What is it?

Phonological Awareness is the awareness of what sounds are and how they come together to make words. Skills include the ability to rhyme, segment words into syllables and single sounds, identify sounds in different positions in words, etc.

Why is it important?

Difficulties within the area of Phonological Awareness often lead to reading and writing difficulties and are an important pre-literacy skill.

Children develop Phonological Awareness Skills in a sequential pattern beginning with ability to hear rhymes and alliteration; hearing words in spoken language; hearing syllables in spoken words and then being able to clap out syllables; hearing beginning of words and then being able to produce words that begin with certain sounds; recognizing and identify rhyming words and then being able to produce rhyming words, through to being able to hear individual sounds in words and being able to segment sounds in words.

Building blocks necessary for the successful development of Phonological Awareness Skills include:

• Attention and Listening – being able to attend to speech and sounds long enough to be able to listen and process the information.
• Adequate hearing for detection of speech sounds.
• Good middle ear functioning most of the time (e.g. a child with ongoing ear infections, glue ear or colds which block the ears may have fluctuating hearing levels which can affect speech).
• Ability to process the speech sounds, identify and hear differences between sounds.
• Understanding of simple concepts such as beginning, end, middle,long, short, loud, soft, etc.

You can tell there are problems with Phonological Awareness Skills if the child:

Is having difficulty with spelling and reading words at school. Children with Phonological Awareness difficulties can also have difficulties with pronouncing words correctly.

At ages 4-5:

• Has difficulties recognising words that rhyme or producing words that rhyme.
• Cannot hear the beginning sound in a word.
• Are unable to identify syllables in words (e.g. “butter” = “bu....tter”, caterpillar= “ca...ter...pi...llar”, etc.).

At school age (ages 6-7):

• Is unable to segment words into sounds (e.g. “cat”=”c...a...t” 3 sounds, etc.).
• Is having difficulty spelling simple non-words (e.g. “lib”, “nuk”, “das”, etc.).

When Phonological Awareness Skills are less than ideal, it can contribute to:

• Difficulties spelling out words and using the phonic approach to sounding out words.
• Difficulties reading unfamiliar words.
• á Lack of motivation and desire to read and write.

What can be done to improve phonological awareness skills?

Developing a treatment plan with clear outlined goals and objectives and developing an individualised treatment plan that can be followed through at home and, if appropriate, within the classroom situation.

Activities that can improve Phonological Awareness Skills:

• Encouraging active listening to sounds in the environment, songs, stories, words and speech sounds.
• Looking at books together from an early age.
• Talking about how sounds are made with your mouth, practice in front of the mirror making different sounds.
• Reading books together which have an emphasis on sound play e.g. rhyme, alliteration, or words that start with the same sound, long words, short words, etc.
• Talk about sounds e.g. a snake makes a “sssss’’ sound.
• Talking about what a word begins with (“Listen, mummy starts with the “m” sound”, lets find more words that start with the “m” sound”.).
• Playing games like “eye spy”, taking turns to find objects that begin with a specified sound (“I spy with my little eye something beginning with “t”, etc.).
• Sing songs together, as they often contain rhyming or alliteration.
• Look at alphabet books and sing alphabet songs.
• Clapping or drumming out syllables in words.
• Making up silly sentences where words begin with the same sound (e.g. “Katy the cute Koala like cuddling Chloe”, etc.).
• Emphasis rhythm and rhyme in rhyming songs (e.g.”Incy Wincy Spider, Jack and Jill, etc.).