Module 3 Phonological awareness: transcripts and audio descriptions
1. Phonological awareness: an overview
Video: Continuum of phonological awareness
Here's our continuum of phonological awareness. [Image: Continuum of phonological awareness with nine steps from easier to harder: segment words into syllables; identify and produce rhyme; alliteration; onset and rime; isolate initial phonemes; isolate final phonemes; blend phonemes; segment phonemes; delete, add and substitute phonemes. There is a green arrow labelled ‘Phonemic awareness skills’ beneath the five hardest steps: isolate initial phonemes; isolate final phonemes; blend phonemes; segment phonemes; delete, add and substitute phonemes.]
On the left-hand side, we have early phonological awareness skills, like working with spoken syllables and rhyming. These skills work with chunks of sounds in words, and ideally, children come to school with some skills in these early steps already. Kindergarten teachers can work on those early skills in a really playful way with children to help set them up for success at school. Reading books, singing and saying songs and rhymes are great ways to tune children to the sounds and patterns in spoken language.
Of course, we know not all students will come with those skills, so we can also work on them once students are at school.
As we move up the staircase, we come to a subset of skills, where the green arrow sits. And that subset of skills is phonemic awareness. A phoneme is a speech sound, and so phonemic awareness skills are skills we use when we're recognising and working with single speech sounds in words. For example, recognising that the word 'gate' starts with the single speech sound /g/, and is made up of the sounds /g/ /ā/ /t/. These are phonemic awareness skills, and these typically develop later than those early rhyming and syllable skills. They require more explicit instruction for most students.
Review activity
Match each term to its definition.
The 5 terms (in random order) are:
- Alliteration
- Phonological awareness
- Phonemic awareness
- Phoneme
- Syllable
The 5 definitions (in random order) are:
- The ability to identify the sounds in spoken language
- The ability to identify and manipulate the smallest units of speech sound
- The smallest unit of speech sound
- A section of a word that contains a vowel and usually a consonant or consonants
- The same sound at the beginning of two or more words that are close together in a sentence
The correct definitions are:
- Phoneme: the smallest unit of speech sound
- Phonological awareness: the ability to identify the sounds in spoken language
- Alliteration: the same sound at the beginning of two or more words that are close together in a sentence
- Phonemic awareness: the ability to identify and manipulate the smallest units of speech sound
- Syllable: a section of a word that contains a vowel and usually a consonant or consonants
2. Phonemic awareness
Audio: What is phonemic awareness
Dog has three phonemes; /d/ /o/ /g/. Shop has three phonemes; /sh/ /o/ /p/. Steps has five phonemes; /s/ /t/ /e/ /p/ /s/.
Video: Blending and segmenting phonemes
Let's take a look at the blending step on the continuum of phonological awareness. Blending is a phonemic awareness skill. It's a required skill for decoding, which is why it's marked with a star.
[Image: Continuum of phonological awareness with nine steps from easier to harder: segment words into syllables; identify and produce rhyme; alliteration; onset and rime; isolate initial phonemes; isolate final phonemes; blend phonemes (marked with a star); segment phonemes; delete, add and substitute phonemes. There is a green arrow labelled ‘Phonemic awareness skills’ beneath the five hardest steps: isolate initial phonemes; isolate final phonemes; blend phonemes; segment phonemes; delete, add and substitute phonemes.]
Like all steps on the continuum, blending skills develop from simple to complex. When planning and teaching, we need to be aware of word complexity and sound characteristics when supporting our students.
Here are some pointers.
Continuous sounds, such as, /m/, /f/, /r/, /l/, those sounds that we can elongate, are easier for beginning blenders.
The number of phonemes or sounds in a word changes the difficulty of blending, too. Words that follow a consonant-vowel-consonant or CVC sound pattern are best for beginning blenders. When students master blending three sounds to say a word, they can be introduced to blending four sounds and so on. Remember, though, more letters in a word doesn't necessarily mean more sounds. Digraphs and trigraphs still only represent one sound. For example the word 'sheep' has five letters but only three sounds, so it is an appropriate word for our beginner blenders to tackle orally. Of course, more complex spelling does add complexity when we later ask our students to apply the skill to decoding and spelling.
