R. Grant Emergent Literacy

PHONEMIC AWARENESS

EMERGENT LITERACY

R. Grant Emergent Literacy

Alphabetic Principle-English is an alphabetic language based on the alphabetic principle: each speech sound of the language is represented by a graphic symbol.

Phonology is the study of speech sounds. Phonics-is the study of the relationships

between the speech sounds (phonemes) and the letters (graphemes) that they represent.

Phonemic awareness is children’s basic understanding that speech is composed of a series of individual sounds.

Critical understandings

R. Grant Emergent Literacy

It provides the foundation for phonics and spelling .

Phonemic awareness requires that children treat speech as an object and that they shift their attention away from the meaning of words to the linguistic features of speech.

Children develop phonemic awareness as they learn to hear and manipulate spoken language.

Phonemic Awareness-Qualities

R. Grant Emergent Literacy

Phonemes are the smallest units of speech, and they are written as graphemes, or letters of the alphabet.

Phonemes are usually represented using diagonal lines /d/

Sometimes phonemes are spelled with two graphemes duck (ck)

Phonemes

R. Grant Emergent Literacy

Identify sounds in words Categorize sounds in words Substitute sounds to make new words Blend sounds to form words Segment a word into sounds

These 5 components are strategies that children use with phonics to decode and spell words. The two most important are blending and segmenting.

Components of Phonemic Awareness

R. Grant Emergent Literacy

Learning to identify a word that begins or ends with a particular sound.◦ For example, when shown a brush, a car, and a

doll, they can identify doll as the word that ends with /l/.

Identify sounds in words

R. Grant Emergent Literacy

Recognizing the “odd” word in a set of three words◦ For example, when the teacher says ring, rabbit,

and sun, recognizing that sun doesn’t belong.

Categorize sounds in words

R. Grant Emergent Literacy

Learning to remove a sound from a word and substitute a different sound in the beginning, middle, or end of words. ◦ bar to car◦ tip from top◦ gate to game

Substitute sounds to make new words

R. Grant Emergent Literacy

Learning to blend two, three, or four individual sounds to form a word◦ For example, /b/ /i/ /g/ blending the individual

sounds to form big

Blend sounds to form words

R. Grant Emergent Literacy

Learning to break a word into its beginning, middle, and ending sounds.◦ Feet into /f/ /e/ /t/ go into /g/ /o/

Segment a word into sounds

R. Grant Emergent Literacy

English language learners:◦ Need more opportunities to play informally with

rhyme and to orally manipulate the sounds in words

◦ Need to listen to wordplay books read aloud more times

◦ Need to participate in mini-lessons on specific phonemic awareness strategies

English Learners

R. Grant Emergent Literacy

Teach high-utility phonics skills that are most useful for decoding and spelling unfamiliar words

Follow a developmental continuum for systematic phonics instruction, beginning w/ rhyming and ending with phonics generalizations

Provide direct instruction to teach phonics skills

Guidelines for Teaching Phonics(Tompkins, 2006)

R. Grant Emergent Literacy

Choose words for phonics instruction from books students are reading and other high-frequency words

Provide opportunities for students to apply what they are learning about phonics through word sorts, making words, interactive writing, and other literacy activities

Guidelines for Teaching Phonics(Tompkins, 2006)

R. Grant Emergent Literacy

Take advantage of teachable moments to clarify misunderstandings and infuse phonics instruction into literacy activities

Use oral activities to reinforce phonemic awareness skills as students blend and segment written words during phonics and spelling instruction

Review phonics skills as part of the spelling program in the upper grades (critical for ELL)

Guidelines for Teaching Phonics(Tompkins, 2006)

R. Grant Emergent Literacy

Research indicates a clear connection between phonemic awareness and learning to reading

As children become more phonemically aware, they recognize that speech can be segmented into smaller units, this is useful in recognizing sound-symbol correspondences and spelling

Why is phonemic awareness important?

R. Grant Emergent Literacy

Children can be explicitly taught to segment and blend speech

Phonemic awareness has been shown to be the most powerful predictor of later reading achievement

Why is phonemic awareness important?