneme by phoneme. When the child guesses the word, she or he is to
name a present for somebody else. Work up from short (two- and three-sound) words to longer ones as the children become more adept
at hearing the sounds. It is best to limit the game to only four or five children on any given day or it becomes a bit long. Examples of gifts
include the following:

ape cheese moose

soap
bean desk pan
stool
book dog pea
stump
bow dress pen
tie
bread eel phone
train
brick glass shoe
truck
broom ice skate

Note: If the students are not familiar with trolls, then substitute another person or creature from folklore such as a leprechaun, unicorn, or
elf.

Variation

 Each child gets from one to three "secret" pictures. They may now give the things in the pictures as "presents," one thing at a time, to
another child by sounding out the word. The child who receives the present has to guess what it is before she or he can have the picture.

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/phonemic-activities-preschool-or-elementary-classroom

How Now Brown Cow: Phoneme Awareness Activities

By: Edwin S. Ellis

Phonemic awareness training is essential for students who are at risk for reading difficulties. This article describes the components of
phonemic awareness and provides activities that special educators can use to provide this training to at risk students.

Research indicates a strong relationship between early phoneme awareness and later reading success, and it links some reading failure
to insufficiently developed phoneme awareness skills. Intervention research clearly demonstrates the benefits of explicitly teaching
phoneme awareness skills.

Many children at risk for reading failure are in general education classrooms where phoneme awareness training is not part of their
reading program. This article presents a set of developmental phoneme awareness training activities that the special educator can
integrate collaboratively into existing kindergarten and first-grade reading programs.

Instructional considerations

Before preparing to conduct phoneme awareness activities in a general education setting, the special educator needs to become
familiar with the method being used to teach reading and should observe the class in action.

Most of the phoneme awareness activities should not take more than 15 or 20 minutes to complete and should fit the context of the
classroom. Although a particular activity can be selected well in advance, the specific words targeted for phoneme awareness should
be selected from material used actively in the class, such as a story or picture book that was just read and discussed, the immediate
environment, words fitting a thematic unit being taught, or discussions about a field trip.
 Phoneme awareness activities work well in classrooms where teachers implement shared reading. Typically, after previewing the text
with the class, the teacher reads aloud a large-print text on a chart or in a big book, the teacher and children read the selection together,
and then students complete individual activities related to the selection (Holdaway, 1979). Phoneme awareness activities are a natural
extension of the shared reading activities.

To be successful, however, the general educator and special educator must plan ahead for sharing time, space, and teaching together
in a collaborative effort. The benefits for the children far outweigh any disadvantages for the teachers. The willingness of the special
educator to fit the activities to the contexts of the classroom can help diminish any existing reluctance a general education teacher
might have toward phoneme awareness training.

Specific guidelines

Teachers need to be aware of the developmental requirements of phoneme awareness activities. For example, when teaching children
to partition words into parts, segmenting a compound word into its two parts ("What two words do you hear in cowboy?") precedes
segmenting syllables and sounds.

Similarly, identification tasks ("Which one doesn't rhyme — cat, hat, sun?") are generally easier than production tasks ("Tell me the first
sound in car"). The difficulty level of most activities can be manipulated by changing the input or response modes. For example, "Find
the picture that starts with /r/" will be easier than "What sounds do you hear in robe?" A set of guidelines to keep in mind when planning
instructional activities is provided below.

Instructional Guidelines for Planning Phoneme Awareness Activities

1. Identify the precise phoneme awareness task on which you wish to focus and select developmentally appropriate activities for engaging
children in the task. Activities should be fun and exciting — "play" with sounds, don't "drill" them.

2. Be sure to use phoneme sounds (represented by / /) and not letter names when doing the activities. Likewise, remember that one sound
may be represented by two or more letters. There are only three sounds in the word cheese: /ch/-/ee/-/z/. You may want to target
specific sounds/words at first and "practice" beforehand until you are comfortable making them.

3. Continuant sounds (e.g., /m/, /s/, /i/) are easier to manipulate and hear than stop consonants (e.g., /t/, /q/, /p/). When introducing
continuants, exaggerate by holding on to them: rrrrrring; for stop consonants, use iteration (rapid repetition): k-k-k-k-katie .

