Understanding Literacy:

A focused look at Print Awareness, Phonics

and Phoneme Awareness

literacy Professional Development

for educators K - Gr.1

Monique Webb
PME 841
Queens University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
 Print Awareness
Print Awareness is the knowledge that oral language Print Awareness begins long
before a child learns to read.
can be represented by written text. It includes alphabet One of the best ways to start

knowledge and understanding that lines build letters developing Print Awareness is
through everyday family
and letters build words. These words can be found on activities.

signs, in books, on paper and anywhere else words can

can convey messages and meaning.
As print awareness develops it expands to include:
being aware of environmental print; being able to
handle books properly; understanding the directionality
of print; being familiar with major book elements such
as the cover, title or author; and knowing the letters of
the alphabet (Lefebvre et al., 2011).
To see how visit: https://
youtu.be/2Yti78OGxg0?
These basic skills help children understand what print list=PLLxDwKxHx1yJTsTEnSok3
looks like, how it works and why it is used (Adams, vev8O3HjofhS

1990).
 Importance to the
Reading Process
Print Awareness is about a student reaching that pivotal understanding

Print Awareness is a sub-skill of reading. A sub-skill is a concept or behaviour in which a student

needs to be proficient to master the foundational skill (Kosanovich, M. and Verhagen, C., 2012).
Once a child has developed print awareness as a sub-skill they can begin to develop other skills
such as, letter sound correspondence.

Print Awareness encompasses a set of essential skills that a student must master in order to
understand that print has a purpose that benefits them. Without purpose there is no reason for
reading. As children begin to realize that printed words are all around them, they will develop a
familiarity with these printed word that helps them feel comfortable with text and understand that
print is useful in many ways (Ripple, 2017).

To witness the moment a child reaches the understanding that print has meaning, is magical. Their
world becomes expanded and then they begin to clearly see what has always been there but is now
new to them.

The National Early Literacy Panel (2002) determined that Print Awareness was one of the 11 early
literacy skills that was necessary for developing successful readers (Lonigan & Shanahan, 2009).
Some Examples of how to include Print Awareness
in your instructional practice:
Centre
The Reading Centre or
Carpet Time
Fill the centre or carpet area with books
that are familiar favourites, repetitive and - