Week 10: Phonemic Awareness 101
What is phonemic awareness? This is the ability to hear and manipulate individual sounds within words. The sounds within words are called phonemes. Before children are able to read, they have to understand how sounds make up words. For example, the word "cat" has three sounds that make it up. If we were to change one sound like the /c/ to /b/ this would change the meaning of the word completely. Students can show us that they have phonemic awareness in many different ways including recognizing words that begin with the same sound, isolating and saying either the first or last sound of a word, combining the individual sounds to say a word, and breaking up a word into separate sounds.
When in elementary school, our teachers did many activities to help us with phonemic awareness that we may or may not remember. I know looking back I remember that my teachers had sounded words out with me and would change sounds to have us create different words. In the article Put Reading First from the National Institute of Literacy they listed out different ways that teachers do this in their classrooms and all of these sounded vaguely familiar from my earlier school days. There are a total of eight strategies you can do with your students. These strategies include: phoneme isolation (children recognize individual sounds in a word), identity (recognize the sounds in different words), categorization (recognize the word in a set of three or four words that has the “odd“ sound), blending (listen to a sequence of separately spoken phonemes, and then combine the phonemes to form a word. Then write and read the word), segmentation (break a word into its separate sounds, saying each sound as they tap out or count it. Then they write and read the word), deletion (recognize the word that remains when a phoneme is removed from another word), addition (make a new word by adding a phoneme to an existing word), and substitution (substitute one phoneme for another to make a new word).
Teaching phonemic awareness can help your students learn to spell because it gives them an opportunity to sound out the words by themselves. Teaching your students to work with phonemes along with letters can help with their reading skills because it gives your students a chance to relate sounds with the letters they go with. Doing phonemic awareness in small-group instruction gives you a chance to work more individually with your students while also giving them a chance to hear what their classmates say. Adding phonemic awareness into your classroom curriculum can only help your students achieve more and broaden their literacy skills.
I have attached a video of a teacher demonstrating different activities on how to teach phonemic awareness in your classroom!
Questions:
1. What was an activity you did in school that helped you learn phonemic awareness? Do you think it was effective?
2. How would you demonstrate phonemic awareness in your classroom?
3. If you noticed a student struggling with this concept, what would you do to help them better understand it?
4. Is learning phonemic awareness an effective way for a child to learn how to read? Why or why not?
I am going to answer the first and last question of what you asked. It wasn't really an activity that we did but something I do remember doing in elementary to practice phonemes is breaking the word into their syllables instead of sounding out letter by letter to be able to create one word. I do believe this was an effective way for me to learn because it was something I was able to catch onto and use for other bigger and harder words as I moved into high school. Learning phonemic awareness is an effective way for a child to learn how to read because it helps guide them with trying to sound out difficult words in different types of readings. Mastering that skill set will help students with reading in many ways. Being able to sound out those words would give the students the confidence to read out load if it was needed.
ReplyDeleteI also remember doing that in elementary school, we would clap to each syllable while sounding it out for practice. That is a another effective way of teaching it since it can be activity to learn. I think using music can help or some kind of tv show since it would be a good introduction that would get them into practicing it more often.
DeleteSamantha,
DeleteI remember the exact same technique that you mentioned above. I remember doing this specifically in Kindergarten and 1st Grade. Out of the eight strategies I had listed, do you know which one that would be?
The article Teaching Reading, states “The relationship between phonemic awareness and learning to read is extremely important (Stanovich, 1994). I use this statement to answer question #4 because I agree. I believe that with phoneme isolation, identity, categorization, blending, and segmentation that it’s multiply ways for a student to learn how to read. These activities provide a better comprehension to words, which essentially will lead to reading because students will be able to sound out and pronounce words accurately.
ReplyDeleteDesiree',
DeleteI totally agree with that statement! I think phonemic awareness is extremely useful in learning how to read. I think it helps students understand the words more. I love that there are multiple ways for students to learn it as well. Do you remember doing any of these things in school?
To answer your second question I think I would demonstrate phonemic awareness by doing basically what she did in the video. Explaining to the kids how if you change the ending sound it can make a completely different word. But I would maybe do it written do they can physically see what I am doing in my head. For example, I would write on the board quit cross out the T and replace it with z then re write the word as quiz. This way the students will know what ending sound I am talking about and what letter and sound I am using to form the new word.
ReplyDeleteAriana,
DeleteI love your idea! I think that would be a great way to facilitate learning phonemic awareness in your classroom. The video did a great job giving an example of how to do it, but I think your revamping of it would help take it even further.
What was an activity you did in school that helped you learn phonemic awareness? Do you think it was effective?
ReplyDeleteThis wasn't something I did in school so much as it was something that my parents did to help me learn to read. I learned to read before I was in school, so a lot of the strategies I learned aren't necessarily from the classroom. I know that one I liked was breaking the word up into chunks, which is what I call chunking. My parents would take their thumb and cover up a part of a word (i.e. in the word "comment" they would cover up "-ment" and leave only "com-" which was easy for me to sound out; then they would cover up "com-" and the "t" and leave "-men-" which was a recognizable word, and the finally cover up all letters except that last "t"; then I would put it together as one word and could read it as the full word comment) and then help me to find distinguishable words so that I could sound it out more easily. I think this is a really good strategy, but with kids just learning to read, I don't think it's good. You really have to have some prior reading skills in this method to be able to make it work, and you also have to have phenomic awareness, which most kids just starting to read most likely won't have. I think one of the better strategies is probably isolation, and then when they get older if they're still struggling, I think that substitution and addition are really good strategies to strengthen their skills.
