Developmental Sequence of Phonemic Awareness - Ep. 004
--- Show Notes
Phonemic Awareness in Young Children by (non-afiliate link)
Prime to Rhyme: CV Rhyming Cards and Vowel Lip Shapes (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 back. And thanks for listening. Today, we're going to be talking about developmental sequence and phonemic awareness. Okay. Now, first off I am a husband of a speech therapist who has a master's degree in this stuff. I swear you guys try to see how smart you are by putting as many syllables as possible into everything you talk about.
So just what is phonemic awareness?
Denise: Okay. It's a two-part explanation. So hang with me and I am quoting from the authors of Phonemic Awareness in Young Children. It's a great book and I'll link it in the show notes. But they say the very notion that spoken language is made up of sequences of little sounds does not come naturally or easily to human beings.
Okay. So that's the first idea, the small units of speech that correspond to letters of the alphabet are called phonemes. So awareness that language is composed of these small sounds is phonemic awareness.
Dan: Okay. So what does that really mean?
Denise: It means. And I'm quoting again from these authors, that the challenge is to find ways to get children, to notice the phonemes, to discover their existence and separability.
And I really love that word existence because you would think, well, of course they know that phonemes exist because they speak. But no, it's not exactly, like if you sing, do you know that different notes exist? Can you sing and know that you're singing, uh, scale ABCD, E
Dan: It's just sounds, it's just music it's until someone teaches you what it is, it's just music.
Denise: Mmm-hmm, and they just all flow together.
So their existence in the separability, a huge idea, and it does not come naturally. And to some children, they really need to be taught it.
Dan: So what is the sequence that children learn, phonemic awareness?
Denise: Okay, I'm going to go off what these authors wrote in this book. And describe the sequence its very important that you address this in the right sequence.
So first children learn to attend selectively to sounds so you'd play listening games. Um, you know, and what does the bird say and what you hear, or that's a car sound. Those kinds of things. And then they start to begin to be aware of rhyming. And there's lots of different things you can do with rhyming, but that is the next step.
Okay. And then they begin to be aware of sounds inwards.
Dan: This sounds like a really complex so what does the Fox say,
Denise: Yeah we're going and then they become aware that words make up sentences. So even though they're already making sentences, they may not be aware of the separability of words. And then they are aware that words are made up of syllables.
So clapping the syllables thing. Okay. Then they can begin to isolate initial and final sounds, realize oh, cat starts with 'k', dog ends with 'guh', okay. Then they learned to put words together from these different sounds. And then, and only then did they begin to understand the relation of letters to speech sounds. So then those are pre-reading skills.
Dan: Right? I remember that in school.
Denise: But it's not just reading. I have found this affects so much more than reading.
Dan: So can you give me an example?
Denise: Sure, several examples. So I have an autistic child, a preschooler who speaks so quickly that her words are run together. She's lacking the separability of words, that awareness.
Okay. I have a child who has severe apraxia she's really getting a lot, lot better, but she lacks spontaneity speech being able to put sentences together. She's just not aware of where the sound should be. So she just does a lot of imitation still. I had one client whose mother brought her to me and said she had been to another private speech therapist who said after working with her for while I just can't break her code.
And she was a little bit confusing at first. And I thought, well, is it phonemic awareness? Because I hardly know how to describe her to you, but she didn't lack for talking. I mean, she could chatter on. And when I ask her comprehensive questions, she would understand, and could answer comprehension questions about stories, but she, I mean, it was kind of mixed up and her pronouns were mixed up and her stories were kind of mixed up, but not super mixed up.
And her academics were really, really low. So I just checked her phonemic awareness and that was the foundation of all her other problems. I mean, her phonemic awareness was so poor. I don't know how she got some of the skills she has in other areas, honestly,
Dan: So naturally, you know, being a speech therapist, you start looking for something to help some kind of a program, something that you could do to help these kids understand the phonemic awareness.
Denise: Sure. And there's lots of programs out there. With these clients. I just described many of them. I was doing other things. First. I was doing the listening games. I was doing some articulation therapy with the apraxic clients, um, prompt therapy. We got to the point where we were ready to work on rhyming and they pulled out some materials already had, which were some CVC.
Consonant vowel consonant, um, arriving puzzles started trying them. I just got blank stares. I just got like, I don't even know what you're asking me to do. They couldn't even grasp where I was starting from every program that I had started the CVC level. And that was just too high for them. It was one sound, too many.
I figured I needed two sounds. CD words like doh mo go or may say hey. And I also thought I need something really concrete. I need a way for them to associate sounds with meaning. So I started to think of the lip shapes we make with vowels. The long vowels, especially are so distinctive, 'a' and 'oh' and 'ooh', and 'ahh', not a long vowel, but a very distinctive lip shape.
So when I realized I needed a consonant vowel words, and I needed lip shapes to go with them, I thought that'd be a really good way for them to connect what their bodies were doing with the idea that they were creating these sounds, I hopped on the internet. I thought I can find something. I can find something that'll meet my needs.
