Reading and Phonemic
Awareness Activities PreK-2
September 2012
Objectives
• Identify sequence of skills for phonemic
awareness for your grade level.
• Create manipulatives to use in teaching
phonemic awareness.
• Name activities for teaching phonemic
awareness.
Agenda
• Review of Phonemic Awareness
• Sequence of Skills for Teaching Phonemic Awareness in
Grades K-2
• Small Group Activities
Phonemic Awareness
• Phonemic Awareness is the ability to understand
consciously and analytically that words are made up
of sound segments that are abstract and can be
manipulated.
• It depends on installing that system in long term
memory and having it available to working memory
when deciphering a printed word.
Teaching Our Children to Read: The Role of Skills in a Comprehensive Reading Program-Crowin ,p. 96 William Honig.
Phonological
Phonological
Awareness
Awareness
Rhyming
Alliteration
Sentences
into Words
Words into
Syllables
Words into
Sounds:
Phonemic
Awareness
Phonemic
Awareness
Most Critical
Phonological
Awareness Skills
Words into Sounds
Segmenting
Blending
Manipulating
Why is Phonemic Awareness
important?
 Phonemic awareness instruction helps
children learn to read.
 Phonemic awareness instruction helps
children learn to spell.
Phonemic awareness skills assessed in
kindergarten and first grade serve as a potent
predictor of difficulties learning to read…we
can predict with approximately 92% accuracy
who will have difficulties learning to read.
Reid Lyon, NIH
The Research Says…
“Children who fall behind in first grade reading have a
one in eight chance of ever catching up to grade
level.”(Juel, 1994)
“Phoneme awareness is the single best predictor of
reading success between kindergarten and second
grade.”(Adams, Stanovich, 1995)
“Phonemic awareness is more highly related to
learning to read than are tests of general intelligence,
reading readiness, and listening comprehension.”
(Stanovich, 1993)
Alphabetic Principle
• This does not come naturally or easily to humans.
• Without direct instructional support, phonemic
awareness eludes about 25% white middle class first
graders and more from less literacy rich homes.
• These children show evidence of serious difficulty
learning to read.
• It is the basis for reading.
• Readers must understand that spoken language is
made up of sequences of these little sounds.
Progression of Difficulty
•
•
•
•
Words-syllables-individual phonemes
Initial sound-final-medial
Receptive-expressive
Pictures-tokens-eventually graphemes
Who is it for?
• Preschool
• Kindergarten through second grade
Skills mastered by …
Age 3
•Recitation of rhymes
•Rhyming by pattern
•Alliteration
Age 4
•Syllable counting (50% of children by age 4)
Age 5
•Syllable counting (90% of children by age 5)
Age 6
•Initial consonant matching
•Blending 2-3 phonemes
•Counting phonemes (70% of children by age 6)
•Rhyme identification
•Onset-rime division
Age 7
•Blending 3 phonemes
•Segmentation of 3-4 phonemes (blends)
•Phonetic spelling
•Phoneme deletion
Age 8
•Consonant cluster segmentation
•Deletion within clusters
Developmental Sequence of
Phonological Skills
• Usually engaged in as
preschoolers.
-Rhyme play and
nonsense words
-Syllables: Implicity
segmenting as in chants
and songs, clapping to
syllables.
Linda Cummins, 2002
Word
Syllable
Phoneme
Areas of instruction
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Isolation
Identify
Categorization
Blending
Segmentation
Deletion
Addition
Substitution
How Much Instructional Time?
“No more than 20 hours over the school year.”
Stanovich, 1993
What does instruction look like?
Direct Instruction Model
I Do
We Do
You Do
Phoneme Isolation
Children recognize
individual sounds in a word.
I do:
Teacher: What is the first sound in van?
The first sound in van is /v/.
Phoneme Isolation
We do: What is the first sound in:
• Tire
• Pail
You do:
• Goat
• Clock
• Star
• Fish
What is the last sound in:
Phoneme Isolation
You Do: I spy something in the room that starts
like:
• Purple
• Water
• Teacher
• Cat
Phoneme Identity
Children recognize the same sounds in different
words
I Do:
Teacher: What sound is the same in
fix, fall, and fun?
The first sound /f/ is the same.
Phoneme Identity
We do: Which sound is the same in…?
• sat
sister
sorry
• run
rice
river
You do:
• bike
• mouse
bake
mat
birth
make
Phoneme Categorization
Children recognize the word in a set of three or
four words that has the “odd” sound.
I do:
Teacher: Which word doesn’t belong?
bus, bun, rig
Rig does not belong. It doesn’t begin with /b/.
