How to Develop Phonological Awareness in Preschoolers

Phonological awareness is an ability to attend to and understand the sound structures of a given language. Phonological awareness skills include understanding the difference between speech sounds and environmental sounds, phonemic awareness, rhyme awareness, word awareness and sentence awareness. Children who have poor speech or problems with reading and writing often have deficiencies in these skills, but you can develop them.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Learn to listen. When trying to develop phonological awareness in preschoolers start with attending to and identifying sounds. Point out when you hear speech versus environmental sounds. Draw attention to speech you overhear and talk about it. "I hear grandpa talking on the phone" or "Johnny is talking to daddy now." Use the same method to point out environmental sounds like, "That car driving by was loud," or "Listen to the birds chirping."

2. Teach your child to rhyme. Read books that contain rhymes and point out the rhyming words. Sing nursery songs, such as "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "If Your Happy and You Know It." Or place 3 pictures on the table and ask the child to hold 1 picture. Name the picture he is holding, and then name each picture on the table. See if he can pick the one that rhymes.

3. Increase word awareness. Read books out loud with your child and point to the words as you read them. Sing songs that focus on a single word in the phrase such as "Pop! Goes the Weasel" or "Ouch! He Stung Me." Play the "What's Missing" game. Put several objects on the floor and ask the child to look at the objects while you label them. Then have him close his eyes and take away one object. When he opens his eyes he will have to tell you which item is missing. This is an early word deletion activity.

4. Enhance sentence awareness to develop phonological awareness. Have your child fill in the phrase to a familiar repetitive book such as "Brown Bear Brown Bear." For example, you read "Brown bear brown bear what do you see?" and wait for her to read the next page "I see a yellow duck looking at me!"

5. Demonstrate syllable awareness. Pick out items in the house and clap out the number of syllables in a word. Have your child find household items that have the same number of syllables.

6. Build phonemic awareness. Use books with letters on pages with corresponding pictures that start with the letter. Name the letter and make the sound that goes with it ("That is the letter s. Letter s goes "ssss"), then name the items on the page emphasising that specific sound as you say it. Ask your child what the first sound in "dog" is. They don't need to name the letter. Making the "d" sound is satisfactory.

Tips & Warnings

• When demonstrating the sound a consonant makes, don't put a vowel sound with it. For example, when demonstrating the "b" sound, don't say "bu" just say "b" to develop phonological awareness.

Resources

• Check out this phonological awareness website for parents.