Why is phonological awareness so important?

Phonological awareness is critical for learning to read any alphabetic writing system (Ehri, 2004; Rath, 2001; Troia, 2004).

Students who lack phonological awareness may not even know what is meant by the term ‘sound’. They may hear well and may even name the alphabet letters, but they have little or no idea that letters and groups of letters represent sounds. Phonological awareness facilitates growth in printed word recognition. 

• Phoneme awareness is necessary for learning and using the alphabetic code;
• Phoneme awareness predicts later outcomes in reading and spelling;
• The majority of poor readers have relative difficulty with phoneme awareness and other phonological skills.

Assessment of phonological awareness skills

Early in primary school simple phonological awareness tests can tap into skills that are directly related to learning to read and spell. These assessments are useful for identifying specific gaps in students’ ability to analyse and work with sounds in words.

Testing could aim to provide a quick screening to identify students who need additional support, or testing could involve more detailed examination of phonemic awareness skills to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses and provide targets for intervention groups and additional support.

Children with dyslexia often struggle with phonological awareness. They have trouble processing the sounds in spoken language and need additional explicit instruction to strengthen their phonological awareness skills.

How do we teach phonological awareness?

Phonological awareness activities develop the ability to think about, and recognise the internal details of the spoken word, including chunks larger than phonemes.

Activities with syllables and onset-rime combinations are generally easier to master than activities requiring awareness of individual phonemes.

Examples of Phonological Awareness Activities

Word Level: 

• Orally say each word in a sentence while touching a counter or block that represents each word.
• During shared reading:
• Clap each word when saying a sentence;
• Count the number of words in a spoken sentence;
• Identify what the first and last words in a spoken sentence are.

Syllable Level: 

• Tap your arm as you say each syllable.
• Put little pompoms or cotton balls in egg cartons for each syllable.
• Throw a ball back and forth for each syllable.
• Every child loves smashing play dough. Roll syllables into balls or have your students stamp things into the play dough for each syllable.

Alliteration:

• Share and explore poetry which uses alliteration.
• Have fun with tongue twisters.
• Create your own silly sentences – Magic monkeys make…

Onset and Rime Level: 

• Read books with rhymes (The Cat in the Hat).
• Word building activities using cards, letter tiles.
• Rhyming bingo.
• Build word families.

Phoneme Level:

Isolating the first phoneme

First sound identification can be introduced as a whole class or small group activity. Students should first be told which phoneme they should be listening for and modelled.

An example could be:

I am going to say a word. You are going to listen for the first sound in the word. Watch me try one. Listen, map. The first sound in map is /m/. Listen. Your turn. What’s the first sound in mop? Cat? Sun?

Once the phoneme has been identified, students can say the word and identify (point to counters, letters) where that phoneme is produced. 

Final and medial phoneme isolation

Once students have mastered the skill of first phoneme isolation then teaching can focus on final and medial phoneme isolation. 

Toy Bag: Collect a bag of small toys representing CVC, CCVC and CVCC words. 

Pull out small toys, ask students to isolate the first sounds. Pull out a group of toys and ask which toys start with the /f/ sound? 

Say to the children I am thinking of a toy. I will make the sounds, you listen and tell me what the word is… c-a-t. Record the word on the whiteboard after blending the sounds.

Picture Cards can be used the same way.

Magnetic letters/tiles: Show the children a toy dog, write ‘dog’ using magnetic letters. Ask the students to manipulate the sounds. How can we make it say ‘hog’? What letter should we change? What letter should I choose? A small group of letter choices can be selected from and the children can replace the d with the letter h.

Blending Phonemes

Continuous blending

Some students find it difficult to bridge the gap from ‘sounding out’ letters to blending words when learning to decode. Continuous blending is sounding out with no breaks between the phonemes in the word, ie: map is sounded out as mmmmmmaaaaaaap. This strategy makes it easier for students to hear the target word.

When choosing phonological awareness activities:

• Think multisensory – engage students’ hands, bodies and mouths where possible (dancing, jumping, clapping).
• Keep it brief – 5-10 minutes per day – embed activities within your phonics teaching, word reading and spelling lessons.
• Show students what you want them to do (I do), Practice together (We do), Students do it while you monitor (You do).
• Give immediate feedback.
• Use letters to represent sounds as soon a possible. Letters reinforce and support phonemic awareness once students have learnt to attend to sounds.

Johnna Alborn
Deputy Principal/Literacy Facilitator

References:

Harnessing the Science of Learning; Nathaniel Swain PhD, 2024

Effective Instruction in Reading and Spelling; Kevin Wheldall, Robyn Wheldall and Jennifer Buckingham, 2023

LETERS Volume 1; Louisa Moats and Carol A Tolman, 2019

How to teaching writing, spelling and grammar; Dr Christine Braid and Dr Helen Walls, 2023