Do You Hear That? Why Phonological Awareness is So Important for Preschoolers

Phonological Awareness is quite possibly my favorite early literacy  skill to discuss.  Partly because many people are already implementing it to some degree without recognizing it (remember: recognize, emphasize, maximize…), but also because many resources and studies suggest that it is the #1 predictor of reading success.  Which is often surprising to people, since it has nothing to do with letters on a page.

I wrote about phonological awareness a while back , but this is a topic that could be written on for days!   Here are a few more insights to phonological awareness, what it is, why it’s important, and how it is learned.

A Few Definitions

Phonological Awareness vs. Phonemic Awareness.  Phonological awareness has to do with the child’s ability to hear and manipulate the sounds within words.  This includes phonemes, syllables, rhyming, blending, segmenting, and even recognizing the number of words within a sentence.  Phonemic awareness has to do more specifically with the individual phonemes in words, and is therefore sort of a subheading under the larger, overarching term phonological awareness.  The two, however, are quite similar and are used interchangeably in most of the literature on the subject, and are often abbreviated as simply PA. 

What’s a phoneme?  Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound in words.  The word “cat”, for example, has three letters, one syllable, but three phonemes, /k/ /a/ /t/.    The word “tree” is also one syllable, has four letters, but has only three phonemes as well, /t/ /r/ /ē/.  There are only 26 letters in the alphabet, but there are 44 phonemes in the English language.  (You can download a chart of the phonemes from docstoc here.)

Phonics vs Phonological Awareness.  Phonological awareness is a skill based solely on hearing and manipulating sounds.  It is not a written task and is not dependent upon meaning.  (So Zax and tracks do rhyme.  Just one more reason why Dr. Seuss is so great!)  Phonological awareness focuses on isolating the task of hearing the subtle sounds in words.  Phonics begins to connect those individual sounds to the written letters that create them.  It is necessary to have a solid foundation in phonological awareness to truly benefit from phonics training.

The Tasks

While there are many ways to categorize the skills involved in phonological awareness, Marilyn Jager Adams, a highly regarded literacy expert, outlined five tasks in relation to PA.  The progression of skill mastery projects through first grade, so don’t expect your preschoolers to do them all right now!  They are also not listed in a progressive order, but varying levels of mastery may be accomplished across each of the skills as individual children move towards proficiency.  And competency continues to develop, even after children have begun to read.  I’ll briefly outline those five tasks here, along with examples for each.

Rhythm, Rhyme, and Alliteration

• Utilize a variety of poems, fingerplays,songs, nursery rhymes, and rhyming stories.
• Encourage nonsense words in rhymes.
• Clap, pat, and drum rhythms in songs and rhymes.
• Substitute rhyming words in directions and transitions (“Pally can go to snack” –instead of “Sally”.)

Oddity Tasks

• In a set, identify the object that differs phonemically in a specified position.  For example, in the set cat, can, and mouse, which word starts with a different sound?
• Identify the word that does not rhyme in a given set.  For example: rock, pig, sock.
•  Use a puppet or picture cut out to “eat” the object that doesn’t belong.
• Use a giant felt X to X-out the picture of the “trickster”.

Orally Blend and Divide Words

• Use visuals like a rubber band, slinky, or hands to “stretch” out the sounds in a word and then quickly and smoothly blend them together.  Break words up phonetically or by onset and rime.  (l-a-dd-er or l-adder, respectively)  Use it as a “sneaky word” activity, with you dividing and the children blending to guess the word!
• Have children talk like a robot – they naturally divide along syllables.
• Use rhythm sticks , drums, or simply clap to beat out syllables in names and words.  (I love to use a pumpkin as a drum for this task in the fall.)

Orally Segmenting Words

• Have children use counters or Elkonin boxes to count the number of sounds in a word.
• Have children sort pictures according to the number of sounds in the words.  (3= pot, cat, dad; 4= water, dance, jump)
• Encourage children to talk like a turtle, slowing down to divide into phonemes.

Manipulation of Sounds

• Children develop the ability to delete and substitute phonemes within words.
• Give clues for a “mystery word.” (It rhymes with rose, but starts with /n/.)
• If I said “book” without the /b/, what would it sound like?  (“ook”)

Two Tips

There are two things I feel are necessary to point out before you jump into more PA training.  First, it is very important to model correct pronunciation, especially when doing PA exercises.  For example, if you (as many around here do) pronounce “mountain” as “mou’en”, a child will not be able to correctly identify the phonemes in that word.  Secondly, since PA activities often rely on pictures rather than written words, it is important to clarify with your children, exactly what word each picture represents.  Children will have a hard time matching “bug” and “rug” if they are looking at them as a “beetle” and a “place mat”.

