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From Sound to Print

How can language-play help my child learn to read and write? Read-on to find out

We think of reading and writing as eye tasks. After all, we look at books, signs, notepaper But even with eagle eyes, we wouldn't be able to read and write messages unless we linked the print we see to the language we speak.

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Bird Sanctuary
The bottom-line? Print is written language. So developing a good ear for language is an important step toward learning to read and write. OK. Got it. Learning to read and write is a language thing. It's about making links between oral and written languagebetween sound and print. So how can I help my child develop a good ear for language? Sounds complicated. Will I need a computer? Special programs? To hire a tutor, perhaps? For most families, there's no need. Children are naturally wired to speak. (You have no doubt observed this!) Developing an ear for language is child's play. With three key concepts under your belt, you'll be ready to help your child (and have some fun!). Readon
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Sound-to-Print Resources (Senecal, 2010 revision www.shapesofmind.ca) This document is released as a service to teachers and families; it may not be used for profit.

1. Phonological Awareness (What in the World is that?)

Let's get these odd words out of the way quickly. Phonological awareness is just a fancy term for what we've already discusseddeveloping a good ear for language. Nothing new there! Just two key points

Sounds are the building-blocks of spoken language. Children who are phonologically aware notice these building-blocks. They know that spoken words are made of sounds. Once children notice sounds in spoken words, theyre in good shape to understand the sound-print linkthe link between speaking and writing.

There are different levels of phonological awareness. At first, children are aware of only the biggest chunks of sound in spoken languagewords. But with time and experience, they become aware that the words they say are made up of smaller chunks (buildingblocks) of sound. The three main stages of phonological awareness are 1) Awareness of Words: Children's awareness that speech (talk) is made up of meaningful chunks of sound called words e.g., I use three of these building-blocks to say I / love / dinosaurs. 2) Awareness of Syllables in Spoken Words: Children's awareness that long words are made up of smaller chunks of sound e.g., I use three of these sound-chunks to say dinosaur: di / no / saur /. 3) Awareness of Phonemes in Spoken Words: Children's awareness that syllables are made up of even smaller chunks of sound (phonemes) e.g., Love has three of these tiny chunks of sound: l / o / ve /. Dinosaur has seven of these sound-chunks! (/ d/ i / n / o / s / au / r /)
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Sound-to-Print Resources (Senecal, 2010 revision www.shapesofmind.ca) This document is released as a service to teachers and families; it may not be used for profit.

3 To summarize, children move from awareness of WHOLE WORDS to smaller SYLLABLES to tiny PHONEMES in spoken language. Children who notice and can play with phonemes (the smallest chunks of spoken language) are more successful in learning how written language works. That is, reading and spelling come easier to them. (If you like fancy words, this highest level of spokenlanguage awareness is called phonemic awareness.) Still awake? Two more concepts then the activities you're waiting for!

2. Phonological Awareness and PhonicsNot the same!

Are phonological and phonics the same thing? Should I go ahead and buy one of those phonics programs Ive seen advertised on the internet? In short, no. These two terms are related, but they don't mean the same thing. For phonics-learning to make sense to children, they must first have phonological awareness. (This is not phonics-bashing. Letter/sound-learning is a legitimate part of the reading/ writing puzzle, butas described belowtiming is everything.) For children who are not yet phonologically aware, phonics is like falling into the deep end of the pool. Why? Phonological awareness is about becoming aware of the sounds in spoken language. Until children develop an awareness of word-sounds, it makes sense that they would struggle with phonics-learning (which links word-sounds to print). Consider the word bird. Your child knows perfectly well what a bird is, often says this word, and might even recognize the written word as a whole (especially if it is accompanied by pictures). But what is this / b / thing they're asking me about? s/he wonders. I can't find it anywhere! This struggle makes sense. Until s/he understands that / b / is a sounda building-block of the spoken word bird, how can s/he begin to link this sound to its matching print (the letter b at the beginning of the written word bird)? Bottom-line: In order to understand the link between sounds and print (the letters that represent word-sounds), your child must first understand that spoken words are made of building-blocks of sound. This is the role of phonological awareness instruction.
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Sound-to-Print Resources (Senecal, 2010 revision www.shapesofmind.ca) This document is released as a service to teachers and families; it may not be used for profit.

