Phonological Coding: Phonemic Awareness
Program Description
The HLC Phonemic Awareness program uses words consisting of two to six sounds to develop phonemic awareness. It uses real and nonsense words to ensure training of the auditory processing system by building fluency in segmenting, blending, and auditory analysis skills.
What is Phonemic Awareness?
Phonemic awareness is a type of phonological coding. Phonological coding is the ability to produce, discriminate, and manipulate the phonological (or sound) structure of a language as distinct from its meaning.
Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken words and syllables are composed of a specific sequence of individual speech sounds. Phonemic awareness is a prerequisite to reading and spelling skills, especially phonics. Other types of phonological coding include word, syllable, and rhyming awareness – skills that must be developed prior to phonemic awareness, but which usually require less practice to achieve fluency.
Why is it Important?
Phonemic awareness is a critical prerequisite for reading and spelling, and particularly for the ability to learn phonics-based word-attack skills. Recent research has shown that many students who seem unable to learn reading using standard phonics-based methods benefit greatly from achieving fluency in phonemic awareness. At the Haughton Learning Center, we have found that developing fluent phonemic awareness can make the difference between success and failure for many students who initially seem profoundly dyslexic.
Program Audience
Students, ages five through adulthood, have used these materials with great success. One of its best features is that the vocabulary is not age-biased, so older students will not feel the program is age inappropriate.
Learning Objectives
The learning objectives for this program include segmenting and blending of simple, complex, and nonsense syllables, as well as analyzing/identifying beginning, middle, and ending sounds in real and nonsense words. All objectives are practiced until the student achieves count per minute fluency criteria with near perfect accuracy.
Prerequisites
Prerequisites for Phonemic Awareness include fluent, easeful performance of the following component skills:
- detect rhyming words
- generate rhyming words
- blend (put together) syllables in words
- segment (take apart) syllables in words
- delete or substitute syllables in words
- identify the beginning and ending sounds in words
What’s Included
The program includes the following parts:
- Background in phonological coding, phonemic awareness research, and Precision Teaching
- Hints and guidelines for use
- A Precision Placement tool for each unit
- Three units of materials, procedures, and guidelines covering segmentation, blending, and auditory analysis
Typical Results
Students who master the HLC Phonemic Awareness program are able to hear and recall sounds in their positions so they can then use phonetic skills to achieve fluent reading and language skills.
Click here to download a PDF version of the Table of Contents for this program.
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