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Reading Readiness Skills and Activities

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Reading readiness is the child’s non-reading stage. It is not yet the teaching of reading. Hence, it is the period of readying the children to read.

As the child enters grade one, he/she must be exposed to different activities that will develop his skills in auditory, visual, alphabet and concepts or vocabularies. These skills could help the child to be ready to learn to read.

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The readiness activities must be given the greatest emphasis before beginning formal reading instruction. Failure to provide varied activities would mean a total failure in developing completely the basic skills for reading. This failure would result to children’s low performance in any scholastic activities.

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What is Phonological Awareness?

The ability to hear and manipulate the sound structure of language. This is an encompassing term that involves working with the sounds of language at the word, syllable, and phoneme (sound) level.

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It is the ability of the child to interpret sounds heard. It involves what a child does when his ear receives an auditory message and how the central nervous system puts meaning to that message.

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Good auditory skills enable children to distinguish between different pitches, volumes, rhythms and sources of sounds and words, which among others, significant benefits for learning to read.

Therefore, teachers should be aware that children need to learn that sound has meaning and every sound heard gives a meaningful signal that calls for their response.

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Auditory Perception’s Activities and Strategies

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It is a mental ability of storing and retrieving information heard in the brain. This skill is central to learning and thinking.

It is necessary for the teachers to have knowledge that lack of auditory memory can result in serious consequences that can affect the students’ social and communication abilities, and stem directly from the inability to process all of the sound inputs that the ears and the brain are faced with.

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Children’s better grasp of the auditory memory helps them develop the skill in identifying likeness and differences of sounds they hear.

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Auditory Memory’s Activities and Strategies

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It is the ability to identify and distinguish between different sounds. It enables the child to tell whether two words are alike or different and to describe the similarities and differences of the sound being heard.

Auditory discrimination skills have been linked to the skills in listening, reading and spelling. Teachers should be guided that if a child does not master the discrimination skill well he may tend to “mishear” words.

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Auditory Discrimination’s Activities and Strategies

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Early Reading Development

Phonological Awareness

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What the Research Says About Phonological Awareness (PA)

The best early predictor of reading difficulty in kindergarten or first grade is the inability to segment words and syllables into constituent sound units (phonemic awareness) (Lyon, 1995).

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What the Research Says About PA

The ability to hear and manipulate phonemes plays a causal role in the acquisition of beginning reading skills (Smith, Simmons, & Kame'enui, 1998).
There is considerable evidence that the primary difference between good and poor readers lies in the good reader’s phonological processing ability.
The effects of training phonological awareness and learning to read are mutually supportive.

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What Skills Does PA Include?

Phonological Awareness Development Continuum

Word comparison

Rhyming

Sentence segmentation

Syllable segmentation & blending

Onset-rime blending and segmentation
Blending & segmenting individual phonemes
Phoneme deletion & manipulation

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What Skills Does PA Include?

Sentences: The sun shone brightly.
Word: sun
Syllables: sun, sun-shine, sun-ny
Onset-rime: /s/ /un/; /s/ /unshine/, /s/ /unny/
Phoneme: /s/ /u/ /n/; /s/ /u/ /n/ /sh/ /i/ /ne/

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Levels of Linguistic Units

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What Skills Does PA Include?

Word & Sound Comparison Examples

I’ll say two words, tell me if they are same or different (sun, sun; tan, ran; fit, bit)

I’ll say two sounds, tell me if they are the same or different (/m/, /s/; /f/, /f/; /r/, /r/; /k/ ,/l/)

I’ll say three words, tell me the one that is different (sun, hat, sun; fat, fat, hat)

I’ll say three sounds, tell me the one that is different (/s/, /s/, /m/; /l/, /t/, /t/)

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What Skills Does PA Include?

Sentence Segmentation Examples

I’ll clap the parts in this sentence:

The (clap) boy(clap) went(clap) home(clap).

I’ll tap the parts in this sentence:

She (tap) likes(tap) fat(tap) brown(tap) dogs(tap).

I’ll move a marker for each word.

Say a 3-5 word sentence and move a marker as you say each word.

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What Skills Does PA Include?

Syllable Segmentation Examples

I’ll clap the parts in “football”:

Foot (clap) ball (clap)

I’ll tap the parts in these words:

ba(tap) by(tap)

snow(tap)

di-no-saur (tap after each syllable)

I’ll hold up 1 finger for each part in these words:

big (hold up 1 finger)

ba-na-na (hold up 1 finger as you say each syllable)

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Onset-Rime Blending & Segmenting Examples

Blending Sounds

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Segmenting Words

Teacher Says:	Student Says:
r-un	run
f-ast	fast
sw-im	swim
spl-ash	splash

Teacher Says:	Student Says:
run	r-un
fast	f-ast
swim	sw-im
splash	spl-ash

What Skills Does PA Include?

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Phoneme Level Blending & Segmenting Examples

Blending

I’ll say the sounds, you tell me the whole word.

/f/ /a/ /n/ - fan
/s/ /i/ /t/ - sit
/s/ /l/ /e/ /d/ - sled
/t/ /r/ /ee/ - tree
/c/ /r/ /a/ /sh/ - crash

Segmenting

I’ll say the word, you tell me the sounds in the word.

Fan - /f/ /a/ /n/
Sit - /s/ /i/ /t/
Sled - /s/ /l/ /e/ /d/
Tree - /t/ /r/ /ee/
Crash - /c/ /r/ /a/ /sh/

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What Skills Does PA Include?

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Phoneme Level Deletion & Substitution Examples

Deletion

Say cat. Now say cat without the /c/.
Say fan. Now say fan without the /n/.

Substitution

Say cat. Change the first sound in cat to /s/. What’s the new word?
Say fan. Change the /n/ to /t/. What’s the new word?
Say sick. Change the /i/ to /o/. What’s the new word?

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What Skills Does PA Include?

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Sequencing Suggestions to Enhance Student Learning

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Research indicates that materials that follow the following principles enhance learning for all students:

Progress from easier activities to more difficult (rhyming, sound matching, blending, segmenting, etc.).
Schedule more instructional time on segmenting then other skills.
Start with larger linguistic units (i.e., words and syllables) and proceed to smaller linguistic units (i.e., phonemes).
Begin with short words (2-3 phonemes: at, mud, run).

(Smith, Simmons, & Kame’enui, 1998)

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Sequencing Suggestions to Enhance Student Learning (cont.)

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Focus first on initial (sat), then final (sat), and lastly the medial sound (sat) in words.
Introduce continuous sounds (e.g., m, r, s) before stop sounds (t, b, k).

(Smith, Simmons, & Kame’enui, 1998)

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Example Continuous Sounds

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f
n
s
r • v
l • z
sh
all vowels
m

Words that begin with continuous

sounds are easier to blend.

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Example Stop Sounds

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t • b
p • c
k • j
g • x
d
ch
h

Words that begin with stop sounds are difficult to use in blending activities.

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Enhancing the Lesson

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