1. Phonological Awareness and Letter Sound Knowledge

2. Phonological Awareness Defined
Conscious attention to the sounds of spoken language
Includes awareness of
Phonemes (smallest unit of sound)
Syllables (unit of pronunciation consisting of a vowel alone or a vowel with a consonant)
Onset and Rime (onset is the consonant sound of a syllable that comes before the vowel, rime is vowel sound and everything that comes after it)

3. Phonological awareness involves listening to sounds in words.

4. Phonological Awareness Importance
Why is it so important?
Considered the most powerful predictor of later reading achievement
A child’s phonological skills in first grade predict how well a child will read in third grade (and beyond)

5. What Phonological Awareness Does…
The ability to. . .
Will eventually help children to. . .
Separate words into syllables or beats
Break down a word into parts to spell or decode/read it -- for example, to spell the word chapter, break it into chap and ter
Recognize and generate words that rhyme
Use known words to read new words -- for example, to use catch to help them read batch
Recognize and generate words that start or end with the same sound
Learn to associate particular sounds with particular letters -- for example, knowing that Peter starts with p may help Peter recognize that purple also starts with p
Blend sounds into words
“Sound out” words -- for example, after saying a sound for each letter in the word nap (/n/ /a/ /p/), putting those sounds together to say nap

6. What Phonological Awareness Does…
The ability to. . .
Will eventually help children to. . .
Segment words into sounds
Spell words -- for example, to hear the found sounds in the clap (/c/ /l/ /a/ /p/), so they can spell it
Move sounds around to create new words
Use known words to figure out new words -- for example, to use corn to help them decode the word pork

7. Phonological Awareness Development
Syllables or beats before rhyming before individual phonemes or sounds
Recognition before generation
Beginnings before endings before middles
Blending before segmenting
Ability to move sounds around to create new words often one of the last skills acquired
Drawing from Anthony, J. L., Lonigan, C. J., Driscoll, K., Phillips, B. M., & Burgess, S. R. (2002). Phonological sensitivity: A quasi-parallel progression of word structure units and cognitive operations. Reading Research Quarterly, 38,

8. Common Core Standards

9. Phonological Awareness “Skills” Assessment
Kids can:
recognize and generate rhyming words
break words into syllables
blend sounds together into words
recognize and generate words that start or end with the same sound
move sounds around to make new words

10. Recognize and Generate Rhyming Words
Give a child a word and the child can generate rhyming words (known as word families)
May include “real words” and nonsense words
Examples include providing the word cat and the child comes up with mat, sat, and dat
Child recognizes words that rhymes
Either hearing them or in print
An example would be the child hearing the words hear and fear in text and telling you that they rhyme

11. Break Words into Syllables
Combine syllables to say words
/mag/ + /net/ = magnet
/blan/ + /ket/ = blanket
Segment spoken words into syllables
hockey = /hock/ + /ey/
Bubble = /bub/ + /ble/

12. Blend Sounds Together into Words
Using the onset (the initial consonant sound(s) prior to the vowel) and the rime (the vowel and everything after it) the child can blend the sounds together to say the word
/m/ and /ice/ to form mice
/g/ and /oal/ to form goal
/p/ and /uck/ to form puck

13. Recognize and Generate Words that Start or End with the Same Sound
Alliteration: producing words in a sentence that start with the same sound
Example: Tucker took ten toucans to town Tuesday.
Rhyme: producing words that end with the same sound
Fat cat sat

14. Move Sounds Around to Make New Words
What happens if we take away the beginning sound of a word?
Example: What word do I have if I take away the /c/ in cat?
What happens if we take away the ending sound of a word?
Example: What word do I have if I take away the /s/ in cats?

15. Assessment Example
Course Text: McKenna and Stahl p

16. Some Strategies for Developing Phonological Awareness
Songs
Songs with rhyming words
Songs with rhyming blanks (e.g., Down by the Bay)
Songs with phonemic manipulation (e.g., The Name Game, Apples and Bananas, Old MacDonald, Willoughby Wallaby Woo)
Books, poems, tongue twisters
Nursery rhymes and rhyming poems
Books with rhyming
Books with alliteration
Books with phonemic manipulation (e.g., Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook by Shel Silverstein)
Tongue twisters

17. Some Strategies for Developing Phonological Awareness
Word games
“Count the Beats!” (sort things or friends by the number of syllables or beats)
“Going on Vacation” (taking turns saying what they’re going to take on vacation, where there’s a rule like it must start with /b/ (“the buh sound”) or must have a certain number of beats r the like
“Who Gets Up?” (determine who gets up with some rule like everyone whose name starts with /j/)
“Guess what I’m Saying” (saying words in partially or entirely segmented form and children guess what the word is)
Stretching words
When writing in front of children (“mmoooommm” when spelling Mom)
As a form of play (“jooooooollllllllllliiiiiiaaaaaaaaa” for Julia)