4. When identifying sounds in different positions, the initial position is easiest, followed by the final position, with the medial position being
most difficult (e.g., top, pot, setter).

5. When identifying or combining sound sequences, a CV pattern should be used before a VC pattern, followed by a CVC pattern
(e.g., pie, egg, red).*

*Note: CV = consonant-vowel; VC = vowel-consonant; CVC = consonant-vowel-consonant

Awareness of onset and rime

Phonograms are the common elements in word families (e.g., the letter sequence "and" in sand, hand, band, and land). The initial
consonant that changes the meaning of the word is called an onset and the following vowel/consonant combination that remains
constant is called a rime. Because an awareness of syllables, onsets, and rimes develops before an awareness of phonemes (Goswami,
1994, p. 36), the first set of suggestions focuses on ways to expose children to word play.

Literature

A natural and spontaneous way of providing children with exposure to phonemes is to focus on literature that deals playfully with speech
sounds through rhymes. Simple rhyme patterns are easily recalled after repeated exposure, and children will get the idea of creating
new rhymes.

In There's a Wocket in My Pocket (Seuss, 1974), initial sounds of everyday objects are substituted as a child talks about the strange
creatures around the house, such as the "zamp in the lamp." Children can make up their own strange creatures in the classroom such as
the "zuk in my book."

Alliteration is the repetition of an initial consonant sound across several words, such as presented in the alphabet book Faint Frogs Feeling
Feverish and Other Terrifically Tantalizing Tongue Twisters (Obligato, 1983).

Assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds within words, is often combined with rhyme, as in "It rains and hails and shakes the sails"
from Sheep on a Ship (Shaw, 1989) or in humorous ways such as "The tooter tries to tutor two tooters to toot" in Moses Supposes His Toeses
Are Roses (Patz, 1983). Some books include music to go with the rhymes, such as Down by the Bay (Raffi, 1987), in which two children try
to outdo one another in making up questions that rhyme, such as "Did you ever see a goose kissing a moose?"

Yopp (1995) presented an annotated bibliography of 44 books for young children that deal playfully with language. She also provided
guidelines for using these books in class:

a. read and reread the stories;

b. comment on the language use;

c. encourage predictions of sound, word, and sentence patterns;

d. comment on or elicit specific aspects of sound patterns (e.g., "What sound do you hear at the beginning of all those words?"); and
e. be creative in inventing new versions of the language patterns utilized in the stories.

Word families chart

The exposure to rhymes leads naturally to the use of phonograms and the creation of word family charts. Charts can contain words from
one story or a brain-stormed list from the children.

A story that leads naturally to a word family chart is Tog the Dog (Hawkins & Hawkins, 1986), which is constructed so that as each page
is turned, a different letter lines up with the rime "og." For example, when Tog takes a jog, the letter "j" lines up with the "og." The children
can dictate to the teacher words to be placed on a word family chart. As they begin to develop letter/sound knowledge, they can
copy or write the words themselves.

You can use magnetic letters to "create" words for a word family chart. Provide a rime of plastic letters (e.g., at) and have the children
take turns placing different letters in the onset position to create new words (e.g., hat, bat, sat, rat). These charts can be used as
reference charts (or the children can make their own word families reference book) for spelling and creative writing activities.

Direct instruction

Children who are struggling with recognizing and creating rhymed words may need more direct intervention. Initial rhyme recognition
can be reinforced by direct modeling of instances (nose/rose) and non-instances (bed/car) of rhyming word pairs. The children are then
presented other word pairs and asked if the two words sound the same or sound different.

This can be made into a game-like activity by having them respond with a "happy face" card if the words rhyme and a "sad face" card
if they don't (or they can use a "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" response). It is important for the teacher to ask a child to repeat the
rhyming pairs in this and the following activities to reinforce the verbal production of rhymed words.

Pictures provide visual cues for rhyme recognition and can be used during the modeling phase of instruction. The teacher can then
present three pictures and ask the child to select and say the two that rhyme. A variation would be to display two nonrhyming pictures
and have the child select the one that rhymes with the word being said by the teacher.

