When it comes to teaching your child how to read, there is a lot to learn for yourself. What is the best way to teach reading? Does phonics work? Also, what are phonemes? Are graphemes important? Most importantly, what is the best way to help children succeed at learning and reading?
First of all, children are born with the innate skill of listening and speaking. They recognize sounds, pitches and intonations from the moment we start speaking to them. In contrast, reading must be taught.
Learning to read begins with phonemes and phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize the individual units of sound that make whole words. As a result, this prepares them for phonics and phonics prepares them to read and write. In phonics, we deal with the individual letters, or symbols, that make words. Consequently, if children understand that these symbols are linked to familiar sounds, they are well on their way to reading success. Similarly, children who practice phonemes have a better chance of becoming successful students of phonics, able to read and write at a more proficient level.
First, What Is a Phoneme?
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in words. For example, the word cat is made of three distinct phonemes: the sound /k/, the sound /a/ and the sound /t/. Likewise, the word fish is made of three distinct phonemes: the sound /f/, the sound /i/ and the sound /sh/.
While there are only 26 letters in the alphabet, there are about 44 phonemes. Why are there so many phonemes? Because some sound units and letters can be pronounced in more than one way, there are always more than just 26 phonemes.
Consonant Phonemes
| /b/ bat | /j/ jet | /s/ sun | /sh/ ship |
| /k/ cat | /l/ leg | /t/ tub | /ch/ chip |
| /d/ dog | /m/ man | /v/ van | /th/ think |
| /f/ fan | /n/ net | /w/ wig | /th/ the |
| /g/ go | /p/ pen | /y/ yell | /ng/ sing |
| /h/ hat | /r/ rat | /z/ zap | /zh/ vision |
Vowel Phonemes
| /a/ ant | /ai/ rain | /oo/ book | /ur/ hurt |
| /e/ egg | /ee/ feet | /ow/ cow | /air/ care |
| /i/ in | /igh/ right | /oi/ toy | /ear/ fear |
| /o/ on | /oa/ coat | /ar/ arm | /ure/ sure |
| /u/ up | /oo/ boot | /or/ more | /e/ corner |
Why Children Have Difficulty Learning Phonemes
Why do children have a hard time learning phonemes and developing phonemic awareness? Simply put, learning to read is unnatural. Therefore, the process is challenging and can be uncomfortable.
When children hear adults speak, they hear whole words. So, they come to know the word as a whole instead of its parts. This is because we rarely speak in individual phonemes. Instead, we speak using a combination of phonemes in a particular sequence. This is also why some children are able to say large and complex words they pick up from their parents but have no idea what the word means.
Remember, at this point children are not dealing with printed words because phonemes are only sounds. Similarly, phonemic awareness is purely auditory. We are trying to break down larger words into smaller units of sound. Over time, children should be able to pick up on repeating sounds in familiar words. As a result, this prepares them for phonics, where they learn the symbols of the alphabet and connect them to its corresponding sound.
Unfortunately, phonemes are not obvious to a child and must be taught. Because children know how to speak before they can read, they know the whole word before knowing its phonemes. For this reason, separating phonemes from each other (a process called “segmenting”) can be difficult for early learners. So, to properly teach phonemes, we must disrupt the system already set in place and retrain. How do we do that?
In phonics, there are several tools we use to develop phonemic awareness. This includes practicing rhythm, rhyme, alliteration and breaking larger words down to their phonemes helps children understand that sequences of sounds make up whole words. At Professor Pup’s Academy, we also use a variety of techniques to teach phonemes and pronunciation: phoneme identification, blending, segmenting, phoneme manipulation and rhyming.
How Phonemic Awareness Helps Children Learn to Read and Spell
First and foremost, phonemic awareness prepares children to learn phonics and other skills for reading. It has a huge impact on children’s ability to read and learn. Why? More often than not, the letter of the alphabet is not pronounced as it is.
The letter s is rarely pronounce ess. Sometimes, it is pronounced sss or suh. Likewise, the letter e isn’t always pronounced as e. Sometimes, it is pronounced as eh. Therefore, familiarizing young students with only the 26 letters of the alphabet is not enough.
In addition to the alphabet, they also need to notice, recognize and practice the other many ways these letters are pronounced. Otherwise, they will end up reading each letter individually instead of combining the phonemes in the word together. In this case, you might end up with a child pronouncing the word cat as sea-ay-tee instead of kat.
Consequently, a child with phonemic awareness understands that the individual symbols c, a and t make up the printed word cat, contains three distinct phonemes and is pronounced kat.
Help Develop Phonemic Awareness At Home
Does your child struggle with phonemic awareness? We suggest practicing not only the letters of the alphabet but also their phonemes. Provide lots of examples for how the same letter can make different sounds and be used in different words. This is easier to do when you spend time reading aloud with your child. While they may not be able to recognize letters in print at this point, they will hear you speak those sounds.
Phonemic awareness is purely auditory and a skill achieved through listening and speaking. So, the more time you spend pronouncing different words, the more awareness your child develops to the variety of sounds letters can make.
Unfortunately, no one is born knowing how to read or having the basic skills to sound out phonemes. In fact, developing phonemic awareness takes practice just like any other skill. As a result, every part of our reading experience involves explicit training and practice. To help teachers and parents alike, Professor Pup’s Academy has developed several products that guide children from phonemic awareness to reading fluency.
Finally Master All Phonemes with the Help of Professor Pup
We want all young learners to get the best education possible, so our programs are completely supported by science and research. Additionally, we promise high quality learning activities on phonemes that keep your child engaged with results you can see for yourself. Our kid-friendly app also lets your child play on his or her own. Best of all, you do not need any additional training in phonics!
For help your kids with phonemes and developing better phonemic awareness, we suggest Professor Pup’s Phoneme Farm. Our Home Edition works for busy parents who want to give their kids a little extra reading practice. To download Professor Pup for your tablet, please visit the App Store.