Phonemic Awareness

The activities are now moving from observing chunks in words, or the onsets and
rimes, to identifying and manipulating individual letter sounds in words. In English there
are two different types of sounds; vowels and consonants.
VOWELS
Vowels are unobstructed sounds that allow us to project our voices. A good way
to demonstrate this to students is to have them place their hand an inch under their
chin and then say the letters a, e, i, o, u. Then have the students say the letters
b, k, t, p. In the first group of letters, their chin will hit their hand from their
jaw dropping because vowel sounds are unobstructed, meaning that nothing gets
in the way of the airflow. When saying the second set of letters, students chins
wont touch their hand because their jaw doesnt need to drop as far to pronounce
consonants. This is because consonants are obstructed sounds, meaning the
airflow is stopped by either a persons tongue, lips, or teeth (Fisher, J., 2016).
English has long and short vowels. A vowel is said to have a long sound when
the vowel sounds like its name. The short sounds of vowels are represented in
words in the table below. Vowels can even be silent or work in teams, depending
on the position of the vowel in the word and the letters around it, which is why
learning vowels in the context of the words in which they are found is very
important.
Long Vowels (name)
A - //
E - //
I - //
O - //
U - //
Long vowels say their name!

Short Vowels (sound)

A - apple - //
E - edge - //
I - itch - //
O - octopus - //
U - umbrella - //

(Fisher, J., 2016, p.491)

Sometimes vowels appear in pairs. The vowel pairs below are all important pairs
to learn. As the rhyme says, When these letters
go walking, the first one does the talking,
meaning that the first vowel is long, thus it
sounds like its name, and the second vowel is
silent. Specifically pointing these vowels pairs
out in the context of the word families words in
which they appear is important so students
understand how the vowel pair sounds.
Vowel Sorts
o Marrapodi (2013) explains how
challenging it is for beginning language
learners to hear and reproduce sounds
that are not in their native language, thus
the teacher must provide activities for

the students to practice hearing discrete differences in phonemes to build

up the learners auditory ability to identify, differentiate, and reproduce
new sounds (p. 11). One way to help students hear the difference
between long and short vowel sounds is by sorting words based on the
vowel sound they make. This should only be done with words that
students are familiar with, such as words from word families they have
learned. The teacher can model how to listen for the vowel sound by
emphasizing the vowel sound as they read the word, like c-a-a-a-t, c-a-aa-n, c-a-a-a-p, c-a-a-a-m-e. Students will then listen to the vowel and
identify whether its long or short. Sorting cards for each vowel are in
Appendix B. Some of the words are represented by a picture on these
sorting cards so to help students out, I would recommend the teacher write
the word on the cards with pictures, just so students can use both cues to
help them sort the card.

Minimal Pairs
o Minimal pairs are words that differ by a single phoneme such as (sheep /
ship), (sip / zip) (buzz / bus), [leaving] the learner to identify [which is
which] (Marrapodi, 2013, p. 11). Minimal pair exercises help develop
students ability to identify, differentiate, and reproduce new sounds by
focusing on sounds that are very similar, but slightly different (Marrapodi,
2015, p. 11). Students need to be able to hear minimal pairs often in order
to develop the auditory ability to distinguish between sounds. One activity
that could be done to practice minimal pairs is stand up, sit down.
Stand up, sit down is a game in which students focus to distinguish
between two specific sounds. The teacher assigns an action to two
different sounds and when students hear one sound in the word,
they stand up, when students hear the other sound in the word, they
sit down. For example, lets say students are trying to develop the
ability to hear the difference between the sounds r and l. The
teacher would tell students to sit down if he says a word with r in
it and to stand up if he says a word with l in it. Some examples
of minimal pairs with r and l sounds are: fry/fly, right/light,
list/wrist, road/load, laid/raid, late/rate, low/row. Its beneficial to
focus on two sounds at a time and then try to master them prior to
moving on to another challenging sound. This game should also
only be done with words that students are familiar with, such as
words from books or word families. Ensuring that the word is
coming from a familiar context is crucial, otherwise, students
wont place any meaning behind the word and it will simply
become a task of memorization.
Hand Motions
o Teaching a hand motion with each vowel can help students remember the
letter and the sound(s) it makes. If students use the hand motions
consistently, over time they will grow to associate the body motion with
the shape of the letter and also the sound they hear themselves saying.