To support your students with blending, you can use manipulative materials, physical objects, such as little counters and sound boxes. Have students push each counter forward as they say a sound. They can say the sounds progressively faster to then blend them together to make a word: /s/-/a/-/t/, s/a/t, sat.
Scaffold students as well by elongating sounds where possible and running them together to begin with, like rraaammm, ram. You might have heard this referred to as continuous blending. More skilled blenders can then progressively be given speech sounds in a more spaced manner including ‘stop sounds’ like /b/ and /d/, which can’t be elongated. For example, you could say, /b/ /r/ /e/ /d/ for students to blend into the word 'bread'.
Let’s move on to segmenting phonemes. It's also starred because this skill is a required skill for encoding, or spelling. It's the opposite skill to blending. In this case, rather than building a word from single phonemes, we're now asking our students to break a full word into separate speech sounds or phonemes. We've used the same word as the example on the steps to show that relationship.
Again, word complexity and sound characteristics influence how difficult it is to segment the sounds in a word. Remember to use words with continuous sounds and a CVC sound pattern to begin with.
We can scaffold students in the way we say a word. Stretching or elongating the sounds as you say the word can help students to perceive and therefore segment the sounds more easily.
A common difficulty for students is noticing and segmenting out the second sound where two consonant sounds sit together. So, the /r/ in f-r-og, the /t/ in s-t-ump and so on. You have probably noticed this in your students' spelling before. Lots of modelling and guided practice will be needed when students reach this point.
Audio: Why should we focus on phonemic awareness
Quote from 'Learning disabilities: From identification to intervention'
Research findings by Fletcher, Lyon, Fuchs and Barnes show that phonemic awareness skills are one of the best predictors of reading ability in Year 1. This widely accepted research emphasises the importance of developing students’ phonological awareness and, in particular, phonemic awareness.
Quote from 'Equipped for reading Success'
David Kilpatrick tells us that: ‘Most students with poor word-level reading skills display poor phonological awareness.’ If we can identify these difficulties, and identify them early, we are in a much better position to be able to address the students' underlying issues. When this intervention occurs early there is less chance of long-term reading challenges.
3. How to teach phonological awareness
Video: Principles of instruction
There are several key principles of phonological and phonemic awareness instruction.
First, we need to teach in a stepwise manner. Teach the simplest skills first and continue along that developmental continuum of increasingly complex skills.
Second, we need to teach skills to mastery. Students should be given enough instruction and guided practice to be able to use the taught skill automatically and independently before teacher support for that skill is reduced.
Keeping instruction brief and focused is also key for effective phonological and phonemic awareness instruction. The amount of time dedicated to instruction and the number of skills students are introduced to at a time is important for your planning.
Five to ten minutes of daily explicit instruction is often sufficient. Skills can then continue to be reviewed to provide students with practice. Do be mindful though, that some students will need further explicit instruction in order to achieve mastery. For example, students learning Standard Australian English as an additional language or dialect, including some of our students with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds, may need to work more intensively on phonemic awareness. This is because different languages and dialects have different speech sounds represented. It can also really benefit this group to learn how their teeth, lips and tongues should be used to make particular speech sounds.
Focus on just one or two skills at a time with your students for most effective instruction. So, you might focus in on blending words with three phonemes or on both blending and segmenting.
Once students are at school, boosting their phonemic awareness becomes critical to reading and spelling success so if students are still working on some early phonological awareness skills, rhyming instruction could be paired with the early phonemic awareness skill of isolating initial phonemes.