Bradley and Bryant (1983) used an activity called "Odd Word Out," which can be done with or without pictures. Four words, three of
which rhyme, are presented by the teacher (e.g., weed, bead, pill, seed). The child determines which word is the odd one that doesn't
belong with the others.

The game of concentration or memory is a good practice activity for rhyme recognition. Separate pictures (not printed words) of rhyming
word pairs (e.g., cat/bat) are shuffled, and all are placed facedown in a grid pattern. The children take turns turning two cards face-up,
trying to match a rhyme pair. If a match is made, the child keeps that pair and takes another turn. If not, the cards are turned facedown
and the next child gets a turn.

A summary of activities to heighten awareness of onset and rhyme is offered in the table below.

Awareness of Onset and Rime

Focus Example

a. Rhyme patterns: There's a Wocket in My Pocket (Seuss, 1974)

Faint Frogs Feeling Feverish and Other Terrifically Tantalizing Tongue

Literature b. Alliteration:
Twisters (Obligato, 1983)

c. Assonance: Moses Supposes His Toeses Are Roses (Patz, 1983)

Create words by adding beginning sounds — /b/ + at = bat

What is another word that sounds like bat?

Word families
a. Phonograms
chart
Use literature — Tog the Dog (Hawkins & Hawkins, 1986

Create individual word family reference books

a. Rhyming word pairs: Do these sound the same (nose/rose) or different (bed/car)
Direct
instruction
b. Odd word out Which one doesn't belong? (weed, bead, pill, seed)
 c. Rhyming word pair
Name the pictures out loud. Find two that rhyme.
concentration

Simple phonemic awareness

Isolated sound recognition

As stated by Lewkowicz (1980), "Children should be familiarized with speech sounds in isolation before they attempt to detect sounds
within words" (p. 694). Because children are usually unaware that words are made up of individual speech sounds that can be produced
in isolation, it is up to the teacher to provide children with a concept of speech sounds.

This is probably best done by associating phonemes with a creature, an action, or an object that is familiar to the child. For example, the
phoneme /s/ can be associated with the hissing sound a snake makes — sssssss. A sound personality can be created by calling /s/ the
"Sammy snake" sound. Many sounds have natural associations, such as a crowing rooster for /r/, a buzzing bee for /z/, and the "be quiet"
sound for /sh/.

Figure 1. An example of pictures of sound personalities incorporating letter-shape association.

Sound personalities can be introduced naturally and in context by selecting a particular sound to talk about that is stressed in alphabet
or other books that use alliteration. For example, Obligato (1983) presented "smiling snakes sipping strawberry sodas" for the alphabet
letter S. It is helpful to create or provide pictures that represent these sound personalities and to post them in the room as each is
introduced. A natural connection can sometimes be made between the sound and the letter, such as presenting a picture of "Sammy
snake" drawn in the shape of the letter Sor "Buzzy bee" flying in a pattern of the letter Z (see Figure 1).

Besides providing a label to facilitate talking about sounds, the pictures provide self-correcting cues for children engaged in initial sound
isolation and sound-to-word matching activities.

Word, syllable, and phoneme counting

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 (Lundberg, Frost, & Peterson, 1988).

Word counting can be done for any sentence selected from a reading or writing lesson. The sentence should be read to the children
without being visible. The children listen and place a marker from left to right for each word heard. The teacher can confirm the number
of words by showing the printed sentence to the children, pointing to each word as it is read, and having the children touch their tokens
in one-to-one correspondence. Or the teacher can reinforce the children's "counting" using auditory input only by repeating the
sentence and having them touch each token to confirm the number of words heard.

To count syllables in words, activities can be used such as clapping hands, tapping the desk, or marching in place to the syllables in
children's names (Ma-ry), items in the immediate environment (win-dow), or words from a favorite story (wi-shy, wa-shy). Initially, two-
syllable words can be targeted, building up to three. Visible, manipulable representation of sounds also helps to clarify and guide
counting and segmentation tasks for beginners (Lewkowicz, 1980).

