Phonemic Awareness is simply teaching your child to be aware of the sounds used in speech and spelling, but it does not involve the use of actual letters. It is simply an informal (but intentional) teaching to your child to hear the sounds in words and getting them to the point they can manipulate them – so rhyming, or changing the beginning sound to make a new word. For example seeing a STOP sign and asking them to say the word “stop” and then seeing if they are able to create a new word if you ask them to take off the /s/ sound. You can read more about this in my previous post!
Using Tiles
Another way, and a bit more formally done, is to use tiles. (Honestly, if you are frugal like me, you can use small bits of paper – otherwise you can go on Amazon and order colored tiles). The tiles are blank, but represent sounds. So, if you are asking your child to use tiles, you would simply give them a word (2-3 letter word to start) such as CAT. With their fingers, have them tap out the sounds they hear in CAT…/c//a//t/. Three sounds = 3 tiles…and since they are different sounds, they use 3 different colors. You can continue to expand on that…so if we have the /c//a//t/ sounds, which sound do I change if I change the word to RAT? Have them repeat the word and finger tap. They should than change out the first tile to represent the new sound. Play with the beginning sounds for awhile, until they seem to have it mastered, then you can move on to ending sounds and vowel sounds. They simply change the tile to represent where the sound changed. The finger tapping (I start with my pointer finger to thumb, then middle finger to thumb, then ring finger, ect.) helps them slow down to think about the sounds they hear that make up a word. Make sure they are tapping from THEIR left to right!
As they get better and more confident in this, you can move on to 4 letter words. BUT…realize that diagraphs and vowel teams will only make ONE sound, therefore, will only be represented by ONE tile. So if you give the word CAT…and have them change the word to THAT – it will still only be 3 tiles as we are not representing letters – simply sounds. If you give a child the word GOAT – still only 3 sounds as OA is a vowel team and only makes ONE sound. This can be a little difficult for us parents, as we know there are 4 letters and we think that we should then have 4 tiles…resist that temptation 🙂 We will talk about digraphs and vowel teams later, and teach our kids when to use them, I promise! Again, this is simply an exercise to help your child to be aware of the sounds of speech (4 tiles!) and will truly assist them in their reading later. Please don’t try to rush the process! It’s more important that they do it well, then they do it by the time you want them to (remember when they were learning how to walk? They have to crawl first. You can help and support and practice with them, but in the end, they won’t do it before they are ready.)
Remember to read to your child…if you think the IPad can do this for you, please reconsider and Google what Sweden has learned the hard way regarding using technology to teach young kids how to read. Reading to your child and teaching them phonemic awareness are the first steps. It’s important.