So many phonemic awareness programs out there. And I did find some lip shapes, but I didn't find any phonemic awareness programs that just had consonant vowel words. It was a little bit frustrating cause I was like, I want this now. And granted, I don't have all day to search the internet, but I did enough searching that I was like, I'm done searching, I'm going to make mine.
Dan: So what was your next step then?
Denise: I had some lip shapes made. I had an artist draw lip shapes had an artist draw the consonant vowel words for A E I O N ahh and ooh, made the cards. Oh, because they're so visible because my plan.
Dan: For an artist to actually be able to draw them.
Denise: Well, that wasn't, it is, but that wasn't no, it's easy for the child to see in the mirror because this is what's coming up.
Oh, okay. The mirror is very important. If I say 'ih', can you see what I'm doing? No, no. If I say, 'ooh', can you see what I'm doing? Okay. I, they needed the concrete visibility.
Dan: After the lip shapes were made, then then, what'd you do?
Denise: Then I just came up with a list of consonant vowel words for A E I O ooh and ahh like go and mow and doe you know, um, be me see, after I had as many as I could think of that were words that these children would know, you know, their age appropriate words. I left the words off the cards. Cause I didn't want them attending to the spelling.
Dan: You had a lip shape card, and then you had a whole bunch of other cards with pictures for the words that go with that lip shape.
Denise: Yeah, exactly. So now that we've gone through all of this, here's the function, here's the fun part.
Okay. This is where the fun really starts and my clients really do enjoy this. The first step I use a mirror, a standalone mirror, so it can just sit on the table. And the very first step is just have the clients attend to what shape their lips are making when they say these vowels. And then we associate it with the cards.
Okay. Next step is to match the word they're saying, with the lip shape and I'm still using the mirror at this point, but I'll have two sets because if I just had one set, if I just had, oh, they would just automatically be saying dough, no, oh, I'm saying, oh, does that make sense?
Dan: They focus on the O more than, than just because it's a rhyme and just go, they wouldn't think about it.
Denise: They need the contrast. So they can sort, they began to sort in their mind. And, and really, they couldn't do this at the first, which is a clue that this is what the clients needed if I had, oh, and I had a, okay. My two lip shape cards and I had a word like, Hey, and I had a word like dough. They really had to think and look in the mirror.
And some of them were even touching their mouth in order to put the O word in the 'o' pile and the A word in the 'a' pile.
Dan: Oh, to be able to even recognize that there's a difference in the sounds.
Denise: Yeah, to recognize that they're saying a different sound. So a whole bunch of sorting a whole bunch of sorting with all different mixtures of all the different vowels is what we did.
Dan: Okay. That's the first step. And then I took the mirror away and see if they could still sort that's the next step. Okay. And then they're really clueing into not just the visual of it, then they're clueing in their ears, and making those associations. Yes. It depends completely on the ear.
Denise: So then they're hearing it and they're hearing the difference. And then after that, I want to start to build their auditory memory, the memory for where sounds should be and for what rhymes, even though we really haven't talked about rhyming, you notice these are rhyming words, they, right. Okay. So I will choose one constant vowel set after we've done a sorting activity. Now, so say I choose E and we'll go through all the cards and I'll have them say them with me and lay them all down that I pick them all up, put one down like C and I say, okay, what else do you remember, that goes with C and see if they can even remember, can they remember B or key, or d oftentimes I couldn't. So I'd show them the cards again with name them all. I pick them all back up, gathering them up. They can't see them. What do you remember? And I tell you for the clients who really struggle, it's a doing this step every single time.
I mean, they remember one, right? They remember one word, I put it down and they show them all the other words again. Gathering back up, ask them what they remember. And it can take quite a while before they start to remember two words that they saw. So phonemic awareness, auditory memory, they really go hand in hand.
I haven't even asked them to generate rhyme yet. And that's often where some phonemic awareness program starts with consonant, vowel, consonant words. They're asking for generator rhyme. These kids aren't generating roams yet. They're just remembering what they heard. So then after you do that. you can play a matching game with carpet markers. You know, those little circles that preschoolers sit on at circle time, okay.
One inch or one foot in diameter.
Yeah. Yeah. The internet calls them carpet markers. Okay. So what I like to do, and this is really fun is play a matching game with two vowel sets, I tape some words to the carpet markers and on the bottom of the carpet markers, some of them have a picture of an M&M, like half of one.
Okay. They can't see it. It's on the bottom. Okay. So you have to walk around on the carpet markers and I tell him stop, it's like a stop and go game, you know, and they have to stop on a word and I have the lip shapes on the board, or I have one of the words that belongs to this set on the board. So I might have a lip shape O and I have lip shape E or I might, they might be past that. I might have the word 'no for O, and the word 'key' for E if you get it. So whatever word they step on, they have to choose where that goes. Then they get to turn the carpet marker over. And if there is a picture of an M&M on the bottom, they get a mini M&M and they just think that is awesome.
