Phonemic Awareness Study Notes

Phonemic Awareness and Its Development

Overview of Phonemic Awareness

  • Definition of Phonemic Awareness:
    • Phonemic awareness is defined as the ability to hear, identify, move, or change sounds, or phonemes, in spoken words.
  • Brain Development:
    • Neuroscience research indicates that the brain is naturally wired for speech development but not for reading and writing.
    • Because of this, explicit instruction is necessary to help students develop phonemic awareness.

Importance of Explicit Instruction

  • First Step:
    • Draw students' awareness to individual sounds (phonemes).
  • Second Step:
    • Teach the alphabetic principle:
    • Explanation: Individual sounds are represented by letters and letter patterns.

Phonological Awareness

  • Focus Area:
    • Investigate phonological awareness within the context of the reading rope.
  • Components of Phonological Awareness:
    • Recognition that spoken words consist of sounds, syllables, onsets, and rhymes.
    • Phonological awareness relies only on sound, thus it does not require the presence of letters.
    • It could even be taught in a dark environment.
Subcategories of Phonological Awareness
  • Rhyme:
    • Example: Words such as "pat," "cat," and "mat" exhibit rhyming patterns.
  • Alliteration:
    • Example: "Peter Piper picked a pack of pickled peppers" showcases alliteration.
  • Onset and Rime:
    • In the word "cat", "c" is the onset and "at" is the rime.
  • Syllable Awareness:
    • Example: The word "peppers" consists of two syllables.

Phonemic Awareness as a Foundation

  • Movement from larger units of speech (syllables) to individual speech sounds (phonemes).
  • Key Activities in Phonemic Awareness:
    • Blending: Combining phonemes to form words (e.g., blending /k/, /æ/, /t/ to say "cat").
    • Segmenting: Breaking words into phonemes (e.g., segmenting "cat" into /k/, /æ/, /t/).
    • Manipulation:
    • Changing phonemes: For example, changing /k/ in "cat" to /m/ to form "mat".
    • Deleting phonemes: Remove from "cat" to create "at".
    • Adding phonemes: Add to "pat" to create "spat".

Relationship to Reading and Writing

  • Phonemic awareness is crucial for spelling because it involves segmenting sounds in spoken words.
  • It is also necessary for decoding:
    • Young readers associate sounds with each letter and then blend sounds to read words.

Clarification of Terminology

  • Phonology:
    • Study of speech sounds.
  • Phonetics:
    • Study and classification of speech sounds.
  • Phonics:
    • Systematic relationship between letters and sounds.
    • Phonics includes letters, whereas phonology focuses solely on sounds.

Scope and Sequence of Phonemic Skills

  • Understanding the development of phonemic awareness involves recognizing that
    awareness of individual phonemes is a challenging skill to acquire as it differs from natural speech patterns.
  • Teaching Sequence:
    1. Sentence and Word Awareness
    2. Rhyme and Alliteration
    3. Syllables
    4. Onset and Rhyme
    5. Phonemes
  • It is critical for teachers to note phonemic awareness skills in students as these skills directly affect reading and writing abilities.

## Identifying Struggles in Older Students

Teachers observing difficulties in students must ask the following:

  • Are letters missing?
    • Example: "s e t" instead of "sent".
  • Are letters confused?
    • Example: "s t o b" instead of "stop".
  • Are students applying accurate letter-sound correspondence?
  • Are students aware of syllables when reading multisyllabic words?
    • Early intervention may be required for students lacking foundational skills, applying methods to teach and reinforce these areas.