Reading

What is Phonemic Awareness?

Occasionally people ask me if I worry about running out of information for this site.  My response is that I have an infinate amount of activities and information that I want to post about and if anything I struggle with getting ahead of myself.  And I have to confess I already have!  I want to show parents the sequence of understanding a child’s development in reading, writing, and math so bad that I want to lay it out post by post.  But today, I am stepping back, only SLIGHTLY, to take what I already have introduced and add a lot more activities to it. 

For example, I wrote a post not long ago about phonemic awareness, but there is SO much to know about phonemic awareness and there are a few other skills to master before introducing the one I posted about coloring a gingerbread house.

So take a minute, breathe, and brace yourself for a little lesson that is “the secret key to reading success” (as my friend and mentor Beth Yglesias puts it).

Phonemic awareness is the awareness of sounds within a word.  To learn this process there is a ladder of skills that must be climbed to achieve the FLUENCY and structure of reading.  So here is a visual breakdown for you: Click HERE on Reading Ladder if you cannot read the image below or click on the image itself.

I wanted you to see this so that you would understand the sequence of activities I am posting,  Each step needs to be MASTERED before moving up to the next.  So I am going to try to post more activities on the earliest steps first to give you lots to practice 🙂

All that to say, I posted an activity recently for a child who has established the Step 5 skill and I skipped an activity for Step 4: Listening for a word in parts and hearing the whole word….so here is an activity for Step 4:

Step four is to be able to listen to the sounds that make up a word such as /c/-/at/ and understand that you are saying the word “cat”

*******When a letter is inside of this symbol “//” you make the letter SOUND not the letter name.  

So if I were to show my little one (who can rhyme as well as clap words and word parts) pictures of a cat, a dog, and a fish, and asked him/her to show me the picture of the /f/-/ish/, he would point to the fish.

But this is just the first level of giving him/her a chance to listen for the word parts to hear a word.  The next level, after this one is mastered, is to ask him/her to show me the picture of the /f/-/i/-/sh/ and he would hear all those sounds together and point to the fish.

Here is a page of pictures for you to practice the FIRST LEVEL of this skill:

Listen To Find The Picture

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Selective Book Search

Books are a GREAT way to INTRODUCE new concepts.  If I am teaching about shapes, focusing on squares, I might pick a book from my expansive library that centers around squares.  But~ I would make sure that I discuss the pre-conceived understandings about squares first.  I might ask the little one “What do you know about shapes?” This one question “What do you know?” is probably on the first column of a 3 column KWL chart of classrooms all across the country.  The K stands for “Know” -what do you already know? The W stands for “Want” -what do you want to learn? and the L stands for “Learned” – what you have learned after the subject is taught.  So a great way to plan your teaching is to first learn what your “student” already knows about the topic.

Then, I might make some associations – brainstorming with the little one about what squares remind them of.

THEN…I would read a book about it 🙂  – but this is a great time to bring in visuals, dig a little deeper into the topic, and ask questions throughout the reading that get them thinking.

Afterwards, I could do an extension activity with them to “extend” their understandings, or have them record (draw) what they have learned about shapes from our discussion and book.

And quite honestly, as a teacher, I learned a lot from books; not just growing up reading books.  I learned a lot from reading books to my Kindergarteners.  In fact, I love kids books and grew an appreciation for them, but I still find it important to select books strategically.  You need a good balance of fiction and non-fiction.  You need to select a variety for each topic.  And you need to make sure the book is engaging.

There is a difference between read-aloud books that carry a life lesson, and books that teach a specific subject matter.  I have tons of favorite read-aloud books, and a lot of favorite books on each theme I am teaching.  Buying them can be great to have your own little library, or you can check your local library for availability.

Either way, I am going to make an amazon list of books for you to check out.    Feel free to E-MAIL ME if you have any questions about searching for specific resources.

