Phonemic Awareness is /f/u/n/

We had a wonderful introducation to phonemic awareness in Tony's class last quarter and it is to me one of the most fascinating aspects of elementry education. My previous experience as a toddler teacher introduced me to just how early students begin to pick up on phonemic awareness. It really is amazing to think that as young as two years old, we are making the phonological awareness connections. Young children love rhymes and can easily pick them up. By the later toddler age, you can witness kids exploring phonological awareness by immitating rhymes with "made up" words, such as the "Tina-Tina-Tina, Fe-Fi-Fo Bina!" rhymes. Other rhyming songs are thick with phonological awareness teachings, such as the "Apples and Bananas/ Epples and Beneners" song. It wasn't until this course and its sister course last quarter that I was able to make the connection between classic rhyming songs and reading. I find it absolutely fascinating!

After reading "Put Reading First" I have a much greater understanding of how to approach the teaching of reading. In my toddler classroom, I was often using a non-systematic approach to teaching the letter sounds without even realizing it. I would often go through the alphabet and model the letter sounds, "A... ahh ahh, B... bah bah, etc". I had no idea that this was in fact, not entirely useful to my students. Using a systematic and explicit approach, including letter blends in association to words (verses the written letter) makes much more sense, especially at the youngest years of education when written language resembles doodles more than words.

I understand that phonetic education is useful and necessary for students to be able to read and write. Yet, I believe that in these early years (toddler - kindergarten) that phonemic awareness is a much stronger approach. For students who do not have an understanding of written language, phonological and phonemic awareness is better achieved in a systematic and explicit teaching method. With a good base education, students can jump into phonics with a greater understanding of why a sound represents a particular letter/ letter combination (verses a sound representing a particular part of a spoken word).