How to Support Phonological Awareness at Home
I never really thought about phonological awareness early in my career as a speech therapist. Sure, the importance of the relationship between speech sounds and phonological awareness skills was mentioned in my graduate courses, but it was never a dedicated topic. It was only years later, when my school’s instruction coach questioned whether one of my student’s speech sound errors might affect his reading skills, that I began to appreciate the depth of the connection between speech and literacy.
So, let’s unpack phonological awareness: what it is, why it matters, and how you can support this critical skill at home.
What is Phonological Awareness?
Phonological Awareness (PA) covers a broad range of skills which involve recognizing that words can be broken down into smaller parts. These skills include:
counting the number of syllables in a word
rhyming
matching words by their beginning and ending sounds
activities involving individual speech sounds.
Phonemic awareness is a specific subset of PA skills which focus on the recognition and manipulation of individual speech sounds. These skills include:
identifying onsets and rimes (e.g., /k/ and /at/ in the word ‘cat’, where /k/ is the onset and /at/ is the rime)
segmenting words into individual sounds
blending sounds into words and
changing sounds in words.
While all of these skills are PA skills, only skills involving individual speech sounds are part of phonemic awareness skills. That said, children develop these skills in more or less a predictable sequence starting from the most broad area (awareness that words are individual units with meaning) to most specific area (words contain individual sounds that can be broken apart, put back together and/or changed).
Why is Phonological Awareness Important?
Because phonological awareness forms the basis for the development of reading skills, of course! All of the skills above are stepping stones for children to develop phonemic awareness skills to the point where they are able to differentiate between and identify individual speech sounds in oral language. Once kids start to notice individual sounds, they approach the magical threshold of phonics (aka, linking speech sounds with their respective letters). In other words, higher-level phonemic awareness skills are the bridge to learn how to read.
Once children connect sounds to letters, they begin to learn how to sound out words (aka, decoding). Similar to earlier, learning how to blend sounds together in oral language plays a vital role in learning to decode words. As children’s reading accuracy and speed increase, these basic reading skills support the development of spelling, writing, vocabulary, and, of course, reading comprehension!
Let’s imagine a child named Emma - a local kindergarten student. At the beginning of kindergarten, Emma could somewhat count syllables, recognize rhymes for words like ‘man’, ‘can’, ‘pan’ and knew half of the alphabet. Within the first four months of school, Emma could not only recite all of her alphabet letter name by heart, but could match words with the same beginning and ending sounds and break basic words apart into their individual sounds. By the end of the school year, Emma could decode basic CVC (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant) words like ‘pot’ and ‘tin’. Through practice, Emma's decoding improved throughout her elementary career, allowing her to read more fluently until she was able to focus on the meaning of the text, leading to improved vocabulary and comprehension.
Phonological skills were the key that unlocked this process for her, starting with simple sound play and leading to the complex skill of reading comprehension.
What does this have to do with speech therapy?
I’m glad you asked! Children with speech sound disorders (think: children who cannot say sounds like /s/ or /r/) face increased risk in developing reading difficulties. Tambyraja, Farquharson, and Justice (2020) examined the prevalence of reading challenges in Kindergarteners, first and second-grade students receiving speech therapy. Their findings showed that approximately 25% of these children had difficulties with phonological awareness skills and were likely to continue having challenges with these skills in school. This means that speech therapists are uniquely qualified to address both speech sound errors and phonological skills for speaking and reading success.
How to Support Phonological Awareness at Home
The Very Hungry Caterpillar Spin and Seek is a fantastic and easily adaptable game to work on a variety of phonological skills. Flick the spinner and advance your game pieces shown, each marked with a letter. The image with this section shows the game board as reference. to a number of letters ahead. There are also cards you can use, but don’t feel like you have to. The player who reaches to the end of the board wins the game. Once your child lands on a letter, ask them to:
name the letter "(/ef/ for the letter “f”)
name the letter sound (/ffff/ or for the letter “f”)
name a word starting/ending with the sound
break apart a word starting with the letter
blend the letter with others to form a word
find a word that rhymes with a word starting with same sound
The best part? On your turn in play you have the chance to show your child what to do if they are struggling - that counts as a twofer if I’ve ever seen one!
