Phonological Awareness Is the Awareness of Sound Structure of Language

Phonological Awareness

Jennifer Molinsky

Phonological Awareness is the awareness of sound structure of language.

Before children work written letters and words they need to go through a series of explorations with sounds and words orally.

Montessori education is well known for its strengths in language. Maria Montessori saw the need to expose children to naming, ordering, and reading at a very young age. Many of the materials have indirect aims in preparing the child to read and write along with the materials that are specifically designed to read phonetically. Before they can read or write, theymust explore and play with language orally. Phonological awareness activities are simple games you can play with your children regardless of how young they are. These activities are critical to help children in their journey towards fluent reading.

Many parents want to know how they can help their children at home. Here are a few games that can be played at home, in the car, in a box with a fox, anywhere.

1. Rhyming. Playing with rhyming words is critical. If you remember when you were a child, jump rope games, singing and Mother Goose were as common as Yu Gi Oh and play station today. Reading books that have a rhyming sequence and creating rhymes are fun. Children love to rhyme real words and create non-sense words. Think of Dr. Seuss. A variation of this game would also be can you say pickle with a "z"? Zickle.

1. Alliteration. This is exploring words that begin with the same sound like nine new nickels, five fantastic flickering fish. There are books that are written with this pattern. You can even create a phrase like three yellow birds and say zee zellow zirds.

1. Sentence segmenting. This is simply tapping your legs for each word spoken in a phrase or sentence.

1. Onset-rime. Onset is the beginning of a word; the rime is the end of the word. The way the game is played is by using your hands. By holding your left hand out say the beginningof the word then hold out your right hand and say the ending of the word. Repeat the gesture and then say the word in its entirety and at the same time gently slap both hands onto your legs. For example: chair, ch....air, ch....air, chair. This can be done by saying any word. You can also do this in reverse order and ask the child if s/he can guess the word you are saying. Even another variation of this game, once the child has mastered this is:“chair, ch....air, ch....air, can you say ‘chair’ with out the “air”…CH; or “can you say ‘chair’ without “ch”....AIR.

1. Word segmenting/blending. This is done by clapping to the syllable count of any word. Once again this can be played anywhere. You can also do this in reverse order and ask the child if s/he can guess the word you are saying.

1. Sound games. This is the traditional "I spy game". I spy with my little eye something that begins with the sound "r". This is done with a limited number of objects or range of vision.

C:\Documents and Settings\Joen\My Documents\OMTI\Lectures\intro to four areas\Language\Phoneme parenthandout JEN.doc