PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS
Objective
The purpose of these activities is to provide guidelines for parents to scaffold children's development of phonological awareness in the English language using educational apps such as ReadwithPhonics, Phonological Awareness Lab, Syllables Splash, and so on. The app draws from the phonics approach to introduce children to the phonemes in the English language, providing step-by-step guidance to children in recognising and practising grapheme-phoneme matches.
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The phonological awareness and grapheme-phoneme matching activities are divided into 4 sessions according to Cope and Kalantzis' (2015) Learning by Design framework.
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Materials/Resources
• Word cards
• Tablet or iPad
• ReadwithPhonics, Phonological Awareness Lab, Syllabus Splash, and so on
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Sessions 1 - Experiencing/Situated Practice
Duration - 30 mins (variable)
• ReadwithPhonics can be used to help children develop phonological awareness and grapheme-phoneme recognition gradually, beginning with the single letters in the alphabet and their connections to basic vowels and consonants, before moving on to diphthongs and consonant clusters.
• It is recommended that parents follow the sequence in which the app introduces the vowels and consonants so as to allow a natural progression in their children’s phonological awareness development.
• For a start, parents can accompany their children as they attempt the activities in the app. Beginning with the letter or grapheme <a> and the phoneme /æ/, parents first guide their children to practise saying out loud the phoneme [æ] and help them match the phoneme to the grapheme <a>.
• Parents then guide their children to say aloud words containing [æ] as prompted by the app, such as ‘cat’, ‘bat’, ‘mat’, ‘fat’, ‘hat’, etc.
• The app parses each word into the individual phonemes and provides a model pronunciation of each phoneme, such that children are taught to recognise that ‘cat’ is made up of three sounds, [k], [æ] and [t], and so on.
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Session 2 - Conceptualising/Overt Instruction
Duration - 30 mins (Variable)
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• To help their children internalise the sounds and grapheme-phoneme relationship, parents can practise saying aloud each word multiple times with their children.
• The above can be repeated multiple times as children move on to the next vowel or consonant, eventually moving on to more complex sounds like the diphthongs and consonant clusters.
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Session 3 - Analysing/Critical Framing
Duration - 30 mins (Variable)
• The app includes one activity package per phoneme.
• Within some of the activity packages, there is one section which requires children to differentiate words from non-words.
• To help children make the right differentiation, parents can guide them first in parsing the given words into the component phonemes, then combining the phonemes together to say the whole word aloud.
• Parents can then discuss with their children if these are real words or non-words, and make the relevant selection in the app.
• For instance, if they are given the word ‘bat’, parents can work their children through the three phonemes present, [b], [æ], [t], and that combining them form [bæt].
• But if they are given a word ‘za’, parents can again guide their children to break the word down to the two phonemes [z] and [æ], but combining them gives [zæ], which is a non-word not used in real-life daily conversations.
Session 4 - Applying/Transformed Practice
Duration - 30 mins (Variable)
• To expand beyond the words provided in the app, parents can procure or make their own word cards to teach children new words that are not introduced in the app.
• These could be longer words containing more phonemes and graphemes.
• Children can look at the word cards and practise stringing the phonemes together to pronounce the word.
• For example, having learnt [æ] and [ʃ], parents can teach their children to make out the word ‘ash’.
• In another example, [t], [r], [æ] and [p] make up ‘trap’, while [b], [æ], [θ] correspond with <b>, <a> and <th> to make up the word ‘bath’.
• This can be repeated with as many new words as parents are able to come up with, perhaps even progressing to short phrases instead of individual words, such as ‘the [kæt] on the [mæt]’, etc.
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Contributor: TJM