3 Tips For Building Phonemic Awareness

Recently, in the education world, there has been a lot of talk about phoneme awareness and its importance in reading instruction - with good reason! As classroom reading instruction shifts, finding ways to bridge the research to instructional practices is crucial. But with this comes a need to understand what the research means for our work and our students. 

There is widespread agreement that phoneme awareness skills such as perceiving sounds in speech, isolating sounds, and blending and segmenting words are the foundation for learning to read and write. A National Reading Panel in-depth review of 52 phonemic awareness articles found that explicitly teaching phonemic awareness directly impacts children's reading significantly more than instruction without any attention to phonemic awareness. This evidence was so clear that they recommended that explicit phonemic awareness instruction be a part of classroom reading instruction beginning in preschool.  

Looking at the Phonological Processing Umbrella

Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness are parts of the larger phonological processing term, which "includes many aspects of speech and language perception and production" (Scarborough & Brady, 2002). Under this larger umbrella of phonological processing, we know that phonological awareness provides the underpinnings for reading and writing. Here is a simplified breakdown of phonological awareness.

Phonological awareness is the umbrella term that includes: phonemic awareness, rhyming, syllables, word awareness, onset-rime, and phoneme manipulation. 

Phoneme awareness is a part of the phonological awareness umbrella which refers to the awareness of and consciously thinking of individual speech sounds, or phonemes, in spoken language. As students move to formal reading instruction, their knowledge of phonemes in connection to graphemes is necessary in acquiring the alphabetic principle.  This is because phonemic awareness lays the foundational pieces upon which letter-sound knowledge can be built. It is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds and then connect those sounds to the letter representations. Bridging this knowledge of sound to letter is crucial for unlocking the written code, and our students find success when instruction is systematically and explicitly taught and practiced.

Connecting Phonemes to Graphemes and the link to Phonemic Awareness Instruction 

Phonemic awareness teaches students to hear and manipulate the smallest units of sound and understand that spoken words are made up of sequences of speech sounds. In previous instructional practices we may have isolated phonological awareness tasks from that of reading and writing instruction, but the research is clear that integrating phoneme awareness instruction with letter correspondences and handwriting aids in reading and spelling development. 

Why? This integration, or linkage, of speech to print through a multimodal approach connects the phoneme to the grapheme through the orthographic mapping process and is a key component of structured literacy lessons. When we explicitly teach these linkages, we are helping students gain awareness of the alphabetic principle and lay the foundation for reading and spelling. 

Where Do You Begin?

Teach articulatory features

We can support phonemic awareness with students by bringing awareness to the articulatory features of individual phonemes or speech sounds as we link sounds to print. Articulatory features refers to the use of voice, placement and manner of our tongue, lips, and mouth as we make individual speech sounds. Read more about articulatory features here.

When we explicitly teach phonemes' articulatory features, we are helping to create links between the individual speech sounds and the letter representations. Sound production and mouth formations are key to helping students link the phonemes, those sounds that they hear, to the graphemes, which are the letter representations of those spoken sounds. They also provide students and teachers with cues for error corrections. Explicitly teaching these to our students provides them with the knowledge and ability to analyze sounds in a deeper way. 

The importance of articulation to teach PA is not generally recognized.

Boyer, N. & Ehri, L.C., (2011)

Connect the Phoneme to the Grapheme

Connecting the letter representations, or graphemes, right from the beginning within our phonological awareness instruction may be new. Many programs have kept these two things separate, but the National Reading Panel showed that connecting letters to sounds (graphophonemic connections) during phonemic awareness tasks benefited students in reading and spelling. In addition, as we teach articulatory features, we connect this awareness to the speech sound and the letter representations, or the phoneme-grapheme correspondences. The more that we connect the research about learning to read to our instructional practices, we see ways in which we can refine our instruction and approach. 

Our interpretation is that awareness of articulatory gestures facilitates the activation of graphophonemic connections that helps children identify written words and secure them in memory.

Castiglioni-Spalten, M. & Ehri L.C., (2003)

For this reason, one way I have bridged the gap between my phonemic awareness instruction and phonics instruction is with the use of sound-letter tiles that highlight the articulatory features. I use these tiles with my students as we complete word chains/ladders, spelling, and more! I wanted to provide my students with another opportunity to bridge their knowledge of sounds to print - and they love these! The mouth cards are a useful scaffold for those students who need additional support and practice.

 

Connecting to Handwriting 

We know that the knowledge of letter names and fluency of letter naming in kindergarten are among the best predictors of later reading success (Catts et al., 2015). But what does that have to do with phonemic awareness?

Handwriting helps students store letters as linguistic symbols. 📝 When students have the precise motor sequence for forming each letter, it is automated and recalled without conscious effort. This automaticity leaves mental energy for the written composition of writing. Many students who struggle with automatic letter writing will also struggle with putting thoughts onto paper because their energy is expended on forming letters instead of content. 

When kindergarten students are taught explicit letter formation linked to the concept that letters represent speech sounds, syllables, and words, these images are stored in the brain's language center (Beringer & Wolf, 2015). 

In last week’s blog, I discussed the power of multi-sensory teaching strategies and their integral role within a structured literacy lesson. The connection of speech to letter representation and formation supports what we know about developing neural pathways that support memory and learning of our written language. When we introduce a phoneme to students, we want to connect to the grapheme as soon as possible which includes explicitly teaching the letter formation of that grapheme. This is a step within the structured literacy lesson that shouldn’t be overlooked.

I advocate that we ensure our earliest learners are presented with the necessary skills and language to create these stored linguistic symbols that lead to automaticity in writing, and weaving this into your phonemic awareness activities can bridge a student’s knowledge of sound-letter correspondences as they develop their phonemic awareness. 

What are the Instructional Implications? 



When introducing students to a target phoneme, the research is clear for our instruction to connect to the articulatory features, or those mouth formations as we connect the grapheme and letter formation. Explicitly teaching these skills consolidates the information as we begin the orthographic mapping process. Remembering that research and science is dynamic means that we continue to improve our teaching craft and adjust our methods to meet the needs of our students. 

Always learning,

Casey

 

Want to learn more? 

Check out these resources to support your instruction.

Mouth Sound Cards I Orton-Gillingham I Science of Reading

Letter Formation Cards for Print with Mouth Formation Cues I Science of Reading

Mini Sound Wall Alphabet Chart - Science of Reading

Alphabet Chart with Mouth Formation + Keyword I Science of Reading

Phonemic Awareness Activities for Early + Later Alphabetic Phases I OG + SOR

Letter Formation Cards for Cursive with Mouth Formation Cues-Science of Reading



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