What is Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness addresses the sounds of language. It does not teach the symbols that represent sounds, but rather the sounds alone. Instruction in phonological awareness includes the following:
Word Awareness
Word awareness is the knowledge that words have meaning. Students with word awareness can discriminate individual words in a passage read to them. Beginning readers must have this skill before they can extract meaning from what they read. For example, a student needs to know that the spoken word "dog" represents a creature that has four legs and barks before he or she can understand what is meant by the printed word dog.
Rhyme Awareness
Rhyme awareness is the understanding that certain word endings sound alike, and therefore contain the same sounds, such as the short /a/ and /p/ sounds in cap and map or the long /i/ and /t/ combination in fight and kite.
Onset and Rime
Onset is the initial consonant in a one-syllable word. Rime includes the remaining sounds, including the vowel and any sounds that follow. For example, in kite, the /k/ sound is the onset, and the /ite/ sound is the rime.
Syllable Awareness
This is the recognition that words are divided into parts, each part containing a separate vowel sound. A student with syllable awareness can identify bat as one syllable and batter as two syllables.
Phonemic Awareness
This is the student's awareness of the smallest units of sound in a word. It also refers to a student's ability to segment, blend, and manipulate these units. A student with phonemic awareness hears three sounds in the word bat: /b/, /a/, and /t/.
Word Awareness
Word awareness is the knowledge that words have meaning. Students with word awareness can discriminate individual words in a passage read to them. Beginning readers must have this skill before they can extract meaning from what they read. For example, a student needs to know that the spoken word "dog" represents a creature that has four legs and barks before he or she can understand what is meant by the printed word dog.
Rhyme Awareness
Rhyme awareness is the understanding that certain word endings sound alike, and therefore contain the same sounds, such as the short /a/ and /p/ sounds in cap and map or the long /i/ and /t/ combination in fight and kite.
Onset and Rime
Onset is the initial consonant in a one-syllable word. Rime includes the remaining sounds, including the vowel and any sounds that follow. For example, in kite, the /k/ sound is the onset, and the /ite/ sound is the rime.
Syllable Awareness
This is the recognition that words are divided into parts, each part containing a separate vowel sound. A student with syllable awareness can identify bat as one syllable and batter as two syllables.
Phonemic Awareness
This is the student's awareness of the smallest units of sound in a word. It also refers to a student's ability to segment, blend, and manipulate these units. A student with phonemic awareness hears three sounds in the word bat: /b/, /a/, and /t/.
What is Phonics?
Phonics teaches developing readers the relationship between phonemes (sounds of oral language) and graphemes (letters that represent sounds in print). Students who learn phonics master the sound/symbol code that enables them to read and spell. Mastering phonics, or the alphabetic principal, will help readers decode unfamiliar words and automatically recognize familiar words.