Teaching Phonological Awareness

Early experience with nursery rhymes can help children begin to notice and think about the phonological structure of words. Several research studies have shown that the children who know more about nursery rhymes at age 3, are those that tend to be more highly developed in general phonological awareness at age 4 and in phonemic awareness at age 6.

You don’t have to stop with nursery rhymes though. Read rhyming books, sing rhyming songs and chants. Have children identify the rhyming words using picture cards and do rhyming sorts with picture cards.

Also play games that teach children to isolate individual sounds in a word. For example, this game can be played with the “BINGO” song. There was a letter had a sound and you can say it with me b,b,b,like ball…… Play the game – “What’s the First Sound in this Word” This can be done orally or with picture cards.

When children learn how to “listen to language”, they are also learning to connect oral language with the written word. Once they hear, know, and are able to manipulate sounds, they begin to realize how words work.

from : nowlearnmore.com