Dean Kindig and Moira Prister

My daughter in law is starting Summereaders in Austin TX, and has already run into students with phonological awareness problems. Phonological awareness facilitates a student’s ability to manipulate sounds, which is vital for phonic analysis and reading growth. It allows kids to transfer training (“Because I already know leopard and size, this new word must be jeopardize“). Here is the best phonological awareness game, both from a pedagogical standpoint and maximum student enjoyment:
http://www.superduperinc.com/products/view.aspx?pid=gb215

http://quietube.com/v.php/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiOwcJsEuOo

Don’t stop teaching phonological awareness when the youngster starts reading; keep calling attention to words and how to attack them.

Here is a complete list of all of the Phonological Awareness Tasks (adapted from Virginia Department of Education (1998) [11] and Gillon (2004)^[1])

Listening Skills: The ability to attend to and distinguish environmental and speech sounds from one another^[11]

• Alertness – Awareness and localization of sounds
• Discrimination – Recognize same/different sounds
• Memory – Recall of sounds and sound patterns
• Sequencing – Identify order of what was heard
• Figure-ground – Isolate one sound from background of other sounds
• Perception – Comprehension of sounds heard

Syllable-structure Awareness Tasks

• Syllable segmentation – e.g., “How many syllables (or parts) are in the word coffee?”^[12]
• Syllable completion – e.g., “Here is a picture of a rabbit. I’ll say the first part of the word. Can you finish the word ra_____?”^[13]
• Syllable identity – e.g., “Which part of complete and compare sound the same?”^[12]
• Syllable deletion – e.g., “Say finish. Now say it again without the fin”^[14]

Onset-rime Awareness Tasks:

• Spoken word recognition – e.g., “Do these words rhyme: shell bell?”^[12]
• Spoken rhyme detection or rhyme oddity task – e.g., “Which word does not rhyme: fish, dish, hook?” ^[15]
• Spoken rhyme generation –e.g., “Tell me words that rhyme with bell?”^[13]
• Onset-rime blending ^[9]

Phonemic Awareness Tasks

• Alliteration awareness (aka phoneme detection and sound or phoneme categorization) – e.g., “Which word has a different first sound: bed, bus, chair, ball?”^[16]
• Phoneme matching – e.g., “Which word begins with the same sound as bat: horn, bed, cup?” ^[16]
• Phoneme isolation – e.g., “Tell me the sound you hear at the beginning of the word food” ^[3]
• Phoneme completion – e.g., “Here is a picture of a watch. Finish the word for me: wa_____ “^[13]
• Phoneme blending with words or non-words – e.g., “What word do these sounds make: m…oo…n?” ^[9]
• Phoneme deletion, also referred to as phoneme elision – e.g., “Say coat. Now say it again but don’t say /k/”^[14]
• Phoneme segmentation with words or non-words – e.g., “How many sounds can you hear in the word it?^[12]
• Phoneme reversal – e.g., “Say na (as in nap). Now say na backwards”^[9]
• Phoneme manipulation – e.g., “Say dash. Now say it again, but instead of /æ/ say /I/”^[14]
• Spoonerism – e.g., felt made becomes melt fade^[12

To learn what elements comprise strong phonological awareness, parents would like the way this site organizes them.