Phonemic Awareness:
Embedding Songs, Word Play,
and Letters Throughout the
Classroom
Session Goals
Identify developmentally appropriate
phonological awareness skills for preschool
age children.
2. Practice and enhance phonological awareness
activities to assess and instruct individual and
small groups of children.
1.
Sharing Small Group
Implementation
Assemble in Coaching Cohorts
Reflection in Coaching Cohorts
Share with the group…
1. How have OWL books and interactive reading strategies
been implemented in your classroom?
2. When and how have small groups been implemented in your
classroom?
3. What have you learned about individual children through
small groups?
4. How has the diversity of small groups impacted your
practice?
5. How has the diversity of small groups impacted children’s
interactions and participation (e.g., engagement of passive
learners, scaffolding, time for children to respond and explain
thinking)?
ELM Professional Development
Implementing OWL
Interactive Reading
Concepts of Print
Small Group
Let’s Talk About
It/Let’s Find Out
About It
Songs Word Play
and Letters
Oral Language &
Inquiry
PD Survey
Daily Expectations
Intentionally instruct individuals and/or small
groups in SWPL - Phonological Awareness (PA)
activities (at least one).
 Collect and reflect on data from Intentional Small
Groups for progress monitoring.
 Incorporate interactive book readings:
◦ Half-day programs: at least one or more per day.
◦ Full-day programs: at least three or more per day

Brainstorm
When and how do you use Songs, Word Play and
Letters in your daily schedule?
Phonological Awareness
1 Word
baseball
2 Syllables
base / ball
Intrasyllabic Units: b-ase b-all
Onset and Rime
6 Phonemes
/b/-/ā/-/s /- /b/-/ă/-/l/
Reading
Letters
Phonics
Listening
Phonemic
Awareness
Phonological Awareness
What does research tell us?
Linking Early Literacy to Reading
Early Reading First
Reading First
Comprehension
RAN
Phonological
Awareness
Phonemic
Awareness
Successful
Readers
Alphabet
Knowledge
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
Print
Awareness
Phonics
Fluency
Phonemic Awareness
supports learning how words are represented in
print.
 allows children to notice the number, identity,
and order of sounds in words.
 requires understanding how to use phonemic
cues in identifying printed words.

Without it, children cannot understand the
strategy of “sounding out” words.
Phonemic Awareness is Important

Children who are better at detecting and
manipulating syllables, rhymes, or phonemes learn
to read faster than children who cannot
complete these tasks.

The lack of phonemic awareness is the most
powerful determinant of the likelihood of failure
to read.

Phonemic awareness is the most potent
predictor of success in learning to read - more
highly related to reading than tests of general
intelligence, reading readiness, and listening
comprehension.
Phonological Awareness
Deficits Persist
►Children
with dyslexia have weak
phonological awareness, and have a
phonological processing deficit that will
persist into adulthood unless directly
targeted as part of a comprehensive
intervention.
►All children benefit from early phonological
awareness training strategies as
prevention, but particularly children with
weak phonological awareness.
Cracking the Code
Children with poor phonological processing
skills:
►have difficulty “cracking” the alphabetic
code.
►tend to rely on contextual cues to guess
the unfamiliar word rather than knowledge
of phonics to decode it.
Phonological Awareness Continuum
Alliteration
Rhyme
Alliteration
Producing
groups of
words that
begin with the
same initial
sound
Sentence
Segmentation
Segmenting
sentences into
spoken words
Syllable
Onsets and
Rimes
Phonemes
Blending
syllables to
say words or
segmenting
spoken words
into syllables
Blending or
segmenting
the initial
consonant
cluster (onset)
and the vowel
and consonant
sounds
spoken after it
(rime)
Blending
phonemes
into words,
segmenting
words into
individual
phonemes, and
manipulating
phonemes in
spoken words
/m/
/ice/
/sh /
/ake/
(onset) (rime)
/k/ /a/ /t/
/sh/ /i/ /p/
/s/ /t/ /o/ /p/
Alliteration
ten tiny
tadpoles
Examples
Rhyme
cat, hat, bat, sat
Rhyme
Matching the
ending sounds
of words
The dog ran away.
1
2
3
4
/mag/ /net/
/pa/ /per/
Strategies to Promote
Phonological Awareness
►Choose
books to read aloud that focus on
sounds: rhyming and alliteration .
►Invite
children to make up new verses of
familiar words or songs by changing the
beginning sounds of words.
►Play
games where children isolate the
beginning sound in familiar words or
generate rhyming words.
Small Group Work
In small groups of 2 to 4 people identify SWPL
activities in OWL Unit 4 or 5
 Use the Small Group Worksheet to:
◦ Identify SWPL activities.
◦ Identify phonemic awareness skill.
◦ When and where you will implement
activity?
◦ Identify skills children might demonstrate.
◦ How might this concepts be extended
throughout the day?

Reporting Our Findings
Build a Rhyme Awareness
Repertoire
►Read
rhyming stories and
poems
►Guess what rhymes with….
►Fill in the missing rhyme
►Substitute new rhymes for
old
►Generate name-and-word
pairs
Adapted from Gillon, 2004, Hohmann ,2002
Bingo Board
Build an Alliteration Repertoire

Use the term “alliteration”

Use alliterative phrases in everyday
conversation

Identify alliteration in books, poems, tongue
twisters, songs

Fill in missing alliterations

Substitute new alliterations for old

Make up name-based alliterations

Alliterative “I Spy”
Adapted from Hohmann, 2002
Play with Words

Record children’s examples of rhyming,
alliteration, or nonsense sequences in a classmade big book, and read them aloud over and
over!
licking
lovely
lie
“To match the right skill with the child, you
need to know what each child can do
phonologically.”
Five Essentials
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Guide instruction in phonological
awareness
Integrate PA activities into learning
activities
Link PA activities to learning alphabet
letters and writing, especially names
Use informal assessment of PA skills
Provide additional instruction for children
who need additional supports
Scaffolding
Adult
We
models . do it.
What
child
cancan
do do
What
child
only with
assistance
only with
help
Child
shows
skill
What child can now
do alone
Use Fancy Nancy’s Favorite Words from
Accessory to Zany or The Neighborhood
Mother Goose to:
Identify phonological
awareness skills that promote
learning?
 List how the book might be
used to scaffold learning.
◦ You model.
◦ You do together.
◦ You ask children to
demonstrate or generate?

What did you learn today?
Sound Chain
Stand up and form a line
First person turns and says a word to person
behind her
 Second person hears word and turns to
person behind and says a rhyming word
 Have fun!
 Now let try alliteration; then, last sound
becomes first sound of next word!


LUNCH
Work Plans & Evaluation
Make and Take
Five Green Speckled Frogs
 Alphabet Memory Pocket
 Bingo page 78 VICKY (Flannel board letter)
 Alphabet memory pocket
