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Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken words (Chard & Dickson, 1999). Research has shown that phonemic awareness is a strong indicator of a child's future reading success. If a child lacks phonemic awareness, he or she may be at risk for future reading failure. The explicit teaching of phonemic awareness in the early grades can increase the ease with which students acquire the important skill of reading. It is not difficult to incorporate activities emphasizing oral language into the classroom each day through formal and informal experiences. The following activities help promote phonemic awareness in students.

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Teach nursery rhymes. The ability to rhyme is an important component of phonemic awareness. Include nursery rhymes in many formats within your classroom such as in books and poems read aloud or said as a group and in songs and chants. Set up a listening station using nursery rhymes on tape.

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Teach simple poems and fingerplays that use rhyming words. Emphasize the rhymes as you say the poems together or chant the fingerplays. The Wee Sing(R) books (2000) and tapes, such as Wee Sing Nursery Rhymes and Lullabies, include many examples of fingerplays and simple rhymes to share with young children.

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Draw attention to rhyming words as they occur in normal classroom interactions. When a student says "sun" and "fun" in the same sentence, ask students to identify which words rhyme. Have the students think of additional words that rhyme with "sun" and "fun," such as "run" or "bun." Allow nonsense words that rhyme.

4.

Read stories that contain many rhymes. The Dr. Suess series includes numerous books where the rhymes are an integral part of the stories. In most cases differentiating between the meaning of the rhyming words in the stories is key to understanding the fantasy world of the plot. The ability to hear the similarity and difference between the words that rhyme is imperative to comprehension and builds phonemic awareness.

5.

Play the "I Spy" game using the initial sounds of words as the clues (Fisher, 1993). For example, the teacher would start the game by saying, "I spy something that begins with /m/." Notice that the teacher is not saying, "I spy something that begins with the letter M," but rather gives the students the /m/ sound as the clue. Recognizing the individual sounds in spoken words is an important phonemic awareness skill.

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Create a sound box in your classroom. When discussing a new sound, have the students bring objects from home to place in the sound box that begin with the new sound. The objects can be shared using an abbreviated "show and tell" format with the focus being on the initial sound of the name of the object. For example, when introducing the /h/ sound, the students may bring in a hat, a toy horse, or a hula hoop.

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Have students sort picture cards based on the initial sound in the name of the picture. Given six cards with bear, pig, pin, bat, pen, and bike, the students would sort the pictures into two groups with bear, bat, and bike in one group and pig, pin, and pen in the other. After the students achieve mastery with the initial sounds, they can be challenged to complete the same task for the ending sounds and middle sounds (Fisher, 1993).

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Extend the picture card activity to spoken language. After students have mastered sorting picture cards based on initial sound, have the children listen to three or four words and then tell which words begin with the same sound and which word does not belong. For example, say, "Dog, desk, fun." The students should identify "dog" and "desk" as beginning with the same sound and "fun" as beginning with a different sound. Continue the activity for ending sounds: "pat, fit, run, lot" and middle sounds: "pat, sit, lap, sad" (Fisher, 1993).

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Develop students' ability to split syllables into their smaller phonemes by breaking off the first phoneme in a syllable or word. The teacher says, "bear," and the student responds, "/b/." Another method of teaching syllable splitting is by playing the "What's Left?" game. The teacher tells the student a word, and the student deletes the initial phoneme and says what is left of the word. For example, if the teacher says, "nice," the student responds, "ice."

10.

Play "change a name." While sitting in a circle, select a student and change his or her name by deleting the initial sound (Betty becomes Etty or Tom becomes Om). The game proceeds by having the students guess who you are speaking about. As students become skillful at identifying the abbreviated names, have them practice deleting the initial sounds on their own. The game can be extended by teaching the students to substitute other sounds at the start of the names (Betty becomes Metty or Tom becomes Dom; Chard & Dickson, 1999).

11.

Play phoneme deletion games by omitting a sound in a word. Challenge children to say "hill" with out the /h/, "monkey" without the /k/, or "seal" without the/l/. If this task is difficult for the students, begin with compound words, such as, "Say toothpaste without the tooth." Work gradually on beginning, middle, and ending sounds.

12.

Use and build on students' phonemic knowledge during transition times. For example, instead of calling rows to line up for lunch say, "All students whose names begin/end with /k/ may line up." Another method would be to show the class a picture card and have them identify the beginning/middle/ending sound of the name of the picture before lining up. When assigning partners ask a student to find a partner whose name begins with /n/ to be their partner.

13.

Play an alphabet sound game. Work through the alphabet finding objects to correlate to each sound. Be sure to specify the long or short sound. Having the students think of a food, an animal, or a place that begins with each sound can extend this activity.

14.

Modify the song "Old Mac Donald Had a Farm" into a fun game for students to work on identifying the beginning, middle, or ending sounds in words.

15.

Play "guess the word." Have a small group of students sit in a circle and place picture cards in the center. Explain that you are going to say the name of one of the pictures in "snail talk." Say the word slowly, stretching out the phonemes (mmmaaannn) and have the students look at the pictures and guess which word you are saying. Allow wait time before asking a student to give the answer orally, or signal when the group can give the answer in unison (Chard & Dickson, 1999). Allow each student to take a turn saying one of the pictures in "snail talk" while the others respond.

16.

Play the push-up game as the students become more advanced with blending and stretching phonemes. When introducing this game, draw a rectangle divided into one-inch square boxes with one box for each sound in the word you will be working on. As you say the word the stretched way, /m/ /a/ /n/, have the student push a penny or button into a box to represent each sound they hear. After having the student identify and check that they have the correct number of boxes filled to correspond with each phoneme in the word, have the student say the word both the slow way, /m/ /a/ /n/, and the fast way, man. As the students become more experienced, you can provide them with a set of five or six boxes and pennies to use as necessary for words of varying lengths.

17.

Have students clap and count the syllables in a variety of words to assist children in learning the concept of syllables. Go around the classroom and have the students say each child's name and then clap out the syllables together. Look through a book or magazine and have students say the names of different pictures and clap out the syllables, or provide a grab bag of different objects and allow the students to choose one and then say the name and clap out the syllables. Try to provide experience with words that differ in the number of syllables contained.

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18.

Demonstrate tapping on the tabletop or desk for each phoneme heard when stretching out a word to assist students in recognizing the individual phonemes in words. When stretching the word "cat" into /c/ /a/ /t/ the teacher would tap once for each sound. Have the students tap with you as you stretch the words, then say the phonemes and tap together. As students become more competent, have them stretch the words and tap on their own.

19

Teach phoneme substitution by asking students to change the initial, middle, or ending sound in a word. "If the word is 'cat' and you change the first sound to /b/, what is the new word?" As the children become proficient at substituting initial sounds, proceed to middle and ending substitution tasks.

20.

Present phoneme substitution tasks in a riddle format to fill those spare moments before lunch or while students return from recess. For example, ask, "What rhymes with 'big' and starts with /p/?" Students can be further challenged by asking for consonant blends or digraphs at the beginning, such as "What rhymes with `jump,' but begins with /gr/?" or "What rhymes with `jump,' but begins with /th/?"