This document discusses phonological awareness, which is the understanding that spoken language can be broken down into smaller linguistic units like sentences, words, syllables, and phonemes. It explains that phonological awareness is an important predictor of reading success. It provides examples of how language can be segmented at different levels. It also discusses related topics like phonics, graphemes, auditory skills, and guidelines for teaching letter-sound correspondences to develop phonological awareness.

1. Phonological Awareness

2. Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness is the understanding that……
Spoken language can be broken into smaller units:
• Sentences into words
• Words into syllables
• Syllables into onset-rimes
• Words/syllables into phonemes
Phonological awareness is an important predictor of
reading success

3. Phonological awareness
“The tiger jumps across the river” - sentence
- words
The ti-ger jumps a-cross the ri-ver - syllables
/ðə ˈtaɪɡə dʒʌmps əˈkrɒs ðə ˈrɪvə / - phonemes
the tiger jumps across the river

4. phoneme
• The smallest unit of spoken language sounds
• Vowels, consonants
• Transcribed using the IPA (International
Phonetic Alphabet) system e.g., /bʌs/,
/dʒɪˈrɑːf /
• Phonemes are not the same as letters
(graphemes)

5. graphemes
How many graphemes in the word ‘through’?
th r ough 3 graphemes
θ r u: phonemes

6. phonics
• PHONICS is knowing how letter names and
phonemes relate to each other
• Also known as ‘letter-sound correspondence’
(grapheme-phoneme correspondence)

7. Phonological awareness
Phonics

8. Auditory skills and phonological
awareness
• The ability to hear and discriminate phonemes
require adequate “auditory skills” and/or
“perceptual skills”
• Auditory  perception  production
Map or mat?
Star or start?
Cool or pool?

9. Auditory and visual skills, and letter-
sound correspondence
• The ability to hear and discriminate phonemes require
adequate “auditory skills” and “auditory perceptual skills”
• The ability to see and discriminate reversible letters require
adequate “visual skills” and “visual perceptual skills”
• The ability to associate letter with sounds requires
integration of auditory and visual skills
Auditory  perception  production
(b,d,p or q)
Visual  perception  production

10. Continuum for the development of
phonological awareness
Rhyme & alteration  sentence segmentation
 syllable blending & segmenting  onset-
rime blending & segmenting  phoneme
blending, segmenting, & manipulation
*also known as phonemic awareness
Early developing
Late developing

11. Teaching phonological awareness
The majority of students at risk for reading
difficulties have poor phonological awareness
and can profit from explicit instructions in
learning letter-sound correspondences, and
blending, segmenting, and manipulating
phonemes as early as possible

12. Letter-sound correspondence

13. Teaching letter-sound
correspondences
• Expert estimates of the number of speech
sounds or phonemes in English vary from 40
to 52
• For purposes of teaching students, most
estimates are about 44
• In learning to read and write, students learn
more than 100 spellings (graphemes) for these
phonemes

14. Teaching letter-sound
correspondences cont…..
• The largest division of phonemes is
consonants (C) or vowels (V)
• The English language also makes use of
consonant digraphs and consonant blends.
– Consonant digraph – two consonants that
represent one sound (ph for /f/)
– Consonant blend – combines the sounds of two or
more consonants so that they are clustered
together. (bl, spl)

15. Phonemes: vowels
Short Example Long Example
I kit i: fleece
ɛ dress ɛ: bear
æ trap ɑ: palm
ɒ lot ɔː thought
ʊ foot u: goose
ʌ up ɜ: nurse
ə bonus

16. Phonemes: consonants

17. Diagraphs & diphthongs
ch,ck, gh, kn, ng, ph, sc, sh, th, wh, wr, ai, ay, ay,
ee, ie, oa, oe, ow

18. Consonant blend
bl,cl, sc, sl, pl, br, fr, st, sw, str, sch

19. Guidelines for teaching letter-sound
correspondence
• Students use grapheme-phoneme correspondences
to decode words
• Struggling readers benefit from learning to blend
and segment sounds so that they can decode and
spell words
• A number of programs have been developed using
systematic approaches to introduce the letter-
sound relationships and how to blend sounds to
read words (e.g: Jolly phonics, catch up literacy)

20. Guidelines for teaching letter-sound
correspondences
• Teach one phoneme at a time. Start with phonemes that
occur frequently in simple words (e.g., /a/, /m/, /t/)
• Letters that look familiar and have similar sounds (e.g., b
and d) should be separated in the instructional sequence to
avoid confusion
• Generally, short vowels are taught before long vowels
• Lower case letters are taught first
• Start by teaching the sounds of the letters, not their
names.
• Teach blending and segmenting in oral as well as written
language
• Highlight the first phoneme of words

21. Guidelines for teaching letter-sound
correspondences
• Teach that some letters can represent more than one
sound. For each letter, teach the most frequent sound,
and then teach other sounds (e.g., /c/ in cat then /s/ in
city)
• Teach that different letters can make the same sound
(e.g., /s/ in sit and city)
• Teach that sounds can be represented by a single letter
or a combination of letters (e.g., /e/ in me and meet)
• Add a kinesthetic component by having students trace
or write the letter as they say the phoneme
• Colour-code consonants or vowels

24. Can you read this?
I cnduo’t bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I
was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan
mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it
dseno’t mttaer in what oderr the lterets in a wrod are,
the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be
in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you
can still raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the
huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the
wrod as a wlohe.

29. ACTIVITY 1
In your group, discuss the following questions
What is the main focus of the LINUS books in …
• phonological awareness skills?
Why?

30. Trouble-shooting 1

31. Trouble shooting 2

32. Reflection
• What do you think of the adaptations that you
have to make?
• What can you do to teach phonological
awareness effectively?