Literacy 

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; for example, cat has one syllable, water has two syllables)
• rhyme (two or more words with the same ending sound; for example, ring, sing, thing)
• alliteration (two or more words with the same beginning sound; for example Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers)
• phonemes (the individual sounds within a word; for example, 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.

How can families encourage phonological awareness at home?

• 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.

Congratulations to the children in Years 3-6 who participated in the Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee this week.  It was great to see so many students take up the option to participate in this competition against other students across Australia. 

Jemma McVeigh and Chris Catterall