Phonics and Phonemic AwarenessJessica FrazierReading Master’s StudentUniversity of West Georgia

Phonological Awareness All words are made up of phonemes.

This is the smallest unit of sound. Phonological awareness is defined by

the website Begin to Read, as the sounds in which listeners “are able to hear, identify, and manipulate phonemes that can differentiate meaning.”

Activities to encourage Phonological Awareness Nursery Rhymes Songs such as tootie-ta, where students

change sounds in a word. Sequencing Sounds Music Patterns Carpet time games

Phonemic Awareness Phonemic Awareness looks at the

phoneme which is the smallest unit of sound.

Students Manipulate sounds such as the changing the beginning and ending sounds.

Phonemic awareness Orally delete sounds in a word. Orally add sounds to a word Change onsets and rimes orally. Identify syllables in a word.

Phonics Phonics looks at the actual sounds that

each letter makes. As students learn more sounds and learn the rules that go with those sounds, they can learn to read unfamiliar words accurately.

Activities that help build phonics skills Use the analogy strategy (this will be

discussed fully in the next module). Use Elkonin Boxes. Use Magnetic letters to manipulate

words. Use Word Walls and Vowel Word walls to

make connections between words. Use the ABC chart to learn and work

with sounds.

Try it by yourself! Identify the beginning sound in cat. Change the beginning sound to a /b/. Now change the ending sound to a /d/. What word did you make? When looking at this new word, what

other words start the same way?

Alphabetic Principle Pre-Alphabetic Stage- In this stage students memorize

symbols or the shape of the word. The student might recognize the word stop because it is on a stop sign, or the word yellow because the two L’s stick out.

Partial Alphabetic stage-Students begin to understand that letters are made up of sounds. Students may understand the beginning and ending sound but miss all the sounds in between. An example is a student may see the word boat and think it is but. The student can identify the beginning and ending sound but does not have an understanding on the middle sounds.

Alphabetic Principle Full Alphabetical stage- Students can sound

out all of the phonemes in the word and blend it together correctly. Sometimes this can be time consuming. An example is b-o-a-t.

Consolidated alphabetic stage- This stage is for students that do not have to sound each phoneme in a word. Students can consolidate onsets and rimes to read words fluently and automatically. Ex: start can be broken up by its onset and rime and read as st-art.

Resources Bear, D., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnson, F.

(2008). Words their way: Word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Phonological Awareness. (2013). Retrieved November 27, 2015, from http://www.phonologicalawareness.org

What is Phonemic Awareness? (2014). Retrieved November 27, 2015, from http://www.beghttp://www.begintoread.com/articles/phonemic-awareness.htmlintoread.com/articles/phonemic-awareness.html