Learning and Teaching
Vision for Instruction
A few weeks ago, we shared information about the components that are essential for reading. They were oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. This week we will focus on phonological awareness.
Phonological awareness
How does phonological awareness contribute to reading success?
Phonological awareness is the ability to hear the sounds within language. Children with good
phonological awareness can hear:
- words and word spaces in language
- syllables (a unit of pronunciation with one vowel sound, cat has one syllable, water has two syllables)
- rhyme (two or more words with the same ending sound, ring, sing, thing)
- alliteration (two or more words with the same beginning sound, Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers)
- phonemes (the individual sounds within a word, dog has three phonemes, d-o-g).
Being able to hear or ‘isolate’ these sounds gives children a foundation for learning to manipulate the sounds of sentences and words as they learn to read and spell.
What can parents do at home to encourage phonological awareness?
- Read aloud books or poems with rhyming words at the end of lines or sentences.
- Allow children to join in and predict the next rhyming word.
- Listen for and clap with the syllables of familiar and new words, for example, jump-ing, wa-ter, ha-ppi-ness, fab-u-lous.
- Sing songs, say nursery rhymes, chants, riddles, silly poems, tongue twisters and jokes.
- Word families are sets of words that rhyme. Start to build your word family by giving your child the first word, for example, cat. Then ask your child to name all the “kids” in the cat family, such as: bat, fat, sat, rat, pat, mat, hat, flat. This will help your child hear patterns in words.
Excerpt taken from www.theliteracyhub.edu.au
Deborah Courtney
Director of Learning and Teaching