So, if you haven’t figured it out already…today’s activity is to READ with purpose whether it be on colors, shapes, counting, alphabet principles, etc. 🙂

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Color the Gingerbread House

This is one of the first phonemic awareness activities I am posting for pre-readers.  If you try to introduce this activity and your little one is not quite getting it, go back to some of the earlier reading posts on the “getting started” page and practice more activities similar to the earlier skills because your little one may need more time playing with words before he/she is ready to listen for the beginning sounds in words. 

Listening for beginning sounds, generating beginning sounds, and identifying which letter makes that sound are three SEPARATE skills.   So today, we are going to start with the basics of introducing phonemic awareness (which is the awareness that words are made up of sounds).

I created an activity in which you will talk about all the objects in the picture so that you can label the objects with your child BEFORE attempting to listen for the sounds that the words start with.  Once children are able to “play” with words enough to hear sounds.  They usually hear the beginning sound first, then the ending sound, and then the middle sound(s) eventually.  It takes A LOT of practice listening for the beginning sound before a child can hear and distinguish other sounds within a word. 

But this is a great place to start: 

Click on the link below, print it, read the directions and let your child choose what they want to color with -crayons, colored pencils, markers, etc.

Color the Sound

If you dont have a printer, free-hand this picture on a blank sheet of paper 🙂

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Environmental print Make a Book of Their World

In one of my earlier posts “Read the Playroom“, I briefly mentioned the suggestion of posting “environmental print” in the playroom. Environmental print is simply “print that we see in our everyday environment” such as signs, banners, billboards, logos, etc.

Today, I have a simple activity, but it may take a bit of time to collect.
You are going to cut out the front of cereal boxes, snack boxes, and restaurant boxes/bags such as donut box tops or burger king bags. And you are going to combine them all to make a book for your child’s reading corner. If you dont have a reading corner, book display, bookshelf, or something like it. PLEASE consider establishing a designated area for reading. Make it cozy with bean bags, pillows, a little lamp, etc. You want this area to be one that your little one frequents.

I am posting the picture of my assembled book, but I was a teacher who “bound” the book at school. You can 3-whole punch it and use binder rings, stick it in a 3-ring folder or binder, put them in sheet protectors, or anything you can think of that align with the resources available to you.

Please e-mail me pictures of your completed work so I can post ideas for other moms and dads on the visitor share page 🙂

Remember, as mentioned in an earlier reading post, this doesn’t mean your child can read necessarily, but it is a great way to attach meaning to print, to reinforce that reading can be linked with picture clues, and to provide the repetition to introduce new reading skills such as phonemic awareness which I will address in detail later.

And remember that each time you cut out a new print to save it is an opportunity to teach about it….to talk about what it says, the letters in the word(s), the way that you can identify it, etc. Have fun!

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introduce concepts of print ABC Match

Let’s do some more letter activities because the alphabet is a great way to introduce concepts of print in a systematic way.
Being able to read the alphabet aloud with a pointer, pointing to the correct letter and not zooming ahead or falling behind is a great milestone that represents your child’s understanding that print communicates something.
First, write out the alphabet in large letters / use the alphabet sentence strip poster you made for the post “Read the Playroom.” Lay it out on the floor.
Then, I want you to search around your house and find some alphabet pieces that your child can manipulate –like the foam ABC set for the bath, or the magnetic set you can buy at the dollar store, or puzzle pieces, whatever you have. And I want you to lay them all out on the floor in no particular order. Then I want you to tell your child that you want to put them in the order that we read them when we sing the ABC’s. In order to do this you are going to match the manipulative letter to the written letter. Each time you pick a letter….talk about it. Do you know this letter? Where is its place in the alphabet, the beginning, middle, or end? What letter does it come after/before?
If your child isn’t sure…sing the ABC song until you get to that letter; your little one will most likely act super excited that he/she “found it.”
If you want to accommodate to make the matching skill more difficult….draw the lower case of the alphabet and match the upper case to it.

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