Dear family,

We are working to increase your child’s phonological awareness. Phonological awareness is the understanding that our language is made up of individual sounds which are bended to form syllables and words. Phonological awareness contributes to better early reading and spelling, even though phonological awareness activities are oral, and do not require reading skills.

Your child is currently working at the phoneme or sound level. The ability to break up words into individual sounds is strongly correlated with early reading achievement. Activities at this level include isolation, segmentation, blending, deletion, and substitution of sounds in words. In this package, you will find worksheets for the following activities:

What is Phonological Awareness? Sound Segmentation exercises and pictures Syllable blending exercises and pictures

A few things to remember when doing sound segmentation and blending exercises: Refer to the different sounds in the word, rather than the names of the letters. Pronounce each sound in isolation

o Make sure whispered sounds (p, t, k) remain whispered and no other sounds are inserted (e.g. “p” not “puh”)

o The sound of a letter depends on the context (e.g. /a/ in “cat”, is different from /a/ in “father”, and /a/ in “cake”). M

Make sure you are pronouncing the sounds as they occur in those specific words. Make sure your child leaves a slight pause between sounds or syllables – that way, you know that they are

recognizing the different parts (i.e. sounds, syllables) of the word. Remember that the number of sounds in a word is often different from the number of letters in the word (e.g.

“shoe” has four letters, but only 2 sounds (sh-oo); tack has four letters but only three sounds (t-a-k)).

Strategies to help the child segment sounds:o Use visuals to help the child visualize how many sounds need to be included when they are

segmenting. For example: Use squares to have the child tap along with each sound Have the child fill boxes for each sound with the corresponding letters, and say the sounds

out loud Have cut-outs of different letters, and have the child segment and tap along to each of the

different sounds that the letter(s) make. If the child is having difficulty, model the correct segmentation for them and have them

repeat.

Play games as you do these activities. Have the child take a turn in a turn-taking game, or reward them with a game after they complete the activities.

Use the pictures on pages ____ to play games in which you have to segment sounds (e.g. use the cards to make go fish, bingo, memory, etc.)

I hope that the activities are easy to understand. Keep in mind that they are designed to be fun, not frustrating, for you and your child. Feel free to call if you feel unsure about the procedure for an activity.

If you have any questions, please call me. Thank you for your help!

Sincerely,

_____________________________Sharel Wentz, Speech-Language Pathologist

A. Perez-Leon, SLP student