Teaching Young Children to Decode: Phonological Awareness, Phonemic Awareness and the Emergent Reader

Teaching Young Children to Decode: Phonological Awareness, Phonemic Awareness and the Emergent Reader

What do we need to know about the English Language?26 letters44 phonemes (sounds)500 spellings to represent 44 phonemesFor example: Long e can be spelled like me, flee, fleaAND Long i can be spelled like night, like, my.

Phonological AwarenessThe foundation for phonics

Why teach phonological awareness? Part of Big 5The importance of phonemic awareness is underscored by the No Child Left Behind Act, which stipulates that it is one of the five areas in reading in which students in US schools must be proficient. (Nettles, pg 186)

Why teach phonological awareness?Part of a balanced approachThe Cueing System (pg. 12)Remember this theory from the Theory Module??Graphophonics help the reader determine the pronunciation of a word in print, based on the letters she sees. (Nettles, pg. 13)

Why balanced approach?

From the diary of a Pre-School Teacher

My five-year old students are learning to read.Yesterday one of them pointed at a picture in a zoo book and said,"Look at this! It's a frickin' elephant!"

I took a deep breath, then asked....."What did you call it?"

"It's a frickin' elephant! It says so on the picture!"

And so it does...

" A f r i c a n Elephant "

What does balanced instruction look like?Meaningful instruction: games, activeIs guided by theory

Theory of how readers learnLearn from being activeLearn from talkLearn from an organized, supportive environmentLearn from individualized instructionLearn from constructing own knowledgeTeacher's role is to scaffold

Read the following sentence and then make a facial expression similar to the one child had on his face.

The small child had an infractaneous look on his face.Were you able to decode this word? Did you know what it meant? oYou probably had a difficult time with this one because infractaneous is not a real word; therefore, we do not know if the child is mad, sad, scared or happy! Remember READING IS A MEANING MAKING PROCESS. IT IS MUCH MORE THAN JUST SAYING WORDS!

Phonological AwarenessHighlight this definition in your glossary. Awareness of and the ability to manipulate sounds of spoken English. This is the foundation for phonics (beginning). Highlight phonemic awareness in your glossary.. These are the steps of phonological awareness. Awareness of rhyme, onset/rime, syllables and phonemes

Phonological AwarenessHighlight the definition of a phoneme. The smallest unit of sound in a spoken language. Example: The word cat has 3 phonemes /c/ /a/ /t/Highlight the definition of a grapheme. A letter or cluster of letters representing a single sound or phoneme. Example: The word like has 3 phonemes /l/ /i/ /k/ (you cant hear the e, it is not a sound). The word like has 4 graphemes that represent those sounds.

Phonological AwarenessLets practice counting phonemes

Draw 4 boxes like this. For each word, saying the sound not the letter, push your finger from below the boxes into the box. Like: only has 3 sounds so use 3 boxes. /l/ /i/ /k/ bright: has 4 sounds, so use 4 boxes: /b/ /r/ /i/ /t/ ship: has 3 sounds, so use 3 boxes:/sh/ /i/ /p/ (SH is one sound)

If this is tricky for you, there is more practice in the Try It section. This is on the TeXes exam so please make sure you understand.

Phonological AwarenessWhy teach phonemic awareness? Phonemic awareness is very helpful for knowing how to take apart and blend sounds together-something that is needed later, when trying to decode unknown words. Nettles, pg. 186.

How do we teach phonological awareness?Games

Oralno letters! The focus is on the sounds, not the letters.

Use the continuum (see next slide) to know where to start.

Phonological Awareness Continuum

Begin here!

Rhyme and AlliterationThis tends to be the easiest so begin here. Remember the focus is on the sound not what the word looks like or starts like!

Example: Using The Relatives Came, read a sentence. Find one word that has many rhyme sounds, like Dad. Go around the room or group and say rhyming words with Dad. The same can be done with alliteration. Go around the room and say words that begin like Dad with a /d/ sound.

Sentence SegmentingOnce students have a grasp on rhyme and alliteration, you can begin working on sentence segmenting. This means to break apart a sentence, word by word. This can be done by clapping or patting your knees for each word.

Example: Take a page of Knuffle Bunny and read one sentence. Trixie went boneless. Clap or pat for each word making sure that they only clap once for boneless.

Syllable Blending and SegmentingOnce students get a grasp of a sentence and a word, begin breaking apart words by syllables.

Example: Take the word, Trixie, and break it up by syllables for students. You might say, Tri and xie say. Students should reply with Trixie! This is blending!

To give students the opportunity to segment, ask them to break apart a word like, laundry. Their reply should be, laun----dry!

Onset and Rime Blending and SegmentingWe will discuss onset and rime again with phonics. The onset is the beginning of the word (before the vowel) and the rime is from the vowel to the end. For example with the word Rime, the onset is /r/ and the rime is /ime/.

Example: Give students various picture cards. They must look at their picture and say the onset and then the rime. For example, dish would be /d/ /ish/.

Using Knuffle Bunny, take various words from the text. The teacher says the onset and rime and the child says the word. Bunny would be /b/ /unny/

Blending and Segmenting Individual PenniesThis is what was demonstrated on slide 15. Students take apart the whole word, sound by sound. Remember chair would only be 3 sounds/ch/ /a/ /r/. It is not by letters, rather sounds! More practice is available in the Try It section. Once students achieve this stage, they are considered to be Phonemically Aware. This tends to be the most difficult concept of Phonological Awareness.

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Rhyme/Alliteration

Sentence Segmenting

Syllable Blending and Segmenting

Onset Rime Blending and Segmenting

Blending and Segmenting Individual Phonemes

Phonemic Awareness