Phonemic awareness is the ability of a child to recognize the relationship of letters and letter sounds. Phonemic awareness is a prerequisite skills for children to begin to use "phonics," which is the ability to apply rules to letters and the sounds that they make.
Phonemic awareness is clearly a developmentally determined task. Children need first to be able to:
- Hear and imitate letter sounds. Some children have difficulty hearing and repeating spoken sounds when articulated by an adult. This may be a matter of immaturity. Children on the autistic spectrum often do not attend to the spoken word and fail to imitate speech. They may also need a great deal of structured direct instruction to hear and replicate word sounds.
- Articulate word sounds. Children with cleft palate or other oral deformities may have difficulty making some word sounds, and may also have difficulty distinguishing the same sounds. Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders often have motor deficits, and for some they are in their mouths.
- Hear Clearly. Some children who fail to speak or speak clearly may have undiagnosed hearing loss. I had one struggling fifth grader in Philadelphia who did not speak until he was four because of otitis media (ear infections.) He continued to struggle with articulation and hearing the accompanying sounds.
Before students begin remedial reading instruction, it's critical that they are screened for hearing and visual acuity.
Component Skills of Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic Awareness proceeds from the least to the most difficult skills:
- The ability to identify words that begin with the same sound, : i.e. "Which of these words start with the same, /p/ sound? Pig, bed, pin, got. ")
- Segmenting and identifying the first or last sound of a word: "What sound does the word "ten" begin with? /t/? Very good!"
- Blending the sounds of a word together. Given "b," "e," and "d," a child can put the sounds together and make "bed."
- Segmenting or separating out the sounds in a word: can the child say that "bed" is "b," "e," and "d?"
Tips for Building Phonemic Awareness
Nursery Rhymes: Nursery rhymes and word plays can help students hear and imitate the percussive word sounds, like /p/ and /b./ Classics like "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" or "Patty Cake Patty Cake" help students listen to and imitate word sounds.
Alliterative Activities. Show pictures and students to identify which ones start with the same sound, say "sun," "snake," "seashell," and "sandwich." Also name words that start with the same sound: "Who knows another word that starts with the same sound as pig? Okay, pickle. Poodle? Good!
Poetry. The poetry of Shel Silverstein (Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic) and Jack Perlusky (Zoo Doings: Animal Poems, For Laughing Out Loud: Poems to Tickle Your Funnybone) are rich with alliteration and rhyming words. Read lots of poetry and ask students to listen and name specific parts of the poems.
Letter Recognition
Before building letter recognition skills, it's important that children are hearing and can imitate the letter sounds. Children who have difficulty identifying and imitating signs need to spend lots of time imitating sounds.
Begin with the easiest letters to hear and imitate first: /b/, /p/, /t/ and other percussive and explosive letter sounds. When you know students can imitate "pig" and "pop," it's a good time to introduce the letter p. We often make the mistake of starting the other way around and are surprised when students cannot identify the "r" sound (have you ever tried to learn the Spanish or German R? A five year old hasn't had as much experience with the language as you have!)