The marker activity used for word counting can be adapted for use in counting syllables by providing each child with two or three
horizontally connected boxes drawn on a sheet of paper. The children place a token in each box from left to right as they hear each
syllable in a word. These same activities can be used to count sounds in words.

Sound synthesis

Sound synthesis or sound blending is an essential skill related to later reading ability (Lewkowicz, 1980; Lundberg et al., 1988; Wagner,
Torgeson, Laughon, Simmons, & Bashotte, 1993) and one of the easiest phoneme awareness tasks for children to perform (Yopp, 1988).

Sound synthesis can be done using the following sequence: blending an initial sound onto the remainder of a word, followed by blending
syllables of a word together, and then blending isolated phonemes into a word.

The teacher can model blending an initial sound onto a word by using the jingle, "It starts with /l/ and it ends with ight, put it together,
and it says light." When they have the idea, the children supply the final word.

An element of excitement can be created by using children's names for this activity and asking each child to recognize and say his or
her own name when it is presented — "It starts with /b/ and it ends with etsy, put it together and it says ." Context can be provided by
limiting the words to objects that can be seen in the room or to words from a particular story the children just read. As the children
become proficient, they can take turns using the jingle to present their own words to be blended by the class.

Guessing games that utilize words broken into syllables or isolated phonemes provide fun sound blending activities.

One involves using a puppet (perhaps representing a character from a current reading lesson) who speaks "funny" by saying words
syllable-by-syllable or sound-by-sound for the children to figure out. Initial clues can be provided by displaying three pictures, one of
which is the word being said by the puppet. The puppet can confirm or negate a student response by picking up the picture and saying
the word being segmented: "/f/-/i/-/sh/ — I said fish!"
Another is the familiar "What's in the bag?" activity. Instead of describing what is in the bag, the teacher says the word syllable-by-syllable
or sound-by-sound and the children guess the word. A correct response is confirmed when the teacher brings the object out of the bag.

Yopp (1992) suggested the use of song games and presented an example to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your
Hands":

If you think you know this word, shout it out!

If you think you know this word, shout it out!
If you think you know this word,
Then tell me what you've heard,
If you think you know this word, shout it out!

The teacher says a segmented word such as /k/-/a/-/t/, and the children respond by saying the blended word (pp. 700-701).

Sound-to-word matching

Sound-to-word matching is useful as a beginning step in sound segmentation. Basically, sound-to-word matching requires that the child
identify the beginning sound of a word.

Awareness of the initial sound in a word can be done by showing the children a picture (dog) and asking the children to identify the
correct word out of three: "Is this a /mmm/-og, a /d/d/d/-og, or a /sss/-og?" A variation is to ask if the word has a particular sound: "Is
there a /d/ in dog?" This can then be switched to "Which sound does dog start with — /d/, /sh/, or /l/?" This sequence encourages the
children to try out the three onsets with the rime to see which one is correct.

It is easiest to use continuants that can be exaggerated and prolonged to heighten the sound input. Iteration should be used with stop
consonants to add emphasis.

Yopp (1992) also suggested the use of songs in sound matching activities. One of several examples she presented uses the tune of "Old
MacDonald Had a Farm":

What's the sound that starts these words?

Turtle, time, and teeth.
(Wait for a response from the children.)
/t/ is the sound that starts these words:
Turtle, time, and teeth.
With a /t/, /t/ here, and a /t/, /t/ there,
Here a /t/, there a /t/, everywhere a /t/, /t/.
/t/ is the sound that starts these words:
Turtle, time, and teeth! (p. 700)

The children might use favorite stories from their reading lessons to identify different sets of three words that start with the same sound to
incorporate into the song. Each repeated verse could then emphasize a different sound. The teacher again is cautioned to use the
phoneme sounds, not the letter names for these activities.

Identification of sound positions

Establishing that sounds occur in different positions of words — initial, final, and medial — helps some children with the later task of
segmenting whole words into isolated sound components.

One method of representing sound positions is to display a picture of a train composed of an engine, a passenger car, and a caboose.
Three connecting boxes can be drawn under each component: one under the engine, connected to one under the passenger car,
connected to the one under the caboose (use poster board and laminate). Explain that words have beginning, middle, and end sounds
just like the train has a beginning, a middle, and an end part.