Phoneme Categorization
We do:
• shake
ice
shave
• milk
butter
bug
You do:
• candle
cookie
gutter
Phoneme Blending
Children listen to a sequence of separately
spoken phonemes, and then combine the
phonemes to form a word. Then they write
and read the word.
We do:
Teacher: What word is /b/ /i/ /g/?
Children: /b/ /i/ /g/ is big.
Types of Blending
Continuous Blending
Sound by Sound Blending
Vowel-First Blending
Types of Blending
I do: What word is /_/ /_/ /_/?
• /h/ /ou/ /s/
• /p/ /i/ /t/
• /f/ /o/ /k/ /s/
Phoneme Segmentation
Children break a word into its separate
sounds, saying each sound as they
tap out or count it.
Then they write and read the sounds.
We do:
Teacher: How many sounds are in grab?
Children: /g/ /r/ /a/ /b/. Four sounds.
Segmentation Levels
• Counting words in a sentence
• Counting syllables in words
• Compound words
• Counting phonemes in words
Segmentation Levels
We Do: How many sounds are in ___?
• Cake
• Lock
• Hen
• Flag
Phoneme Deletion
Children recognize the word that remains
when a phoneme is removed from
another word.
I do:
Teacher: What is smile without the /s/?
Children: Smile without the /s/ is mile.
Phoneme Deletion
We do: What is ___ without the /_/?
• Ball without /b/
• Fly without /f/
You do:
• Rent without /r/
• Eight without /t/
Phoneme Addition
Children make a new word by adding a
phoneme to an existing word.
I do:
Teacher: What word do you have if you add
/s/ to the beginning of park?
Spark.
Phoneme Addition
I do: What word do you have if you add /_/ to the
beginning of ____?
• /s/ to the beginning of mile
• /c/ to the beginning of law
You do:
• /g/ to the beginning of lad
• /t/ to the end of pass
Phoneme Substitution
Children substitute one phoneme for another to
make a new word.
I do:
Teacher: The word is bug. Change /g/ to /n/.
What’s the new word?
Children: Bun.
Phoneme Substitution
We do: The word is ___. Change /_/ to /_/. What’s
the new word?
• Tight
/t/ to /m/
• Bag /b/ to /w/
You do:
• Lid /d/ to /p/
• Cot /o/ go /a/
May seem like play; however,
• Requires explicit teaching
• Highly structured practice
• Independent practice
Which methods have the greatest
impact?
• Blending and Segmenting
Phoneme Awareness instruction is most
effective when it focuses on only one or
two types of phoneme manipulation, rather
than several types.
Developmental Sequence for
Remediation
•
•
•
•
•
Word, syllable, and sound awareness
Rhyming
Odd one out/alliteration
Blending and segmenting
Manipulation
Phonological Awareness Instruction
• Use different materials to represent sounds.
Larger materials for larger chunks of sounds
Segmenting
sentences
into words
Segmenting words into
syllables
Smaller materials for smaller chunks of sound
Segmenting words into
sounds
Syllable Cards
• Use for Blending
• “Blend this into a word “bas-ket-ball.” Touch each space as you say
each part. Let’s blend together… ‘bas-ket-ball’ What word is it?
Yes, it’s basketball.
• Use for Segmenting
• How many parts? Touch each space as you say each part of the word.
Repeat after me- ‘elephant.’ Let’s break it up together…’el-e-phant’
• Use for Segmenting Recognition Task
• Give students several strips with different #’s of spaces (labels)
• Raise up the card with the correct number of parts in this word
‘octopus.’ That’s right! There are three!
Syllable vs. Phonemes
• Struggling readers often get the concept of
phonemes mixed up with the concept of
syllables when doing phonological awareness
tasks.
• Teach syllable awareness and sound
awareness in separate lessons until there is
sufficient understanding of each.
Scaffolding
• Why provide scaffolding when developing
phonological awareness?
• Students needs support as they work towards mastery.
• The most helpful scaffolding is taking something abstract
and making it concrete. For example, students can touch
objects and move them as they say the sounds or syllables
in a word. It helps them understand phonological
awareness at a deeper level.
• Scaffolding is dismantled as students master the concept.
A new skill or new level of difficulty requires the
scaffolding to be reintroduced.
Goal of Phonemic Awareness
Instruction
• The ultimate goal of taking a student from
speech to print is to have the phonological
components of a word correspond to
orthographical components (the print or
spelling patters) so that decoding and
encoding can become automatic.
Summary
• Phoneme awareness is necessary, but not sufficient.
• Phoneme awareness can be directly taught.
• Phoneme awareness does not require extensive
teaching time.
• Phoneme awareness should be assessed in the early
grades.
• Focus majority of instruction on blending and
segmenting sounds.