Phonemic Awareness - Key to Reading and Writing Success

There are three important things your child needs to know to learn to read. They need to know the sounds alphabet letters represent, how to pull words apart into sounds, and how to blend sounds together into words. 

What is Phonemic Awareness? 

Phonemic Awareness is all about hearing sounds in spoken language. This skill is practiced orally, and the focus is on letter sounds.

Oral language is a smooth flowing stream of words. Children do not automatically know that the words they hear are made up of individual sounds. Playing games that focus on phonemic awareness will help your child tune in to hearing the sounds of reading. 

Why is Phonemic Awareness Important?

To read, your child needs to be able to hear sounds (phonemes) and attach the sounds to the letters (graphemes) that represent them. They will also need to tear words apart into individual sounds (segmenting) and blend sounds together to make words (blending) in written language. 

Phonemic awareness uses oral language to hear sounds which have to be connected to print. Blending and segmenting move from oral practice to reading and writing words. Studies show that these are the three most important skills your child needs to learn to be able to read and write.

This makes good sense because reading and writing are based on an invented alphabetic code. It doesn’t come naturally, because you have to learn the code to be able to use it. 

How do I Teach Phonemic Awareness?

Introduce your child to the connection between words, letters, and sounds through playful activities such as:

1. Robot Talk: When your child is getting dressed, emphasize certain words by drawing them out into individual sounds: Put on your shhhhhh-oooooooooo-zzzzz (shoes) or Remember to get your wwwww-aaaaa-ttttt-errrrr (water) bottle. Turn this activity into a playful game by calling it robot, sloth, or turtle talk. Encourage your child to try stretching out words to see if you can guess what they are saying.
2. Start at the Beginning: Beginning sounds are always easiest to hear. Say words and have your child tell you the first sound they hear in each word. What is the first sound you hear when I say the word ball? Once they can hear beginning sounds, move to hearing ending sounds and then middle sounds.
3. Don’t Break the Chain: Take turns making word chains with the same beginning sounds. Start with familiar sounds like the first letter in your child’s name and see how many words you can come up with that start with that letter. 
4. Same or Different: Say pairs of words and ask your child if they begin with the same sound. For example dog/dance, dog/pen, fish/phone, fish/goat). Once your child can identify beginning sounds that match, practice with ending sounds, then middle sounds. 
5. We are Alike: Say three words and have your child identify the common sound. For example tin, tap, toe all have /t/ at the beginning and nap, sip, map all say /p/ at the end. 
6. Rhyme Time: Say a word and work together to come up with as many words as you can that rhyme with it. Children love adding nonsense words to rhymes. Play along and be sure to talk about the difference between real words and nonsense words. 
7. Take Away: Say a word and have your child delete a sound. For example: What word do you get if you take /f/ away from flap? You can also do this with adding sounds. For example: What word do you get if you add /s/ to at? The most challenging step is to substitute sounds. For example: What word do you get if you change the /a/ in ram to /i/?
8. Sloth Reader: When you are reading with your child, point to the words. Occasionally pause to say a word in robot/sloth talk as you point at it. Use fingers to count each of the phonemes. 
9. Segmenting is easier than blending. To segment a word such as hat, pull it apart into beginning, middle, and ending sounds by saying: /h/ /a/ /t/. When you segment a word into sounds, you and your child can hold up fingers to count the sounds. You could also place balls of play clay in a row and squish a ball for each sound. Show your child that some words, such as /f/ /i/ /sh/ have more letters than sounds.
10. Blend sounds into a word by saying the individual sounds /s/ /a/ /t/. Have your child repeat the sounds, then blend them together to say the word sat. It takes lots of practice to move from hearing individual sounds to making those sounds flow together into a word.

Phonemic Awareness focuses on the spoken sounds in words. Once your child can hear individual sounds in speech, they will be ready to connect them to letters. Letters are the written code for the spoken sounds.

There are 400+ child friendly words included in the Alphabites Game Pack. Use them to practice phonemic awareness. Your child will also love practicing sounds with the hilarious tongue twisters on the backs of the cards.

Summary

Phonemic Awareness is all about hearing sounds in spoken language. It helps your child: 

• hear individual sounds in words
• understand how words are formed
• learn the sounds for the written alphabetic code 
• become a strong reader and writer

Children do not automatically know that the smooth flowing stream of words they hear are made up of individual sounds. At Juneberry Learning, we encourage you to use bite sized, playful learning (just 5 minutes a day) and multisensory activities to help your child learn the sounds of reading.

Please reach out to us at hello@juneberrylearning.com with your questions or comments. You know your child best so choose what works best for them. We are here to cheer you on through playful learning for growing young minds. 

Sources  

https://ohiop20litcollab.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/ALL-kids-can-read-2021-June.pdf

https://pz.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/PoP%20Book%203.27.23.pdf