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Phonemes are the sounds of spoken language,
and English is comprised of about 41 of them. Before children can learn
to read, they must demonstrate phonemic awareness, the ability to hear,
identify, and manipulate the phonemes in spoken words. Some competencies
exhibited by children having phonemic awareness are:
• pronouncing phonemes in isolation
(/m/ /r/ /s/);
• blending phonemes to form words (/d/
/o/ /g/ dog);
• identifying words that begin with
the same sound (fish, fan, fire start with /f/); and
• segmenting the first and last sounds
of a word (bat starts with /b/ and ends with /t/).
The importance of phonemic awareness to early
reading success has only come to the forefront in the past 15 to 20 years.
The NICHD synthesized data from over 100 researchers at 14 sites, and
the findings indicated that lack of phonemic awareness is the underlying
cause of reading disabilities, including dyslexia. Most children learn
to read regardless of how they are taught, yet an estimated 30 percent
lack phonemic awareness. In spite of this, studies also show that nearly
all beginning readers can develop phonemic awareness if given intensive
systematic instruction.
Research also validates the superiority of
methodology in which phonemes are taught in isolation and then blended
to form words. Analytic approaches, which are commonly used, require students
to extract like sounds from words. This task requires a sophisticated
level of phonemic awareness, so students lacking this skill cannot compare,
contrast, or extract sounds.
Hands-on, natural approaches are far more
effective with young children, so manipulatives are ideal for developing
phonemic awareness. The following sequence is recommended.
Step 1 - Teach phonemes as isolated sounds
First, teach the most commonly used English phonemes in isolation. This
is referred to as a synthetic approach. Auditory associations that children
have heard and can relate to are most effective since this helps them
to hear, say, and recall the phonemes. In early instruction, do not associate
letter names with the sounds. The English Phonemes Resource List, which
is available for download at the end of this section, specifies associations
used in the Reading Manipulatives Phoneme
Songs & Blending program.
Step 2 - Blend phonemes to form
words
In the early stages of blending, teachers should help students blend isolated
phonemes to form words. A worthwhile strategy is to use pictures that
represent the phonemes. Line up three phoneme pictures that can be blended
into a word. Help students to blend the phonemes from left to right to
read the word. Start with picture blending even though some students may
already know the graphemes that represent the phonemes.
 Step
3 - Break three-phoneme words into onsets and rimes
The onset of a syllable is the initial phoneme or blend; the rime is the
vowel and any subsequent consonants (also called a phonemic or graphemic
base). One of the most effective methods for introducing blending is with
word families. These groups of rhyming words are formed with a common
base and multiple initial phonemes or blends (i.e., -at with phonemes:
bat, cat, chat, fat, hat, mat, pat, sat, that; -at with blends: brat,
scat, slat). By representing phonemes with picture associations, word
families can be done before letters are attached to the sounds.
Step 4 - Work with phonemes
in words
Once students are able to hear and produce phonemes, they can work with
sounds at the word level. The following analytic activities require preexisting
phonemic awareness concepts. For instance, if students are presented with
groups of words that begin with or contain a phoneme, they must deduce
that the similar sound in each example is what is being considered. They
must already know what phonemes are and the sounds they make in order
to perform this task. For this reason, the following analytic activities
extend and solidify phoneme competency:
• phoneme isolation - student
hears individual sounds within a word (man begins with /m/)
• phoneme
identity - student hears same sounds in different words (/f/ in fan, father,
fish)
• phoneme segmentation - student breaks a word into separate sounds
(sock = /s/ /o/ /k/)
• phoneme addition - student creates a new word by
adding a phoneme (/s/ + top = stop)
• phoneme substitution - student changes
phoneme to make new word (fire /f/ to /t/ = tire)
Initial
Phoneme, Final
Phoneme, and Blend
& Digraph Sorts afford student with plentiful practice on these skills.
In addition, the pictures can be used to teach vocabulary words.
Download
Phonemic Awareness Tips
Download
Phoneme Songs Resource List
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