The Mindful SLP Podcast: Tracking Phonological Awareness - Ep - 011
Poor phonological awareness can lead to significant difficulties in intelligibility, reading, and mature syntax. As children with poor phonological awareness get older, their problems multiply and they struggle to make continual progress. I created this tracking form to:
- Begin remediating in the preschool years
- Base the developmental sequence on research (see below for citations)
- Assess the gaps and hidden weaknesses that stem from poor phonological awareness
- Create a rigorous progress monitoring tool that begins with early listening skills and concludes with high level phonemic awareness skills
Many phonological/phonemic awareness tools aren’t rigorous enough to uncover the problems of our clients with communication disorders experience, let alone the needs of children with apraxia. You can use this form for assessment purposes as well as progress monitoring. Each skill area—and there are 7!—is broken down into several smaller steps. With the inclusion of early listening skills and these small steps, you will know exactly what skills to target. The seven areas are:
- Listening Games
- Rhyming
- Word and Sentence Awareness
- Syllable Awareness
- Initial and Final Sounds
- Manipulate Individual Phonemes
- Manipulate Medial Vowels
The download comes with detailed directions and activity ideas for each step.
◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈
If you’re looking for rhyming resources check out my free download for 1, 2, Buckle My Shoe.
Orange is a Carrot is another resource for rhyming and also for word awareness.
Download the Phonological Awareness Tracking Form.
Links:
Phonemic Awareness in Young Children by (non-affiliate link)
Music: Simple Gifts performed by Ted Yoder, used with permission
Transcript
Dan: Welcome to The Mindful SLP, the podcast for SLPs looking for simple tools and optimal outcomes. Your host is Denise, experienced speech therapist specializing in all things pediatric, and Dan, business manager for her private clinic.
Welcome to The Mindful SLP. In this episode, we're going to be wrapping up our discussion on phonological awareness. We started talking about this in episode four, and we spoke further in episode ten, and then today we're going to be wrapping things up. I have a feeling we're probably going to come back to this again, because it is pretty important. Denise, just to get us started off here, please give us a quick overview of phonological awareness. What is it?
Denise: Well, phonological awareness is an umbrella term for our awareness of global sounds and speech. Now under that umbrella term, we have some very specific skills. Some of them develop earlier than others. So I've called them early listening skills, such as rhyming and being aware of syllables. Later developing skills, uh, we call phonemic awareness, which is manipulating particular phonemes within words.
Dan: And why is it so important to speech?
Denise: It is huge. The impact of not having phonological awareness on someone's ability to read and write is huge. If you could do one thing to bolster someone's ability to read, which then bolsters their ability to write, it would be to improve their phonological awareness.
And in addition to that as a speech therapist. I have found it to be really, really important, um, when someone does not speak clearly, and when they mumble or speak too fast, or say they have had a severe articulation disorder and are coming out of it, but we still don't understand them. This phonological awareness is the missing piece.
Dan: Uh, so this is really foundational.
Denise: Super foundational.
Dan: We've talked about this in depth in those first two podcasts. So I encourage everyone to go back and listen to the first two podcasts we did on this, episode four and episode ten, to catch up on those discussions. We want to talk about a tracking form that Denise has developed to help kind of wrap all these things up. Now, Denise, why did you create this form?
Denise: There are forums out there to look at a child's phonological awareness. I think every school district has one. They often create their own, and what I found as I use them is they had a way of not separating out skills into enough areas. For example, suppose you were wanting to check how well a child knew their single digit addition and subtraction.
And you gave them five items. Two of them were subtraction and three of them were addition. And now of the two subtraction items, they missed one and they got one. How much data do you have on how well they know single digit subtraction. I mean, they missed one, they got one, right? Only one of each. You couldn't even say with competence, they're at 50%. You don't know.
Dan: Yeah, so, it's a quick pulse to see if they've got something, but it's not a good overall picture of just how well it's cemented into them.
Denise: Yeah. I mean, you really wouldn't know if they missed one and got one. And you had mixed addition and subtraction, you really don't know. In addition to the typical assessments that I've used in the past mixing skills and not having enough items in certain areas, for me to really know where the child is at, they miss some skills, some of the really early listening skills that I found are very important, uh, don't appear on the typical phonological awareness assessments. And I'm a huge fan of the book Phonemic Awareness and Young Children. I talked about it in the previous two podcasts, I'm talking about it here. They have broken things down so beautifully, every skill that you need. Well, almost every skill that you need because as a speech therapist, I added some.
