First Steps to Reading: Phonological Awareness

Phonological Awareness

Intelligibility and Phonological Awareness

In our last article we talked about intelligibility and phonological processes.  Intelligibility means being understood when you speak. Phonological processes are sound errors that children typically use while their body parts involved in speaking (jaw, tongue, etc.) are still being formed.

To Read I Must Speak

This week we connect the ability to speak, the ability to be understood while you speak, with the success of reading and writing.  To that end, we shall discuss phonological awareness.

What is Phonological Awareness?

Phonological awareness is a set of skills that includes identifying and manipulating units of oral language – parts such as words, syllables, and onsets and rhymes.  Simply put, it’s the ability to “play” with words.

Reading includes identifying letters, matching the sound the letter makes, and sequencing those sounds together to form words-basically, phonological awareness.  Children that have a hard time with phonological awareness usually experience writing and reading difficulties.

So Show Me

Some skills involved in phonological awareness include:

-The ability to recognize when words rhyme (what rhymes with “dog?”)

-Knowing how to segment a sentence (clap for every word in “I hear the dog bark.” )

-Knowing how to delete sounds (say “bark.” now delete the “buh” from “bark.”)

-The skill of removing syllables (say “barking.” now say it without saying “bark.”)

That Looks Fun!…To Them

Those are a few of the skills involved.  To a typically developing child it may be at times puzzling, but all in all it would be viewed as fun word play.  To a child who has difficulty with phonological awareness any of those exercises would be frustrating, to say the least.

Mommy Can You Help Me?

The good news is there are quite a few “games” you can play with your kiddo to improve phonological awareness.

Learning Games

-Play hand-clapping games like “Patty Cake”👏 to work on your child hearing each syllable in a word.

-Take color crayons and paper and have your kiddo draw a picture based on a rhyming sentence like “The pig is big.”🐷 Talk about the words that rhyme and how they sound alike.  Think of other words that rhyme and have her write her own rhyming sentence.

-Give her three words that rhyme and one that doesn’t.  For example, red🔴, bread🍞, head😊, hide.🤷

-Read books filled with rhymes and emphasize the words that rhyme.  I can’t think of any books better for this than the books of Dr. Seuss.

Again!

These are just a few examples, but they will help greatly in teaching phonological awareness.  Hopefully some of your kiddo’s frustration can be avoided by practicing in a safe and loving environment.  It can’t be stressed enough that daily repetition might very well lead to improvement.

What’s Next?

Sometimes, even with parent intervention, progress is slow or so small it seems nonexistent.  In this case the next step might be for you to contact her school teacher👩‍🏫 and find out what their observations are.  Based on their recommendation it might be time to go see a speech language pathologist.