Phonological Awareness is the awareness of rhyme, syllables, and how sounds are put together to form words. Development of these skills is a strong predictor of a child’s later reading and spelling success.
For early communicators and early language users (birth – 36 months), focus on…
• Enjoying shared book reading
• Enjoying nursery rhymes and songs
• Child may attempt to recite rhyming words or alliterative phrases in familiar books, nursery rhymes, or songs
For children ages 3-5.5, focus on…
• Recognition of words that rhyme and don’t rhyme (“Which 2 words rhyme: cat, bat, dog?” “Which word does not rhyme: bear, hair, clock?”)
• Clapping out and counting syllables (Try doing this with names of people, words from books, names of objects you see while riding in the car, etc.)
• Blending the onset + rime of words (“What word is this? b-at”)
• Producing a rhyming word (“Tell me a word that rhymes with hat”)
• Identifying initial and final sounds in words (“What’s the first sound in dog?” “What’s the last sound in duck?”)
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For children ages 6-7, focus on…
Deleting syllables – start with compound words (Say “cowboy” … Say it again, but don’t say “cow”)
Blending sounds into words – this is what we do when we read/sound out words
Play a “guess the word game” (Say each sound separately “c-a-t” and see if the child can guess “cat”)
Play a game where you pick an object in the room and tell the child to “Find the b-a-ll”
Play “I Spy” at home or on the go and say “I spy with my little eye… a b-u-s”
Segmenting words into sounds – this is what we do when we spell
Pretend you’re a robot and say each sound in a word using a slow “robot voice” (e.g., “b-oo-k”)
Substituting sounds in words to create a new word (Say “mouse.” Now say “mouse” but change the /m/ to /h/… house)
For children ages 8-9, focus on…
Deleting sounds (Say “moose.” Say it again, but don’t say /s/… moo)