Phonological Awareness in Young Children

Question: Describe about the Handbook of classroom activities to develop phonological awareness in young children? Answer: Introduction The importance of phonemic awareness for the development of early learning to read is widely accepted but people are still skeptic regarding the role it plays in the development of reading and pronouncing skill of the children. Some educators get confused about the concept of phonetic awareness with some other relevant issues. So there is a need to define phonemic awareness in an appropriate way. Phonemic awareness is defined as the capability to hear, identify, recognize, and manipulate sounds. It is necessary for children to be aware of how the sounds of the words work before they learn to read prints from the book. To make the children understand that the words are made up of speech sounds which are called Phonemes. Phonemes are the smallest segment of a particular word that can be spoken in a way that makes a difference in the meaning of the word. (Lane, 2015) It is evident that phonological awareness is essential for learning to read any system of words. Research reveals that one who finds phonemic awareness and phonological skills difficult indicates that he possess poor reading, pronouncing and spelling developmental aspect. The job of a phonological processor is done automatically by efficiently communicating with the children. But a level of metalinguistic speech is required to develop reading and learning, which is not easy or natural. Another aspect that needs a mention is that phonological skill do not have any association with the level of intelligence. It has been proved that some very intelligent people have problems related to linguistic awareness. (Phonological Awareness, 2015) Thus we see that the importance of the phonological or phonemic awareness at the early childhood level is immense. We will try to explain the argument for the importance of phonological skills to reading and spelling. (PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS, 2015) Importance Of Phonological Awareness For learning and using alphabetic writing system, Phoneme awareness is required. Without proper phoneme awareness student might be clueless about the letters printed on the textbooks and get mystified with this printing system. The phoneme awareness helps to identify and accurately predict the future of the children regarding their ability to read, pronounce and spell words. This type of prediction is done through simple tests of knowledge of the names of the letters, awareness related to the speech sound of words and vocabulary. (Pre-K Pages, 2015) Some poor readers and spellers are incidentally lack proper phonological skill and phonemic awareness. Thus the need for the awareness is recognized. (Reading Rockets, 2009) Phonological awareness created by classroom instructions help the beginners to reduce difficulties associated with reading and spelling. (Partin, 2013) Phonological awareness helps children to attend to unfamiliar words and try to associate and compare them with such words that are familiar to them. It helps the children to repeat and pronounce words in a correct manner. This type of awareness also enables the children to remember words so that they can use whenever required. One of the important thing that the phonological awareness helps children to do is that they learn to distinguish between words that sound similar and segregate the meaning of the two separate word. (Good and Gillon, 2014) (Reading Rockets, 2010) Teaching strategies to develop phonological awareness: Phonemic awareness can be stimulated by using instructional activities in the preschool and elementary school in order to ensure that the children are ready for their reading, pronouncing and spelling activities. (Ldonline.org, 2015)Here are four teaching techniques are discussed that are going to help an educator to develop phonological skills in the children. (Aability.com, 2015) (Teams.lacoe.edu, 2015) Listening To A Series Of Sound The strategy is to develop skills of attentiveness and memory enhancement by listening to a sequence of sounds and language regarding discussing them. Materials: Here objects are required that make distinct sounds. Some of the materials that are needed in these activities are discussed below: Objects that make sounds: Banging on the table, clapping hands, coughing, crumpling paper, hammering, pouring water, ringing the bell, whistling Instructional procedure: In this game, children are advised to recognize the sounds made by all the available materials separately. Once they have successfully identified the single sounds of the objects, they must be advised to close their eyes. The educator now makes one sound at a time and asks students to recognize them with closed eyes. The answer of the students must in a sentence form like This is the sound of a bell. Once the students are able to identify single sounds the teacher must next continue with pair of sounds. The students with closed eyes must again identify sounds and answer them in a sentence form. Then lastly the educator must make a series of sound and let the children to answer them. It must be kept in mind that the educator must individually ask students so that each and every child is able to participate in this game. (Mihai et al., 2014) Clapping Names To Identify Syllables The strategy here is to help children identify syllables by telling them to clap and count the number of syllables in their own names. This is done to acquaint the children to the nature of syllables. (Nchindila, 2012) Materials: Paper cut