Teaching Tips

Teaching Tip for Oct, Nov, Dec '09

Our tip this term focuses on phonological awareness (PA) skills. Research shows that children with strong PA skills, especially rhyming, tend to be successful readers. There are six main PA skills – rhyming, segmentation, isolation, deletion, substitution, and blending. You can download an overview of the skills and examples of each in the downloads section of the website (icon at bottom of each page).

I encourage teachers to use stories they read to their students as a base for PA practice. Prior to reading the story, check through the book to look for words that would work for one of the skills and list them down (you might want to start a file for future years) – eg. multi-syllable words work well for segmentation or blending; many books have rhyming patterns; list a few key words from the story to have children identify the initial/final sound, etc. This practice time can be as short as 1 – 2 minutes.

It also helps to pick one of the skills and focus on it for a week or two then add a second one, remembering to review the first one on occasion.

If children are having difficulty with these skills, be sure to do lots of modeling of the correct response and have them repeat.

There are commercially-produced PA activities and kits on the market, but using your storytime as a base is quick, easy, and usually daily.