All English phonemes or sounds should be included in phonemic awareness instruction, so keep this in mind when you're planning the words you will use for oral instruction and practice. It is important to note however, that it is most effective and efficient to pair phonemic awareness instruction with phonics instruction as soon as possible. That is, as soon as students develop early letter-sound correspondence knowledge and early blending and segmenting skills. This means supporting students to use blending and segmenting to read and spell words with letters they know. Initially this should be done with consonant-vowel-consonant pattern words, where one letter represents one sound. Magnetic letter tiles can be really useful for this activity so the letters can be moved together when blending or swapped out when manipulating phonemes. Oral practice can continue to give students experience with all of the English speech sounds.
Using data to inform instruction means we can support our students to progressively build on their existing skills. It makes the teaching and learning most efficient. Assessment data can tell us both which skills should be taught at whole class level and which students may benefit from targeted intervention. Early intervention for phonemic awareness skills where required is very important for students’ reading and spelling success. A quality systematic synthetic phonics program will usually also provide an assessment tool for phonological and phonemic awareness.
Audio: Phonological awareness activities
Slide 1: Clap it out! (syllables)
Use this activity to teach students how to segment a word into its individual syllables.
Model how to break a word into syllables by saying the word and clapping for each syllable.
For example: cat – one clap, pop/corn – two claps, el/e/phant – three claps.
Then have students clap, stomp or beat a drum to represent each syllable as they say the syllable out loud.
Following the principle of working from simple to complex, firstly introduce students to two-syllable words using compound words such as to/day, sun/set. These words are generally easier for students to hear the individual syllables. Then move to more complex words such as ti/ger, el/e/phant, cat/er/pill/ar.
Slide 2: Who has two? (syllables)
The purpose of this activity is to have students identify words with different numbers of syllables in them, such as two.
Begin by saying two words and clapping the syllables in each. For example, cat – one syllable, Rocky – two syllables. Then ask the students: Which word has two syllables?
Again, working from simple to complex, you can increase the number of words in the set, and also the number of syllables within each word.
Slide 3: Do they rhyme? (Rhyming)
Use this activity to bring students’ attention to the sounds in words by saying words aloud, and listening for and identifying rhyme.
Have students identify rhyme.
For example, say two words and ask students if they rhyme: house and bell (no), book and mouse (no), bone and phone (yes).
Then progress to saying a string of words (such as cat, dog, sat, pat) and ask: Can you tell me the words that rhyme?
Slide 4: Let’s rhyme (Rhyming)
This activity requires students to produce rhymes.
You could have students produce words that rhyme by showing them the first image and saying, for example:
Here is a sun. The sound at the end is '-un.' Run rhymes with sun, they both end with -un.
Now your turn.
Students give examples such as bun, fun, won. Repeat this by showing further images on the slide and having students produce words that rhyme.
Slide 5: Starting sounds (alliteration)
Use this activity to have students use the starting sounds of words to produce alliteration.
For example, use the phoneme /m/ for ‘muffin’. Stretch out the sound as you say it – mmmmmm. Then add other words to create alliteration: marvellous muffins, Max makes marvellous muffins.
Continue with other examples such as Pete paints purple penguins and Tim teaches Tommy turtle to turn.
You can also recite well-known tongue twisters such as ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers’.
And you can add adjectives to names, such as: happy Harry, funny Phil, terrific Tina.
Audio: Phonemic awareness activity
Intro
These activities will help students develop their phonemic awareness. It is best to use these often and in short bursts, following the I do, We do, You do model.
Slide 1: Phoneme sit-down
This activity supports students to identify and isolate initial phonemes.
Explain to students that they are going to play a game called Phoneme sit-down.
Tell students that the first sound they hear in a word is called the initial phoneme. Provide an example such as /s/ being the phoneme at the beginning of the word ‘star’.
Say: Another word that begins with /s/ is ‘sun’. Both ‘star’ and ‘sun’ start with /s/. If my next word doesn’t start with /s/ you need to sit down. The word is ‘table’.
Play again by saying: Now I am going to give you another two words. I want you to sit down when you hear the word that doesn’t begin with /s/: sausage dog
Repeat with other words.
