Literacy: Phonemic Awareness and Phonics

Sheep in a Jeep is a great book to teach rhyming!

Graphophonics: the way readers translate letters to sounds

Goal of Reading: getting meaning from text. This requires the manipulation of complex processes

Interactive model of reading: Process goes from page > head > ... > page > head

National Reading Panel's 5 big focuses

1. phonemic awareness
2. phonics
3. fluency
4. vocabulary
5. comprehension

A Poem for Fun: When Tillie Ate The Chili
by Jack Prelutsky

When Tillie ate the chili,
She erupted from her seat,
She gulped a quart of water,
And fled screaming down the street,
She coughed, she wheezed, she sputtered,
She ran totally amok,
She set a new world record
As she raced around the block.

Tillie's mouth was full of fire,
Tillie's eyes were red with tears,
She was smoking from her nostrils,
She was steaming from her ears,
She cooled off an hour later,
Showing perfect self-control
As she said, "What tasty chili,
I should like another bowl."

Phonemic Awareness

• understanding how spoken language can be broken down into individual sounds (without seeing the letters)
  
• phoneme: the smallest meaningful unit of sound in spoken language, /h/ means h sounds
• serves as an umbrella concept for different sounds awareness

Phonics

• the oral and visual combination of sound and letter

PA and Phonics helps readers

• see the connection between what is said and read
• maniplate sound and letters
• understand how words work in reading and spelling
• *** They are the starter motors of reading comprehension

song: The sounds in the words are /c/ /a/ /t/, /c/ /a/ /t/, /c/ /a/ /t/, and the word is cat. (wheels on the bus)

Common types of Phonemic Awareness:

• isolating: hear and isolate initial, medial, or final parts of words, hear /b/ at end of cab.
• segmenting: pronounce each phoneme in order, /b/ /a/ /t/ comes from bat.
• blending: combine phonemes to make a word, /b/ /a/ /t/ makes bat
• manipulating: add/delete/replace souns to make new word, add a /t/ to 'an' makes ant

ELL students

• each lang has own phonemic structure
• learn the differences (both the student and teacher needs to learn them)
• differentiate instruction

Activity: Elkonin Box

• Insert: /sh/ /ee/ /p/
  
• good activity for learning sounds and chunks of sounds.
• can use either coins, markers, or actual letter cards/magnets/noodles

Tip: always use real words when teaching, but accept fake ones from kids if they understand the concepts.