KNOWING SOUNDS IN SPOKEN LANGUAGE
Teachers Call This Skill:
PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS
Try not to get confused by the fancy name “Phonological Awareness.” It just means the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in spoken language. Children who have phonological awareness can tell you the sounds they hear in words, separate the sounds and change out sounds to make new words.
This is important for reading because children must first be able to hear the sounds and patterns in words before they can identify what letters represent those sounds.
Phonological awareness can and should be directly taught to children. Parents can be the best teachers by singing with their kids, rhyming words and asking them the sounds they hear in different words.
If you can sing a song or rhyme a word, you can build your child’s phonological awareness.
WATCH & LEARN
What is Phonological Awareness?
TRY THESE ACTIVITIES
What's In My Bag?
To practice blending sounds together to make words:
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Fill a bag with toys or items from around the house.
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Say the sounds to 1 thing in the bag without showing item to the child.
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Child guesses what you have by putting the sounds together.
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Child can hold item after guessing.
Variation if too difficult:
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Put 3 items in front of child.
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Say the sounds of one of the items.
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Child chooses the correct item
Elkonin Boxes
To practice segmenting or breaking words apart into sounds:
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Use pictures or real items.
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Say a word
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Then push a lego, coin, bean, etc. into a box for each individual sound
Watch a video on Elkonin boxes
Beginning Sound Basketball
To practice identifying the first sound in a word:
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Say a word
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Child bounces ball and says the 1st sound multiple times
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Child then says the rest of the word
Watch a video of beginning sound basketball
What's That First Sound
ADULT:
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Draw 3 boxes to represent each sound in the word.
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Draw an arrow that points to the first box.
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Say a 3-sound word (LIST OF WORDS AT THE END OF THE VIDEO) and ask your child, "What's that first sound?"
You: Say cat.
Child: cat
You: What's that first sound?
Child: /c/
What's That Middle Sound?
ADULT:
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Draw 3 boxes to represent each sound in the word.
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Draw an arrow that points to the middle box.
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Say a 3-sound word (LIST OF WORDS AT THE END OF THE VIDEO) and ask your child, "What's that middle sound?"
You: Say cat.
Child: cat
You: What's that middle sound?
Child: /a/
What's That Last Sound
ADULT:
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Draw 3 boxes to represent each sound in the word.
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Draw an arrow that points to the last box.
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Say a 3-sound word (LIST OF WORDS AT THE END OF THE VIDEO) and ask your child, "What's that last sound?"
You: Say cat.
Child: cat
You: What's that last sound?
Child: /t/
What's That Last Sound
ADULT:
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Draw 2 boxes to represent each smaller word inside of the compound word.
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Draw an arrow that points to the first box.
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Say a compound word (LIST OF WORDS AT THE END OF THE VIDEO) and say to your child, "Tell me that first word."
You: Classroom. Tell me that first word.
Child: Class!
Tell Me That Last Word
ADULT:
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Draw 2 boxes to represent each smaller word inside of the compound word.
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Draw an arrow that points to the last box.
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Say a compound word (LIST OF WORDS AT THE END OF THE VIDEO) and say to your child, "Tell me that last word."
You: Classroom. Tell me that last word.
You: room!
Blending Sounds in Syllables
Reading expert Linda Farrell helps kindergartener Autumn learn to blend two parts of a syllable (onset and rime). Watch how Ms. Farrell gives Autumn explicit practice with onset and rime — a core phonological awareness skill that helps kids recognize and blend sound chunks within syllables. This video is part of the reading Rockets special series, Looking at Reading Interventions.
Watch additional episodes and download the accompanying Professional Development Guides here: https://www.readingrockets.org/shows/reading-interventions
Floor-Tummy- Sky Game for Sound Blending
ADULT:
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Choose words with three sounds.
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Explain to the child that you will sound out the word.
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When adult says the first sound, the child touches the floor.
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When adult says the second sound, children touch their tummy.
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When the adult says the third sound, children put their hands up to the sky.
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Then they say the whole word and clap above their head.
Rhyming
Rhyming is an important part of phonemic awareness, and is something that can be practiced from an early age through songs, nursery rhymes, raps, and books. Here are a few resources to check out:
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Gracie's Corner - African American Main Character Songs and Rhymes
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Jose Luis Orozco - Spanish and English Songs and Rhymes
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Activity: Ridiculous Rhymes: Have your child give a rhyme for a word you tell them. It can be a made up word, too. “What rhymes with “bindergarten”?
Be Silly
Make up your own rhymes, songs, or silly stories to focus on a particular sound.
“Big Billy blows beautiful bubbles!”
Sound Hunters
Choose a letter sound, then have your child find things around your house that start with the same sound. This is great activity to do in the kitchen while making dinner.
“Can you find something in our house that starts with the letter “s” ssssss sound? Stairs, sofa, sandwich.”
Tell Me the Members of the Word Family
Word families are words that rhyme. Tell your child the “mom’s” name is “bat” and ask them to tell you all the “kids’” names, like cat, fat, sat, rat, pat, mat, at, and hat. This will help children hear patterns in words.
Be a Word Detective
What sound does each letter make in this word on the cereal box? Research suggests that seeing print, saying the sounds, and hearing the sounds while pointing at the letter with a parent or teacher has the greatest impact on learning “phonemic awareness,” or sounds.
Fingers Up!
Take turns saying a word and the other person has to put up their fingers to match the number of sounds. For “cat,” they’d hold up their pointer finger for “c”, middle finger for “a” and ring finger for “t”.
Show Me
Using Cheerios, rocks or beads, say a word and have your child show you how many sounds the word makes. For example, “cap” = c+a+p = three sounds, so they’d place three objects in a row. Then have them tap each object as they say the sound. Remember, your child is just showing you the sounds they hear. So the word “take” would be = t-a-k (silent e) = only three sounds.
