What is Phonemic Awareness?

Hi everyone!  I couldn't wait to write some more so I thought I would talk to you about phonemic awareness.  As a teacher, I hear this word a lot, but as a parent I am sure it is a mystery to you what it means.  Phonemic awareness is just that the student is aware of phonemes or sounds in words.  Each letter makes a sound and when you put those sounds together you get words.  We as adults do this without thinking about it, but kids need to learn this process.  To be a good reader, you must be able to hear phonemes or sounds in words.  When you get better, you should be able to manipulate those sounds and make new words.  I am going to give you some websites to go to and some activities you can do at home to help build up your child's phonemic/sound awareness.

• Say a sound of a letter and let your child repeat it to you.  You say "B" and they just repeat the sound.  This can be done in the car or anywhere.  You don't show them the letter or anything.  Just let them repeat the sound.
• Say a word like cat.  Have them tell you the sounds they hear in cat.  Ex... "c"  "a"  "t".  If they can't do this, do it for them and just keep practicing.  Remember...you want this to be a fun time not a stressful time.  They should want to do this.
• After you have done the sounds in words, place some cereal or candy on the table in front of them.  Say a word... do.  Have them move their candy forward to show you how many sounds are in that word. (2)  Do only 2 or 3 letter words.  Be careful with blends and digraphs.  Digraphs are sh, th, ch etc... and blends are st, sl, gl, etc... they should be simple words that they can segment apart.  Here are some I would use... go, to, my, so, but, can, dog, pig, pop, top, tot, hot, mop, map, tap, lap, sun, fun, (I think you get the idea.) Let them eat the cereal or candy when they are done.
• Compound words...compound words are two words that come together to make one new word.  It is good for them to be able to separate these words apart.  I have mine hold their hands together.  I say a word like doghouse.  They take one hand and put it to the side and say dog.  Then they take their other hand put it to the side and say house.  I then have them put their hands together to say doghouse.  This gives a visual clue as well as verbal that this word has two words in it.  

Continue doing these sound awareness activities and later I will give you more difficult activities to do with them.  Remember...this is to be fun.  You can easily do this in the car because you don't need to show anything it is all verbal.

Web sites to go to...

http://www.professorgarfield.org/phonemics/farm3.html  This is a phonemic site that is so much fun.  Orson's Farm has several fun activities to do.

http://www.literactive.com/Home/roadtoreading.asp  This site is not completely finished, but what your child needs right now works great!  Begin at the nursery rhymes and continue down the road

http://www.starfall.com/ This is one of the best sites on the internet for reading.  Check out the ABC's and all the activities they have you do.

I hope these activities will help you.  I have so much more that I want to share on this topic so I will post more tomorrow and remember... read to your kids if you want them to be good readers!!!