Demonstrate by slowly articulating a CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant word (e.g., /p/-/i/-/g/) and pointing to the box corresponding
to the position of each sound in the word. You can then repeat the word and ask the children to identify where they hear the different
sounds — "Where do you hear the /g/ in pig?" Slowly articulate other CVC words for them to listen to and have them mark the box under
the train that indicates the position of the sound you specify.

Sound segmentation

Segmenting refers to the act of isolating the sounds in a spoken word by separately pronouncing each one in order (Ball & Blachman,
1991; Spector, 1992; Wagner et al., 1993).

Yopp (1988) stated that segmenting the sounds in a word is one of the more difficult simple phonemic tasks for children to perform.
Lewkowicz (1980) and Yopp (1992) suggested starting with isolated productions of initial phonemes as a precursor to segmenting entire
words. The previous sound-to-word matching and identification of position activities help in early recognition and practice with initial
phonemes.

Figure 2. An example of Elkonin boxes used for hearing sounds in words.

Several researchers (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Bradley & Bryant, 1985; Griffith & Olson, 1992; Lewkowicz, 1980) have used visual and tactile
cues based on Elkonin boxes (Elkonin, 1973) to help with phoneme segmentation. A card is prepared with a picture of a simple word at
the top. Below the picture is a matrix that contains a box for each phoneme (not letter) in the word (see Figure 2).
The teacher models the process by slowing articulating the word phoneme-by-phoneme while pushing a counter into a box for each
phoneme. The children can say the word with the teacher while the counters are being placed. Gradually the children should participate
in this "say it and move it" (Ball & Blachman, 1991) activity by taking turns placing the counters in each box while saying each sound in a
word. Both the matrix and picture can be eliminated over time so that the children are segmenting the word without visual clues.

Words should be selected from familiar text to ensure a whole-to-part sequence of instruction and to provide the children with contextual
cues that link word segmentation to everyday classroom lessons.

Letter-sound association

Many researchers (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Byrne & Field- Barnsley, 1993; Hurford et al., 1994; Iversen & Tunmer, 1993) have demonstrated
the advantage of combining phoneme awareness with letter knowledge in a classroom setting. As stated by Griffith and Olson (1992),
"The most pedagogically sound method of phoneme awareness training is one that eventually makes explicit the complete letter-to-
sound mappings in segmented words" (p. 518).

All phoneme awareness activities that use tokens or other visual representations of sounds can be modified to include letter- sound
associations. As individual sounds are mastered by the children, their corresponding letter names can be introduced and placed on the
tokens (magnetic letters or Scrabble tiles can be used) and gradually introduced into the segmentation activities.

At first, only one letter or tile should be provided, and the remainder should be blank. After the child has successfully segmented with
one letter or tile, others can be added as new letter names are mastered.

To reinforce letter names, Blachman (1991) played "post office" — the children select a picture, say the initial sound of the picture, and
identify the letter represented by the first sound by "mailing" it in the appropriate letter pouch.

A modified game of bingo can provide practice in sound-letter association. The desired letters to be emphasized are selected, starting
with two or three, and adding more as the children progress. The letters are printed in random order on cards that have 4-by-4 or 5-by-5
grids drawn on them, one card for each child.

The teacher draws from a container letter tiles matching those on the children's cards. The teacher says the phoneme for the letter drawn
from the container (replacing it each time) and asks the children to identify the letter corresponding to the phoneme by placing a
marker in the appropriate box on their cards. Any child who fills a row or column can then name the letters aloud.

The practice of invented spelling in a classroom can also be used to make explicit connections between sound segments and letters.
Children select words they wish to write but don't know how to spell.

A box is drawn for each sound in the word (remember that one sound may be represented by two or more letters — the word shoes, for
example, has only three phonemes, /sh/-/oo/-/z/). A child can fill in the letters he or she hears and knows with the teacher's help. The
teacher can fill in any letters the child does not know.

A summary of activities for enhancing simple phonemic awareness is presented in the table below.

