Phonemic Awareness Phonemic Awareness Phonemic Awareness is the

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic Awareness:

Phonemic Awareness: • is the understanding that a spoken word is made up of individual sounds. – – is associated with sounds in spoken words. involves listening skills is a strong predictor of reading success is the ability to blend, segment, and manipulate sounds in spoken words – instruction begins with young children

Phonemes: • A phoneme is a speech sound. • It is the smallest unit of sound that makes a difference in meaning. • Approximately 40 different phonemes in English

Importance of phonemic Awareness:

Why is Phonemic Awareness important: • Phoneme blending and segmentation were found to produce the greatest benefits for reading and spelling. • Research indicates that phonemic awareness helps students make connections to reading when students are taught to manipulate phonemes with letters of the alphabet.

• Learning a new word involves forming a connection between visual information about the word as it appears in print and its meaning, pronunciation, and other information that is stored in the child’s oral vocabulary. • This connection is what enables the reader to access information about the word stored in the brain when the word is encountered in print. • Faster, stronger connections help produce more proficient reading.

Strategies for improving Phonemic Awareness:

Isolating phonemes: • Students identify specific sounds at the beginning, middle, and end of words. • Teacher (T): What is the first sound in the word dog? Student (S): /d/

Blending onset-rimes • Students blend onsetrimes to form real words. • (The onset is the leading consonant(s) in a syllable; the rime is the vowel(s) and following consonants. )

Blending phonemes • Students blend phonemes to form real words.

Deleting phonemes • Students identify the word that remains when a phoneme is removed or deleted. • T: What word is left when we drop the /s/ from the word spot? S: pot

Segmenting words into phonemes • Students break a word into its individual sounds by counting the sounds or by moving a marker for each sound. • T: Show me how many phonemes are there in the word bake. S: three — /b/ /a/ /k/

Adding phonemes • Students make new words by adding a phoneme to a word. • T: What word do you make when you add a /b/ to the beginning of the word ring? S: bring

Substituting phonemes • Students make a new word by replacing a specified phoneme with another. • T: Say the word bag. Now change the /b/ to an /r/. What is the new word? S: rag

Strategies: Other activities:

Games that are helpful to students: • Rhyming Sounds: "What words rhyme with pan? For instance, man rhymes with pan. " 2. Beginning Sounds: "How many words can you make that start with the "b" sound? “ 3. Ending Sounds: "How many words can you make that end with the "t" sound? “ 4. Rhyming Beginning Sounds: "What word rhymes with cat but starts with the "b" sound? "

Games that can help students cont. : • 5. Dropping Sounds: "What happens when you drop the "m" sound off of Mike's name? “ 6. Substitute Sounds: "What happens when you change the "t" in Tom to the "m" sound? “ 7. Counting Sounds: "How many sounds can you hear in the word pig? " Say each sound. 8. Common Sounds: "What sound do all of these words have in common: snake, sit, sleep? “ 9. Blending Sounds: "What word is made of these sounds: "d" and "o" and "g"?

Internet Sites that are helpful: • http: //teacher. scholastic. com/activities/bll/index. htm • http: //www. starfall. com/n/level-a/learn-toread/play. htm? f • http: //teacher. scholastic. com/clifford 1/flash/phonics/i ndex. htm • http: //pbskids. org/lions/games/blending. html • http: //www. bbc. co. uk/schools/wordsandpictures/long vow/spelling. shtm • http: //www. bbc. co. uk/schools/wordsandpictures/clust ers/blender/game. shtml