Rethinking Phonological Awareness
Maybe for this one, it isn’t re-thinking as much as just thinking about Phonological Awareness. Historically, this has been the least known, most misunderstood component of reading. Let’s break it all down! Phonological Awareness is the foundation of all language and reading. It is the vital ability to be able to hear, recognize, and manipulate the sounds of language.
Too often we jump into phonics and blending before kids have mastery of the ability to just hear and distinguish language at the sound level. Struggling readers, of all ages, often have a weakness in P.A.
We have found that when you identify a phonological deficit and give systematic, direct instruction at this foundational level, everything can fall into place! Your student will be able to think about sentences and words differently. They will be able to capture the individual sounds in a word and break them down. Decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling) is what literacy is all about and both rely on phonological awareness!
P.A. Terms:
Phonological Awareness: the ability to recognize and manipulate the sounds in a language
Phonemic Awareness: the ability to hear and manipulate the individual sounds in a single word
Word (Grandpa Shark): words are the largest unit of sound and the smallest unit of meaning in a language.
Syllable (Daddy Shark): a single, unbroken sound of a word. Every syllable has a vowel sound. (When you hum a word, you can hear the syllables sounds)
Onset rime (MaMa Shark): the onset is the first sound in a word, the rime is the vowel, and the following sounds. (This is helpful when learning word families and increases familiarity in language patterns. c-at, b-at, s-at)
Phoneme (Baby Shark): the smallest unit of sound in a word. Phonemes combine to create a word that has meaning. (Compare to an atom, a single Lego, or the individual ingredients of a cookie. There are 44 phonemes in the English language.)
This foundational skill is so important! Join our Reading Rev VIP Site to get dozens of resources and tools to teach phonological and phonemic awareness to your intermediate students!