beginning reading writing teks talk image

Knowledge and Skills Statement

Developing and sustaining foundational language skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking--beginning reading and writing. The student develops word structure knowledge through phonological awareness, print concepts, phonics, and morphology to communicate, decode, and spell.

Ask students the following:

  • Listen to some words. Tell me if the beginning sounds are the same or different. What’s different?
  • Listen to some words. Tell me if the end sounds are the same or different. What’s different?
  • Listen to some words. Tell me if the middle sounds are the same or different. What’s different?
A phoneme is the smallest meaningful unit of sound in speech (e.g., the /s//ă//d/ of sad).
Phonological awareness is the ability to detect and manipulate the sounds structures of spoken language, including recognizing differently sized sound parts (i.e., phrases, words, syllables, phonemes) and manipulating those parts (i.e., blend, segment, delete, add, and change).

Research

Baker, S. K., Beattie, T., Nelson, N. J., & Turtura, J. (2018). How We Learn to Read: The Critical Role of Phonological Awareness. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Special Education Programs, National Center on Improving Literacy. Retrieved from https://improvingliteracy.org/brief/how-we-learn-read-critical-role-phonological-awareness

Summary: Phonological awareness involves being able to recognize and manipulate the sounds within words. This skill is a foundation for understanding the alphabetic principle and reading success. There are several ways to effectively teach phonological awareness to prepare early readers, including: 1) teaching students to recognize and manipulate the sounds of speech, 2) teaching students letter-sound relations, and 3) teaching students to manipulate letter-sounds in print using word-building activities.