Slide 2: Tell me – initial phoneme
This is another activity to support students to identify and isolate initial phonemes.
Show students various images one at a time and ask them to tell you the phoneme that they begin with, such as /f/ for fish, /p/for plane.
Make sure you tell students the name of each object so they know what it is called before they attempt to hear the first sound in that word.
Slide 3: Tell me – final phoneme
The purpose of this activity is to have students identify and isolate final phonemes.
This is more difficult than hearing the initial phoneme in a word.
Tell students: I am going to show you two pictures. I would like you to tell me which one ends in /t/. (Click to show clock and ant. Students say the words with you and identify that the word ant ends with the /t/ sound.)
Here are two more words. Which one ends in /n/? (Click to show ball and bone. Students say the words and identify that bone ends with /n/.)
Repeat with final sound /p/ for the words zip and star; and final sound /sh/ for the words fish and train.
Slide 4: Blend it!
The purpose of this activity is to have students blend phonemes into words.
Give students three sounds and have them tell you the word the sounds make. For example: /b/, /a/, /t/ – bat.
Then show them the picture and confirm.
This activity provides students with the opportunity to practise blending phonemes into words. You will need a set of hoops or some small beanbags.
Call out three sounds. Have the students jump into a hoop (or step to the next beanbag), as they slowly say each sound as if they were blending the sounds together to make a word.
For example, /d/-/o/-/g/ – dog!
Repeat with different words and extend to including more sounds as students are ready.
4. Phonological awareness and reading
Video: Phonemic awareness and phonics
Phonemic awareness is so important. David Kilpatrick divides the skills into three phases:
Phase 1: early phonological sensitivity: rhyming, syllables, alliteration. All of these things are those early skills. Generally, we don’t have to spend a lot of time actively teaching these.
We can engage in some practices that raise children’s awareness of them, but we don’t have to spend all of our instructional time trying to work on these. Those basic phonemic awareness skills are where the bulk of our time should be spent.
Phase 2: identifying phonemes: blending and segmenting is so critical.
Phase 3: advanced skills: manipulating, deleting, adding, and substituting. They come about when children start to have a grasp on the alphabetic principle.
Phonological awareness is a broad skill that includes so many things, and as I’ve already mentioned, syllables, onsets, rimes and alliteration.
Phonemic awareness on the other hand refers to the specific ability to focus on and manipulate individual sounds (Reading Rockets). Because while we all use phonemes when we speak, when we want to read and spell, we have to think about them slightly differently. Because when we speak, all the sounds overlap and sort of smush into each other, but to be able to read and spell we have to develop an awareness of the phonemes as individual speech sounds and then work with them from there.
A lack of these skills is one of the primary predictors of reading difficulty (Stone, 2013).
While phonological and phonemic awareness tasks can be performed with your eyes closed, when it comes to instruction phonemic awareness is most effective when combined with phoneme-grapheme correspondence (Kilpatrick, 2015).
The reference I’ve got there is David Kilpatrick from his Essentials book, but this is backed up by Linnea Ehri, one of the early researchers into reading science, by Louisa Moats, by a whole bunch of people who say the oral, phonological and phonemic awareness work can be beneficial. But, if we want real bang for the buck, we need to be including graphemes. Finally, it is important to note that phonemic awareness is the means to enable reading and spelling, it’s not an end in and of itself, and that comes from the National Reading Panel report.
Video: The alphabetic principle
There are 26 letters in the alphabet. [Image: 26 letters of the alphabet with the vowels in black and the consonants in green.] That’s not new to anyone, but you may not be aware that there are 44 phonemes. [Image: a list of phonemes and example words is shown.] Phonemes are the speech sounds we use when we speak. There are 24 consonants and 20 vowels, and we need to understand this so that we can work from a speech-to-print approach and children understand how our language works.
There are 200-250 graphemes or letter combinations. [Image: chart showing the alphabetic code.] These graphemes are the orthography or the spelling structure of our language and what we need to do is make those connections explicit for children.
