Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic Awareness Pre K-Grade One Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, hear, and manipulate the sounds or phonemes that compose words in spoken language. It involves: Segmenting-pulling apart words into sounds Blending-putting sounds back together Manipulating-adding, deleting and substituting these sounds

Phonemic Awareness (continued) Phonemes are the smallest units of sound in spoken words /m/ /a/ /p/ First Second Third There are 41-51 phonemes in our spoken speech Phonemic awareness is an auditory skill that consists of multiple components and does not involve print.

What is the difference between Phonemic and Phonological Awareness ? • Broad term -includes phonemic awareness • Identify and manipulate larger parts of spoken language • Alliteration, rhyme, words, and syllables Phonemic Awareness • Narrower, subcategory of phonological awareness • Identify and manipulate individual sounds of spoken words (Opitz 2000)

Research says…. Explicitly and systematically teaching children to manipulate phonemes significantly improves children’s reading, comprehension and spelling abilities. Phonemic awareness and letter knowledge are strong predictors of later reading success Adams, Foorman, Lundberg & Beeler (1998)

Phonological Awareness Continuum Type Description Example Phonemic Awareness Blending phonemes into words, segmenting words into individual phonemes, and manipulating phonemes in spoken words /k/ /a/ /t/ /sh/ /i/ /p/ /s/ /t/ /o/ /p/ Onset and Rimes Blending and segmenting the initial consonant or consonant cluster (onset) and the vowel and consonant sounds that follow (rime) /m/ /ice/ /sh/ /ake/ Syllables Combining syllables to say words or segmenting spoken words into syllables /mag/ /net/ /pa/ /per/ Sentence Segmentation Segmenting sentences into spoken words The dog ran away. 1 2 3 4 Alliteration Rhyme Listening Producing groups of words that begin with the same initial sound Matching the ending sounds of words Oral language-hearing lots of stories ten tiny tadpoles cat, hat, bat, sat

Typical Age at which Phonemic Awareness Skill Domains are Accomplished 4 Rhyme, alliteration 5 Rhyme, phoneme matching, syllables 5.5 Onset-rime initial, initial consonant isolation 6 Phoneme blending, segmentation 6.5 Phoneme segmentation, blending, substitution 7 Initial and final sound deletion 8 Deletion with blends 9 Longer and more complex deletion tasks

Assessments http://teams.lacoe.edu/reading/assessments/assessments.html Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation (1995) The Reading Teacher, 49 20-29 DIBELS and AIMSweb

Activities to Develop Phonemic Awareness: Yopp and Yopp’s (2000) instructional sequence: Focus on rhyme: “Think of something that rhymes with look.” Focus on syllable units: “Clap twice for Jacob’s name.” Focus on onset and rime: “What is the first sound in boat?” Focus on phonemes: “Please put these sounds together: /b/-/e/-/d/ This sequence mirrors the general stages of phonemic awareness development Rhyme-answer book Syllable unit: /ja/(clap)- /kob/(clap) Onset and rime /b/ Phonemes-bed

Elkonin (1973) Boxes Ant Bat Bath Beach Bed Bee Boat Book Boot Bus Can Cup Dish Dog Duck Feet Fish Fist Fort Frog Goat Hand Hat Hut Jeep Jet Jump Kick Lamp Log Map Mask Mom Nest Net Nut Pea Peach Pen Pig Pot Rain Ring Rock Run Saw Sheep Ship Sun Teeth Three Tooth Town Tree Daniil El’konin is a soviet psychologist and former student of Vygotsky

Sound Activities Elkonin Boxes ~ Practice with 2:00 appointment Sound matching, isolation, blending segmenting and substitution. Multisensory Techniques for Phonemic Awareness Drills- Anchoring sounds and words (Greene 1997) You use left arm, students use right. Repeat sounds (auditory reinforcement) Anchor the Word~two times ~ “Say mat” “Say the first sound in mat” Phoneme Segmentation ~Anchor word two times “Say the sounds in stop” Use fingers on hand –anchor-word

Sound Activities continued… Rhyming, Alliteration, Segmenting, Blending http://www.literatureforliterature.ecsd.net/strategies.htm http://www.debfourblocks.com/lessons/Songswords.html Guessing and Name games Koosh Ball Hink Pink’s What do you call a chubby kitty? What do you call an angry father? What do you call a huge hog? What do you call a rabbit that tells jokes? What do you call a wet pouch?