4 Stay tuned; one more concept to go . . .

3. The Big Picture

What role does phonological awareness play in the overall picture of my child's reading/ writing development? In order to answer this question, we must first ask one of key importance: Why do we read and write? The purpose of reading and writing is to communicate. To become true reader/writers, children must develop a variety of toolsskills and strategies that help them to read and write meaningful messages. Phonological (phonemic) awareness is one of these reading/writing keys. It provides children with an understanding of how our writing code works. This helps them to link spoken words to printunlocking its meaning. Phonological (phonemic) awareness is one of the many tools that strong readers and writers use to understand text, and to put down their ideas in writing. The development of other tools (e.g., rich vocabulary/world knowledge; problem-solving strategies) is equally important. (The Born to Read [www.icanfoundation.ca/born-to-read/index.html] series provides excellent information about developing love of language and books.) This is why phonological awareness is best taught not through isolated drill-work, but in real language contexts, which also helps children to develop these other reading/writing strategies. (This is not to say that instruction in this area should not be systematicindeed, it should! However, systematic play with speech-sounds can readily be provided through language-rich activities.) For example, the old way of teaching rhyming-sounds might have been to have children circle, on worksheets, pictures of words that rhyme. A much richer approach is to learn rhyming through carefully-selected poems, chants, and songs. This way, children not only learn about rhyme (a phonological awareness goal)they also acquire a richer vocabulary, an appreciation for language/literature, and an understanding of how connected text (rather than just isolated words) works.
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Sound-to-Print Resources (Senecal, 2010 revision www.shapesofmind.ca) This document is released as a service to teachers and families; it may not be used for profit.

Phew! Theory's over! Time to use that knowledge

Activities to Develop Your Child's Phonological Awareness

Studies have shown that the activities described on the following pages help children to develop phonological awareness. Over the year, your childs teachers will be introducing these activities at school, and may send home materials/instructions for follow-up. You can do many of these activities yourselfin the car, through bedtime stories, while listening to music Please read-on for details. Before we start, please remember that these are oral language (out-loud) activities, and not phonics or spelling tasks. (The purpose of these oral-language activities is to provide a strong foundation for reading/writing.) 1. Learning About Rhyme Poems, songs, and many children's stories are a rich source of rhyming sounds. Read to (and sing with) your child daily. Nothing fancy required for example, simply chanting the Star Light poem when the stars come out 'does the trick.' (Star light/Star bright/First star Ive seen tonight/I wish I may/I wish I might/Have the wish/I wish tonight) Fairy-tales such as The Three Little Pigs (Let me come in! Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin!), Dr. Seuss books (e.g., The Cat in the Hat), and Raffi and Fred Penner songs are also good sources of rhymes. Traditional action-songs (e.g., The EensyWeensy Spider and The Hokey-Pokey) are another excellent source.
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Sound-to-Print Resources (Senecal, 2010 revision www.shapesofmind.ca) This document is released as a service to teachers and families; it may not be used for profit.

6 For those who have internet access, many of these traditional songs and chants may be found on-line. For those who haven't, most music stores carry inexpensive favorites CDs featuring collections of these traditional songs. (These are also available at many school and community libraries.) What can I do at home? When you encounter rhyming words, bring these to your child's attention, and show enthusiasm when s/he brings them to your attention. Chant series of rhyming words to emphasize the fact that they have the same endsounds (e.g., Light! Bright! Tonight!). Accompany your chants with rhythmic actions (e.g., clapping or foot-tapping, beating a toy drum [or a cushion, if you're headache-prone], waving an imaginary conductor's baton). This adds to the fun, and helps you to emphasize rhyming sounds. Distinguish rhymes from non-rhymes (with your child playing judge to the extent that s/he is comfortable). This helps him/her to develop an ear for rhyme. (E.g., Star! wish! Star!wish! Hmm. Do star and wish rhyme? Nooo! They don't end with the same sound! Light!bright! Light!bright! Aha! Light and bright do rhyme! They do end with the same sound.) Silly play with words is alsobelieve it or not!very powerful. Children love to hear and create nonsense words. Dr. Seuss knew what he was doing when he wrote books such as There's a Wocket in My Pocket! Silly rhymes are made by changing the first sound in a familiar word. Greeting your dog Sammy with a, Hi there, SammyWammy! is an example of this sound-play. (The lesson is lost on the dog, but your child will benefit from hearing it!) Create rhymes (e.g., My daughter A-lice/Ought to live in a pa-lace!*), and/or have your child chime-in with the last word in rhymes that you begin (e.g., He went up/He went down/He went all over _____ [town]). _______________ * Note that it doesn't matter at all that the end-sounds in Alice and palace are not spelled (written) in the same way. The important point is that they sound the same. This is typical of many rhyming words (e.g., rain/plane and might/bite)making English spelling a challenge! (Your child will begin to tackle these sound-print patterns a bit later. The first step toward this is to understand how sounds work.)
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Sound-to-Print Resources (Senecal, 2010 revision www.shapesofmind.ca) This document is released as a service to teachers and families; it may not be used for profit.