So this tracking form I've developed is a combination of just information I've gathered over the years and things that I find really helpful. Now, you know, I love my job. I absolutely love my job. I love it when those kids come in and I get to help them. But do you know what? I absolutely despise inefficiency in my paperwork.
So the way I've been tracking phonological awareness has been driving me crazy for the past few years, because I created my own form to track where they were on rhyming, because I have subdivided the rhyming skills into so many different areas that they really need. And then I've been using a typical form for more of the phonemic awareness, which usually the forms that exist are really strong on that manipulating of individual phonemes and then I've been scribbling in the margins, just other skills that I know they need. So it drives me crazy. I'm like, where is this child at, in their phonological awareness? And which form did I write it down on? Well...
Dan: These podcasts have actually been helping you too, because it has forced you to think about this a little bit and pull it all together into this one form before we get too much further, I want to remind everybody that this form is available for free on SLP proadvisor.com/free. You can download this form and use it in your therapy. We just want to make that available to everybody, because this is so important.
When do you start using this form? When is phonological awareness come into play?
Denise: It comes into play very early and I want to be looking at phonological awareness with preschoolers. Okay. I'm just going to give you a quick rundown of the age or grade when some of these skills are typically mastered.
And I got this from a source called Reading Rockets and I'll link that in the show notes. Words awareness typically mastered at age three, rhyme at age four, syllable blending age four again, syllable segmentation and deletion at kindergarten and onset rhyme, the middle of kindergarten. Typically we expect children to have mastered all of these phonological awareness skills in kindergarten or first grade.
And there's no hard and fast, no set rule. You'll have this by the second month of first grade, you know, but it's kind of a general rule and I have fourth graders who don't have some of these skills mastered. I'm looking at such a broad age range. I have preschoolers. I want to make sure they're starting this journey of phonological awareness. So we're going to talk about those earliest needs skills.
Dan: But then you got to also make sure that everybody has got all the pieces because it's going to show up later.
Denise: Yeah. You just want to check this with pretty much all your clients. I mean, there might be some who it wouldn't be applicable to, but the majority of your child clients, you're going to want to check this, just find out where they're at.
Dan: Okay, and, and of course, just like, just about everything else in speech therapy, it is a continuum. It's not a yes or no thing for skills. Talk a little bit about that.
Denise: When you take data and if you just do pluses or minuses, it's really hard to know where you're at. I'm not a fan of just pluses and minuses. So I've developed this tracking form to reflect that there's four sections you can check under each skill, Not Present - so I don't have the skill at all, Emerging - solid with assistance, so you have to give them a little bit of assistance, and then Mastered - you really want to know that they're independent on it.
Dan: I'm going to draw a picture of this form in the air here for everybody. So there are seven different areas that we're going to be assessing. Each area has several skills that are involved in it. And then there's four columns to the right of those that you can put in a date of when they have achieved that level.
Denise: Yep. Exactly.
Dan: We're going to talk a little bit about each section and maybe highlight one or two of the skills in each section, but for a full description of each, of course, you're going to want to download the form at SLP proadvisor.com/free. I'm going to sound like a repetitive little monkey here, but that way you'll be able to take your time and be able to understand it all. And of course, we do have our forums where you can ask more questions and get everything answered. So Denise, first, what are the seven areas?
Denise: The sequence is listening games, rhyming, words and sentences, syllable awareness, initial and final continence, manipulating phonemes and introduction of letters and spelling.
Dan: These seven areas are progressive, build upon each other.
Denise: They are, but the sub skills within them don't necessarily have to go in order. I mean, that is client-individual. With some of the rhyming skills, you'll definitely, probably, want to go in order, but some of the other skills they can learn simultaneously or it's individual to your client.
I just want to mention and give credit to the authors of the book, Phonemic Awareness in Young Children. And I'll link that in the show notes. I talk about that book in the two previous podcasts. So a lot of these skills that are broken down, I got from that book, they have pulled out separate skills that are really necessary, that are not addressed in most of the assessments that I've used in the past. But I added some of my own that I've found children with speech and language disorders really need. I just want to read this one quote from those authors: "This is not a phonics program. It is a program that is supposed to make the logic of phonics self evident." So you're focusing on sounds, sounds, sounds, sounds what they hear on you notice you don't bring in the actual spelling really until the very last skill.
Dan: Well, let's dive into the skills.
