Before a child enters school, the child has some knowledge of language and how words work. Children are innately curious and teachers in early childhood programs need to foster children’s early literary through research based, developmentally appropriate literacy activities that fosters the essential skills that students need in order to build the foundation for learning to read. A huge component of this type of instruction is phonological awareness, which is an umbrella terms that encompasses word in sentences, syllables, onset-rime, alliteration, and phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is isolating the phoneme (smallest unit of sound) in words. These skills are crucial to a child’s early reading success (Roskos, 2003).
Essentials …show more content…
According to Cooter & Reutzel, “for students to use reading and writing skills, they must first develop phonemic awareness,” (Cooter & Reutzel, 2016, p.115). According to Roskos (2003) there are eight strategies that should be implemented in order to help children learn to develop early literacy skills. These skills include rich teacher talk, where teachers are engaging students in small group or large group conversations. Teachers can extend a student’s thought process and vocabulary by making sentences longer and grammatically correct. Teacher can also prompt students to reflect upon read alouds or situations in their lives. A second strategy emphasized is storybook reading, reading aloud using trade books or big books, allows students to hear fluent reading and when paired with phonemic awareness activities, students can hear how words work together. When students understand the way words work, students are more likely to be able to decode and sound out words they see when they begin to read (Cooter & Reutzel, 2016 & Roskos …show more content…
These activities are easy for teachers to implement and require very little time during the day. Most phonemic awareness instruction takes about 10 to 15 minutes day, every day. However, in order for students to show growth in the areas of phonological and phonemic awareness, it is not about the length of instruction, but about the quality of instruction. According to Yopp & Yopp effective phonemic awareness instruction takes place in classrooms where “phonemic awareness activities will be incorporated intentionally in literature sharing experiences, music experiences, movement experiences, and other experiences throughout the day,” (Yopp & Yopp,