What is Phonological Awareness?

 Hi Everyone!

Seeing as my blog is predominantly written about how to get the best from students using a synthetic phonics approach, I thought it would be most prudent to write a piece explaining the ins and outs of phonological awareness. 

What is it? 

Why should every teacher be equipped with this knowledge?

I will provide the answer to both of these questions in today's post. 

Perhaps we had better wind all the way back to the start and wrap our heads around the what of phonological awareness. 

Phonological awareness refers to your ability to understand and recognize the sound structure of the spoken language. Or put more simply, an awareness that speech is made up of different segments, which are represented by an alphabetic code. It includes a variety of skills including rhyme awareness and production, word awareness, detection of syllables and manipulation of onset and rime. 

Under the 'umbrella' of phonological awareness sits a crucial, distinctly separate skills which consists of sub-skills. This is called phonemic awareness - the ability to recognize and manipulate the smallest units of sound in spoken communication. Let me preface the following: phonemes refer to individual units of sound in speech (i.e., 'cat' is comprised of three phonemes: c-a-t). Phonemic awareness consists of four main sub-skills including phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation, phoneme deletion, and phoneme substitution. 

Here is a handy little graphic I made to help understand how the skills fit in with one-another

You can think of the ability to read as a rope - a single skill that is made of many tiny strands, all equally as important as each other to ensure strength and integrity of the rope. 

We can also consider phonological awareness as a set of steps. Each skill is more difficult than the last, and requires mastery of the previous skill to continue climbing and improving. Below is another handy-dandy little graphic I have made to show the typical progression of phonological awareness in young students. 

It is important to remember that phonological awareness and phonemic awareness are distinct in what they refer to, and the skills they include.

Why should every teacher be equipped with this knowledge?

It's quite simple really - this approach works. Statistically, around 1 in 10 students is coming to school with some form of dyslexia - diagnosed or not. Teaching a synthetic phonics curriculum ensures that every. single. child. will have their learning needs met in your classroom - there will be no one left behind. Aside from being structured and systematic in your approach, the synthetic phonics method of teaching is one that captures the needs of your advanced learners, your middle of the road learners, and your learners who reading does not come naturally to. 

Multiple scientific studies support synthetic phonics as a teaching method that captures all abilities. In 1999, Schneider & colleagues found that explicitly and systematically teaching phonics and phonological awareness skills actually reduced the prevalence of dyslexia among at-risk children. 

I have been told by many reading experts that if students are still behind in reading at Grade 2 level, their chances of catching up are slim to none. It is our job at lower elementary teachers to hit the nail square on the head and to be exceptional, skilled, and knowledgeable in our instruction of literacy. We can achieve this through high quality phonics instruction. 

Comment below if you have been inspired, or are going to try something new in your classroom tomorrow!

References

Schneider, W., Ennemoser, M., Roth, E., & Küspert, P. (1999). Kindergarten prevention of dyslexia: Does training in phonological awareness work for everybody?. Journal of learning disabilities, 32(5), 429-436.