Phonemic In an effective balanced literacy

program, teachers Awareness ✔ children clap syllables. Phonemic awareness is the ability to ✔ use sound/symbol boxes hear and manipulate the sounds that (Elkonin boxes) to demonstrate comprise spoken words. It is the sounds contained in a word. understanding that language is ✔ composed of small units of sounds- engage students in daily phonemes. literature and writing activities. ✔ read rhyming text aloud.

The level of phonemic awareness is ✔ play with the sounds of language a strong predictor of success in (alliteration, i.e., “The big boy learning to read and write. bounced” and rhyme, i.e., “the cat sat on the mat”). Competent readers and writers can: ✔ do shared writing frequently. • identify and generate rhymes ✔ encourage children to listen to, • scan through words and sequence sing, and create rhyming songs. the sounds made by letters or ✔ have students practice chunks of letters (cat=c/a/t or segmenting onset and rhymes spot=sp-ot)) (c-at). • hear sounds in sequence in words ✔ provide a center equipped with and reproduce them in print letter tiles/magnetic letters so Competent readers and writers know children can develop how to: letters/sound relationships. • generate new words from a known word Intervention activities must be • connect sounds or spelling patterns reinforced daily: whole group, small in words they do not know group, and individually. By using a

• decode printed words when reading variety of manipulatives and teacher- generated materials, the • encode spoken words when spelling teacher can focus the children’s

attention to various aspects of sound Teaching phonemic awareness and print. enables a child to hear sounds in words and gives the child the ability to alter and rearrange sounds to create new Macomb Intermediate School District Early words. Literacy Committee