Phonemic Awareness: Best Practices in Working with Phonological Awareness

Introduction/Overview

In this module, we’ll discuss the meaning of phonological awareness, its various components, and its importance to reading and writing acquisition. In addition, we’ll discover playful, game-like activities and assessments teachers can easily incorporate into their daily classroom schedules to address each level of phonological awareness.

Phonological awareness is the broad term used to provide an understanding of all the sound units our language encompasses including rhymes, sentences and words, syllables, and phonemes. Read-alouds along with nursery rhymes, songs, finger plays, and carefully-selected language games explicitly target phonological awareness skills. Tasks can include:

• listening to literature that plays with language through rhyming, alliteration, and assonance
• identifying and producing oral rhymes
• counting words within oral sentences and creating oral sentences with a given number of words
• isolating and counting syllables within oral words
• isolating and counting phonemes within oral words
• orally segmenting and blending phonemes
• orally manipulating initial, medial, or ending phonemes to form new words

Contrary to popular belief, phonological awareness is not the same as phonemic awareness. Many people mistakenly interchange these two expressions, but phonemic awareness is only one piece of the phonological awareness puzzle.

Phonological awareness is not the same as phonics; it involves purposeful listening in order to develop auditory skills associated with language. Once students can hear rhymes, sentences, words, syllables, and phonemes, they have the necessary foundation to move toward visual representation of these units of sound. At that point, they begin to learn about the relationship between sounds and letters, or phonics. In short, phonological awareness supports later phonics instruction by helping students understand that sounds paired with letters in written language are the same sounds we use in speech.

All in all, phonological awareness is both a prerequisite for reading and writing and a result of learning to read and write. Phonological awareness allows students to make sense of the sentences, words, syllables, and phonemes that make up the texts they decode and encode, but by doing so, they learn even more about how writing sounds. Growth in reading, writing, and phonological awareness go hand in hand — each kind of learning supports the other.

Concept of Rhyme

With opportunities to hear and play with language, recognizing and producing rhyme comes easily to most students and is therefore the natural skill with which to begin instruction in phonological awareness. Rhyme play allows students to think about both the meaning and form of language as attention is brought to the similarities and differences in spoken words. Students first learn about rhyme by listening to songs, nursery rhymes, poems, and finger plays.

Keep in mind that the focus is auditory. At this point, attention to the way rhyming words look can be confusing and divert attention from the listening skill. For example, if you chart student’s responses as they produce rhymes, you’ll encounter words with different spelling patterns, such as play/they/sleigh or show/go/toe.

Students who can identify and produce rhymes are said to have a beginning level of phonological awareness—a beginning that research has shown to be a valuable first step to literacy acquisition.

Concept of Sentence and Word

Since research shows we learn best by starting with the “big picture” and then analyzing the component parts, we next focus on sentences. For students to develop the concept of sentence auditorily, they don’t need to be concerned with mechanics such as uppercase and lowercase letters, spelling, spacing, and ending punctuation. Rather, they need to understand a sentence is a complete thought that can be expressed orally. Most students catch on to this idea with little problem and are quickly ready to move to the concept of word.

In order to read and write, students must understand that words are separate entities that can be heard and seen. In fact, experts studying the work of emergent writers believe students don’t develop this concept because we tell them to leave spaces between the words. Rather, they begin to put spaces in their writing as they grow to understand that words are individual units of sound.

Students need many opportunities to hear individual words, count them, determine whether the words are short or long, and think about their order within sentences. This explicit instruction and practice, combined with other ongoing reading and writing opportunities, helps develop the critical concept of word.

Concept of Syllable

Now it’s time to focus attention on an even smaller unit – the syllable. Syllable awareness develops simultaneously with the concept of word for many students. However, some research suggests many older, struggling readers are stuck at this step, so teachers must watch closely for students who have difficulty with this aspect of phonological awareness.

Begin by using words that are familiar to students from their everyday vocabularies or from read-alouds so they don’t have to struggle. Enunciate and articulate words carefully, but don’t isolate syllables to the point that they sound like individual words.

Syllable segmentation and blending develops critical understandings that students will use again. Careful observation becomes increasingly important at this level, as does additional support for students who are progressing more slowly.

Concept of Phoneme

According to specialist M.J. Adams, “The lack of phoneme awareness is the most powerful detriment [to the process of learning] to read because of its importance in learning the English alphabetic system or how print represents unspoken words. If students cannot hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words, they have an extremely difficult time learning how to map those sounds to letter patterns — the essence of decoding.”

Once students begin working with the concept of phoneme, they learn to isolate initial and final phonemes, segment a word by onset and rime, and analyze and synthesize by individual phonemes within a word. Following are more detailed descriptions of each of these processes:

Initial and Final Phonemes

Students begin attending to individual sounds by focusing on initial phonemes. Once they’re comfortable with these, activities are introduced that spotlight ending sounds.

Remember to refer to letter sounds vs. letter names as you give instructions for phoneme activities. For example:

Correct: We’re going to listen for the /f/ sound.

Incorrect: We’re going to listen for the f sound.

Incorrect: We’re going to listen for the sound of the letter f

Whenever possible, targeted sounds are stretched, such as mmmitten, rather than isolated (m-itten). If the sounds are totally isolated, students don’t have the opportunity to hear them within the context of words. In addition, isolating the sounds changes them in ways that may cause further confusion.

At this point, phonological awareness activities may become more difficult for some students. Allow plenty of time for each skill, and pay careful attention to students’ responses and participation. Determine who needs more help and where the problems lie, and then set aside time to provide additional individualized instruction with selected activities. At the same time, keep these students involved in the larger setting so they can listen to and learn from those who are catching on more quickly.

Onset and Rime

Once students understand rhyme and can isolate initial sounds, they are ready to begin segmenting and blending one-syllable words at the onset and rime level. The onset of a word is the first part of a syllable up to the first vowel. The rime of a word is the last part of the syllable beginning with the vowel. For example, in the word dog, /d/ is the onset and /og/ is the rime. Research shows students make this natural division when first learning to segment one-syllable words and eventually learn to make new words by substituting different onsets with the same rime.

Analysis and Synthesis

It’s now time for students to segment and blend complete words by phonemes. Initially, work with two-phoneme words that include easily-distinguishable consonants and long vowels. Then practice with short vowels and other consonants and work up to three-phoneme and four-phoneme words.

The concept of this category of speech sounds can seem complex, abstract, and meaningless to young students. Since phonemes in words are impacted by the sounds around them, they are often hard to isolate and hear. Many are articulated differently in different words or by different people. Each of these factors adds to the confusion.

Continue supporting students by thoroughly introducing each activity, allowing plenty of time and repetition, and being more observant of those who experience difficulty. In addition, provide opportunities for students to listen to sounds in words throughout the day. Those who haven’t mastered rhymes, syllables, or onsets will likely struggle with phoneme-level work. Again, continue providing small-group and one-on-one instruction in their areas of need while including them in the current activities.