Developing Phonemic Awareness in Young Children
It’s said that phonemic awareness is the most important skill for children learning to read and write in English. But what IS phonemic awareness exactly, WHY is it important, and HOW do we cultivate it in young children?
Phonemic awareness, first of all, is the awareness that our writing code is made up of sounds. Above everything else that should be learned in Kindergarten - it’s the logic of how the code works. Letters stand for the sounds we speak, which are known as phonemes. Phonemes are in fact, the basis of our spelling code, NOT the letters of the alphabet.
Beginning learners are often thrown off this awareness by the pervasive teaching that, ‘letters make sounds.’ In fact, in almost every kindergarten in the nation, the logic of the code is being destroyed by the code being taught backward.
A high quality language arts program will guide children to explore their vocal articulators when producing featured sounds. For example, children will be led to place their hands on their throats to feel whether a sound has ‘voice.’ Speech sounds are explored at the same time children are learning to recognize and write the letterform. This way, they form an association between the sound and the letter - which is how they unlock the code.
There’s something else that throws young children off from being able to unlock the logic of the code - and it’s insidiously pervasive. This is the use of letter names. In my learning program, they’re banned. We refer to the letters strictly by their sounds.
Here’s the problem with letter names: when kids see the letter ‘a,’ and say the letter name /a-e/ as in the word ‘bake,’ that’s not the sound we want them to learn at this level. We want them to say /a/ as in the word ‘apple.’ We’ll teach /a-e/ and the other so-called ‘long vowels’ in first grade. So if the child is reading the word, ‘man,’ and says the letter name for the ‘a,’ they end up with a different word - ‘mane.’
But consonants produced incorrectly can also throw off the decoding of CVC words in kindergarten. For instance, kids commonly learn to add a ‘pesky uh’ sound to almost all the consonants, ‘buh,’ ‘cuh,’ ‘duh,’ and so on. Then when they go to decode the word ‘man,’ they say, ‘muh-ae-nuh’ ….. which sounds nothing like the word ‘man.’
It’s very important to avoid teaching other units of sound beside the phoneme at the kindergarten level. Teachers should NOT teach syllable chunking in kindergarten. They should also NOT use word families, and should definitely NOT teach sight words.
It’s extremely common for kindergarten teachers to teach sight words. Don’t get me wrong - teaching a limited amount of sight words is actually important to get young readers reading the simplest of books. Some words can’t be decoded, and actually must be learned BY SIGHT, as a whole word. BUT children need to know this strategy is only for a handful of words. The real way to read is to SOUND WORDS OUT.
The teaching of sight words is so pervasive, that the logic is obsucred. Children with good visual memories can memorize hundreds of sight words by the end of first grade, fooling their teachers and parents into thinking they can ‘read.’ Then, they reach the limit of their visual memory, and it’s clear by the second grade the child can’t accurately decode.
Without careful teaching at the K level, many, many, children get labeled ‘dyslexic’ by second grade. Without intervention, these children never really ‘get the code.’ The lifelong consequences of this failure, both to the individual and society, are staggering to ponder.
To recap the above, create a kindergarten program that makes the logic of the code clear: teach sounds (phonemes) as the basis of the code, concurrently with recognition and writing of the letterforms (graphemes). Teach production of these speech sounds cleanly, and ingrain a reflexive association between sounds and letters.
DO NOT teach any sound units above the level of the phoneme - this includes letter names, syllables, word families, whole words, and sight words.
Now let’s talk about how this carefully laid foundation translates to children being able to read and write. There are two main skills for this, blending and segmenting, and they have everything to do with phonemic awareness.
The main skill for reading is blending. Students should be able to say the individual sounds in quick succession, then hear them as a word. This is what we mean when we say, ‘sound it out.’ Remember, the ONLY way the child is going to hear the word is if the sounds are said CLEANLY - no ‘pesky uh,’ and no letter names.
The UN-learning process is necessary for almost every five year old child entering K, who comes with reflexive knowledge of letter names, and/or sounds incorrectly produced. Until they unlearn these things, they’ll be locked out of the code.
Oftentimes, children are slow to ‘hear the word’ because there’s a long pause between the production of each phoneme in the word. The key to reading is producing these sounds quickly, giving the ear a chance to hear it. Children who ‘say the sounds’ slowly do not know them reflexively enough. If that’s the case, the teacher should back off from reading, and simply focus on helping the child learn the code better. This is primarily accomplished through crafts, games, and writing activities.
The main skill for writing is segmenting. In order to write our phonological code, it’s necessary to hear the individual sounds in the word. The child needs to be able to ‘unglue’ the phonemes from each other … something that can be challenging for many children. I like to train children to use manipulatives for this purpose.
I have a set of ‘stones’ I use in the classroom: flat black ones and clear, flat glass ‘gems.’ I remind kids that some sounds are ‘closed’ (consonants), and some sounds are ‘open’ (vowels). The black stones represent the closed sounds, and the clear ones are the open sounds. For CVC words, a sequence with one black, one clear, and one black is set up in front of the child. They are told a word, then they touch each stone from left to right while saying each sound in the word. Then, they are able to write it, sound by sound. This activity is particularly helpful when segmenting the sounds in words with consonant blends, since kids frequently drop one of the consonants in CCVC and CVCC words.
Teach students to ‘say the sounds’ as they write each one. When beginning reading students are trained with this habit, the logic of the code is reinforced. Just as with reading, you must ‘sound it out,’ with writing you must ‘sound it in …’ in other words, the code is about the sounds of our language, and the letters are mapped to them. Even when children begin learning advanced spellings, it’s still the right strategy to map those spellings to the phonemic foundation of English. It’s often the case that teachers and parents train children to chant letter names when writing - again, I want to heavily discourage this practice. Along these lines, please do not tell children spellings orally. Simply write spellings for kids on scrap paper and they can copy it.
I’ll recap my main tips for keeping the logic of the code clear:
Don’t use letter names. They interfere with automatic decoding and easeful writing.
Teach children to produce phonemes properly. I often tell kids to ‘say it clean’ when they add the ‘pesky uh’ sound to consonants.
DO NOT teach larger units of sound, such as syllables, ‘word families,’ or whole words. Our writing system is based on the phoneme, and this fact should be perfectly clear to young children learning to read.
Teach children to use manipulatives for segmenting while writing. Making them ‘concrete’ for young learners is extremely helpful.
Reading and writing are reversible processes. This is abundantly clear to children who are phonemically aware at every stage of literacy instruction. It’s the foundation of their success with English!