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Tips for Teaching Phonemic Awareness
Experience is our greatest teacher, so I want to share a few “extras” about phonemic awareness that I have discovered.
These “tips” will come in handy:
Not all languages have the same phonemes!
Some children learning English as a new language may not have heard some of our English phonemes before. Some examples are: French does not have the aspirated sound of “p” (as at the beginning of ‘pot’) and many languages do not have the soft, unvoiced “th” consonant digraph sound (as in ‘think’).
In these cases where the phoneme is new to the learner, you will have to slow down and carefully teach them how to pronounce the English phonemes.
Take your time. Don’t rush them.
Short “i” and short “e” can be pesky!
Many children, whether English is their first language or they are English Language Learners, struggle with discriminating between short “i” and short “e”.
I have found it best initially to separate instruction of short “i” from short “e” by several days to a week or two, because so many children have trouble discerning the difference between the two sounds. Once I think a child has a good grasp of short “e”, then I teach short “i”. In Silent Elephant “e”, Part 1, Phonemic Awareness, I put short “e” in Level 3 and short “i” in Level 4 to avoid confusion.
Again, don’t hurry your learner.
Even then I have a few children who have difficulties, so I reteach the lessons and practice with them until they are competent.
Patience is golden!
Children with the least phonemic awareness skills will need your loving patience.
Most likely you will need to do every word in a lesson. I have included long word lists so you won’t run out of words.
You may need to go back over and review part of a lesson or even a whole lesson.
You may need to exaggerate the sounds, to exaggerate stretching out the sounds, to direct children’s attention to your mouth movements and to direct children’s attention to their partner’s mouth movements.
Have your children feel their lips with their fingers and feel where their tongue is in their mouth when they make the sounds. In Silent Elephant “e” we give each child an individual, handheld mirror so they can look at their own mouth movements.
This may seem over the top, but a child (or adult) who does not have phonemic awareness may not actually understand how they are forming sounds.
They will also need to close their eyes and listen carefully to your voice, their neighbor’s voice and their own voice when they make the sounds of the word.
For some children, you may need to engage the help of a speech therapist. This will be obvious as you are teaching them.
You cannot rush this MOST important step, so relax and enjoy their journey with them. You will have so much fun watching them become aware of their language and proud of themselves.
Last tip!! They will get there; they really will! 😊
Never move a child to a new lesson until you are certain the child has mastered the present lesson’s objective. This will pay off in so many ways. One is, you will be able to move through later lessons much more quickly if you build a solid foundation layer by layer in beginning lessons. If that foundation isn’t solid, you will feel the frustration of continually returning to what you thought they should already know.
Keeping this in mind, I never rush a child. I move at their pace.
Three of my students with hearing impairments (one who was born deaf) and one ELL/ESL child with speech and language impairments and profound learning differences needed every word in every lesson. We moved through Part 1 carefully and at their pace resulting in all four of them learning phonemic awareness and developing beautiful reading skills.
Another thing to keep in mind is to plan a little extra time for a struggling child, as they will need 5 to 10 minutes of additional individual tutoring a day to quickly reach that wonderful “Oh, I get it!” moment. That little extra time is powerful.
I hope these tips help smooth out your teaching.
I love helping you be the successful educator you are.
If you have further questions about phonemic awareness, feel free to contact us.