Six quick and easy phonological awareness games to support your student today.
Apr 09, 2024What is phonological awareness and why does it matter to ME?
Phonological awareness is similar to adolescence - it’s a foundation - the foundation for reading and writing. It is essential and critical to build strong readers and spellers but once you become a strong reader and speller it is often forgotten. This doesn’t make it less important, it’s just that once a person is literate phonological awareness becomes part of the past. Just like we need childhood in order to develop into a mature adult we need phonological awareness to be able to grow into mature readers and spellers.
Let’s first address the question - what is phonological awareness? I am going to give you the fancy schmancy definition first and then I will share with you the way that it makes sense in my brain. In the book, Speech to Print by Lousia Cook Moats phonological awareness is defined as “metalinguistic awareness of all levels of the speech sound system, including word boundaries, stress patterns, syllables, onset-rime units, and phonemes.” In simpler words, this means being able to think about and manipulate the sounds in language and the rules they follow.
Why does this matter to your student? Phonological awareness matters because it is the foundation for reading and spelling. Without it, it would be like building a house on sand. Words are simply letters and their corresponding sounds that change positions. Without a strong ability to manipulate letters and their sounds words are all the same - just letters on a page with no purpose or meaning. However, being able to manipulate sounds and patterns in words allows students to build connections, based on similarities and differences, allowing them to decode (read) and encode (spell) faster. A longitudinal study by Hulme et. al. (2015) followed children from preschool to early elementary school and found that early phonological awareness skills predicted later reading ability. This study underscores the importance of early intervention to develop phonological awareness skills as a means to support future literacy success.
How you can easily incorporate phonological awareness games at home.
My personal opinion is this does not have to be a major to do it can easily be slipped in as a conversation filler. Yep, super easy to plan for and implement because the only materials you need are a little bit of time and your ears. If your life looks anything like mine you spend a lot of time in the car with your child, driving them to school, an activity, the grocery store, the dentist, the list goes on and on.
These are the times when you can play a quick rhyming, blending, segmentation or phoneme (aka sound) manipulation game. If drive time doesn’t work, meal time, or bedtime are also good options.
Here are six phonological awareness games with student examples that you can play with zero materials.
The first game I call “Rhyme Time.” In this game the first player says a real or nonsense word to start off. Then the next player must say a real or nonsense word that rhymes with the original word and the game goes on like this until someone says a word that does not rhyme or can’t think of an unused rhyming word. If you want to keep track of points all players get a point for each correct word.
The second activity has to do with blending sounds to hear the word. This activity is called “Sound Blender.” To play you will say individual sounds slowly and whoever can guess the word gets a point.
The third activity is called “Stretch it Out.” This activity is the opposite of “Sound Blender.” To play you will say the word and whoever can stretch out the sounds they hear in the word gets a point.
The fourth activity is called “Vowel Sound Stomp.” For this activity you will say a word and the child or player’s turn it is will stomp for each vowel sound in the word - essentially stomping out the syllables.
The next activity is called “Sub Please.” To play you will say a word and then ask the other players to change one sound in the word to form a new word. For every new word said correctly a point is earned.
The final activity is “I Spy the Sound…”. In this game you will pick a sound and look for words that start or end with that sound. For example if the sound you are spying is /r/ a player might say “I spy the sound r in rug.”
These six phonological awareness games and activities are fun and easy to do with your student. One tip is to present it to them as just that - FUN - rather than something they have to do. Once they buy into the idea that this is fun they will be begging you to play with them more often than not.
Check out these links for more phonological awareness games.
https://www.beginlearning.com/parent-resources/phonemic-awareness-activities/
https://www.tejedastots.com/phonological-awareness-activities/
