Providing Learning Innovations and Curriculum Solutions
Strengthening Our
Teaching Skills in
Reading & Writing
Mary Mount Easter Institute
Bogota, Columbia
April 6 – 9, 2014
Olivia Broxey, Ph.D.
DeVonya Preston, M.ED.
Providing Learning Innovations and Curriculum Solutions
Phonics & Phonemic Awareness
English Consonants and
Vowel Sounds
Part I
Objectives
• Participants will be able to:
– identify the five major components of an
effective reading program
– pronounce letter-sound correspondences
for all English consonants and vowels
– employ a variety of instructional routines
The Big Five:
Essentials for Reading Success: Components of Reading
Phonemic Awareness
Comprehension
Vocabulary
Phonics/Phonological
Awareness
Fluency
The Big Five:
Essentials for Reading Success: Components of Reading
Phonemic Awareness
• An awareness of phonemes in the speech stream. Instruction that teaches
children to hear, identify, and manipulate the 44 individual soundsphonemes- found in the English language.
Phonics
• The relationship between the letters(graphemes) of written language and
the sounds(phonemes) of spoken language.
Fluency
• The ability to read a text accurately, quickly and with expression
Vocabulary
Comprehension
• The learning of meaning and pronunciation of words
• Acquiring strategies to understand, remember and communicate what is
read.
• The reason for reading
What is a Phoneme?
A Phoneme
This is the smallest
unit of sound in a
How many phonemes can
word.
you hear in
cat?
Sheep?
• A phoneme you hear
• A grapheme you see
A word always has the same number of
phonemes and graphemes!
A grapheme
These are the
letters that
represent the
phoneme.
The grapheme could be 1 letter,
2 letters or more! We refer to
these as sound buttons.
t
igh
ai
In the English Language…
• There are 44 phonemes
• Represented by 26 letters
• A letter can sometimes represent more than
one sound. Ex. a sounds differently in the
following words: at, ate, all, was.
• There are hundreds of spellings that can be
used to represent the phonemes. Only the
most common need to be taught.
Phonemic Awareness
• the knowledge that words are made up of a
combination of individual sounds.
• For example,
– the word cat is made up of three sounds (phonemes)
/c/a/ and /t/.
– If a child knows that cat, car, and caboose all have the
same sound at the beginning of the word, she has
phonemic awareness.
– In other words, she is aware that the /c/ sound
(phoneme) begins each of those three words.
Phonics/ Phonological Awareness
• Phonics is the relationship between a specific
letter and its sound, only as it relates to the
written word.
• For example, if a child does not recognize.
– the word chant, he might break the word
apart into pieces, such as /ch/ /a/ /n/ /t/
Then, the child combines those sounds to create
the word chant.
Phonics Instruction Consists of:
• Identifying sounds in spoken words
• Recognizing the common spellings of
each phoneme.
• Blending phonemes into words for
reading.
• Segmenting words into phonemes for
spelling.
What is Systematic and Explicit
Phonics Instruction?
• Systematic phonics instruction provides direct
teaching of a set of letter-sound relationships
in a clearly defined sequence.
• Explicit instruction provides teachers with
precise directions so that the relationship
between letters and sounds are made clear to
the students.
Understanding the English
Alphabetic Code
Consonants and Vowels
Consonants
• Consonants can be categorized
according to
–How they are produced
–Where they are produced in the mouth
–Whether they are voiced or unvoiced.
Consonants
• The 5 major categories of consonants based
on their manner of articulation include the
following:
– Plosives (stops) /b/,/p/,/d/,/t/,
– Fricatives /f/,/v/,/th/ /z/
– Nasals /m/,/n/,/ng/
– Liquids /l/,/r/
– Glides /w/,/y/,/h/
Vowels
• 19 of the 44 English phonemes are vowel
phonemes.
• The consonants w and y often act as vowels.
– Y acts as a vowel when it appears at the end of a
word or syllable.
– W acts as a vowel when it is used in combination
with another vowel.
Vowels
Diphthongs
/oi/ (boil, boy), /ou/ (house,cow)
These are vowel sounds that are formed by a
gliding action in the mouth.
R-controlled vowels
/ar/ (chair), /ur/ (fern, bird, hurt), /ar/ (park)
The letter r affects the sound of the vowel that
precedes it in many ways.
Vowels
• Schwa
(alone, happen, direct, gallop, circus)
Not all linguists consider this a separate sound.
The schwa is also known as as murmur or
neutral sound. Up to 22 different spellings of
the schwa sound have been identified.
The Letter Sounds Song
Good vs. Bad
Song A
Song B
English Consonants: Jigsaw
1. Within your groups, SELECT ONE LETTER.
2. Go to www.rachelsenglish.com to watch your Sound(s) video(s).
3. Meet with EXPERT group to review information and plan your 3 minute
lesson.
4. Go back to your TEACHING group and share your findings.
Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
S and Z
S and Z
S and Z
Y
Y
Y
J
J
J
G
G
G
R
R
R
Providing Learning Innovations and Curriculum Solutions
Phonics:
Instructional Routines and
Center Activities
English Consonants and Vowel Sound
Part II
Providing Learning Innovations and Curriculum Solutions
Phonemic Awareness:
Instructional Routines and
Center Activities
English Consonants and Vowel Sounds
Part III