A digraph is two letters that represent one sound. These digraphs can be consonants or vowels, and we can see some examples here in shop, crown, or song. [Image: the word 'shop' (with sh underlined); the word 'crown' (with ow underlined); the word 'song' (with ng underlined).]
A trigraph is three letters being used to represent one sound. They can be consonants or vowels as well. [Image: the word 'sight' (with igh underlined); the word 'match' (with tch underlined); the word 'hedge' (with dge underlined).]
Quadgraph (you can see a pattern) is four letters for one sound. Not nearly as common, but they do exist, such as eight and although. [Image: the word 'eight' (with eigh underlined); the word 'although' (with ough underlined).]
Finally, a split digraph. You might know this as a ‘bossy e’ or ‘vowel split e’, or some other framework or name for it and that is fine. I'm just going to call it a split digraph today. Essentially, we’ve got this ‘e’ on the end, which is adjusting or making a change to the sound here in the middle. That vowel in the middle. [Image: the word 'like', with an arrow from i to e; the word 'plate', with an arrow from a to e; the word 'mute', with an arrow from u to e.]
There can be some confusion around the difference between digraphs and blends. A digraph is two letters and a trigraph is three letters being used for ONE sound, whereas a blend is called a consonant cluster. These are actually two separate sounds that are put together. Children may have difficulty reading these, particularly if they have speech challenges and so including them in practice is great.
[Image: A list of digraphs and trigraphs
- sh, th, ng, kn, tch, ph
- ay, ee, igh, oa, oo
- ar, or, air, er, ou, oy
A chart of consonant clusters - blends (st, sp, sl, br, bl, pl, nt, lt, mp, gr, cr, str, spl) with a large cross through it so that most cannot be read.]
What we are not going to do with these consonant clusters is teach them as whole units. We want children to recognise digraphs and trigraphs straight off the bat, but we are not going to put up flashcards that have blends for the children. This is not supported practice. It overloads their cognitive capacity. Instead, we are going to teach children to blend and give them practice blending to help build up their accuracy.
Audio: Find out how to use Elkonin boxes
Slide 1: Getting started
Elkonin boxes, also known as sound boxes, can be used to help phonemic awareness development and increase students’ understanding of the alphabetic principle.
Elkonin boxes support students in lots of ways. They help students to segment words into individual phonemes; to represent the number of phonemes in a word; and to understand the link between sounds and written letters.
Get started by preparing blank Elkonin boxes like the one shown. [Image: a horizontal 1x3 grid of rectangular boxes. Green counter are scattered below the grid.] You might like to make a set and laminate them. You will also need some counters for students to use.
Slide 2: Isolating individual phonemes in CVC words
Demonstrate how to listen for and segment the individual sounds in a CVC word, that is, a word with a consonant, then a vowel, then a consonant. For example, the word ‘sat’ has three sounds: /s/ /a/ /t/. Show students how to push one counter into one of the squares on the Elkonin box for each sound.
Then ask students to try the activity themselves. Have them say the word slowly, emphasising each sound they can hear in the word, so that they are segmenting the word into individual phonemes. For example, students will say /c/ /a/ /t/ and push one counter into one of the squares on the Elkonin box for each sound they say.
[Image: the same 1x3 horizontal grid, with one counter in each box. /c/ is written below the first box; /a/ below the second box; /t/ below the third box.]
Slide 3: Isolating phonemes in words with digraphs
You can also include words that have digraphs, such as sh making the /sh/ sound.
The word ‘fish’ has four letters but has just three sounds: /f/ /i/ /sh/. Have students segment the sounds in the word and push a counter into a box on their Elkonin chart for each sound they hear.
[Image: Elkonin box (or sound box) used to show the sounds in the word ‘fish’. A green counter sits in each of the three boxes and beneath each box is written the individual sounds (phonemes), /f/, /i/ and /sh/. Two remaining unused green counters sit underneath the box and phonemes.]