You can find a version of this game here for purchase!
Find magnetic letters and a whiteboard. Who doesn’t love playing with magnets?
Use the magnets to build words letter-by-letter. Encourage your child to say each letter sound as they create words. This is a great way to reinforce the connection between letters and sounds in a meaningful activity.
Help your child take words apart, explore rhyming patterns, and manipulate sounds within words. Help your child to build a word on the whiteboard with letters before you break apart the word into individual sounds. After your child labels every sound, you can switch out letters to change the words - you can easily do this to form rhyming words or you can opt for a more advanced activity by changing the vowel or end of the word.
These activities are not only fun and hands-on but a powerful method to enhance reading skills
Interested in activities like this? Amazon has got you covered. Click here for a set.
I spy… an opportunity to build phonemic awareness! Whether you are are using one of the classic books or playing a game in the car, there are always opportunities to play a classic game of I Spy.
Find an object that starts with a sound of your choice and challenge your child to find the object. You can always give them extra help by adding sounds. You can always add other clues, but remember: we want to teach them to relate sounds as being part of words. Finding the balance between helping your child to enjoy success and to grow is difficult to achieve, but you know your child best and can tailor this activity to their unique needs!
Here’s how this activity could sound with this picture:
Adult: I spy something that starts wtih... /p/.
Child: Is it a teddy?
Adult: Hm… it starts with /p/, not /t/. It starts with /pi/.
Child: Oh! Is it a pig?!
Adult: Right! pig starts with /p/! Can you see anything else that starts with /p/?
Let’s reel in some sounds with fishing. Grab a bowl and a box of goldfish and you’re ready to go. Set the bowl down and tell your child that you are fishing for sounds and every time they give a correct response, they will add a “fish” to their catch.
For this activity, you can ask your child to name the corresponding sound to a letter name, count syllables in words, create rhymes, or identify the first and last sound in a word. You can also takes turns “fishing” to model how to perform all of these tasks without feeling like you are giving too much negative feedback to your child.
After you are done, you can eat your catch. You can always switch up this activity with other treats as well. If I may: snacking on sounds? Terrible pun intended.
Remember how we used to put couch cushions and pillows on the floor to pretend the floor is lava? Here’s a slightly more educational version of this childhood pass time to help with phonological skills.
Grab a a stack of paper and write upper- and lower-case letters on each sheet (if you have time, using cardboard cutouts will survive much longer than sheets of paper). Scatter the papers/cardboard on a carpeted floor about one foot apart across the entire room, or take the paper to the floor if you have the time. The object of the game is to make it from one point in the room to the other without stepping on the floor (it’s lava, after all!).
You can ask your child to jump to certain letters by letter name or letter sound, or identifying the beginning sound in a word. Level up the difficulty by writing words instead of letters and asking kids to break words down into individual sounds or to change sounds within words. If your child is able to, switch roles with them so they have to tell you where to jump. When your child makes a mistake, they have to go back to the sound they jumped from.
The best part of this activity is that it gets your child moving and everyone will have fun!
What to do If You Are Concerned
While these activities are a fantastic start, every child's journey is unique. For children with a speech sound disorder and challenges with phonological awareness skills, a speech therapist near you may be the best option to give your child a leg up in their development. If you find yourself wondering about your child's progress or just want to ensure they have the best support on their path to reading success, we’re here to help. For personalized support in your child’s speech and literacy journey, contact us today to schedule a consultation.
References:
Tambyraja, S. R., Farquharson, K., & Justice, L. (2020). Reading risk in children with speech sound disorder: Prevalence, persistence, and predictors. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 63(11), 3714-3726.