That is so much they're so motivated. I mean the whole game, they might get five mini M's, but it's so fun for them.
Dan: Yeah. It sounds like they respond really well to this.
Denise: Oh, they do. They just think it is so much. Look at themselves in a mirror, no carpet markers. m&ms it just seems to be fun. Magnets on a board kids look magnets on the board too.
So after you do all this, sorry, there's two more activities you can do. And I'm sure that I will come up with more. And if you're listening to this as an SLP, you will come up with more, but these are the ones I've been doing so far. I begin to model the separability of the consonent vowel words and practice segmenting the two sounds so, duh, oh, and by the way, this is not easy, you think they should be easy if they're struggling, this is not easy, but this is what they would need to do to generate a rhyme is to realize that they got to replace the first sound with a different sound. Okay. So then we began to do that. And another activity I'll do is I'll arrange the cards face down on the table, with the one card face up in the middle. And I asked them to remember a word that sounds like the face upward, and I'll give them a little clue, an insect that buzzes. Oh, 'bee'. So now as the therapist, you got to have your list of words in your clues. You know. Yeah. And then you pick it the cards to see which one actually is bee because you don't remember, but with that activity, you're working in the attributes, which is, you know, it's just another language bonus that you can give.
So as you're playing these games, besides having fun, I wanted to tell you some really, really impressive results. So the, my little preschooler, autistic client that runs the words together, started slowing down and becoming more conversational. Now it's not perfect yet, but she said to me, one day she needed a tissue and she said, where's the garbage can.
Okay. That might not sound like a big thing to you. But it was huge the way she said it in a conversational tone with the words not coming out too fast, her intonation was correct. Where's the garbage can. I was like wow! I mean, I was doing a lot of other things with her, but this happened after she started to make some real gains in the phonemic awareness.
And so I really think seeing those two things emerge together, I really believe it was the phonemic awareness that helped her start to slow down and become more conversational. We still have some work to do, but it's coming. The other client that I described, to the one who the other speech therapist that she couldn't crack her code, and she just kind of seemed to be all over the place with her language. What was really interesting is the day she first got the first glimmer of separability of the phonemes, like saying, 'guh', 'oh', like that. Okay. We were also working on pronouns, 'cause she was messing up her pronouns. And I had some cards off to the side that we had used earlier with he and she sentences, she picked them up and she went through them and she said he is running and she is drinking milk, he is eating a hot dog, just, she went through like 25 cards without making a mistake. Wow. Just like that. And we haven't even really addressed the pronouns directly. I kind of let them drop and thought I need to get this one and make awareness under control. Well guess what? I mean, the pronouns just started to come in by themselves because she could attend to what the word sounded like.
Dan: And then she could discern the difference. Yeah.
Denise: So that was really good.
Dan: To wrap it up, then what do you say to a speech therapist who might have a client struggling with phonemic awareness?
Denise: So, first of all, I would say, think of all your clients, not just the ones you are sure have a phonemic awareness issue, but ask yourself, could there be some phonemic awareness deafness that I have not explored because I have found once I start diving in, I found it in so many places I didn't expect it. It has tendrils in so many different areas, but if you're struggling with a client that you are currently working on phonemic awareness, look at this developmental, sequence and ask yourself, are you starting too high? I find that so often I find that so, so, so often. We start too high because that's where a program says we need to start, or that's the materials we get and that's the, where they are starting. And so that's where we start and the clients struggle more than they need to. So these consonant vowel words that I've made, you can totally do it. I mean, you can grab pictures off the internet.
You can come up with these lists of words. If you want to save some time, I have them on SLP ProAdvisor and you can get them. And if you put in the coupon code 'mindful', you'll get 10% off. It's not real expensive to begin with. No, it's $10.
Dan: So, you know, you're saving 10%, you're going to save a buck, but, you know, what's your time worth? And, and you know, we're not trying to get rich on this stuff here, but it did cost us a little bit with the, uh, the artist and, and things like that. And putting together. But yeah, these things, can you put these together? You print it out, you laminate them and you've got cards that you can use...
Denise: In so many different, fun activities.
Dan: And the activities are all with the cards.
Denise: Yes, oh and as a bonus you get some nursery rhymes. I also use nursery rhymes for rhyming and that's a whole different podcast about how to use nursery rhymes with rhyming, but they are their pictures that they can color, the artists did a fantastic job of drawing, cute pictures and kids this age are working on this normally like to color. So it's a send home activity too.
Dan: Well that about wraps it up for this week.
Denise: And I want to say, I so appreciate you as listeners. I know you're busy. I know you have a thousand things to do, and there are a thousand resources out there to pay attention to. So I really, really appreciate it that you would pay attention to my little piece of 'this is what you can do'.
Dan: We will talk to you again on our next episode. Thanks for listening.
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