What is Phonological Awareness?
Phonological awareness skills are the basis for reading. Without these important skills, potential reading difficulties may arise. It is the ability to hear and manipulate sound structures within words. A child who has concrete phonological skills will have a strong platform in which to develop reading skills.
Why is Phonological Awareness so Important?
It is a vital set of skills that allows us to learn how to read. Phonological awareness skills provide children with a means to access the written form; phonics. You might know phonics as sound and letter combinations used to represent words (e.g. knowing the sounds of the letters d-o-g, make the word ‘dog’).
Phonological skills include:
Rhyme: Rhyme awareness and construction
Alliteration: Discrimination and production
Sound and Word Discrimination: Hears units of sounds within a sentence, identifies which word is different
Syllabification: Syllable segmenting and blending
Onset and Rime: Blending and segmenting
All of which are important foundational skills to have when learning to read, write and spell.
On this page you will find a number of different phonological activities and games to help your child build on their knowledge and learn the foundational skills to further develop their reading abilities.
Vowel Cue Cards – this activity involves the long vowel sounds and how they are spelt (e.g. boat, light, row). Have your child match the picture to the sentence (mnemonic) using the vowels, this sentence is like a rhyme and can support your child in learning how the letters form to make the sound, and how to write the sound within a word (e.g. if your child writes lite instead of light). Use these as flashcards to learn the vowel sounds.
Recognising rhyming activities:
Onset-rime segmenting:
Syllables: