Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness is the ability to segment sounds in a word. There is an initial sound, medial sound, and a final sound. You are able to isolate segment sounds, blend segment sounds, and delete sounds to create new words. According to the University of Oregon Center for Learning on Teaching, phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in spoken words. It is the understanding that spoken words are made up of sequences of speech sounds. Phonemic awareness is important because it is essential to learning to read. Letters represent sounds.
For this activity the teacher should provide each student with multiple sheets such as the one above. These sheets are known as Elkonin boxes. Each space provided is for a specific sound for the picture provided. In this example there is a picture of a duck with three boxes below. The boxes should be filled with the sounds following. /d/ /u/ /ck/. The students should follow the boxes with their fingers.
This activity would be great for early english language learners. With pictures being presented instead of words, it would be easier for native speakers to understand the word they are to use. According to George Lucas Educational Foundation, "...using photos with English-Language Learners (ELLs) can be enormously effective in helping them learn far more than a thousand words -- and how to use them."
In this activity the teacher will provide each student with a group of matching cards like the ones above. Before handing the cards out, the teacher should cut each box out. Once the students have received their cards, they should shuffle them up based on if they have a circle in the bottom right corner or a triangle in the bottom right corner. Once the cards are shuffled they should be placed face down on a flat surface in front of them. The circle cards should be placed on one side separated from the triangle cards. The student should start by flipping one card from each side. If the cards match, they should be placed to the side. If the cards do not match they should be flipped back over. The cards match based on the sounds. The students are to take out the initial sound for the words representing the pictures labeled with a circle. For example, the first set of boxes show a leg, represented with a circle, and an egg represented with a triangle. If you take away the initial sound /l/ sound from /l/ /e/ /g/ you get /e/ /g/. This creates the word egg. The goal of this exercise is to find a match for each card.
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Because the cards have pictures, this activity would be great for all ages starting with early elementary children. According to Educational World, "There are countless skills that students can develop through game playing such as critical thinking skills and creativity".
http://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/pa/pa_what.php
http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/reasons-to-play-games-in-the-classroom.shtml
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