Phonemic Awareness Activities (Early Reading Skills)

Research has shown that a child's phonemic awareness (ability to hear and manipulate sounds within a word) is a very good indicator of that child's future reading success or struggle.  So, how do we build phonemic awareness in children, including very young children?

• Rhyming--read rhyming poems and stories, emphasizing the rhyming words.  Leave a rhyming word out and have the child fill in a word that works.    
• Blending--putting individual sounds together to make words.  For example, "/b/, /a/, /t/ says what?"  Then change it, "what if we use a /c/ instead of /b/?"  In addition to individual sounds, you can also blend and change groups of sounds; "/h/, /op/ says what? What if you change /op/ to /at/?"
• Segmenting--segmenting is the opposite of blending; the child tells you all of the sounds they hear in a word.  "What sounds do you hear in 'stop'?"
• Isolating sounds--matching words with the same beginning, middle or ending sounds.  Sort pictures; play "Beginning Sound Concentration"--find pictures with matching sounds; play "I Spy"--"I spy something  that starts with /w/."
• Identifying and sequencing sounds--first, identify sounds in isolation.  This part can be done in the classroom or on a "sound walk".  "What was that sound you just heard?"  (crumpling paper, clapping, sliding a chair, etc.)  Once children learn to identify different sounds pretty well, you can start sequencing the sounds and see if the children can tell you what sound they heard first, next and last.  Or, give them three sounds, then do it again, leaving one sound out.  See if the children can identify which sound was left out.
• Deleting sounds--leaving one sound or part of a word out and seeing what word remains.  "Say the word 'toothbrush'.  Now say 'toothbrush' without saying 'tooth'."  The child should respond "brush".  "Say the word 'train'.  Now say 'train' without saying 't'."  The child should respond "rain".

Anything that we can do to help child develop phonemic awareness will help them in their reading, regardless of whether they are currently learning to read or still a few years away.

Misty

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Pre-Reading Skills: Teaching Beginning Sounds

Play is a very important aspect of a child's learning.  The same idea applies in developing pre-reading skills.

Some children see a word as a whole rather than as individual letters (or sounds) that combine to form a word.  This makes it difficult to learn to read.  For example, a child may read the word "dug" as "dog" because the words look so similar and the child doesn't notice the difference.

We can help children develop the skills that they need to be able to read by playing language games with them. 

• "My name starts with /m/ (the sound of "m").  Who else's name starts with /m/?"   Move on to other sounds.
• "I'm going on a trip and I'm taking a toothbrush."  Next person--"I'm going on a trip and I'm taking a turtle."  Continue taking turns naming things that start with the same letter until someone has difficulty with the task.  Choose a different letter and start again.
• "We're going to make 'c' soup."  Put soup pot in middle of circle and have a child start stirring it.  Other children come up and pretend to put something in the soup that starts with the target letter.  "I'm putting corn in the soup."  "I'm putting carrots in the soup."  Children can be silly with their ingredients if they want--"I'm putting a camera in the soup."
• Word sort--provide children with pictures that start with one of two different target sounds.  (The target sounds should not be similar--don't use /m/ and /n/ together.)  Children name each picture and sort them into piles of words starting with the same sounds.  For example--one pile will have a picture of a banana, a boat, and a bone, while the other pile will have a picture of a man, a map, and a mop.

Making language fun is one way to help children more readily develop pre-reading skills.  

Misty

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