Phonological Awareness and the Beginning Reader
Phonological Awareness is necessary to become a successful Beginning Reader. All too often students who struggle with learning to read have a deficit in this area.
It is now mainstream knowledge in the educational field that a student who is unable to hear and manipulate the parts of the spoken word will most likely be a student who becomes an at-risk reader. As a Beginning Reader it is important to provide students with opportunities to manipulate the spoken word.
Students should participate in activities that allow them to manipulate:
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parts of the spoken word
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onsets and rimes of the spoken word
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syllables of the spoken word
Examples of Manipulating Parts of the Spoken Word would be taking the word CAT and saying to the student. Listen to me say the word CAT, your turn to say all the sounds you hear in the word CAT. The student if able would correctly say: /c/ /a/ /t/. This sounds terribly easy, but it is not for the phonologically challenged student. Some possible incorrect responses are listed below.
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Instead he and she may simply say the word as /cat/ without breaking it apart at all and instead simply repeating the word with all sounds intact.
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Perhaps the student may say /c/ /at/ thus breaking the word into only two parts. Another way would be for the child to say /ca/ /t/ and that too is incorrect.
The correct answer for onset and rime with the word CAT would the /c/ is the ONSET and the /AT/ is the RIME.
The student who can separate a word into its separate syllables would know that the word ‘catastrophic’ is divided into the syllables /cat/ /a/ /stroph/ /ic/. A student who can hear syllables within words would know that every word has as many syllables as it has talking vowels.
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If you are old enough, you may recall in the late 1980s and early 90s there was the craze called Whole Language which basically purported that if a student was immersed in enough good literature they would learn how to read. Seriously, we lost so many readers with the advent of this philosophy. Students did not learn to read through osmosis back then and neither do they nowadays. All students need a strong foundation in phonological awareness in order to be their most successful at reading. Without it, students are doomed to having a vocabulary that is only as large as their ability to memorize as many as they are able to retain in their memory bank.
As you likely already know, their are five basic components that influence Beginning Readers.They are listed below. The focus of this post is on the first two which are phonemic awareness and phonics instruction. Teachers should provide Beginning readers daily systematic phonemic awareness and phonics instruction as part of their process of learning to read. That is not to discount the remaining three areas of reading development, because all five are crucial in the development of a well rounded beginning reader. Yet, when talking specifically about improving a student’s phonological awareness, we are specifically referring to phonemic awareness and phonics.
- PHONEMIC AWARENESS
- PHONICS
- Vocabulary Development
- Reading Fluency
- Reading Comprehension
Based on my personal experiences, Phonemic Awareness and Phonics Instruction more often than not is a deficit in hard to reach readers. Over the years I have observed the less ready a child is to read the more critical it is to spend time on skill specific areas in the first two critical areas of learning to read. If you want to learn more about phonics and best practices click here to read an article to enhance your knowledge base.
Phonemic Awareness and Phonics Instruction at the Teacher Table is Essential to the Overall Development of the Beginning Reader.