Before She Can Read…

Once a child knows the sounds for w, i, and n, it seems like she should be ready to read the word “win.” But sometimes she can’t. She reads each sound w…i…n and then shouts out the word “dog!” What’s going on here?

This student is missing the phonological awareness skills she needs to put sounds together. Without these skills, reading words becomes a guessing game. Maybe she’ll start memorizing some words that teachers and parents show her over and over, and maybe she’ll use the pictures to guess what’s going on in the story. However, until she develops her phonological awareness, she will not have the tools she needs to figure out new words for herself.

To help this hypothetical student develop phonological awareness, we can use short oral activities and games. Teaching her how to blend and segment compound words is a natural starting point. The parts of compound words are easy to work with since each part is its own real word. Then we move into syllables. A syllable is a word or part of a word with one vowel sound. Since vowel sounds open our mouths, we can help the student feel the syllables in a word by having her place a hand on the bottom of her chin. Once the student can blend and segment syllables, we can teach her about smaller word parts. For example, we can have her listen for and make up rhyming words. Break out the Dr. Seuss! Finally, we reach the goal of our phonological awareness work — individual sounds. 

An understanding of how individual sounds work within a word is called phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the most advanced level of phonological awareness. We can start by asking our student to blend two sounds that are easy to draw out: “What word is ooo…nnn? What word is sss…eee?” Using tokens, coins, or fingers to represent sounds can help her visualize and feel the sounds blending together. Once she gets comfortable blending and segmenting sounds, she can start using this skill with written letters. Now she’s ready to figure out w…i…n…win!

Looking for phonological awareness activities to practice at home? Check out these free printables in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.