Instill Phonemic Awareness in Your Children
In recent years, the area of reading education has seen a significant transformation, with many reading instructors dividing their time between phonics teaching and whole language training. Different reading programs that fall into either of the camps have spent millions of dollars promoting the respective advantages of both approaches to learning to read.
Because the plain fact of the issue is that the most effective reading teaching takes place when both methods are used in tandem, Furthermore, reading research has increasingly shown that phonemic awareness, rather than phonics alone, is essential to guaranteeing reading achievement–particularly for children with learning disabilities–in order to ensure reading success.
However, the fact that the phrase "phonemic awareness" is thrown about so often and in so many different contexts causes a great deal of confusion for many parents and caregivers in this situation. Phonemic awareness is concerned with the structure of words rather than the content of the words themselves. Readers must be able to reflect on the correspondences between spelling and sound in order to comprehend the creation of our written code, in other words. Beginning readers must initially have some knowledge that words are comprised of sounds (phonemic awareness), rather than thinking of each word as a single indivisible sound stream before they can comprehend the written word.
The development of this consciousness is not something that can be achieved in a single move but must be accomplished through time. It is also essential to remember that these abilities are really precursors of reading abilities. Children may not identify any of these components on the page, but they may recognize them by hearing them.
The phases of phonological development that lead to the ultimate aim of profound phonemic awareness may be divided into the following categories:
- Acceptance of the fact that sentences are made up of words
- Recognition of the fact that words may rhyme as well as the capacity to create rhymes
- Recognition of the fact that words may be broken down into syllables, as well as the capacity to break them down
- a recognition of the fact that words may be broken down into their initial and final sounds and the capacity to do so
- Recognition that words may begin with the same sound and the capacity to create these matches are two important skills for reading.
- Recognition that words may have the same sound at the end of them, as well as the capacity to create these matches
- Recognition of the fact that words may have the same medial sound(s) and the capacity to find matches between these words
- Recognition of the fact that words may be broken down into separate phonemes, as well as the capacity to do this task
- Recognizing that sounds may be removed from words in order to create new words, as well as having the capability to do so
- The ability to combine sounds to form words
- The ability to break down words into their component sounds
Phonemic awareness, on the other hand, is more sophisticated than basic auditory discrimination, which is the capacity to recognize that the words cat and mat are distinct from one another. A degree of phonemic awareness is shown by the ability to explain how they are similar and how they are distinct. Although the familiarity with rhymes may be the first sign for youngsters that they may play with the structure of words, young children are not often encouraged to examine words on a level other than their semantic meaning.
Many children's phonemic awareness development begins with the recognition and enjoyment of rhyme, which is typically the first step in this process. Being aware that words may have a similar end-sound indicates that you have taken an important step toward learning to read. The ability to recognize rhyme has both a direct and indirect impact on the ability to read.
Directly, it assists youngsters in realizing that words that have common sounds are often also composed of words with similar letter sequences. When children are exposed to common letter sequences later in life, they make substantial contributions to the development of reading strategies.
Additionally, the detection of rhyme encourages the refinement of word analysis from broader intra-word portions (such as rhyme) to analysis at the level of the phoneme in a word, which is beneficial in both directions (the critical requirement for reading).
Studies have shown a very high correlation between rhyming skills at three years old and success in reading and spelling three years later (see Figure 1). A lot of studies have shown the importance of early exposure to rhyming games and the benefits of doing so.
Rhyming and phoneme awareness are two concepts that are linked. Children who are capable of excellent discernment of musical pitch also do well on tests of phonemic awareness, according to research. Because pitch shift is a significant source of information in the speech signal, it is possible that sensitivity to tiny frequency changes, such as those involved in phoneme identification, is an essential component of the effective first reading in speech signals. The intriguing idea that musical instruction may be one of the pre-reading, home-based experiences that contribute to the significant individual variations in phonemic awareness that children bring to school is raised by these findings.
So, what do you do for a living? Identifying sounds in various positions in words (initial, medial, final), identifying words that begin or end with the same sound, and manipulating sounds in a word such as saying a word without its beginning or ending sound are some of the most common techniques for increasing phoneme awareness in children and adults.
The majority of the phoneme awareness exercises should take no more than 15 to 20 minutes to complete. Although a specific activity can be chosen well in advance, the specific words targeted for phoneme awareness should be chosen from material that your child is already familiar with — for example, a book you recently read together, a game, or a family outing — to ensure that your child is successful. Exercises that increase phoneme awareness are a logical progression from the shared reading exercises.
To expose youngsters to phonemes in a natural and spontaneous manner, it is best to concentrate on literature that deals with speech sound in a fun and spontaneous manner, such as via rhymes. After repeated exposure to simple rhyme patterns, youngsters will be able to remember them with ease, and they will develop the concept of making their own rhymes. During the reading of "There's a Wocket in My Pocket" by Dr. Seuss (1974), the first sounds of common things are replaced when a kid describes the odd animals that live in the home, such as the "camp in the lamp." When children are in school, they may make up their own odd animals, such as the "Zuk in my book."
