Upon reading many school districts and school comprehensive educational plans you will most likely see a section on how they plan to accomplish the goal of having most if not all of their students reading by the end of grade 2. While this seems like a pretty feasible goal, what one has to look at is HOW schools plan to go about reaching this goal. You will read statements of comprehension, increasing rigor, questioning, writing multiple paragraphs but none of these "results" actually help a child successfully read. These are goals students will be able to achieve once they have learned how to read.
This is where knowledge and application of phonological awareness, phonemic awareness and phonics comes into play. I'm sure you have heard of phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics but do you really know the difference and the pivotal role the first two play in students becoming successful readers and writers?
Phonological Awareness
Many educators, including myself at first, thought that phonological and phonemic awareness were the same concepts. But think of phonological awareness as the umbrella in which everything else falls beneath it. It is the conscious awareness that our spoken language is made up of smaller parts e.g. word boundaries, syllables, stress patterns, onset-rime and phonemes. When a child sees and/or reads a word s/he has to know how many parts or syllables are in the word and within each syllable the sounds or phonemes the letters represent. WHewww! Seems like a lot right? But as you're reading these words you are rapidly executing this same exact process.
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness refers to one aspect of phonological awareness which is individual speech sounds. Not only does one have awareness of the speech sounds in consonants and vowels but they also have the ability to manipulate those sounds. For example, a student with phonemic awareness will recognize the sounds that make up the word bat and say those sounds. They could segment each sound in the word and blend the sounds together to say the word. Hearing is an integral part in how a child says and reads a word in addition to how the sound is being said (mouth position). It's important that students are aware and proficient in identifying their letters and sounds accurately. One important note to make here is the activities associated with phonemic awareness do not involve print. They are listening and speaking activities.
Phonics
Phonics is the ability to take all that you know about letters, sounds and words patterns to now read those printed symbols in text. One must have a strong grasp and understanding in phonemic awareness to be successful in phonics. Decoding, or sounding out the letters/letter patterns in a word is also phonics. Knowing the sounds represented by these letters /letter patterns and syllable patterns is phonemic awareness.
Reading is the result of training your brain. Once these skills are mastered then Having a clear understanding of the importance of phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics can pave the way for your students or little ones in becoming successful readers.
Happy Reading :)
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