Teach Your Child Phonological Awareness
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Teach Your Child Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness forms the bedrock of successful reading. Research reveals that it’s a more accurate predictor of reading success than factors like IQ, vocabulary, or family socioeconomic status.
Children who start reading instruction with well-developed phonological awareness tend to grasp reading concepts more effectively, understand the alphabetic principle faster, and learn to read with ease. On the other hand, those who may later be identified as dyslexic often lack these skills. Studies show that teaching phonological awareness can prevent dyslexia in many cases, prompting schools to implement early screening programs.
Over the past two decades, phonological awareness has gained considerable attention in reading research. The most promising discovery is that with carefully planned instruction, critical levels of phonological awareness can be developed, significantly influencing children's reading and spelling achievements.
Why Is Phonological Awareness Crucial?
Understanding phonemes is essential for grasping the alphabetic principle, the foundation of our written language system. Developing readers need to be aware of a word's internal structure. Recognizing that words can be divided into individual phonemes and blended back into words allows children to use letter-sound knowledge for reading and word-building. This link makes phonological awareness a robust predictor of future reading success?"a relationship that research confirms persists throughout schooling.
Phonological awareness instruction promotes early reading effectively, and knowledge of letter-sound correspondence in early reading reinforces these skills. Achieving a certain level of phonological awareness is necessary for success, benefiting most children and proving critical for others.
What Is Phonological Awareness?
Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the sounds within words. A child with this skill can identify rhyming words or words that start with the same sound. Further development enables identification of words that end with the same sound, e.g., recognizing that "bat" and "sit" share an ending sound, while "bat" and "sad" do not.
This broad concept includes phonemic awareness and involves activities like recognizing rhymes, words, syllables, and onsets and rimes. Learning to read requires being aware of phonemes, the smallest functional sound units. For instance, the word "cat" has three distinct sounds. The English language comprises 44 phonemes, including combinations like /th/.
In addition to identifying these sounds, children must learn to manipulate them. Activities like segmenting words into sounds, matching rhymes, and blending sounds are vital. This skill set is termed phonological awareness, encompassing five levels from recognizing rhymes to substituting word components.
Children typically begin demonstrating phonological awareness through an appreciation of rhyme and alliteration, often facilitated by exposure to rhyming or alliterative books during early language development.
Teaching Phonological Awareness
Introducing children to nursery rhymes can spark an interest in the phonological structure of words. Research indicates that children familiar with nursery rhymes by age 3 exhibit advanced phonological and phonemic awareness by ages 4 and 6, respectively.
Beyond nursery rhymes, reading rhyming books or singing rhyming songs and chants can enhance this skill. Engage children in identifying rhymes using picture cards, or conduct rhyming sorts with these cards.
Games that teach sound isolation are also effective. For instance, modify the "BINGO" song to emphasize letter sounds: "There was a letter, had a sound, and you can say it with me: b, b, b, like ball." Encourage children to identify the first sound in words, either orally or using picture cards.
Connecting oral language to the written word is crucial. As children learn to hear, recognize, and manipulate sounds, they begin to understand how words function, building the foundation for reading success.
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