Great Activities!

Part of what makes phonological awareness so great is the fact that it really can be fun!  It’s all about playing with the sounds in words.  There are three books that I use, which are full of great activities as well as more information on the topic of PA.  You might want to check one out for yourself! 

• Phonemic Awareness: Playing with Sounds to Strengthen Beginning Reading Sounds by Jo Fitzpatrick
• Phonemic Awareness Activities for Early Reading Success by Wiley Blevins
• Sounds in Action: Phonological Awareness Activities & Assessment by Yvette Zgonc

How do you encourage the children you love and teach to get ready to read by playing with the sounds in words?

 Photo by Charlie Balch.

Does Your Alphabet Chart Need to Be Recalled?

I’m issuing my  own product recall on alphabet charts, and yours might be included! 

This isn’t a safety issue, I can’t imagine an alphabet chart causing physical harm (though I suppose the occasional paper cut could be pretty traumatic) but the alphabet chart you’re using might not be teaching what it’s meant to teach.

Alphabet charts, those posters or room headers that show upper and lower case letters along with a picture, are meant to be a reference point for children.  They are meant to help a child associate the written letter with its accompanying sound.  So you have “Tt” next to a tiger, “Ff” next to a frog, and “Dd” next to a  dinosaur.  Easy enough, right?

X is for X-Con

The letter X is the biggest offender on these alphabet charts.  Most alphabet charts show “Xx” x-ray, or “Xx” xylophone.  These cues won’t help your children much, unless they’re trying to spell X-Men or xenophobia.  Now I’ll be the first to agree, that finding a familiar word that begins with x is not an easy task.  Just check out this list of words starting with x.  Not too child friendly.  The problem is, the purpose of an alphabet chart is not just to match letters to cute pictures with the same beginning letter, it is to offer visual cues to match with a useful sound. 

The most common sound for the letter X, particularly in the early stages of reading and writing is the “ks” sound.  That is the X sound children need to learn.  Now, I don’t think I can come up with a word starting with X and the “ks” sound, but I know a few common words that end with the X-“ks” sound.  Box and fox, for example.  The fact that the sound is at the end doesn’t make it less useful.  In fact, it’s more useful because it teaches the actual sound the child needs to learn.

Other Offenders

X is by far the worst offender, but you might want to take a look at the vowels on your chart too.  Vowels are the Jason Bourne of the English language.  Just when you think you know exactly what they’re about, they change on you.  While we teach long and short sounds, we all know there are about twenty subtly different sounds those five letters can produce-  think R controlled, schwa, diphthongs.  For the sake of basic concepts, an alphabet chart should ideally show a picture corresponding with the short sound for the vowels.  The long sounds are obvious – they state the letter’s name.  It’s the short sounds that children will need to be reminded of.  So instead of “Ii” ice cream, it would be better to find “Ii” insect, or iguana, or igloo.  Now, this may require some vocabulary training, but really, with any alphabet chart, you need to spend some time explaining what each picture represents.  Otherwise you have children reciting A for Crocodile or Q for Pretty Princess.

Quick Fix

The good news is, you don’t have to send your chart in to the factory to be retrofitted with a new part.  You can do that yourself.  Simply identify the offenders in your alphabet chart, choose words that more appropriately match the sound cues you are trying to teach, do a quick image search on the internet, print, paste over the offender, and you’re done!

Charts Vs Books

Now I don’t want you to suddenly rifle through all your alphabet storybooks and throw them out as well.  Alphabet books like Alphabet Under Construction by Denise Fleming, or Jerry Pallotta’s Icky Bug Alphabet Book shouldn’t be held to the same standard as the alphabet charts.  While charts are meant as a ready reference across situations, alphabet books are meant to show application of the alphabet within a theme or context.  They can show “airbrush” for A because tomorrow you’ll show them another book with “anaconda” for A.  Books can show variation, but your chart needs to show consistent basic concepts.

No one will come from the government to enforce this recall.  But if you have children trying to spell the word “zebra” with an X, you can’t say I didn’t warn you about your misleading “xylophone“.

 

You may also be interested in A Culture of Literacy: Teaching Preschooler’s the ABCs and More.

 

Top photo by ctech.