Denise: Let's begin with listening games. Identifying environmental sounds, identifying animal sounds. Remembering two sounds in sequence, remembering two plus sounds in sequence, detect changes in the familiar, really quick, that might not be familiar to you unless you listen to the last podcast. But if you were to give them a really familiar nursery rhyme, such as Baa Baa Black Sheep, and say, Baa Baa Purple Sheep, you want them to be able to hear that and detect that if you were telling them a familiar story, such as the Big Bad Wolf says, I'll Huff and I'll Puff and I'll Blow Your House Down and you change that to I'll Huff and I'll Puff and I'll blow your ice cream cone down, they would catch that. And then following a sequence of two directions and following a sequence of two plus directions, these are really basic skills.
I look for these in preschoolers. I find kids with autism have more difficulty with this. Kids with ADHD, have more difficulty with this. Treat this a little bit like a standardized test where you're going to start in this area and you're going to go drop back if they're missing and you're going to go forward again.
You can use this tracking tool like that. You don't have to start at the very beginning and say, Oh, does this third grader have these listening skills? They probably do. So use your judgment. And then if you find something missing, backup.
Dan: Right. It's just there as a guidepost to make sure that you don't forget anything.
Denise: Yeah. It's there for you to make sure that at this very young age, they are starting to build the foundation because sometimes we have. I used to miss it as a speech therapist. So that's why it's there. This is where it begins. This is where phonological awareness begins.
Dan: Are we ready to move on to rhyming?
Denise: We are, one of my favorite sections. Let me just read out the rhyming skills and then I'll highlight a few. You want to identify and repeat the last word in a line so they could remember if you said Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, they could remember wall. You want them to be able to anticipate the last word. So be able to fill in wall.
Anticipate the second word in a rhyming pair. Clap in rhythm with chants. Match vowel lip shapes, to words, which I talk about a lot in episode four sort constant vowel words into sets, recall constant vowel rhyming words with some support generate constant vowel rhyming words and nonsense words are fine.
Generate consonant, vowel, consonant, rhyming words. And generate other simple syllable shape rhyming words. So you might have a blend at the beginning or blend at the end, like flag or sand, and be able to rhyme with those, complete rhyming phrases with real words and rhyme words with I N G endings, clapping snapping.
Dan: Let's just talk a little bit about a couple of these skills. Uh, talk a little bit about clap in rhythm with chants.
Denise: So if you can picture yourself sitting across from the child and maybe you're doing the chant bingo. And when you come to say BINGO, you clap your hands against the client's hands. Right?
Yep. Yeah. B-I-N-G-O like that, they need to be able to be in rhythm with you, in sync with you, paying attention to you. Let me emphasize this is not clapping syllables, cause we haven't gotten to syllable awareness yet. This is just being aware of the basic rhythm and that they can be synchronized with you and you're giving them the cues because you've got your hands up.
Dan: Complete rhyming phrases or with real words.
Denise: So I've got a little story to go with this. I had sort of forgotten about this additional skill. I have this client who worked for a long time on mastering the rhyming at the consonant vowel level. And then she got to where she could do consonant, vowel, consonant rhymes and she was just throwing them out all over the place, nonsense words, which was great.
But I started to delve deeper and she really didn't have mastery. If I told her goat. She said dote. And I realized she was giving me dote every single time. So I said, tell me something else that runs with goat. And she said hote. I was like, okay, that's great. I mean, nonsense words are great, but there is this skill where you want them to be able to fill in a real word.
The cat sat on the mat, snug as a bug in a rug. Yeah. So that's part of the whole language skill, and that really threw her for a loop. And she didn't really understand at the beginning that I wanted her to do a real word. Now she's starting to catch on, but that's important for that prediction of real words. So you don't want to miss that skill.
Dan: Let's go to the area of words and sentences. What are the skills involved with that?
Denise: I love how the others in phonemic awareness and young children understand the child's mind about how they perceive words. So the first skill there is identify longest sentence. Let me list all the skills, then I'll come back.
But, um, and then you've got one to where, one-to-one word to mark her correspondence. Easy for you to say. Repeats sentences accurately, counts number of words in a sentence, and here's differences in lengths of words. Okay. So a couple of these do need explanation.
Dan: So tell me about hearing the little differences of lengths in sentences.
Denise: It may seem as though we should talk about words first and then sentences, but we're really talking about words within sentences and how words are their each separate unit. That's what the section is really about. Okay. So identifying the longest sentence, if you were to write, Bob is tall and Bob went to school today.
Dan: Bob went to school today is a longer sentence.
