Phonemic Awareness and Phonics

Phonemic Awareness  Is crucial in the development of the ability to decode, to read for meaning and to spell ( Yopp,1992, Adams,1990).  Phonemic awareness is central in learning to read and spell because English and other alphabetic languages map speech to print at the level of phonemes.

Phonemic Awareness  Research shows that phonemic awareness is the most potent predictor of a child’s success in learning to read (Stanovich, 1994).  The lack of phonemic awareness is the most powerful determinant of the likelihood of failure to learn to read (Adams, 1990).

Phonemic Awareness  Phonemic awareness is the awareness of phonemes in the speech stream.  The ability to manipulate phonemes is also a part of phonemic awareness.  Phonemic awareness requires a shift in attention from the content of speech to the form of speech.

Phonemic Awareness  There are 41 different phonemes that are represented by 26 letters of the alphabet.

Terminology  Auditory discrimination: the ability to hear similarities and differences in phonemes and words. Example: “Say these sounds /r/,/s/. Are they the same or different?”  Phoneme: the phoneme is the smallest part of spoken language that makes a difference in the meaning of words.

Terminology  Phonological awareness: the broad term for sensitivity to any size unit of sound. Phonological awareness activities can involve work with syllables, rhymes, words, rimes and onsets.

Terminology  Grapheme: the grapheme is the smallest part of written language that represents a phoneme in the spelling of a word. A grapheme may be one letter or several letters.

Terminology  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).  Onsets and rimes: onsets and rimes are parts of spoken language that are smaller than syllables but larger than phonemes.

Terminology  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/).

Terminology  Phoneme manipulation: involves children working with phonemes in words. Phoneme manipulation includes blending phonemes to make words, segmentating words into phonemes, deleting phonemes from words, adding phonemes to words or substituting one phoneme for another to make a new word.

Terminology  Blending: involves combining individual phonemes to form words. Combining onsets and rimes to make syllables and combining syllables to make words is also apart of blending.

Terminology  Segmenting: segmentation is a child’s ability to break a word into individual phonemes. Breaking words into syllables and syllables into onsets and rimes are also considered segmenting.

Phonemic Awareness  Phoneme isolation Recognition of individual sounds in a word. Example: What is the same sound in fix, fall, fun? /f/

Phonemic Awareness  Phoneme categorization Recognition of a word in a set of three or four words that has the “odd” sound. Which word does not belong big, bat, tuna?

Phonemic Awareness  Phoneme blending After listening to a sequence of separately spoken sounds a child can combine the phonemes to form a word. Example: What word is /d/ /o/ /g/ /a/ /t/ /ch/ /i/ /n/

Phonemic Awareness  Phoneme segmentation After saying a word children can break it into individual sounds by saying them, tapping them or counting them. Example: How many sounds in the word cat? 3 /c/ /a/ /t/

Phonemic Awareness  Phoneme deletion Children are able to recognize the word that remains when a phoneme is removed from another word. Example: What is chat without the c?

Phonemic Awareness  Phoneme addition Children make a new word by adding a phoneme to an existing word. Example: What word would you have if you add an /h/ to /at/ hat?

Phonemic Awareness  Phoneme substitution Children substitute one phoneme for another to make a new word. Example: Change the /g/ in bug to an /n/ what is the new word?

Phonemic Awareness  In older children phonemic awareness is helpful in spelling.

Phonemic Awareness  Elkonin Boxes help children slow down the sounds in a word.  Elkonin Boxes help children recognize the number of letters in a word and letter placement within a word.  A child’s hand can replace boxes.

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures  Take each aspect of phonemic awareness and use the pictures to demonstrate each area of phonemic awareness

Activities  Read poetry to children.  Ask children to identify words that rhyme.  Look for alliteration.  Have children create their own rhymes.  Combine phonemic awareness to phonics by having children create their own poetry.

Activities  Have children echo or choral read poems.  Use poetry to identify and develop the critical steps in phonemic awareness.

Activities The Green Grass Grows All Around In a park there is some ground, The prettiest ground you ever did see And the green grass grows all around, all around And the green grass grows all around.

Activities The White Clouds Float All Around Above my head there is some sky The bluest sky that you ever did see And the white clouds float in the sky,in the sky And the white clouds float in the sky.

Activities  Tongue twisters Five fine fellows find feathers Four foolish friends flipping Fritos. Six silly sisters sipping sodas.

Activities  Rhyme time- give students a group of pictures and have them sort according to words in the pictures that rhyme.  Rhyme me- one student says a word another must make a rhyme.  Rhyme circle- one student starts a rhyme and the others must continue until no more rhymes can be made.

Bridging Phonemic Awareness and Phonics  Phonograms – after playing rhyme games have students work on phonograms.  In primary texts of the 286 phonograms that appear, 95% are pronounced the same way in every word in which they are found.

Bridging Phonemic Awareness and Phonics  500 words can be made from the following 37 rimes. -ack-all-ain-ake-ale-ame –an-ank -ap-ash-at-ate-aw-ay-eat-ell -est-ist-ice-ick-ide-ight-ill -in -ine-ing-ink-ip-ir -ock-oke-op -ore-or-uck-ug-ump-unk

Bridging Phonemic Awareness and Phonics  Place a letter on the board and have a student say it.  Add a letter and make a new word.  Take away a letter and make a new word.  Add two letters and make a new word.

