Phonological Awareness: Interventions and Engaging Ways to Practice

There is literally a ton of solid research that supports the critical importance of explicitly teaching students, so that they can develop phonological awareness skills. Even more important is giving them chances to practice. Students’ motivation to participate in activities is a critical part of being successful in learning and developing new skills. One way to make practice motivating is to do it in a game-based way, “play with purpose.” If you LOVE research like we do (well, mostly Linda LOVES research. Michelle likes it, but doesn’t read it like a bedtime story), then you will enjoy the next section. If you just want to skip to the good part (can you hear the song in your head? “Can I skip to the good part?”), skip the next section and go right to the “Yada, Yada, Yada, But How” section. Happy Reading!

What is Phonological Awareness and Why Is It So Important?

Phonological Awareness is a broad term that encompasses identifying and manipulating the sounds of the spoken language such as compound words (sun-shine), syllables (thun-der), onsets and rimes (sh-ark), phonemes (s-a-d), rhyming parts (hat and mat), initial sounds (b-ark), and alliterations (Jack, jar, jump, jelly). Phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words. It is included under the umbrella term, phonological awareness. It is important to note that phonological awareness is NOT the same as phonics. Phonics involves sounds and written language; whereas, phonological awareness involves the sounds in spoken language. There is an overwhelming amount of solid research that identifies phonemic awareness as not only a critical skill necessary for learning to read and write, but along with letter sounds, is the MOST important predictor of success in learning to read.

Yada, Yada, Yada, But How?

Since we know that developing phonological awareness is super important and we want kids to want to learn and practice, listed below are some ideas on how to fit it in to your school day in a motivating and engaging way. AND even more important, there are some ideas and a couple of FREEBIES that you can use in your classroom immediately.

What to Teach?

Oral blending and segmenting of phonemes (individual sounds) have the most bang for your buck according to many researchers; however, rhyming, syllables, onsets and rimes, and beginning sounds are also important. Students should start out learning and practicing the biggest chunks of sounds (compound words, syllables, onsets, and rimes) first and progressing to the smallest sounds (individual phonemes).

When to Teach Phonological Awareness?

• During Morning Meetings or Circle Time as the academic game
• During whole-class skill practice time
• As a warm-up to a small-group reading lesson
• As a small-group lesson
• As an intervention

Ideas and Freebies

• Guess My Word: Give students two clues
  • 1. It starts with _________.
  • 2. It rhymes with __________.
  • It is __________.
  • 1. It starts with /d/ .
  • 2. It rhymes with log.
  • It is dog.
• Rhyme and Draw: Give students sentence clues where they need to produce a rhyming word. They can each draw it individually, or you can draw it. Decrease the difficulty by telling students what you are drawing first. This can almost be any animal or person you want it to be.
  • When we got out of bed, the first thing we did was draw the ______. (head)
  • You don’t need to cry great big tears, next we need to draw the _______. (ears)
  • Oh my! We need to draw one _____. (eye)
  • Please don’t cry, we will draw one more _____. (eye)
  • Hurry, here she goes. We had better hurry and draw the ______. (nose)
  • Go north and then south before we draw the _______. (mouth)
  • We are not going to do work that is shoddy (bad). Next we need to draw the ________. (body)
  • Does it lay eggs? No (or yes if drawing a bird), but it (also) needs (two or four) ______. (legs)
  • We are not going to fail, it needs to have a ______. (tail)
• Count the Sounds: Say the word and then segment the word. As you segment (say each phoneme separately), have students count the sounds (phonemes) and show you on their fingers or by writing the sounds on a whiteboard or something similar. They can also represent the phonemes with lines. Students can also say and segment the word with you. “Say home. (home) Sound out home. (/h/, /ō/, /m/) How many sounds in home? (three)”
• Piggyback Silly Songs: Change familiar tunes to silly songs to practice a variety of phonological awareness skills.
  • Sung to the tune of Baby Bumblebee (the first two lines) Change out the word and the beginning sounds (e.g, nose to rose, hat to sat, shy to by, etc.)
    • I’m changing the first sound to make new words.
    • Can you guess them or are you silly birds?
    • Say house. Change the /h/ to /m/. What’s the word? (mouse)
  • Sung to the tune of If You Are Happy and You Know It – Continuously blend the sounds (the continuous sounds) for the students by holding the sounds for a count of two and not pausing between sounds.
    • If you are happy and you know it, blend these sounds /ssaat/. (sat)
    • If you are happy and you know it, blend these sounds /mmoomm/. (mom)
    • If you are happy and you know it, blend these sounds /kiiss/. (kiss)
  • Just add new words. You can also change “blend” to “sound” and have students segment the words.
    • If you are happy and you know it, sound this word /note/. (/n/ ō/ /t/)
• Picture Sorts: Use pictures or items and sort by beginning sounds, medial sounds, ending sounds, syllables, rhymes. Start with “matches the criteria and does not match the criteria” sorts (e.g., /b/ versus not /b/), then move to two different differences (e.g., beginning sounds /s/ and /m/), and move to three differences (e.g., ending sounds /t/, /d/, /s/). Click HERE to grab a sort FREEBIE or HERE to check out all of our picture sorts.
• I Spy: Using items on a tray, picture cards, items around the room, items in a photo or illustration, give “clues” (rhyming words, orally blending words, onsets and rimes, beginning sounds, etc.).
  • I spy something that rhymes with note.
  • I spy something that starts with /b/.
  • I spy a /caat/. *Remember to continuously blend the sounds (the continuous sounds) for the students by holding the sounds for a count of two and not pausing between sounds. As students get more proficient at orally blending and blending words as they decode, you can put a slight pause between the phonemes.
  • I spy a /shiip/.
• Click HERE to grab an I Spy FREEBIE or HERE to check out other fun games that can be used to practice important beginning reading and math skills in an engaging game-based way.

As critical as developing phonological awareness is (especially phonemic awareness) for our beginning readers to be successful, it is crucial that we find ways to practice these skills. Our students LOVE doing the above activities. They are always asking when they can play one of the sound games. They literally beg to play I Spy. If you are looking for other ways to practice beginning reading and math skills, click HERE or on the images below to check out our monthly Let’s Play games that can be used for instruction, practice, and intervention. Comment below and let us know what your students’ favorite ways to develop and practice phonological awareness are.

Have an incredible day!