Phonological Awareness:
What it IS & what it IS NOT
Phonological awareness skills are important in order to develop good reading skills. Having good phonological awareness skills means that a child is able to manipulate sounds and words, or “play” with sounds and words.
Phonological awareness includes the following skills:
Why is phonological awareness important?
Is Phonological Awareness the same as Phonics?
Phonological awareness includes the following skills:
- Recognizing when words rhyme (e.g., “Do ‘cat’ and ‘shoe’ rhyme?”) and coming up with a word that rhymes (e.g., “What rhymes with ‘key’?”)
- Segmentation of words in sentences (e.g., “Clap for each word you hear in the sentence ‘The dog is furry.’”)
- Blending syllables (e.g., “I am going to say parts of a word. Tell me what the word is. ‘Pan-da.’”)
- Segmentation of syllables (e.g., “Clap for each syllable you hear in the word ‘refrigerator.’”)
- Deletion of syllables (e.g., “Say the word ‘strawberry.’ Now say it without saying ‘straw.’”)
- Identifying sounds in words (e.g., “What sound do you hear at the end of ‘tulip’?”)
- Blending sounds (e.g., “Put these sounds together to make a word. ‘D-oo-r.’”)
- Segmentation of sounds (e.g., “Tell me each sound you hear in the word ‘cat’?”)
- Deletion of sounds (e.g., “Say ‘chair.’ Now say it without the ‘ch.’”)
- Addition of sounds (e.g., “Say ‘cook.’ Now say it with an ‘e’ at the end.”)
- Manipulation of sounds (e.g., “Change the ‘s’ in ‘sad’ to a ‘d’ and say the new word.”)
Why is phonological awareness important?
- Phonological awareness is important because it is a basis for reading.
- Children begin to read by listening to others read aloud, then recognizing sounds in words, sounding words out for themselves, recognizing familiar words, and so on.
- By engaging in word play, children learn to recognize patterns among words and use this knowledge to read and build words.
Is Phonological Awareness the same as Phonics?
- NO! Phonological Awareness is NOT the same as phonics.
- Phonics refers to learning the relationships between letters of written language and sounds of spoken language. It is a visual task.
- Knowledge of the alphabet is not necessary to develop phonological awareness skills.
- Phonological awareness is an auditory only task.