ABSTRACT
Chapter 3, Teaching Phonological Awareness, explains what phonological awareness is and how children develop it. It discusses the differences in key “ph words” (e.g., phonics, phoneme), differentiating between important teacher jargon. It discusses letter-sound correspondences and the three pieces of information needed to understand these correspondences: 1) visually discriminating one letter from another (e.g., b versus d), 2) becoming aware of speech sounds in English, and 3) mapping the speech sounds to the appropriate letter symbol. It also focuses on the importance of students understanding that words are made up of speech sounds that are represented by graphemes (letters). The chapter includes an oral assessment that teachers can give to discover what their students’ abilities are. A simple scope and sequence is also provided as well as activities appropriate for preschoolers.
