Phonics And Phonemic Awareness Paper

Phonics and Phonemic Awareness

Phonics and Phonemic Awareness

Grand Canyon University
EED 470 Curriculum, Methods and
Assessment: Literacy and Language Arts K-3
August 25, 2013

The purpose of this paper is to discuss several strategies and techniques to help teach phonics and promote phonemic awareness. The importance of phonics and phonemic awareness in learning to read will be discussed as well as assessments, differentiated instruction, and any assessments. Finally this paper will discuss the actions a teacher could take when a student is not demonstrating progress. Reading is one of the most important skills a learner must acquire in life. Statistics show that students who are behind in reading
The terms are sometimes confused for the other because of their similarity. Phonemic awareness is the cognitive recognition that there are different sounds and that they can be recognized and manipulated to and blended together to make words (McGee, & Ukrainetz, 2009). Phonemic awareness is kind of a prerequisite to reading as students should be aware of different sounds before learning to read words. Students who do not hear the phonemes of words will have a difficult time relating sounds to words on paper (Cheesman, McGuire, Shankweiler, & Coyne, 2009). Phonemic awareness usually begins at home before a child starts school and this happens at varying degrees in each household so when children begin school they are all at different awareness levels if they have any awareness at all. When working with younger children it is important to keep learning sessions in small enough groups so that each child can receive attention because it can get difficult for the teacher to try and hear a child if they are 1 in 30 talking (Isakson, Marchand-Martella, & Martella, 2011). In the classroom teachers can use rhyming
Where phonemic awareness is about the awareness of the sound of phonemes, phonics is the awareness and recognition that those phonemes correlate into written letters, words, and language (Cunningham, 2012). The goal with phonics is to help children learn how to read new words by sounding out the letters that make up the word. Phonics instruction can be done through flashcards, where the teacher holds up the flashcard with a letter on it and the student says the letter. Phonics instruction can take place by teaching upper and lower case letters. Have a handout with 2 spaces on it for each letter of the alphabet on it. Write the letter “A” on the board then prompt the class for the name of the letter, and then ask one student to come up and write the lower case letter. “Which Letter?” is another fun phonics activity where students learn the relationship between sound and symbols. For each letter of the alphabet, one at a time, the teacher will write a group of words starting with the same letter like car, cat, can, camel, then ask students what sound do they hear in each of them and ask them to think of other words that start like that then write them on the board. Picture dominoes are also a fun classroom activity where the class plays in groups of 2 and the students have paper dominoes with pictures on one side and letters on the other. Have students match up the pictures with other pictures that have the same