PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS
Continuing our series on COR Instruction - The Components of Reading and Writing, this month's topic is Phonological Awareness. To see last month's post on DECODING, go HERE.
The ability to recognize and manipulate rhymes, syllables, and phonemes is a foundational skill of reading. Phonological awareness skills are so crucial to reading that they can be used in preschool and kindergarten to predict later reading ability (Paulson, 2018). Phonemes are the speech sounds (consonants and vowels) that distinguish one word from another (ie., pit vs. pat). They may be represented by one or more letters (ie., phone vs. fun). There are many products designed to work on phonological and phonemic awareness, but they rarely connect to a meaningful context.
Phonological Awareness Activities based on the HOT ROD series of decodable books were designed to use the same words found in the stories. The activity below is from the Gods and Gifts Activity Book based on Gods and Gifts: Three Greek Myths Retold. "No Gift for Man" is the first story of the Greek creation myth in that book.
Find information about the Gods and Gifts Activity Book HERE.
FREE ACTIVITY - Rhyme Time
This activity uses rhyme and alliteration to work on phonological awareness skills. The Gods and Gifts Activity Book includes six different Rhyme Time Activities. The complete downloadable PDF for this activity may be found HERE.
Rhyme Time explores one way that book content can be incorporated into phonological awareness activities. The educator creates a list of target words from the story in the left column. In the right column, list words that either rhyme with the target word or start with the same sound. Students then circle words from the story that rhyme and underline alliterations (words that start with the same sound). They then create a sentence that uses alliteration, which helps them understand and use literary devices. Additionally, switching between these three tasks requires students to use cognitive flexibility at both the letter-sound and meaning levels. We will have a deeper conversation about Cognitive Flexibility next month, so stay tuned.
You can use any decodable book or even a traditional storybook in a similar way by making lists of target words from the book and then finding words that rhyme.
ADDITIONAL FREEBIES
Two additional free phonological awareness activities, including applications for speech-language pathologists, will be available in my April 18th, 2025 newsletter for subscribers. You may sign up for my newsletter HERE.