…is the basis of phonics.
Phonics has come into conversation in India over the past 8-10 years as an important part of early and foundational learning. Unfortunately, many teachers misunderstand phonics as ‘teaching letters using songs and games’. The structured phonics approach, however, is much more than that and begins, in fact, with what may be counterintuitive – hearing. After all, the root word of ‘phonics’ is the Greek word ‘phōnē’, which means ‘sound’ or ‘voice’.
What is phonemic awareness?
A crucial goal for an early years teacher must be to develop phonemic awareness in her students. Why is this goal crucial? And what does the term ‘phonemic awareness’ even mean?
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word.
The word ‘cat’ has 3 phonemes: /k/ /a/ /t/
The word ‘sack’ has 3 phonemes as well: /s/ /a/ /k/
And the word ‘cheque’ has only 3 phonemes too: /ch/ /e/ /k/
Interestingly, the word ‘kite’ has 3 phonemes as well: /k/ /ī/ /t/
But the word ‘fax’ has 4 phonemes: /f/ /a/ /k/ /s/
Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken words. A child who has developed phonemic awareness can answer these questions:
Hear: How many sounds do you hear in the word ‘cat’? THREE!
Identify: What are the different sounds that you hear in the word ‘cat’? /k/ /a/ /t/
Manipulate: Can you say ‘cat’ without the /k/ sound? AT!
Across different languages, research shows us that phonemic awareness is one of the best predictors of how well children will learn to read in the first two years of school. Students at risk for reading difficulties often have lower levels of phonemic awareness than their classmates.
How is phonemic awareness built?
Let us follow the learning trajectory of Seema, an LKG student who has just started preschool:
Building listening stamina: Seema learns to pay attention to sounds for longer periods without getting distracted.
Activities:
Sound Hunt: The teacher plays different sounds (clapping, bells, animals) and asks students to point in the direction of the sound.
Quiet Listening Time: Students close their eyes and listen to soft music or nature sounds, then talk about what they heard.
Understanding rhyme: Seema learns to hear words that sound the same at the end.
Activities:
Singing Nursery Rhymes: The teacher sings rhyming songs like Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star or Hickory Dickory Dock, emphasising the rhyming words.
Rhyming Story Time: The teacher reads a rhyming book and pauses before the last word, letting students guess the rhyming word.
Segmenting sentences into words: Seema learns that sentences are made up of separate words.
Activities:
Clap for Words: The teacher says a short sentence like “I love school,” and students clap for each word.
Jump for Words: Students jump once for each word in a spoken sentence.
Segmenting words into syllables: Seema learns to break words into parts (syllables).
Activities:
Clap the Word: The teacher says a word like ‘banana,’ and students clap for each part: ba-na-na.
Syllable Sorting: Students sort picture cards based on the number of syllables in the word.
Segmenting words into onset and rime: Seema learns to break a word into its first sound (onset) and the rest of the word (rime).
Activities:
Sound Slide: The teacher says ‘/m/…at’ slowly, and students blend it into ‘mat.’
Guess My Word: The teacher says the onset and rime separately (/b/ - all), and students guess and say the whole word (ball).
Isolating the beginning sound of words: Seema learns to hear and say the first sound in a word.
Activities:
What's My Sound? The teacher says, "Map! What sound does it start with?" and students say "/m/!"
Mystery Bag: The teacher pulls an object from a bag and asks students to say its first sound.
Isolating the ending sound of words: Seema learns to hear and say the last sound in a word.
Activities:
Last Sound Echo: The teacher says a word like ‘dog,’ and students repeat only the last sound: /g/!
Sound Match: Students find objects or pictures that have the same ending sound (hat and bat).
Isolating the middle sound of words: Seema learns to hear the vowel sound in the middle of a word.
Activities:
Guess the Middle Sound: The teacher says ‘cat’ and asks, “What’s the middle sound?” Students say /a/.
Stretch the Word: Students slowly stretch out words like ‘top’ (/t/ - /o/ - /p/) and say the middle sound louder.
Segmenting phonemes: Seema learns to break a word into all its sounds.
Activities:
Tap the Sounds: Students tap their fingers as they say each sound in a word (sun = /s/ /u/ /n/).
Sound Boxes: Students slide a block into a box for each sound they hear in a word.
Manipulating phonemes: Seema learns to change sounds in words to make new words.
Activities:
Sound Swap: The teacher asks, “What happens if we change the /m/ in 'mat' to /s/?” Students say "sat."
Silly Word Play: Students change the first sound in their name to another sound, like ‘Seema’ becoming ‘Beema.’
Phonemic awareness activities must be built into the school calendar and must be conducted a few times every day. For example, a teacher can begin Circle Time by singing a rhyme, can have students say the first sound of their name as they line up for Break Time, have students break up new words into syllables during Story Time and have them isolate the ending sounds of number names during Math Time. Each activity can be just 3-4 minutes long, but continuous, planned practice is what matters in building phonemic awareness!
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Edition: 4.09
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