Phonemic Awareness Tips for Home
Dear Parents/Guardians,
We are working in the classroom to develop what is called “phonemic awareness”. It means that
we are working on hearing sounds. Before a child can be successful in learning phonics, which is
crucial to spelling and reading words, s/he must be able to hear that:
-Words are made up of separate sounds
-Some words start with the same sound as others
- Some words end with the same sound as others
- Some words rhyme
- Some words have just one beat, some have two, and some have more (syllables).
If you want to help her/his progress, here are some suggestions.
- Read and sing Nursery Rhymes
- Make a list of rhyming words
- Make flash cards with high frequency words (you can play BINGO or Memory)
- Play hangman
- Use foam or magnetic letters to build words
- Make word lists –if you know cat then you know bat, hat, sat, etc…
- Make a list of words that start with the same letter
- Read a poem and highlight the rhyming words
- Underline all the _______ sounds in a story
- Highlight long or short vowel sounds in a story
- Sing songs together
- Play language games -One person names a word and then you both see who can make the most
rhymes from it. Nonsense words are perfectly acceptable in this game (people, meeple, steeple,
creeple, cheeple). Or make up sentences together with the stipulation that every major word has to
have the same beginning sound ("Six silly snakes sat slowly on a sandwich")
- Read aloud to your child
- Write letters in sand
- Go on a letter hunt –
We're looking for a/an [name of letter],
We're looking for a/an [name of letter],
[Sing sound of the letter to the tune of "Heigh, ho, the Derry Oh!"]
We're looking for a/an [name of letter].
- Play alphabet I Spy -"I spy something that begins with the letter _______."
- Make up tongue twisters
- Turn on the closed captioning on your TV! (This really works –check out the link to Jim Trelease's
web site!)
Good luck and remember –the most important thing is to have fun!
