Helping all students with emergent reading skills

 Begin at the beginning for emergent readers

Regardless of the age for emergent readers with little or no phonemic awareness, we begin first using picture cards to teach the initial consonant sounds heard in the letters: b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, and w ….(We hold the sounds heard in q, and z till later because we notice these sounds are often difficult for the emergent readers). It is important to note that at this stage we are ONLY teaching the initial consonant sounds in the pictures, not the letters that make the sounds. We want to ensure children are phonemically aware before we introduce letters.

Sounds in words – the lesson

Once it has been determined that beginning readers need to develop their levels of phonemic awareness, we can use pictures of objects to assist in teaching sounds in words. Parents might say for example, “This is a ball, /b/ /b/ /b/ ball/ the first sound you hear in the word “ball” is /b/, can you say that with me, /b/?” Continue with the initial sound lesson until your beginning reader can tell the initial sounds in each picture with some degree of automaticity. You can copy the pictures provided here or make your own.

Ball

Car

Dog

Fish

Goat

Hat

Jug

Kite

Lion

Man

Note

Pig

Rat

Snake

Table

Vase

Worm

Parents might also rearrange the pictures and ask your child for example: “can you point to the picture that starts with the /b/ sound?”           

-Your child should point to the ball without hesitation.

Phonemic Awareness

We have been talking about the importance of phonemic awareness for emergent readers. But what exactly is phonemic awareness and why is it so important to reading? The simple explanation is that readers are said to have phonemic awareness when they gain an understanding that spoken words are made up of separate units of sound and how those sounds can be manipulated. Individual units of sounds are called phonemes.  Therefore, when readers hear the word “cab” they should be aware that word “cab” has three phonemes /k/ /a/ /b/.

Reading researchers have said that when beginning readers are not phonemically aware they have difficulty learning to read (Share, Jorm, Maclean, & Matthews, 1984; Adams, Foorman, Lundberg, & Beeler, 1998).  This might be because these separate units of sounds that we make in speech also have a symbolic representation called letters which are used to make up the words we see in texts.

As you work with beginning readers you can undertake several activities that will help your child build phonemic awareness. You might assist your child in learning how to isolate phonemes. That is, you can help your child as he/she tries to identify the sounds he/she hears at the beginning, middle, and end of words. As such, you might ask, “What is the last sound you hear in the word mat?  The hope is that the young reader will immediately say “/t/.”

Your child should also be able to delete phonemes - here your child should try to identify the word that remains when a phoneme is removed or deleted.  For example, a parent or tutor might say, “Tell me what word is left when we drop the /m/ from the word mat? Child should say, “At.”

Just as they delete sounds in words, beginning readers can also add phonemes; Adding phonemes allows your emergent reader to make new words by adding a phoneme to a word. So, parent might say to the child, “Can you tell me what word is made when you add a /h/ to the beginning of the word “at”?  The beginning reader should say, “Hat.”

Substituting phonemes is another way readers manipulate sounds. Here, the parent might say to the young reader, as he/she replaces a specified phoneme with another, “Can you say the word sat. Now change the /s/ to a /f/. What is the new word do you hear? The young reader should say, “Fat.”

Segmenting words into individual sounds is another way readers manipulate phonemes. Here, your child will break a word into its individual sounds.  The parent might say, “Can you tell me how many phonemes or sounds you hear in the word shake? The tutee should say, “Three:  /sh/ /a/ /k/.”

Finally, readers should be able to blend phonemes into words. If you think about it, blending phonemes is probably the most important phonemic activity because blending phonemes allows readers to put sounds together in order to form words. Once your child can form words, this activity takes your emergent readers’ efforts to another level. As such, parents might ask the beginning reader, “What word can you make when you blend the sounds /sh/ /o/ /p/ together? You child should say, “Shop.”