Phonological Awareness

1. Phonological Awareness Ann Morrison, Ph.D.

2. Phonological Awareness • Is an umbrella term over the following: • Listening for sounds • Rhyming • Syllabication • Phonemic awareness – phonemic awareness refers to a student’s ability to blend, segment, delete, add, and manipulate individual sounds within words

3. Phonological Grain Size • Larger phonological grain sizes are longer utterances • Easier to hear and understand • Smaller grain sizes are brief sounds • More difficult to hear and understand

4. Larger Grain Size Smaller Grain Size Phonological Awareness • Phonemic awareness • Syllabication • Rhyming • Attention to sound

5. Phonological Awareness vs. Phonics Phonological Awareness Phonics Includes letters as well as sounds • The manipulation of sounds and can be done with the eyes closed

6. Matthew Effects of Reading

7. Attention to Sound • Separating sounds • Distinguishing between sounds • Sequencing sounds • Location of sounds • Identifying same and different sounds

8. Activity: Listening for Sounds • Sit quietly for 15 seconds, what did you hear? • Sit quietly for another 15 seconds, what did you hear first, second, third, etc. • Did you see the sounds being made? If not, how did you know what made the sounds? • Did any two sounds overlap? If so, how did you know they were two separate sounds?

9. Rhyming • Word endings that sound the same • Spelling doesn’t matter • Onset-rime

10. Syllabication • Syllables the phonological building blocks of words • Mono-, bi-, tri-, polysyllable word

11. Rhyming Game • Teacher says a word • Student says a rhyming word • Go through all of the rhymes you can think of until you are repeating yourself • Words don’t need to be “real” words, nonsense words are fine

12. Phonemic Awareness • Smallest units of sound • Addition • Deletion • Substitution • Manipulation

13. Explicit Instruction • Give instructions: I am going to say a word and I want you to say a rhyming word • Model: For example, if I say mop, you could say hop, top, cop, rop, fop, or another rhyming word. • Practice: Ready, let’s try one.

14. Error Correction Sometimes students will not be able to do what you ask them to do • Acknowledge something the student did right • Model the correct answer • Have them say the correct answer with you, maybe repeat if necessary • Have them try again • Don’t make them guess

15. Matching Initial Sounds Activity • Take a look at the items on your table • What are possible names for or ways to describe the items on your table? • One person picks an item and says a word to describe it, emphasizing the initial sound • Everyone else at the table looks for an item with the same initial sound

16. Initial and Final Sounds Activity • One person picks an item and says a word to describe it, emphasizing the final sound • The next person picks an object that begins with the final sound of the previous object and says it’s name • The third person finds an object that begins with the final sound of the previous object, and so on.