“First Things First!”
What’s Phonemic Awareness
How much do YOU truly know about phonemic awareness?
The beginning of the school year or when you begin tutoring a student is THE time to ask the question, “Do my children have phonemic awareness?”
Asking this question about beginning readers is critical, and especially critical for any student, preschooler through adult, who has struggled with learning to read or who is learning to read English.
But first things first—just how much do YOU truly know about phonemic awareness?
It’s important you ask yourself that question before you ask the first question—“Do my children have phonemic awareness?”
It’s important that you understand what phonemic awareness is and why it’s so important to the success of all of your students.
So…Just what is Phonemic Awareness?
Phonemic awareness is being aware of phonemes, the smallest unit of sound in our language, and understanding that phonemes flow one after another in our spoken words.
Phonemic awareness has no connection to the printed word. It is solely the ability to hear the individual sounds within words and the silence of sound between words and syllables.
When children can hear the individual sounds within words and the silence of sound between words and syllables, they gain knowledge of how sounds “work” in our spoken language—beginning with the smallest, single unit of sound and connecting those units of sound to form meaning.
This consists of being able to do these crucial skills:
· identifying the first, last and medial sound(s)
· phoneme isolation
· phoneme blending
· phoneme segmenting
· phoneme deletion
· phoneme substitution
· phoneme manipulation
· phoneme reversal
· hearing and generating rhyme.
As any learner, preschooler through adult, develops these skills, they become increasing aware of the phonemes in our language and how those sounds flow together to give our spoken words, sentences and dialogues meaning. They know how our language works.
Upon first hearing the term phonemic awareness in the 1990s and listening to a definition such as I gave above, I was still confused. I couldn’t understand how a person could not hear the individual phonemes in our spoken language. It just seemed so simple–so natural.
A gentleman teaching a Lindamood-Bell class I attended explained phonemic awareness by comparing the ability of a person to hear the individual notes within a chord on a piano to the ability of a person to hear the individual sounds within a word.
He asked how many of us thought we would be able to tell him what the 3 or 4 individual notes were in a chord played on the piano. He said that we might be able to tell if the chord contained high or low notes or if it was major or minor, but would we hear the chord as one sound or as 3 or 4 distinct sounds?
I decided that as soon as I got home, I would actually try this activity. I had my daughter play 3 and 4 note chords high and low on the piano. I painstakingly listened! Did I hear one sound when I listened to a chord made of 3 or 4 sounds or did I hear all the notes separately?
I‘m a pianist myself, but I found that I actually struggled hearing the different notes within a chord especially if it was an unfamiliar chord.
Through my struggles, I became more acutely aware of the different notes within each chord. I focused my attention more and more on the individual sounds.
Even now I intensely concentrate on the individual sounds within chords while I play the piano. That is exactly what we do when we teach phonemic awareness—we teach our students to listen to the individual sounds that are flowing together to make a word.
Try this activity yourself. Have someone play a 3-note chord made of high notes and a 4-note chord made of low notes on the piano as you listen carefully to discover if you hear the chord as one sound or as 3 or 4 distinct sounds.
Let me know your thoughts about this experiment. Did you find this activity clarifying and enlightening or was it confusing and frustrating for you? Please email or call me to share your experience. I would love to hear from you!
In my next blog post, I will share another learning experience I had with my daughter’s piano teacher as I continued my search to truly understand what phonemic awareness is, the difficulties a person might have in attaining phonemic awareness and why it is so important.
If you have further questions about phonemic awareness, feel free to contact us.