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Phonological Awareness

Reading is based on the sounds of the letters within our alphabet system (Herron, 2008; Moats, 2010). The word part, “phon”, means sound. Words used in regard to reading that begin with this word part, phon-, relate to the sounds within words.

Phonological awareness refers to an ability to “play with the sounds in words”. Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize that spoken words are made up of individual sound parts. It includes (from simplest to most complex) word awareness, recognition of rhyme and alliteration, syllable awareness, onset and
rime blending, and phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words. An example of how beginning readers show us they have phonemic awareness is combining or blending the separate sounds of a word to say the word ("/c/ /a/ /t/ - cat.")

Correct Sound Production

OG Card Deck is an app developed for Mayerson Academy's accredited Orton-Gillingham training programs. It's a simple and effective electronic card deck that enhances understanding of over 80 common grapheme-phoneme correspondences that form the building blocks for reading and spelling. It's a free app available for iPhone, iPad and Android:

Simplifying Syllables
Background Information on Phonological Awareness

Phonological Awareness: What Do You Need To Know from Understood.org

Phoneme vs. Phonological Awareness: Knowing the Difference Matters for Assessment and Instruction from The Reading League (53 min video)

Phonological and Phoneme Awareness from Reading Rockets

Literacy Nugget from Pam Kastner of PaTTAN about Advanced Phonemic Awareness

Activities

The Florida Center on Reading Research has phonological and phonemic awareness activities:

  • Grades K-1 (Scroll down the page to find a large number of links to packets of activities. This is one example.)
  • Grades 2-3 (Again scroll down the page to find a large number of links to packets of activities.)

Other sources for activities:

Phonemic Awareness with Heggerty:

 Rhyming

Kindergarten: Rhyming, Initial Sounds and More Grade One

Equipped for Reading by David Kilpatrick

Basic Components of a Phoneme Awareness Lesson, by Bruce Murray, Auburn University School of Education

Making Friends with Phonemes by the Reading Genie

Spelfabet: Learning the building blocks of words – sounds, their spellings, and word parts