Phonemic Awareness

Level 1: Exposure to Nursery Rhymes

Hearing, learning and reciting nursery rhymes can help young children toward becoming proficient readers. They also develop early literacy skills. We have to...

• Select poems and rhymes that actually do contain rhyming words. 
• Know that It is easier for young children to hear rhyming words that are situated in closer proximity (“One, two/ Buckle my shoe”).

I have selected the Humpty Dumpty rhyme to follow this sequence:

• Teacher recites the rhyme.
• Teacher takes a piece of paper and makes a ball at the time He/She recites the rhyme.
• Teacher increases difficulty making some gestures little by little. Children imitate him/her. 
• Children recite the rhyme and make the gestures using the paper ball.

We can present the rhyme to the children with a song:

Also, we can use this version of the rhyme to practise the countdown with the students:

Level 2: Word Awareness

This level helps children to identify words within sentences.  When speaking, children do not usually concentrate on individual words, but this is necessary when they are learning to read. Children will develop an awareness of words in spoken and written sentences and understand that word order has an effect on sentence meaning. Compound words are introduced here:

COMPOUND WORDS NOTEBOOK: click here!

Level 3: Recognition and production of rhyme

Rhyme activities introduce children to the sound structure of words.  Especially when rhyme recognition skills are not well established, the visual representation of the words provides great assistance. To be aware that words can have a similar end-sound implies a critical step in metalinguistics understanding – that of ignoring the meaning of a word in order to attend to its internal structure.

The activity designed to work on the third level is You can come sailing on my ship. Children have to think of things to take that will rhyme with the word suggested (bun, in this case).

YOU CAN COME SAILING ON MY SHIP NOTEBOOK: click here!

Level 4: Recognition and production of syllabes

In this section children divide spoken words into syllables or ‘beats’- a task which is easier than finding the individual sounds within words. The proposal to work this level in class is Syllabes group:

SYLLABES GROUP NOTEBOOK: click here!

Level 5: Recognition and Production of Initial sounds

Initial sound activities show children that words contain phonemes and introduces how phonemes sound and feel when spoken in isolation. Phoneme train is the activity to work on the initial sounds. First of all, we have to explain that the words have a beginning, middle an end just as a train. Articulate CVC and point to the box corresponding to the position of each sound in the word.

PHONEME TRAIN NOTEBOOK: click here!

Level 6: Recognition and production of final phonemes

In this level children are going to work with the final phonemes in activities like Secret sound. The teacher say three words and children have to listen carefully and say the sound that is the same in all words. Make sure the target sound is in the same position in all words. 

SECRET SOUND NOTEBOOK: click here!

Level 7 and 8: Blending Phonemes and Phonemic Segmentation

Blending phonemes to make a word: a word is presented with the individual phonemes isolated. The child needs to put the phonemes together to make the word.

Phonemic segmentation: a child is given a word and is required to isolate the individual phonemes.

Segmenting and blending is necessary to work on Phonemic Awareness. Drawing lines is an example of how to represent the phonemes in words by drawing lines through a pictures. 

DRAWING LINES NOTEBOOK: click here!

Phoneme Frames is another possibility to work on segmenting and blending. Teacher should demonstrate using the frames many times using counters on a table or magnets on a whiteboard. Letters should not be used. The idea is to say the phoneme and move a counter in to the box.

PHONEME FRAME NOTEBOOK: click here!

Level 9: Phoneme manipulation

Phoneme manipulation is the ability to delete initial and final phonemes in words, to delete the first phoneme of a consonant blend as well as substitute one phoneme for another.  Because sound deletion tasks require this manipulation of phonemes in words, they are considered to be more difficult than other types of phoneme awareness tasks. 

In Switcheroo, you have to explain to the children that you will say a word and you want they listen carefully to the phonemes in the word. You will then play switcheroo with on of the phonemes. That is you will change one sound in the word: initial, medial or final. Students have to tell you which sound was switched. 

SWITCHEROO NOTEBOOK: click here!