Teaching Phonemic Awareness using The Sing to Read Adventure Phonological Awareness Phonological awareness is an understanding and auditory awareness of the sounds of language, including rhyming words, sounds, and syllables. Phonemic Awareness Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear segments of sounds (phonemes) of spoken language and to manipulate those individual sounds. For example: A child who has mastered phonemic awareness realizes that the word  c-a-t   is made up of three phonemes. Phonics Phonics is a code-based component of reading instruction based on phoneme/grapheme associations. Phoneme - the smallest unit of sound Grapheme - the visual representation of a phoneme Through all the rhyming activities we do in the early childhood years, we are teaching our children to hear the words that sound the same or different. The students are fine-tuning their hearing for words that sound the same. Predictable books usually have a format in which the rhyming words stand out. Therefore the children are able to hear and pick out the rhyming words, again fine-tuning their hearing for words that sound the same. This provides an essential base for later when they are learning to hear the individual phonetic sounds. The children are training their ears to listen for the sounds of language that sound the same or different. The repetition of rhyming literature, such as The Sing to Read Adventure, during the emergent reading years is an essential base for learning and hearing the phonics sounds. Research shows that when early literacy concepts are taught from a meaningful context, such as a predictable book, the concept is retained in long-term memory. The child has a previous experience and an association with the book and story. Therefore the child has a previous experience he can relate to the new concept. When the new concept can hook on to the previous experience, learning takes place. Following are 7 activities that teach phonological awareness, phonemic awareness and phonics using the predictable literature in The Sing to Read Adventure.

Teaching Rhyme 1.    Choose a page from The Sing to Read Adventure predictable book series that is familiar to the children. Read and sing the page together. Next, tell the children they are going to read and sing the page again, but this time listen for the words that sound the same - the words that rhyme. For example, on the first page of Here Kitty, Kitty! the students will pick out the rhyming words bed and red. Write the rhyming words on a piece of paper and observe their similarities. (Both words end in "ed".) Then have your children brainstorm other words that rhyme with bed and red. Record the children's rhyming words on the paper with bed and red. When finished, reread bed and red with the children's rhyming responses to reinforce the concept of rhyme.

Words Beginning with the Same Letter 2.     Choose a page from The Sing to Read Adventure predictable book series that the children are familiar with and which contains the alphabet letter you want to teach and reinforce. Read and sing the page together. For example, to teach the letter F, the Down at the Pond book has a frog page with the words four, fat, frogs and fiddle. Next, tell the children they are going to read and sing the page again, but this time listen and pick out the words that begin with the letter F and the F sound. Record the children's responses (the words beginning with letter F) on a piece of paper and observe their similarities. (The words all begin with letter F.) Then have your children brainstorm other words that begin with the letter F. Record the new words on the paper with the Down at the Pond words four, fat, frogs and fiddle. When finished, reread all the words with the students to reinforce the sound of letter F.

Alphabet Letter Search 3.     To teach and reinforce the visual recognition of an alphabet letter, the child can go on an "alphabet letter search" using a book from The Sing to Read Adventure series. This is reinforcing their visual discrimination for the particular letter the children are learning to recognize. Use 2 blank stickers stuck back to back attached to the end of a Popsicle® stick. Write the alphabet letter the children are learning to recognize on both sides of the stickers. Ask the children to scan along the text of the book and find a letter that matches the letter written on the stickers on the Popsicle® stick. For example, to teach the letter P, the Packing for a Picnic book is full of words beginning with letter P. As the children scan the text, they will match many of the letter P's with the Popsicle® stick. Ask the children to label the letter P each time they match one. After the children have mastered the visual discrimination of the letter, you can use a bubble wand from a bubble-blowing jar. The end of the wand is shaped like a circle. The wand can be scanned over the words to visually isolate a particular letter. You may ask the children to count how many letter P's they found on a particular page. These "alphabet letter search" activities are good guided reading activities for small groups.

Concept of Word 4.     To teach the concept of a word, take a sentence out of a Sing to Read Adventure storybook the children are familiar with. For example, from "What's All the Fuss?" you could use, "Dogs, dogs, what's all the fuss?" Write each word on a big piece of construction paper. During a large group lesson, give each word to a student. Have the students stand up and hold their words in front of them. Ask the students to organize themselves so that the sentence can be read correctly. Read the sentence with the class. Reinforce that each friend is holding one word. Repeat the activity by passing the words to another group of children. They will do the same by standing up and getting into the correct order. Read the sentence together and reinforce that each friend is holding one word. At the end of the lesson, the children should have had the opportunity to hold one word, as well as see each of their friends hold one word.

Hearing Syllables 5.     To teach children to hear the syllables in words, you can start by picking out some 2-syllable words from a familiar page in a Sing to Read Adventure storybook. For example, the frog page in the Down at the Pond storybook has several 2-syllable words. You and the children can clap to the words while reading and singing the page together. Together you can then go back and clap the words slowly and pick out the words that have 2 claps. The children will pick out the words sitting, lily and fiddle. Write the 2-syllable words on a piece of chart paper in front of the children and reread the words slowly while clapping the syllables. "sitt-ing", "li-ly", "fi-ddle" This strategy is helpful when your students are phonetically sounding out multisyllabic words when writing independently. For example, at journal time when students are writing independently, they are now able to break the word into syllables. They have the strategy to clap the word slowly and hear each individual part of the word. Then they can encode the sounds they hear in each small part of the word.

Create New Predictable Books 6.     The predictable storybook serves as a framework for children to create their own book with new text. For example, you can use the format from the book, "What's All the Fuss?" The children can put in animals of another habitat and create a new classroom or individualized book related to another theme of study. Another way to use the storybook as a framework for a new book is to substitute the rhyming words in the book with other rhyming words. For example, I had a student create a new verse for Here Kitty, Kitty! He suggested, "Kitty, kitty on the beach, why are you the color peach?"

Sentence Mix-up 7.     Choose a sentence from a predictable book that is familiar to the children. Write the sentence on a sentence strip or each word on an index card. For example, you may want to use, "We're going on a picnic.", from the Packing for a Picnic storybook. Cut the words apart. Mix the words up. Have the students reassemble the words in the correct order. With this activity you are reinforcing phonetic sounds, decoding, concept of word and sight word recognition. Stanovich made this comment on phonological awareness, "Specifically, phonological awareness appears to be the strongest single determinant in predicting the success a child will have learning to read." (Stanovich, 1986) Parents and teachers of emergent readers have an important job to do in laying the foundation of phonological awareness for our children. It can be done in a fun and enjoyable way using predictable literature and sing-alongs. Cheyney, W.J. & Cohen, E.J. (1998).Phonemic Awareness and the Alphabetic Principal: Laying a Foundation for Phonics Instruction.Bothell, WA:Wright Group Publishing, Inc. Stanovich. "Matthew Effects on Reading: Some Consequences of Individual Differences in the Acquisition of Literacy." Reading Research Quarterly, 21, 1986: 360-401.