Eventually they will no longer need to make the hand motions, as the
sounds will become automatic. Hand motions are a great way to get the
students using their full bodies when learning. Below are the hand
motions for each vowel. These motions will hopefully improve the
connections between students storage and retrieval process, improving
their letter-sound recall (Major, 2016).
Aa
Ee
Ii
Oo
Uu

CONSONANTS
Consonants are obstructed sounds and make up all the letters in the alphabet,
except for the five vowels. Students will initially get exposure to consonants
when looking at onsets and rimes as they work with beginning consonants in
word families.
To further make some of the consonant sounds more explicit, the teacher can
highlight multiple consonant sounds each day. They should do so in the context
of words from stories and themed units.
Personal successes: Consistently pointing a letter sound every time I see is one of
the best ways I have found students remember the various consonant sounds.
Over time students commit a consonant sound to memory through the constant
exposure and explicit presentation of all the words that begin with that consonant.
I also make a point to use as many of the same consonants as possible when
building words in word families so that way students are consistently exposed to
the same consonant sounds. Once students feel comfortable with those sounds, I
introduce new consonant sounds.
The following activities help highlight consonant sounds, as well as vowels
sounds, in words in an effort to further develop students phonemic awareness.

Move It (mClass Dibels, 2008)

o The purpose of this activity is to teach students how to break words into
sounds and then blend these sounds back into words.
o To begin this activity, the teacher models how to break a word up. Lets
say the teacher is teaching the -at word family today so she
demonstrates the word mat. The first sound is /m/. The next sound is /a/.
The last sound is /t/. While the teacher says each sound they touch their
head during /m/, their shoulders during /a/ and their hips during /t/. They
will then bring their hands back up to their head and slide them all the way
down to their sides again as they say the whole word, mat. If a word has
more than three sounds, teachers can use their knees and toes as additional
body parts. Once the teacher has modeled the word, the students will get
up and do it with the teacher, touching each body part as they say each
sound in the word and ending by running their hands along their sides
while saying the whole word. Then once the students practice with the
teacher, they will do the same word on their own. Once they can do that
word on their own, the teacher can then demonstrate another word in the
-at family to break apart. The teacher can model how to break apart the
words with the students, until the students are ready to break the word
apart on their own. This activity should be done with words from a story
or a themed unit so after stretching the word out into its individual sounds,
students can see how the word they just practiced pronouncing looks and
sounds like in the context of a sentence.
o This activity will help students understand that letters have corresponding
sounds that determine how the word is pronounced. When they encounter
a word they dont know, the teacher should encourage them to break the

word apart into sounds they know, just as they do in this activity, until
they are able to sound the word out.
o Personal successes: I have done with activity after reading a story and
introducing a word family word wheel and students respond very well to
it. Students love that they get to stand up and move around. I also found
that when students get to the last sound of the word and have their hand on
their hips, they like to hit a pose while saying the last sound, which always
make them laugh. I also encourage them to choose an action to
demonstrate, if it applies, when they say the whole word. For example, if
a student just sounded out the word ran, I would encourage them to run
in place while saying ran, rather than simply moving their hands down
their sides while saying the word. The motion makes the word more
memorable. Once students were comfortable with this activity, I could
just write a few words from a story or word family on the board that
students were familiar with. I would then point to each letter in one of the
words as the students touched each body part and said the sound that letter
makes. This helped build students phonemic awareness even further, as
they could connect that the sound they were saying matched the letter I
was pointing to.

Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down

o This activity is to give students practice hearing the differences between
new sounds (Marrapodi, 2013, p. 11). Students listen as the teacher reads
a story or a song is played. The story or song should have already been
read or played for the students if its being used for this activity. Students
need to already understand the meaning of the story or song, as this
activity prompts them to listen for specific words and their starting sounds.
o To begin this activity, the teacher gives the students a specific sound to
listen for. Students then try to identify all the words that start with that
sound as the song is played or the story is read. When they hear a word
that starts with that sound, students put their thumb up and the teacher
glances around the room to see if everyone caught the word. Examples of
song and letter combinations might be the sound /k/ in the song Kakai
by Shatta Wale or the sound /h/ in the song Hol It by Shatta Wale. The
teacher could also use some of the songs students sing at the morning
assembly for this activity. By pointing out specific sounds in familiar
songs and stories, students will begin to associate sounds with the familiar
words, helping build the students phonemic awareness through
contextualized phonics.
o Personal successes: If there is a sound that comes up frequently in a story,
I will reread it to my students (as the first time reading it was for
meaning). Prior to reading it a second time, I will let the students know
that they will hear a specific sound often. I then say the sound and have
them repeat it back to me so that theres no confusion in what sound they
will be listening for. I then ask students to either raise their hand or put
their thumb up anytime they hear a word start with that sound. I purposely

only have students listen for the sound at the beginning of words because
it helps them build word awareness. I make sure I read slowly, giving
students enough time to evaluate the first sound of the word I just read,
before I move into the next sound that starts the next word. Sometimes I
will simply read the story and let the students listen for words that start
with the sound we are focusing on that day. Other times I will pause after
a word every now and then and ask if the word starts with the sound we
are focusing on. Students at that point will either give me a thumbs up or
a thumbs down. This strategy helps familiarize students with sounds by
using words that they already have familiarity with and therefore can
associate meaning with.

Large ABC cards (Vinogradov, 2009, p.4 )

o This game requires each student to have a piece of paper with one big
letter written on it. The teacher creates these pieces of paper with letters
on them for a set of words that the kids are learning. The words should all
be from the same word family. The teacher should then give each student
a letter. Students will then use their letter cards to spell out words at the
front of the room. This activity will help students understand the different
sounds that make up each word while also strengthening their soundsymbol associations. If the class spells words from the same word family,
the teacher can have the end chunk letters stay at the front of the class.
They can then have students change the beginning letter(s) of the word
and have the class respond with what the new word spells. For example,
the teacher could have students spell book, have the b sit down, h
come up, and then ask the class what the new word is. It is especially
important when doing this activity to point out similarities and differences
between the words the students are spelling. Its a fun way to learn words
that rhyme as well as it gives students practice manipulating sounds by
deleting and substituting the beginning sounds of the words.
o Personal successes: I have had students practice building words like the
activity described above using small letter tiles. Often I do this activity a
few days after I have introduced a new word family so students have had a
couple days to work with the word family chunk and learn words that are
in that family. I then have students build the chunk and then experiment
adding different letter tiles to the chunk to make words. Sometimes
students will start making words on their own and sometimes I will
prompt students by saying Oh look, youve made the word book. What
if you replaced the b, with a h, what word would that make? Students
are then able to gain an understanding of the sounds different consonants
make as well as develop a stronger recognition of the word chunk.

Wheres the sound? (Vinogradov, 2009, p. 3)

o This game involves the teacher asking students to identify where a sound
is located in a word. The teacher will give each student or group of
students three cups. If cups arent available, the teacher can also draw

three circles on a piece of paper. One cup or circle will be labeled b for
beginning sound in word, one will be labeled m for middle sound in
word, and the last one will be labeled e for end sound in word. The
students should then be given an object, such as an eraser or a rock. The
teacher will state a sound (not a letter) and a word that has that sound in it.
For example, the teacher might say s, sat. The students will then need
to identify where that sound is in the word; whether its at the beginning,
middle, or end, and then drop the rock or eraser into that cup or circle.
The sound is what matters, not the spelling or letter name. This game will
give students a chance to listen and identify the sounds that make up
words. Teachers should try to use a list of words from a thematic unit or
vocabulary the kids already know from a book. Initially when playing this
game, teachers might want to only use sounds that are at the beginning or
end of the word because that can be easier to hear. Then, as students
become more comfortable with hearing different sounds, teachers can start
using sounds that are found in the middle of the word.