Phonological & Phonemic Awareness
Phonological and Phonemic Awareness is an essential component of early literacy. Key skills that children need to acquire in this area include: orally discriminate and identify sounds; understand and identify rhymes; segment syllables in spoken words; visually discriminate and identify letters and sounds; understand that written words are made up of individual letters and sounds, and that sentences are made up of words.
Letters are symbols that carry meaning and sounds, all while making words. Support children to build these connections.
Early writing opportunities and intentionally designed experiences support children to grow as both writers and readers. Creating words gives a new form of representation and voice to a child.
Words have parts called syllables. Play these games to teach and reinforce children’s ability to hear syllables in words.
The I Spy Game is a foundational initial phoneme game, setting the stage formore formalized targeted experiences. It is played in a small group or individually.
How do we build phonological awareness? Active Listening! Active listening games teach children to listen carefully and analytically to sounds in their environment.
Children learn phonological and phonemic awareness in overlapping stages and teachers should target multiple goals simultaneously.