7 2. Exploring Beginning Sounds Think way back to high school English class. Remember analyzing poetry? Remember how you had to hunt down poetic devices in poemsthings with million-dollar names like onomatopoeia and alliteration? Thought you'd never use them in real life? Think again! Turns out that alliteration is a great tool for developing your child's ear for beginning sounds. (Also turns out that alliteration is less scary than it sounds. It's just a fancy name for something writers do for effectrepeatedly use words with the same sound.) Alliteration can be found in everything from highbrow poems to tongue-twisters. What these have in common is repetition of a soundin most cases, a beginning one. As you can imagine, repeatedly hearing a sound draws children's attention to it. They also enjoy the feel of saying alliterative phrases aloud (e.g., The small snake slithered She sells sea shells by the seashore Fee! Fie! Fo! Fum!). What can I do at home? Play with repeated sounds in poems, songs, and stories (e.g., Christopher Kingsley is curious). Pause, while reading to your child, to play with repeated sounds that you and s/he discover (e.g., chanting the magic spell Bibbity, bobbity, boo!). As discussed in the rhyme section, silly play with words is also surprisingly effecttive. For instance, what would happen if the /m/-sound replaced all beginning sounds? (Instead of Lynn, my name would be Mynn! Instead of books, I would read mooks. Instead of a car, I'd drive a mar.) Children also enjoy feeding foods (pictures; play-food) that begin with a given sound to a hungry puppet. On a /p/ day, it might eat popcorn, pickles, pizza on a /s/ day, sandwiches, soup, celery on a /ch/ day, chocolate, cheese. (At school, a classroom monster will eat anything tasty or not! that begins with the sound of the week.) 3. Word-Building: Linking Sounds As we have discussed, its important for children to become aware of the building-blocks of sound in spoken words. Part of this process is learning how we blend (link-together) these bits of sound to say meaningful words. Becoming comfortable with sound-blend_________________________________________________________________________

Sound-to-Print Resources (Senecal, 2010 revision www.shapesofmind.ca) This document is released as a service to teachers and families; it may not be used for profit.

8 ing in spoken language helps to build a foundation for fluent (smooth) reading and writing. How can I help at home? The important point to recall is that we're working with sounds, not letter names. Pretend that a doll, puppet, or stuffed toy is very young, or that an action figure is a space alien. (The point is that they would just be learning to speakexplaining why they would speak slowly.) You might say to your child, Oh! The baby (or alien) wants something! Its trying to tell you what it wants. Can you figure out what it needs? Follow-up this question by having the baby (or alien) say a segmented wordone stretched into its building-blocks. (Its more fun if you use a baby or alien voice when doing this, but please be sure that you say each sound clearly.) Pause for approximately a second before saying each sound. As we have discussed, younger, less experienced children may be aware of only larger chunks of soundso this is where to start. Some larger (syllable-chunk) examples would be: coo kie and tel - e - phone. When your child blends these larger sounds with ease, try the following: separating the beginning sound (phoneme) from the rest of a short word (e.g., m ilk, c - ar, f - ish); separating all phonemes in short wordsthe highest level of awareness (e.g., a - pp le, f - i - sh, c - oo - k - ie). 4. Segmenting Words into their Building-Blocks As true of blending, its important to be aware of your childs stage of development when segmenting (stretching) spoken words into their building blocks. The easiest way to segment words with your child is simply to clap each word-sound as you chant it. (Alternatives are stamping your feet, beating each sound on a drum, or using Elkonin Boxes, a method your childs teacher will explain.)

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Sound-to-Print Resources (Senecal, 2010 revision www.shapesofmind.ca) This document is released as a service to teachers and families; it may not be used for profit.

9 For instance, while reading a book about spiders, you might (depending on your childs developmental stage) pause from time-to-time to a) Segment sentences into words (e.g., clapping 3 timesonce for each word you say in the sentence, Spiders - spin - webs.), b) Segment words into syllables (e.g., tapping your drumstick 2 timesonce for each syllable you say in the word spi - der), or c) Segmenting syllables into phonemes (e.g., lifting 3 fingersone as you say each phoneme [tiny sound] in the word w - e - b). Important Note: With time and experience, children progress from Developmental Stage A to C. Stage B (syllable) activities should be introduced only when your child is comfortable with word building-blocks (Stage A). Likewise, Stage C (phoneme) activities should be introduced only when your child is comfortable with syllable building-blocks. Your child may also use Elkonin boxes and plastic game-pieces at school to segment word-sounds, and may bring these home for additional word-play with you. (If so, your childs teacher will provide an explanation of this technique.) Enjoy!

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Sound-to-Print Resources (Senecal, 2010 revision www.shapesofmind.ca) This document is released as a service to teachers and families; it may not be used for profit.