Phonemic Awareness In Young Children: A Classroom Curriculum

Phonemic Awareness in Young Children complements any prereading program. From simple listening games to more advanced exercises in rhyming, alliteration, and segmentation, this best-selling curriculum helps boost young learners' preliteracy skills in just 15-20 minutes a day. Specifically targeting phonemic awareness — now known to be an important step to a child's early reading acquisition — this research-based program helps young children learn to distinguish individual sounds that make up words and affect their meanings.

• One of the most popular programs available — more than 250,000 copies sold
• Easy and fun activities that take only 15-20 minutes a day
• Includes a flexible assessment test that allows group screening
• Developed by leading experts in reading instruction

With a developmental sequence of activities that follows a school year calendar, teachers can chose from a range of activities for their pre-school, kindergarten, and first-grade classrooms. Plus, the curriculum includes an easy-to-use assessment test for screening up to 15 children at a time. This assessment not only helps to objectively estimate the general skill level of the class and identify children who may need additional testing but may also be repeated every 1-2 months to monitor progress. All children benefit because the curriculum accommodates individualised learning and teaching styles.

Here is everything a teacher needs:

• Teaching objectives
• Lesson plans and sample scripts
• Activity adaptations
• Troubleshooting guidelines
• Suggested kindergarten and first-grade schedules
• Informal, group screening

Table of Contents

1. The Nature and Importance of Phonemic Awareness
• What Research Says About Phonemic Awareness
• About the Structure of Language
• Phonemic Awareness in Young Children: A Classroom Curriculum
• Notes to the Special Education Teacher
• The Structure of the Program
2. The Language Games
• About the Use of the Language Games
• Overview of the Program
• Brief Description of the Games in Practice
3. Listening Games
• Listening to Sounds
• Listening to Sequences of Sounds
• Jacob, Where Are You?
• Hiding the Alarm Clock
• Who Says What?
• Whisper Your Name
• Nonsense
• Whispering Game
• Do You Remember?
4. Rhyming
• Poetry, Songs, and Jingles
• Rhyme Stories
• Emphasizing Rhyme Through Movement
• Word Rhyming
• Can You Rhyme?
• The Ship is Loaded With
• Action Rhymes
• Rhyme Book
5. Words and Sentences
• Introducing the Idea of Sentences
• Introducing the Idea of a Word
• Hearing Words in Sentences
• Exercises with Short and Long Words
• Words in Context and Out
6. Awareness of Syllables
• Clapping Names
• Take One Thing from the Box
• The King's/Queen's Successor
• Listening First, Looking After
• Troll Talk I: Syllables
7. Initial and Final Sounds
• Guess Who
• Different Words, Same Initial Phoneme
• Finding Things: Initial Phonemes
• I'm Thinking of Something
• Word Pairs I: Take a Sound Away (Analysis)
• Word Pairs II: Add a Sound (Synthesis)
• Different Words, Same Final Phoneme
• Finding Things: Final Phonemes
• Spider's Web
• With Word Pair I
• With Word Pair II
8. Phonemes
• Two-Sound Words
• Basic Three-Sound Words
• Consonant Blends: Adding and Subtracting Initial Sounds
• Consonant Blends: Inserting and Removing Internal Sounds
• Building Four-Sound Words
• Guess a Word
• Troll Talk II: Phonemes
9. Introducing Letters and Spellings
• Guess Who: Introducing Sounds and Letters
• Picture Names: Initial Sounds and Letters
• I'm Thinking of Something: Initial Sounds and Letters
• Picture Names: Final Sounds and Letters
• Picture Search: Initial or Final Consonants
• Introduction to How Words are Spelled: Add a Letter
• Swap a Letter
• Sounding Words
10. Assessing Phonological Awareness
• The Assessment Test
• Materials
• The Testing Procedure
• Detecting Rhymes - Description, Administration & Scoring
• Counting Syllables - Description, Administration & Scoring
• Matching Initial Sounds - Description, Administration & Scoring
• Counting Phonemes - Description, Administration & Scoring
• Comparing Word Lengths - Description, Administration & Scoring
• Representing Phonemes with Letters - Description, Administration & Scoring
• Interpreting the Results

Appendices

• Appendix A: Phonetic Symbols and Classifications of American English Consonants and Vowels
• Appendix B: Suggested Kindergarten Schedule
• Appendix C: Suggested First-Grade Schedule
• Appendix D: Accompanying Materials and Resources
• Appendix E: Advanced Language Games
• Appendix F: Annotated Bibliography of Rhyming Stories
• Appendix G: Poems, Fingerplays, Jingles, and Chants

Index

"This is the curriculum in phonemic awareness that many teachers have been waiting for."
- Joseph K. Torgesen, Ph.D.

"This curriculum is an example of what we desperately need more of: research-based theory translated into field-tested materials that teachers can confidently and successfully use in the classroom.'' - American EducatorThis curriculum is an example of what we desperately need more of: research-based theory translated into field-tested materials that teachers can confidently and successfully use in the classroom."
- American Educator

"The directions are easy to understand and the lessons follow a developmental sequence beginning with the easiest and most basic activities. . . . This book could be used with any reading program. . . . The games are user-friendly and do not require a large amount of preparation time. . . . Excellent resource book."
- Utah State Textbook Commission Evaluation

"[The] activities reinforce the phonological awareness skills that are crucial for young children to develop the foundation required for becoming a successful reader."
- Cena Holifield, Academic Language Therapist, Hattiesburg, Mississippi