Bridging Phonics and Phonemic Awareness Word Surgery atalk attalking hattalks hatswalk thatchalk

Bridging Phonemic Awareness and Phonics  Make phonogram books.  Make phonogram chains.  Use color to highlight the phonogram.

Bridging Phonemic Awareness and Phonics  Word searches  Scrambled words- scramble a word and have students make as many one letter, two letter, three letter, four letter words as possible.  Use a Venn diagram to sort two words and make as many words from them as possible.  Sort words into categories.

Activities  Poetry exchange- turn a poem into a rap. My Friend My friend is nice, We like to play We play together every day. We laugh, we cry, We scream,we shout, We never call each other out ‘Cause that’s what friends are all about.

Bridging Phonemic Awareness and Phonics  Word walls Use word walls to call attention to features of words or build words. Example:Find a word that starts with…ends with… has 3 sounds, could be… if we took the … off, rhymes with…

Phonics - Terminology  Synthetic phonics Children learn how to covert letters or letter combinations into sounds, and then how to blend the sounds together to form recognizable words.

Phonics- Terminology  Analytic phonics Learning to analyze letter-sound relationships in previously learned words. Sounds are not pronounced in isolation.

Phonics- Terminology  Analogy-based phonics Children learn to use the parts of word families they know to identify words they don’t know that have similar parts. “ I know the word cat and this word looks like it except it starts with an /r/ so it must be rat.”

Phonics Terminology  Phonics through spelling Learning to segment words into phonemes and to make words by writing letters for phonemes primarily to learn to spell words.

Phonics- Terminology  Embedded phonics Learning letter sound correspondences during the reading of connected text. Since children encounter different letter sound correspondences and different letter sound relationships as they read this approach is not systematic or explicit.

Phonics- Terminology  Onset-rime phonics Children learn to identify the sound of the letter or letters before the first vowel (the onset) in a one syllable word and the sound of the remaining part of the word (the rime).

Phonics- Terminology  Systematic-explicit phonics Systematic and explicit phonics instruction provides practice with letter- sound relationships in a predetermined sequence. Children learn to use these relationships to decode words that contain the element being taught.

Systematic- Explicit Phonics  Significantly improves instruction in word recognition and spelling.  Improves comprehension because children are reading text accurately.  Is effective for children of various economic levels.  Is not an entire reading program

Vowel Rules  When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking. Nail, bead, ceiling, pie, boat, suit Exceptions- said, head, chief, build

Vowel Rules  When a word ends in a vowel plus a consonant plus e the e is usually silent and the other vowel is long. Cake, late, ride, hide, chime, bone, June Exceptions- have, give, come, bare, move

Vowel Rules  When a vowel is in the middle of a one syllable word, the vowel is short. (CVC) Cat, mat,hat,rat, pat  When a word has only one vowel letter, the vowel sound is likely to be short.  The combination of ee is pronounced with a long e sound.

Vowel Rules  When y is the last letter in a word, it usually has a vowel sound.  An r the preceding the vowel makes the vowel neither long nor short. Car,bar, far,charm,certain,curtain

Explicit Phonics Lesson  Display a letter card and have children give the letter name.  Explain that the letter stands for …sound  Write several words with the sound in initial position and/or show several words with the sound in initial position.

Explicit Phonics Lesson  Have children practice the sound by naming a picture, finding pictures, or locating words with the sound.  Have children make words with the sound.  Web words that have the sound.  Have children make their own words with the sound using a word builder.  Introduce words with the sound in the final position.

Explicit Phonics Lesson  Have children identify words that have the sound at the end of the word.  Have children practice making words with the sound at the beginning or end using word builders.  Have children find words with the sound in a story.  Have children compose sentences with the sound.

Skill Mastery Model  Present skills in micro-steps.  Have students repeat each step and “show,tell, and do” each step in skill acquisition.  Have students practice each skill in a variety of interactive ways ( not just worksheets).

Skill Mastery Model  Use peer teaching and group work.  Provide for closure- check to see if students understood concept through application.  Review concepts on successive days.  Spiral review of concepts.

Skill Mastery Model  Create positive ready to learn reading environment.  Establish relevance of what is to be taught to students  Identify and communicate measurable, observable learner outcomes  Model parts and whole of skills and strategies.  Demonstrate skills and ask for student demonstration.

Skill Mastery Model  Give specific, clear, short directions.  Have children repeat and demonstrate understanding of directions.  Praise effort as well as success.  Allow for self-evaluation: “Were you right? How do you know? What could you do?”

Skill Mastery Model  Does it look right?  Does it sound right?  Does it make sense?  Does it look right, sound right, make sense?  Does it look right, sound right, make sense to you?

Application  Look through several lessons in your teacher’s manual.  Find places you could use phonemic awareness and phonics.  Create a “lesson” within the total reading lesson using phonemic awareness and phonics.

Application  List 5 joys of teaching.  List 5 joys of children.  List 5 reasons why you are proud to be a teacher.

Strive to thrive, not just survive.

If you want to your students to enjoy learning you must enjoy teaching.

Share some joy each day.