Denise: Yes. The authors make the point again, this is from Phonemic Awareness in Young Children, they're just looking at the words as chunks. They're not really spelling them yet. And you use like blocks to represent each word. So you could have three blocks for Bob is sick. Okay, and four blocks for what was the other word?
Dan: Bob went to school today.
Denise: Bob went to school today, five words. So you're just getting to understand that you can move words around in sentences. Today Bob went to school. Yes. And that you can manipulate the word, see that proceeds, manipulating phonemes, right. Which hasn't happened yet. So yes, they're looking at words. You're not really doing spelling yet.
Does that make sense? Yes. One to one word to marker correspondence. It just means that they can say a rhyme as they touch each block. Or say a sentence and not miss any words, walk down a line of carpet markers and not miss any words. Okay. Which leads right into repeating sentences accurately, and then counting the number of words in a sentence.
If they can go down the line there and count in sequence, they're doing that. And the last one, hearing differences in lengths of words.
Dan: So tell me about hearing the little differences of lengths in words.
Denise: So take the word caterpillar. Lots of syllables, big word and the word plane, small word one syllable. Children don't always understand that the length of the word has nothing to do with the physical size of the object. So you were to ask them, which is bigger. They might say caterpillar because the word is bigger. Okay. So you just want to help them understand that the physical size of the object doesn't relate to the word.
And so you switch up words like caterpillar and plane, and then words like elephant and ant. Well, elephant is bigger, right? Ant is smaller both physically and in the length of the word, but they need to learn to break that association if they have it.
Dan: Syllable awareness is our next area.
Denise: Let me describe analysis and synthesis because this is where this comes in. If you analyze something, you're taking it apart, and if you synthesize something, you're putting it together. And from here on out in phonological awareness, you want to make sure that the child can do both analysis and synthesis in all these skills. Under syllable awareness, we have clap syllables on the beat, sort words by number of syllables, count number of syllables with clapping, count number of syllables without clapping or saying the word out loud, use other physical movements to mark syllables, and synthesize syllables into words. Just let me say something briefly about clapping syllables on the beat, cause you might think that that was really intuitive, but I have a client with apraxia and she does not clap with the syllable as she says it. She might say the word today and her clap might bump(?) us today. To get it instead of to-day. Okay. So that's super important for her to realize not only clap the right number of syllables, but to actually clap on the syllable when you're saying it.
Dan: And then use other physical movements to mark the syllables.
Denise: So you could do marching swaying, stomping your feet, lots of things like that. But what I really, really love is a technique that Pamela Marcela described to me called pencil talk. I was at this conference that she was giving several years ago. I had a client with apraxia no idea what to do with her. She knew how to put the endings on words, but when she started talking conversations, they all dropped out and I was like, waving my hand and my burning question, Pamela, what do I do? And she introduced pencil talk. You use the eraser of a pencil and you tap it on the table for every syllable you say. Really slows someone down. It's a pacing technique basically. It makes them aware of saying every syllable. It works. All I can say is if they have these skills, if they know the syllables. Okay, now clap them and know how many syllables are in a word and you still can't understand them because they're just not mindful putting them in.
If they have to tap a pencil each time they say a syllable.
Dan: It slows them down and connects that to their mind, and then their mind starts to realize that all syllables are important to get into the word.
Denise: And I've got this really cool story. I had a child that I began working with, I think in first grade, again, she had apraxia, I mean, no one could understand her. No one knew that she could talk and you could pick the words out what she was saying. After I'd been doing pencil talk for a little while, her mom came in before school one morning with her. And she said, have you been teaching her to slow down when she talks? She said to me, mom, I want you to stop the car and put the sunroof down. This is a child that nobody could understand. I was like, yes, it's a matter of fact. I have, I told her about pencil talk. I mean, huge, huge moment.
Dan: The next section is initial and final sounds. What are the skills in that?
Denise: These are skills we're all pretty familiar with because these do show up on those assessments we've been used to using. Match and sort words with the same initial phoneme, identify initial full names with pictures or objects.
So you're just using visuals here to help them understand. Generate words with given initial sound, you give them an initial sound and then generate words. So you say, give me a word that starts with M. Take an initial sound away and determine what the word is. So you give them cup. They have to take, mentally, take away the CA and come up with up. Add initial sound, and determine the word, take a final sound away and determine the word, add a final sound and determine the word.
Dan: Pretty straightforward stuff you do all the time.
Denise: Yes. And you know, speech therapists, minimal pairs. We use those all the time.
Dan: Phonemes, that's our next area.