Slide 4: Isolating four phonemes in a word
As students are ready, you can move to words with four sounds, such as /f/, /r/, /o/, /g/ – frog.
And, as students become more competent, you can introduce picture cues. This allows students to work independently by looking at the picture, saying the word slowly, and then isolating the individual phonemes in the word and moving their counters into the Elkonin boxes – again, one counter for each sound they hear in the word.
[Image: Blank Elkonin box (or sound box) comprised of four empty boxes in a row. Above it is an illustration of a green frog. Beneath it are five scattered green counters.]
Slide 5: Introducing letters
Once students have been taught some phonic code, you can introduce letters to the Elkonin box activity.
Write each letter of a simple CVC word in the boxes on the chart. Then have students listen for the phonemes in the word, for example ‘sit’ /s/, /i/, /t/. Students can then move each counter onto the letter that represents that sound.
[Image: Elkonin box (or sound box) comprising of three boxes showing the word ‘sit’. A cartoon hand is shown sliding a green counter onto the letter ‘s’. Unused green counters sit underneath the box.]
Slide 6: Increasing complexity: two letters – one sound
As students learn more letter-sound correspondences, this knowledge can be practised and reinforced using Elkonin boxes.
For example, once students have learnt the /sh/ digraph they can match each letter-sound correspondence in words such as 'shop' and 'fish'.
This is a helpful way to cement the concept that sometimes two letters make one sound.
[Image: Elkonin box (or sound box) comprising of three boxes showing the word ‘fish’. A cartoon hand is shown sliding a green counter onto the letter ‘f’. Four remaining unused green counters sit underneath the box.]
Audio: Phoneme manipulation lesson activities
Intro:
These activities will help students who need support to develop phoneme manipulation skills.
Slide 1: Add it
This activity is called ‘Add it’. It encourages students to add phonemes to a base word to make new words.
Say a word such as ‘pot,’ and ask students to add /s/ at the beginning of the word to make ‘spot’. Once students have identified the new word verbally, reveal the word on the slide to confirm.
Repeat with other words, such as adding /f/ to ‘lash’ to make ‘flash’ and adding /t/ to ‘rain’ to make ‘train’.
Slide 2: Drop it
This activity is called ‘Drop it’. The purpose of this activity is for students to remove a phoneme from a word to make a new word.
Say a word such as ‘tram’ and ask students to drop the /t/ at the beginning of the word to make ‘ram’. Then ask them to drop the /r/ to make ‘am’. Once students have identified each new word verbally, reveal the word on the slide to confirm.
Repeat with other words, such as ‘spin’: drop the /s/ to make ‘pin’, then drop the /p/ to make ‘in’.
Reveal each word after students give their responses.
Slide 3: Swap it
The purpose of this ‘Swap it’ activity is for students to isolate and substitute initial phonemes to make new words.
Say a word, have students repeat it and then ask them to take away a phoneme and put a different phoneme in its place.
For example: say ‘back’. Now take away the /b/ and add /s/. Students provide the new word ‘sack’. Reveal the new word on the slide to confirm. Now take away the /s/ and add /p/. Students provide the new word ‘pack’. Reveal the new word on the slide to confirm.
Repeat with other words such as 'pit', 'sit', 'fit'.
Slide 4: Move it!
This activity is called ‘Move it’.
In this activity, students use the letter–sound correspondences they know to move letters into place to make words.
This activity can support the application of phonemic awareness skills to both decoding (that is, reading) and encoding (that is, spelling).
Review the sounds that you will be using for the activity. Ensure you’re using sounds that the students already know.
Say: I am going to make a word by moving the letters into the green boxes.
Move /s/, /a/, /t/ into the boxes. Model sounding the word out and blending together to say ‘sat’.
Choose a student to change the word to ‘sit’ by moving the a out and replacing it with an i.
Repeat by swapping different sounds in and out to make new words, for example 'hit' and 'hat', 'pit' and 'pat'.