Basic Reading Skills

1. BEGINNING READING
(Phonemic
Awareness)
ANITA M. MANISCAN
MATAOROC ES
Department of Education
Region V
Division of Camarines Sur
Minalabac District
MATAOROC ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

2. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear,
identify, move or change sounds, called
phonemes, in spoken words. Phonemic
awareness is an important basic skill that gets
students ready to develop into readers.
Phonemic awareness is usually taught during
kindergarten and beginning first grade.
What is Phonemic
Awareness?

3. » Phonemic awareness is a critical skill for
learning to read an alphabetically written
language. Yet a fair amount of confusion,
especially among educators, persists about
what this skill is and why it is so important.

4. Phonemic Awareness is important ...
It requires readers to notice how letters
represent sounds. It primes readers for
print. It gives readers a way to approach
sounding out and reading new words. It
helps readers understand the alphabetic
principle (that the letters in words are
systematically represented by sounds).

5. Recognizing that words are made up of
discrete sounds, and that those sounds
can be changed, is essential for
success in learning to read and spell.
Similarly, understanding the connection
that words are made up of phonemes

6. and that phonemes are represented by
graphemes is a vital skill for
understanding print. Being able to take
words apart, put them together again
and adapt them into a new word (or
even a nonsense word!) is a
fundamental skill.

7. Children can demonstrate phonemic awareness
in several ways, including:
 recognizing which words in a set of words
begin with the same sound.
 isolating and saying the first or last sound in
a word.
 combining, or blending the separate sounds
in a word to say the word. ...
 breaking, or segmenting a word into its
separate sounds.

8. When we explain to a child that the
first sound in bug is "buh," what we are
actually pronouncing is neither abstract
(for abstract things are by definition
unpronounceable) nor something
related to a single phoneme.

9. In fact, what we are saying is a syllable,
one that has two phonemes underlying
it. Thus, one difficulty in developing
phonemic awareness is that it is not
possible to explicitly state to the child
what she must become aware of, rather
we can only lead her to try to induce for
herself what must be acquired.

10. How Does Phonemic
Awareness Relate to
Reading and Spelling?

11. Phonemic awareness: the ability to
identify and manipulate the distinct
individual sounds in spoken words.
 Phonics: the ability to decode
words using knowledge of letter-
sound relationships.

12. Fluency: reading with speed and
accuracy. Being able to read
automatically, accurately and quickly
is an important skill when learning to
read.

13. Vocabulary: knowing the
meaning of a wide variety of
words and the structure of written
language.
Comprehension: understanding
the meaning and intent of the text.

14. Things to remember when
teaching phonemic
awareness are……

15.  It is important for children to
hear lots of modelling of these
skills, before being asked to do
it themselves.

16.  Most children learn to orally blend
words before they can orally segment,
and when learning to segment, they
may not hear and say all the
phonemes in a word. For example, for
the word cup, they may say “c-p”.

17.  Continually working on
phonemic awareness and other
phonological activities alongside
teaching phonics is important

18. Stick to cvc words (consonant
vowel consonant) at first, but
remember that these don’t just
include words like hat and van,
but also words like sheep (sh-ee-
p) and chick (ch-i-ck).

19.  Activities should be enjoyable
and engaging; children should
want to do the activity again.
Remember, creating a positive
attitude towards reading and
writing is essential to build on
these skills.

20. Factors that can Affect a
Child’s Phonemic
Awareness

21. There are a number of factors that can
affect a child’s phonemic awareness.
Firstly, check that the child
is pronouncing the phonemes
correctly. There is a tendency for
people to put an ‘uh’ sound on some
phonemes, for example, “cuh” rather
than “c” and “duh” rather than “d”.

22. This leads to a struggle to blend
phonemes: for example with the
word cat, instead of blending
“c-a-t”, they may attempt “cuh-
ahh-tuh”, making “cuhahhtuh”,
which can cause confusion as
it’s not a word.

23.  Hearing difficulties: most children
have a hearing test in their first year of
school, though temporary hearing loss
following a cold and glue ear are
common
 Speech and language difficulties: a
child may have difficulty pronouncing
sounds and words correctly.

24.  Dyslexia: dyslexia is a learning
difficulty which primarily affects
accurate and fluent reading and
spelling. One the characteristics of
dyslexia is poor phonological
awareness, and children with
dyslexia will often need extra
support.

25.  Autism: some children with autism have
speech sound difficulties or auditory
processing disorders. Many children with
autism are visual thinkers, and find abstract
concepts like oral blending and segmenting
difficult to grasp. They are more likely to
benefit from using concrete objects, like
magnetic letters. Remember to avoid long
verbal explanations.

26. Working memory: working memory
is the ability to hold and manipulate
information in the mind for a short
period of time.