Phonological Awareness

Definition

The conscious attention and awareness to the sounds of spoken language. This includes recognition of phonemes, syllables, and onset and rime.

 Phoneme: “The smallest sound unit of a language that distinguishes one word from another.” (Dow & Baer, 2007).

           My definition: A phoneme is the sound that a letter makes in a word, but disassociated from words and letters. If we didn’t have written

                 language we would still have phonemes or sound units in language.

 Syllable: "A unit of pronunciation consisting of a vowel alone or a vowel with one or more consonants." (Dow & Baer, 2007).

           My definition: The units of pronunciation that words are distinctly segmented into based on their consonant and vowel patterns.

Onset: "The consonant sound(s) of a syllable that comes before the vowel sound." (Dow & Baer, 2007).

           My definition: The initial consonant sound of a syllable.

Rime: "The part of a syllable that includes the vowel sound and any consonant sound(s) that comes after it." (Dow & Baer, 2007).

           My definition: Everything else in the syllable that comes after the onset, the vowel sound and any other consonants.

Phonological Awareness Skills

• Separating words into their distinct syllables
  • Combining syllables into words
    • /dan/ + /cer/ = dancer
    • /cal/ + /en/ + /dar/ = calendar
  • Breaking down words into syllables
    • flying = /fly/ + /ing/
    • needle = /nee/ + /dle/ 

• Recognizing and generating words that rhyme
  • Recognizing that two words rhyme with each other
    • Hearing words in spoken language and knowing that they rhyme
    • Looking at words in text and knowing that they rhyme
• Taking one word and being able to generate other words that rhyme with it
  • Can be done with real words or with nonsense words
  • Ex: book- rhymes with look, cook, shook, took, etc. 

• Recognizing and generating words that start or end with the same sound
  • Alliteration- words in a sentence that start with the same sound
    • Lauren in lavender loves licking lemon lollipops
  • Rhyme- words that end with the same sound
    • (see explanation of rhyme above) 

• Blending sounds into words
  • Taking onsets and rimes and blending them together to form words
    • /c/ + /at/ = cat
    • /dr/ + /ag/ + /on/ = dragon 

• Segmenting words into sounds
  • Separating words into their onsets and rimes 

• Moving sounds around to create new words
  • Noting what happens if the beginning sound of a word is removed
    • /p/ in pride
    • /c/ in cat
  • What happens when the ending sound is removed
    • /s/ in dogs
    • /ed/ in locked

Why it’s important

• Phonological awareness is the most powerful predictor of reading achievement later on
  • A child’s phonological awareness in 1^st grade is related to their reading achievement in 3^rd grade
• Skills and their implications
  • Separate words into syllables
    • Breaking a word down helps children with the decoding process for spelling and reading
  • Recognize and generate rhymes
    • Known words can help children read new words, ex: knowing “place” can help a child read “trace”
  • Recognize and generate words that start or end with the same sound
    • Helps children learn to recognize relationships between sounds and the letters that represent the sound
  • Blend sounds into words
    • Learning to decode words by putting their sounds together
  • Segment words into sounds
    • Learning to spell words, breaking down a word into its sounds can give clues as to how it is spelled, in some cases
  • Move sounds around to create new words
    • Another way to decode new words using already known words, ex: figuring out “sheet” from knowing “green”

Shedd, 2008b

Order of Phonological Awareness Development

• 1) Syllables 2) Rhyming 3) Distinct phonemes or sounds
• Recognition of similar sounds will develop before the ability to generate a similar sound from an example
• Children will learn to recognize similar sounds at the beginnings of words first, then the endings, then in the middle
• Blending of sounds will develop before the ability to segment words into sounds
• Moving sounds around to create new words develops last

Anthony, Lonigan, Driscoll, Phillips, & Burgess, 2002

Ways to encourage phonological awareness development in children

• Singing songs
  • Songs with rhyming words
  • Songs where children are asked to fill in the blank with a rhyming word
  • Songs with phonemic manipulations, changing of sounds in the words of the song (ex: “The Name Game,” “Apples and Bananas,”)
• Books, poems, tongue twisters, etc.
  • Books with lots of rhyming or alliteration
  • Nursery rhymes and other rhyming poems
  • Books with phonemic manipulations
  • Tongue twisters (more alliterations)
• Word games
  • “Count the Beats!” (sorting words by their number of syllables)
  • “Going on Vacation” (name items to take on a vacation, but give a rule such as all items named must have a certain number of syllables or begin with a certain sound)
  • “Who Gets Up?” (determine who stands up by students’ names that begin with a specified sound, ex: /j/, /b/, or /d/)
  • “Guess What I’m Saying” (say words in partially or wholly segmented form to see if students can guess the word)
• Stretching words
  • Stretch out the sounds of words when writing in front of children
  • Make a game of it using a child’s name so they can hear all the individual sounds

Shedd, 2008b

MLPP Assessment- Hearing and Recording Sounds

This assessment asks the child to write down the sounds they hear in the words of a sentence read aloud to them. Spelling is not important, simply that the child is able to recognize all of the different sounds in a word and record those sounds. The assessment is scored based on the number of correct sounds the child records.

Michigan Department of Education Early Literacy Committee, 2001

Phonemic Awareness

Resources

Anthony, J.L., Lonigan, C.J., Driscoll, K., Phillips, B.M., & Burgess, S.R. (2002). Phonological sensitivity: A quasi-parallel progression of word structure units and cognitive operations. Reading Research Quarterly, 38, 470-487.

Dow, R.S., & Baer, G.T. (2007). Self-paced phonics: A text for educators.Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Michigan Department of Education Early Literacy Committee. (2001). Michigan Literacy Progress Profile. Lansing, MI: Department of Education.

Shedd, M. (2008). Phonological awareness and letter sound knowledge. Presentation for TE 301 (b), East Lansing, Michigan.