Simple Phonemic Awareness

Targeted Skill Example

Isolated sound recognition Sammy snake sound says… (/s/)

Word/syllable/phoneme counting How many (words/syllables/sounds) do you hear in this (sentence/word)?

It starts with /l/ and ends with ight, put it together and it says… (light)
Sound synthesis What word am I saying?
Put these sounds together to make a word — /f/-/i/-/sh/.

Is there a /k/ in cat?

Sound-to-word matching
What is the first sound you hear in dog?

Identification of sound positions Where do you hear the /g/ in pig (at the beginning middle or end of the word)?

Sound segmentation What sounds do you hear in the word ball? Say each one.

Letter-sound association What letter goes with the first sound in this word: book?

Compound phonemic awareness

 Word-to-word matching

Compound phonemic awareness requires holding a given sound in memory while performing a second operation such as determining
whether two words begin with the same sound in a word-to-word matching task (e.g., "Do cup and cake begin the same?"; Yopp, 1988).
Byrne (1991) offered several games for practicing word-to-word matching.

1. Make a set of dominoes that have two pictured objects on each card. The children are required to join cards sharing beginning (or
ending) sounds.

2. A version of "snap" uses cards having one picture. The children take turns drawing a card from a face-down pile and placing it in a face-
up pile. When a newly drawn card has the same beginning (or end) sound as the top card in the face-up pile, the first child to identify
the match by saying "snap" collects the pile.

3. Sound bingo uses bingo cards with pictures that children mark if one of their pictures has the same beginning (or end) sound as the word
said by the caller.

Each of these games can be related to other classroom activities by having the children make their own dominoes, snap cards, and
bingo cards using pictures cut from catalogs or magazines, or hand drawn and laminated. The pictures selected by the children can
represent things related to the literature and themes being covered in class.

Sound deletion

Because sound deletion tasks require manipulation of phonemes in words, they are considered to be more difficult than other types of
phoneme awareness tasks.

Cole and Mengler (1994) stated that it is not until a mental age of approximately 7 years that children are able to perform phoneme
deletion tasks adequately. Lewkowicz (1980) suggested that sound deletion activities be done after the children exhibit some skill in
segmentation and after letter names have been introduced. Because phoneme deletion of medial consonants puts an undue burden
on young children's memory, sound deletion should target only initial or final sounds in words.

To introduce the idea of deleting parts of a word, the teacher can show pictures or point to objects in the room that are compound
words and demonstrate how each word can be said with a part missing. For example, "This is a seesaw. If I say seesaw without the see,
it says saw (give other examples). Now you try it. This is a hotdog. Say hotdog without the dog." An element of fun can be introduced by
making it a "Simon says" activity: "Simon says, 'say bookmark without the book.'"

Identification of a missing sound can be accomplished through a "What's missing?" guessing game. The teacher says two words for
comparison and asks the children to identify the missing element: "Listen: eat/meat. What's missing in eat that you can hear in meat?"

Final position deletions can be done in the same way (e.g., "What's missing in play that you can hear in plane?"). The children can be
encouraged to make up their own "What's missing?" words for the initial position by referring to the phonograms on the word families
charts: "What's missing in an that you can hear in pan (man, ran, can)."

Identifying the missing element using phonograms tends to be easier than using unrelated words because the initial consonant
determines the meaning of the word for the child and the rime remains constant.

The actual task of deleting a sound from a word can be made easier by building on earlier segmentation practice, playing a game of
"sound take-away." The teacher models how to orally segment a word into the "target" sound plus "everything else" and then take the
target sound away.

A modified version of the sound blending jingle can be used: "Chair. It starts with /ch/ and it ends with air; take the first sound away, and
it says air." The jingle can be used until the children can delete sounds with a simple prompt: "Say ball without the /b/." A sound deletion
that results in a "real" word such as deer becoming ear or card becoming car is easier than one resulting in a "nonsense" word such
as book becoming ook or sun becoming su (although some children enjoy making "alien" or funny words).

Children who have difficulty with deleting sounds might benefit from visual clues. By placing two colored blocks side-by-side, the teacher
can designate one as representing the target sound and the other as representing the remainder of the word: "I'm going to use these
blocks to say moon. This (red block) says moo and this (yellow block) says /n/." The child is then asked what the first block says when the
second block is removed.