outs with names of the children written on it, a basket to store the paper cutouts Instructional procedure: First the educator must write down names on the paper cutouts. The names that are to be selected must be of contrasting lengths which will make identification of syllables diverse. Next the educator must invite a child and ask him/her to select a paper and read out the name on it. The name must be repeated by the educator syllable by syllable while clapping hands on the count of each syllable in the name. After this ask the children How many times did we clapped the hands? and So how many syllables are there in the name? (Mann and Foy, 2003) In this way different names of varying length must be selected by the children so that they can count more than two syllables in the names. This procedure can also be done by introducing pictures of different objects and clapping by pronouncing the names. In this way syllables can be counted and understood by children. Finding Intial And Final Sounds This teaching strategy enables children to identify initial phonemes. This is done by comparing and contrasting the initial sounds of a wide range of words. (Tips for Teaching Phonological Awareness, 2015) Materials: Picture cards Instructional procedure: The educator is advised to use a table for this procedure. The educator is required to spread the picture cards on the table. Then the children must be asked to identify and select those pictures whose name start with a similar sound. For example, children must select picture cards of box and ball and separate it as the initial phoneme is similar. Here again the educator needs to be more cautious about the pronouncing the words after the picture card is selected. The words must be pronounced by elongating the initial phoneme of the words like b-b-b-b-box, b-b-b-ball. This can be further done by creating small groups of children and passing pictures around them. They must identify the pictures and drop the pictures on the pile of similar initial phoneme. Here the educator is advised to individually assess the children and allow them to select, separate and pronounce the words in a proper way. It is necessary for a phonological instructor to allow every child to participate in the activities. (Justin, n.d.) Take A Sound Away The game aims at the ability of the children to separate the sounds of the words and understand the meaning of those words. Material: A white board and a marker Instructional procedure: The educator first must write down some words on the board whose elimination of the first letter can form a meaningful word. For example, hear, blow etc. these words can be used in this game. If the first letter of the word Hear is removed, then we get Ear which holds a meaning. Next the educator must loudly pronounce the word written on the board indicating the students to repeat the word. Once they have repeated the words, the instructor must make them understand the meaning of the word by actions. Then the educator must erase the first letter of the word and pronounce the word loudly and in an elongated manner. Then again the meaning of the word must be taught the children. In this by taking away the first letter of the words, the initial phoneme changes. Conclusion The different strategies used in the phonological activities are playful in nature but each strategy focuses on the different sound structure. Our aim is to introduce phonemic awareness as a component I the early literacy program. The handbook of classroom activities to develop phonological awareness motivates the educator or teacher to promote students in a environment believed to be linguistically rich. It is highly necessary for the parents to recognize the need of their children to develop phonological skill in order to enable their children to read and spell properly. Literary programs that include these type of phonological awareness activities must be encouraged by the society and its relevance must be recognized. (Varela Osorio, Viecco Reyes and Florez Trochez, 2014) References Aability.com, (2015).FREE Phonemic Awareness Games. [online] Available at: https://aability.com/styled-3/styled-6/index.html [Accessed 25 Feb. 2015]. Fresch, M. and Harrison, D. (2013). Playing With Poetry to Develop Phonemic Awareness.IRAE, pp.1-9. Good, P. and Gillon, G. (2014). Exploring the benefits of integrating sound-field amplification and phonological awareness intervention for young school-aged children.Speech, Language and Hearing, 17(1), pp.2-14. Justin, N. (n.d.).The impact of phonological awareness on reading acquisition: Discrepancy between research and practice. Lane, H. (2015).Phonological Awareness: A Sound Beginning. 1st ed. [ebook] Available at: https://curry.virginia.edu/reading-projects/projects/garf/Lane-GA_RF_PA_Handoutpdf.pdf [Accessed 25 Feb. 2015]. Ldonline.org, (2015).Phonological Awareness: Instructional and Assessment Guidelines | LD Topics | LD OnLine. [online] Available at: https://www.ldonline.org/article/6254/ [Accessed 25 Feb. 2015]. Mann, V. and Foy, J. (2003). Phonological awareness, speech development, and letter knowledge in preschool children.Annals of Dyslexia, 53(1), pp.149-173. Mihai, A., Friesen, A., Butera, G., Horn, E., Lieber, J. and Palmer, S. (2014). Teaching Phonological Awareness to All Children Through Storybook Reading.Young Exceptional Children. Nchindila, B. (2012). The role of phonological awareness in early childhood reading in English.Per Linguam, 27(2). Partin, J. (2013).5 Quick, Easy, and Fun Phonemic Awareness Activities. [online] EarlyChildhoodTeacher.org. 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