School-to-Home Connection for Phonemic Awareness

cue card for students, teachers, supporting personnel and parents

Parents/Guardians can foster the development of their child's phonemic awareness by carrying out the following activities (Groff, 2000):
Activities that Foster Phonemic Awareness - for Parents
1. Say pairs of spoken words and have your child tell whether they rhyme.
2. Have your child count the number of speech sounds in short words you say aloud. Lengthen the words by leaving one second between each sound.
3. Ask your child if two words you speak (that have three speech sounds each) begin with the same speech sound.
4. Do the same for final speech sounds in words.
5. Do the same for middle sounds in words.
6. Pronounce words that have three sounds, leaving a second between each sound. Have your child say the word.
7. Say to your child, When I add /r/ to at I make rat. What word do I make if I add /l/ to ap?
8. Say, If I take away /m/ from meat, what word is left?
9. Say, When I change the /s/ in sat to /r/, what word do I make?
10. Continue with items 7, 8 and 9 with speech sounds at the ends of words, and in the middle of words.
11. Say, Listen to this word (bad). Say it backwards (dab).
12. Say, Listen to this word (pan). Put its last sound first and its first sound last (nap).
13. Say, Listen to this funny word (das). Say it backwards to make it a real word (sad).
14. Say, Switch the first sounds in these two words to make real words (ded rog = red dog)/
15. Teach your child Pig Latin. Here the first sound in a word is detached, placed at the end of a word, to which the sound (a) is added. For example, sit becomes itsay.