Denise: Yes. Phonemes is our next area. And I really love how, um, the authors of Phonemic Awareness in Young Children suggest that you start analyzing consonant vowel words, which is exactly what I do with rhymey. You're going to be able to both analyze, pull apart and synthesize words like B, buh, E if you ask them to break apart, be the higgo(???), buh, E, if you ask them to put this together and you say, tell me what M, E, is they can say me.
Dan: Okay. That's the first two skills.
Denise: Yes. And then you just extend that analysis to consonant, vowel, consonant words. Let me go through the rest of this list and then I'll go back to some of them. So count the number of phonemes in a word, determine longer words in three sound words, add and subtract the initial consonant of the blends, in three sound words, add and subtract internal consonant of blends, change three sound words to four sound words, add and subtract consonants from final blends, synthesize words from separate phonemes. So some of those were hard to say, uh, let alone understand. So I'll see if I can help you visualize this. Determining the longer word is like high or hike.
They figure out that there's more phonemes in the word hike. Okay. And so you can use counters with that too. Now this one, in three sound words, a word like play add and subtract the initial consonant. So lay to play or play to lay, right. That is easier than adding and subtracting the internal constant of the blend, changing so to slow. Or go to grow. And I found this really important when those kids are working on the L blends and the R blends, and you think they can break apart this blend, how come they're not doing it? It's because that internal consonant of the blend, they're not really strong on that. So all of those, um, those previous ones are analysis, and then the last one is synthesis. Like if you were to say P L A, what word does that make? They can put it together.
Dan: Our final area is with use of letters and spelling.
Denise: Finally, we get a little bit of spelling in here identifying the medial vowel, when it's a long, kay, long vowels are easier to hear As and Es and Is, and then identifying the medial short vowels, ihh and ehh and ahh, harder for kids to hear, especially if they have an articulation disorder. Then swap out medial sounds to change words. So now hot to hit. And the very last one, I love this. You could really have fun with this, but add and subtract letters to change words in various ways. So suppose I started with the word add, then I added an H would become had. But suppose then I changed the last consonant and it became ham. Then I changed the vowel in the middle and it would become him. I could change that to hum, I could change that to sum, I could change that to sing.
Dan: Oh, so you can really? Yeah. I can see there's a lot of fun games with this one.
Denise: So now you're getting really, really flexible with moving all of those sounds around.
Dan: I could just envision, uh, a game...
Denise: We could go on forever with changing the words, right.
Dan: But that's really the fun thing is to make a chain there. Okay. Anyway, so those are the seven areas and all the skills that are involved. And this is all on the tracking sheet that we told you about. Again, you can get that at SLP proadvisor.com/free.
So you'll be able to pick this form, download it, print it out, start using it with every child that you work with to help build up these skills and see where they're doing and how you can work with them.
Denise: Yeah. And let me mention again, the, anything that I didn't describe, I will have an instruction sheet on how to do this. Most of these skills, you're probably pretty familiar with, to give you a snapshot of how I use this. I have a kindergartener who's working with me and I just wanted to check, do a real quick check where she's at with rhyming. So I pull out a rhyming book. We read it. I see if she can fill in the last word. I see if she can anticipate. I mean, she can do all of those things in one like five minute little book reading session with her, I was able to check off where she was with phonological awareness. Then I knew I didn't have to really address it with her.
Dan: But you know that if she's missing one of the earlier ones that you've got some work to go back and to build on.
Denise: Yeah. If she'd been missing something, then I would have backed up, if she hadn't been able to rhyme, I would've gone back up and say, okay, what are we missing previous to that? Or where exactly do we need to start? You can use it as a checklist to find out where you need to work or as a hey, this is not something we really need to worry about.
Dan: All right, well, this wraps up our three part series on phonological awareness. We'll probably come back some day in the future, but for now, w we're going to go on to some other topics. So you can rest assured that I'm not going to have to try and say phonological awareness.
Denise: And keep it separate from phonemic awareness, which by the way has been a huge challenge.
Dan: Come back next time. And we're going to talk about a whole nother topic and we're going to keep it a secret. So you'll just have to come back, see you next time. Thanks.
Thank you for listening to The Mindful SLP. We hope you found some simple tools that will have optimal outcomes in your practice. This podcast is sponsored by SLP pro advisor. Visit SLP pro-advisor dot com for more tools, including Impossible R Made Possible, Denise's highly effective course for treating those troublesome Rs.
A link is in the show notes. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give us a five-star rating and tell your fellow SLPs. And please let us know what you think. Join the conversation at SLP pro-advisor dot com.