Paige,
DeleteThat's awesome that your parents help you learn phonemic awareness! I think how they taught you to read and sound out words is a great way to learn. This is something I think you should totally do with your students. I like how the strategies build on each other. They get more complex as they go and I think that really helps students (and teachers).
How would you demonstrate phonemic awareness in your classroom?
ReplyDeleteI would demonstrate phonemic awareness in my classroom through activities and games. I believe children learn best when they can experience what they are learning themselves. If my students are having fun while also learning I think the material will stick better.
I also feel like activities and games would be a good way for them to learn phonemic awareness. I like how in the video she made it fun for the children with the puppet...that way they are engaging in their learning with the material.
DeleteChristian,
DeleteYes! Children love to play games and I think that will help them understand and soak in the material better. What are some ideas you have for games?
Games and songs would be a fun way to help students learn phonemic awareness. This would help students learn individual sounds within words. It would help them memorize them and they would enjoy doing it! I had a lot of trouble with reading and writing in school and I don't remember them doing this with me. I relied on my mom to learn how to talk properly and say words the correct way.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with you. I think learning with games in activities that actually engages the kids makes them understand better and helps them memorize. I doubt kids would remember stuff taught to them if it was all boring and plain.
DeleteMeredith,
DeleteThat's awesome that you had your mom to help you. I think this is something you would have benefited from in school if it had been taught! Are there any games you can think of that would help with learning this?
To answer your question 2, I would use the strategies blending and substitution in my classroom, which were one’s you’ve given above. Mostly because I remember using these in these strategies when I was in elementary school an I struggled with reading. Those strategies helped me a lot and you could make cool games out of them as well. This way I could keep my kids motivated and engaged.
ReplyDeleteSarina,
DeleteI'm glad these strategies helped you as a reader! What kind of games would you come up with that would involve these strategies?
To respond to your fourth and final question "Is learning phonemic awareness an effective way for a child to learn how to read? Why or why not?" I believe learning phonics is a very useful tool in helping a student navigate their way through reading. I remember when I came home from school I would watch this show called "between the Lions". It had a lot of functions that were suppose to help kids boost their reading comprehension and language arts skills as well. One of the segments that they had on the show that really helped me was where there was a gospel type singer puppet that sung the endings and try to match it with different constant-sounding vowels. I always like that segment and it showed in my classes on tests it improved my reading comprehensions skills by a large margin. Learning phonics can increase reading comprehension due to the fact it can help a child expand their vocabulary and create new words as well.
ReplyDeleteJordan,
DeleteI remember "Between the Lions"! That was such a helpful show. It seems like learning phonemic awareness really helped you throughout your schooling. It's nice that there was a show that helped too so that way we could broaden our skills at home as well.
One thing I remember is my teacher clap her hands to each syllable. I even catch myself doing this to help the students at my work. I remember my mom teaching me how to spell the word "together". I was struggling with this word so she told me to break the word apart. She said remember the word as to-get-her. I think after my mom showed me this method I started to do it a lot with words. I believe this goes along with the chunking style. I think a good way to teach phonics is to have students play partner games. The game could be a roll and read it or even bingo. I also believe students would enjoy learning phonics through a computer game.
ReplyDeleteI remember my teachers also teaching us to clap out the syllables. They would make it a game sometimes and put us on teams and we'd go up 2 at a time (one from each team) and when the word was given whom ever clapped it out correctly got the point. I also learned how to spell together by breaking it apart in that manner. I found myself looking for "shortcuts" to help me spell difficult words because sometimes sounding them out didn't work for.
DeleteFor me, people would sound out words. Letter by letter and then slowly combine the sounds of two or three letters at a time so I could hear the word as one. This is often still difficult for me to do when spelling a word I normally do not spell. This is because of things like a long e in words (eat, creep) or when something is "ie" but we often think of it as "y". So, its sometimes hard to explain why things are spelled the way they are even though they sound the same. For question 3, I would do an activity or have some type of model in my room showing how word endings sound the same, but are different. This made me think of when I did an activity when I was younger about words that are pronounced the same but are two different things aka homophones (flour/flower, sun/son).
ReplyDeleteSounding out words by clapping or just pronouncing every letter separately was also how I learned phonics in the classroom. We then would slowly put all the sounds together to try and figure out what the word was. This was definitely a process because we also had to realize letters make different sounds when put next to other letters but eventually we figured out the sounding out method!
Delete- Deja Shelton
Thinking back at my elementary school days, I think a method that worked for me was when my teacher would have me read out loud to her. If I ran into a word that I didn't know, she wouldn't tell me how to pronounce it. Instead, she would tell me to sound it out and was there to help me if I needed it. I started off by sounding out the first, the middle and then the end. I then combined it all together to get the final sound of the word together. If I was really having trouble, she would cover half of the word and only letting me see the beginning to sound it out and so on. To answer your fourth question, I think phonemic awareness serves as a foundation to learning how to read. Once you start sounding out words and saying them correctly, you start developing that confidence.
ReplyDeleteTo answer question four, I think it is important for students to learn this to help them read. I think it is an important tool for them to know first before they start reading.My elementary school worked on this skill a lot.
ReplyDeleteI remember learning phonemic awareness in elementary school. The only method I remember using to learn this was the worksheets that had boxes for each letter of the words to show the different parts of the word. I think this was helpful for my understanding of phonemic awareness, and it also helped me learn how to spell. I think phonemic awareness is important for students to learn because it does help them learn to read. It helps them understand the different parts and sounds that are within words.
ReplyDeleteWhat was an activity you did in school that helped you learn phonemic awareness? Do you think it was effective?
ReplyDeleteSomething I used to watch that helped me with phonics and learn new words was the Electric company. It had interactive phonics content that worked on blending. I believe this plus the weird visuals they would show helped phonics stick for me.