Our Big, Beautiful Classroom!

Phonological Awareness

Let's Get Ready to Read!

Now that we've assessed our kindergarten kiddos, our next area of focus will be developing phonological awareness to move them toward reading and writing success.

Through phonological awareness, children learn to associate sounds with symbols and create links to word recognition and decoding skills necessary for reading.

*Prepare! Prevent!*

Phonological awareness skills:
•    Lead to reading success
•    Prevent reading deficits
•    Lead to success with spelling
•    Help children become aware of sounds in their language

According to Gillon (2004), “Phoneme awareness performance is a strong predictor of long-term reading and spelling success and can predict literacy performance more accurately than variables such as intelligence, vocabulary knowledge, and socioeconomic status” (p. 57).

What is Phonological Awareness?

• Awareness of sounds in a language
• Awareness of rhymes
• Awareness that sentences can be broken down into words, syllables, and sounds
• Ability to talk about, reflect upon, and manipulate sounds
• Understanding the relationship between written and spoken language

Phonological awareness consists of skills that typically develop gradually and sequentially through the late preschool period.  They are developed with direct training and exposure.

The information above was provided by a wonderful online resource.  I highly recommend visiting the site to get a better understanding of phonological awareness.  The site also offers many engaging activities and lessons with attached materials for teaching phonological awareness. 
http://phonologicalawareness.org/index.html

Below is a sample activity from the website:

1. Matching Pictures
Find pairs of pictures that rhyme. Place one set of pictures in a container and all of the rhyming pairs in another container. Have the children draw out two pictures (one from each container) and ask them if the two words rhyme. If they don’t, continue pulling out pictures from the second container until the child finds a matching rhyme. Continue with all remaining cards.
- Materials 

Teacher Freebie! Monthly Storage Lables

Download Free Monthly Storage Labels Here!

Let's Get Ready for Kindergarten!

Click here for some terrific worksheets to warm up those kindergarten skills!

Rhyme & Draw

These interesting and quirky rhymes will keep your students engaged as they listen for clues to draw pictures of pets while developing phonemic awareness.  Visit my TPT store for more!

Kindergarten, Trimester 1

On Common Ground 2012-2013 T1 Kinder

Comprehension for Kindergarten

Visit my TPT store for some handy question cards.  These can be used for building background knowledge to improve comprehension during shared reading experiences.