A summary of compound phonemic awareness activities is given in the table below.

Compound Phonemic Awareness

Targeted Skill Example

Word-to-word matching Do cup and cake begin (end) the same?

Say hotdog without the dog.

Sound deletion What sound do you hear in meat that is missing in eat?
What word would be left if you take the /n/ off moon?

Conclusion
Research has demonstrated not only a predictive relationship between phoneme awareness and reading success, but also a causal
relationship. Phoneme awareness that has a positive impact on reading can be developed in children through systematic instruction in
kindergarten and first-grade settings. Early training in phoneme awareness should be a priority for those interested in improving early
reading instruction and in reducing reading failure.

General and special educators should be supported in their efforts to collaborate on incorporating phoneme awareness activities into
kindergarten and first-grade classrooms.

These activities are not intended to replace children's interactions with meaningful language and print, but to be incorporated into
classrooms as part of a language-rich environment. Reading aloud, using big books and predictable books, developing language
experience charts, and using other language-oriented practices give children valuable reading experiences.

However, by supplementing these experiences with related phoneme awareness activities, general and special educators can draw
children's attention to a critical aspect of their language — its phonemic base.

It takes only a few minutes a day to integrate activities that emphasize the sounds of language into the rich, oral language environments
we are creating for our children. Those few minutes can result in a lifetime of reading benefits to children who otherwise might not learn
to read.

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/how-now-brown-cow-phoneme-awareness-activities

Phonemic awareness.

What does it mean, anyway?

It’s a scary-sounding phrase, but it’s really not that complicated. It has to do with hearing and manipulating sounds in words. While some
phonemic awareness activities may be used alongside letters, most of them don’t.

If you ask a child to tell you the beginning sound of sandwich, and s/he says sssss, that’s great! Isolating beginning sounds is one key
component of phonemic awareness – and it’s exactly what we’re going to focus on with this set of games.

We have six children, and our oldest four developed phonemic awareness without a lot of intentionality on my part. I read to them often,
and we did a variety of early learning activities – but I didn’t have to teach explicitly phonemic awareness. For all of them (now 10, 9, 7,
and 5) phonemic awareness just came.

This hasn’t been true of my Three (almost four). Thankfully, she’s catching on with the playful activities and games that I’ve been sharing
over the past few months.

How to play the games

 Print and cut apart the dot cards at the end of the file.
 Grab playing pieces.
 Take turns moving along the board by drawing a dot card and moving that number of spaces.
 When you land on a space, say the picture’s name and its beginning sound.
When my Three landed on a picture, she often stretched that initial sound instead of isolating it. For example, “Milk. Mmmmmilk.” Or
“Sandwich. Ssssandwich.” Fine by me! My goal was for her to hear and identify that beginning sound – and she was doing it!

Sometimes she was frustrated and didn’t want to try. Tiger was hard for her. Can you guess why?

It’s because /t/ is not a continuous sound. Mmmmmmm and Sssssss were the other two sounds featured in the first game and were much
easier.

When she hit a roadblock, she told me to do it. So I did.

“Hmm… is it /m/? Mmm, mmm, miger! No? Is it /g/? /G/, /g/, geiger?” After I was a little silly she was ready to get back in the game.

I chose to use those dot cards because my Three isn’t real quick at knowing the dots on a die yet. Another reason is that it’s a short game
board. If your learner rolls a six three times, the game is over!

The dot cards gave her just enough turns without a single game overwhelming her.
After we played one game, she was willing to play one more. Each game adds a new letter’s sound and bumps one sound off. So for
example, the first game featured the sounds of m, s, and t. The second game features the sounds of s, t, and a.

I would say that she isolated (or stretched) the beginning sound correctly about 75% of the time. By the time we were finishing (after
about 5-10 minutes), she was tired and gave up quickly. Ax (pictured above) was too hard.

So what do you think? Will these work for your learners? I hope you enjoy the 25 free games you can get in the download. These games
come in color, but feel free to print in grayscale if you’d like.

https://www.themeasuredmom.com/phonemic-awareness-games/