Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in words. Research has shown there is a very strong relationship between early phonemic awareness and later success in reading. It is an auditory/spoken process and does not involve letters or words in print. What it does involve is playing with the sounds of language to see how these sounds can be combined and pulled apart.
Marilyn Adams in Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print (1990) describes five levels of phonemic awareness: hearing rhymes and alliteration; performing oddity tasks (for example- listening for the word that does not rhyme in a group of rhyming words); blending and splitting syllables (for example – listening to the word parts “m” and “an”- and asking “What word does that make?”); performing phonemic segmentation (for example- listening to the whole word “cat”, then saying the sounds of the word parts “c” “a” “t”); performing phoneme manipulation tasks (for example- replacing one sound with another as in replacing the “m” in “man” with an “f” and seeing what word you get).
Parents can encourage play with the sounds of English as part of everyday activities. Ask children to think of as many words as they can that rhyme or that begin with the same sound. Another good way to increase phonemic awareness is by clapping the syllables in family names or favorite foods to see how many syllables each word contains. Reading books that rhyme is another wonderful activity. Read a rhyming book to children and, in consecutive readings, stop and ask children to fill in the missing rhyming word. Children can also practice rhyming by matching rhyming pictures and words in Web sites. The sites below will give children an alternative and enjoyable way to practice this important skill.
Web sites for Children
This site is excellent for children who do not yet read. A word is pronounced and a corresponding picture is shown. A child is given three choices from which to select a rhyming word. There are 12 topics to choose from including the zoo, airport, home, and garden.
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bll/reggie/index.htm
In this game a cute mole named Digby gives the child a word, and the child needs to pick another word on the screen that rhymes with it. A child must be able to read to use this site.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/laac/words/dg3.shtml
The Whirlyword Machine is a machine that makes short vowel words. Choose Level 1 to create rhyming words. The child spins the first reel to make new words that use the same word ending. Then s/he decides if each new word is a real word or not. If the child is correct, the word is collected and added to a list. A child must be able to read to use this site.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/wordsandpictures/cvc/whirl/index.shtml
This matching game gives the student eight pairs of rhyming words to match. The child must be able to read short words in order to play.
http://www.quia.com/mc/65870.html
In this game, students pick the two words that rhyme out of several possible pairs. The child must be able to read short words in order to play.
http://school.eb.com/student/games/GE_1_7/GE_1_7.htm
There are many fine teacher-created games in this site. The first two are for rhyming practice. Check out the rest as well.
http://www.quia.com/pages/havemorefun.html
Parent Information
Below are two links for articles about phonemic awareness. The first and second articles have a lot of good information for parents and contain more examples of games you can play at home. If you would like more detailed and research-based information on phonemic awareness, the third article, written primarily for educators, makes for fascinating reading.
http://www.pbs.org/launchingreaders/soundsandsymbols/helpfularticles_1.html
http://www.scholastic.com/familymatters/read/age3_5/rhyming.htm