A common example of alliteration is the repeating of an initial consonant sound over many words, as in the alphabet books "Faint Frogs Feeling Feverish" and "Other Terribly Tantalizing Tongue Twisters."
"It rains, hails, and shakes the sails," from "Sheep on a Ship," is an example of assonance combined with rhyme. It is also used in a humorous manner, as in "The tooter attempts to tutor two tooters to toot," from "Moses Supposes His Toeses Are Roses," where "the tooter tries to tutor two tooters to toot." Some books feature music to accompany the rhymes, such as "Down by the Bay," in which two youngsters compete to see who can come up with the most creative questions that rhyme, such as "Did you ever witness a goose kissing a moose?" Some books are only for children.
Visit the children's department of your local library or search through your child's bookshelves at home to find books that deal with language in a lighthearted manner. Read and reread the stories, making notes about the language patterns that are employed. Next, encourage predictions of sound, word, and sentence patterns (for example, "What sound do you hear at the beginning of all those words?") and the creation of new versions of the language patterns that are employed in the stories.
Not only has research shown a predictive connection between phoneme awareness and reading performance, but it has also demonstrated a causal relationship between the two. Developing phoneme awareness, which has an advantageous effect on reading, in youngsters may be accomplished via regular teaching and reinforcement. It is imperative that individuals who are interested in enhancing early literacy teaching and decreasing reading failure begin by educating their students in phoneme awareness at a young age.
Other activities include the following:
Making Word Families Charts: Charts may include words from a single tale or a list of terms that the youngsters came up with on their own. The words that should be put on a word family chart may be dictated by the youngsters. As they progress in their letter/sound knowledge, they will be able to copy or write the words on their own. Magnetic letters may be used to "make" words for inclusion in a word family chart. Provide a rime of plastic letters (for example, at) and ask the youngsters to take turns putting various letters in the onset position to construct new words from the letters they have (e.g., hat, bat, cat, rat). These charts may be used as reference charts for spelling and creative writing exercises (or the youngsters can create their own word families reference book) or as inspiration for their own word families reference book.
Four words, three of which rhyme, are given in the form of an odd word out (e.g., speed, bead, pill, seed). The kid decides which word is the outlier, or the one that doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of the words. The game of concentration or memory is a wonderful way to get some practice in your rhyme recognition skills.
Using alliteration, sound personalities may be presented organically and in context by focusing on a certain sound that is emphasized in the alphabet or other novels that utilize alliteration to establish the sound personality. For the letter S, for example, you could offer "smiling snakes drinking strawberry sodas" to represent the letter S. In order to effectively depict these sound personalities, it is beneficial to develop or supply images of them that may be posted when each is presented. A natural connection can sometimes be made between the sound and the letter, such as presenting a picture of "Sammy snake" drawn in the shape of the letter S or "Buzzy bee" flying in a pattern of the letter Z. Children participating in initial-sound isolation and sound-to-word matching exercises benefit from the images, which, in addition to giving a label to make it easier to speak about sounds, also serve as self-correcting signals.
The use of counting activities, such as clapping hands, tapping the desk, or marching in place to the syllables of children's names (Ma- ry), objects in the surrounding environment (window), or phrases from a beloved tale, may help youngsters learn to recognize and count the syllables in words (wi-shy, wa-shy). Initially, two-syllable words may be addressed, with the goal of progressing to three-syllable ones.
Mixing an initial sound onto the rest of a word may be accomplished in the following ways: blending syllables of a word together, combining isolated phonemes together, and finally blending isolated phonemes together to form a word. By utilizing the jingle, you may demonstrate how to mix an initial sound onto a word. "It begins with /n/ and ends with -ight, so put them together and you get the word night," she explains. When they come up with a concept, the children are the ones who have the ultimate say. It is possible to add an element of excitement to this exercise by utilizing the children's names and asking each kid to identify and pronounce his or her own name when it is presented- "It begins with /m/ and it finishes with -ary, put them together and it says ———." By restricting the words to things that can be seen in the room or to terms from a specific tale that the children have just read, context may be given for the children to understand. As the children gain confidence in utilizing the jingle, they may take turns presenting their own phrases to be mixed.
Identifying the Starting Sound of a Word: This activity requires that the kid identify the beginning sound of a word. It is possible to raise awareness of the first sound of a word by giving the youngsters an image (a dog) and asking them to pick the right word out of three options: The /mmm/-og, the /d/d/d/-og, and the /sss/-og are all possible options. Another variant is to inquire as to whether a specific sound is present in the word: "Does dog have a /d/ in it?" Afterwards, the question may be changed to "Which sound does dog start with—d, sh, or 1/?" Children are encouraged to try out the three onsets with the rime in order to determine which one is right in the following sequence: It is simplest to utilize continuants that may be increased and extended in order to increase the amount of sound input received. Iteration should be utilized with stop consonants in order to emphasize their importance.
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Instill Phonemic Awareness in Your Children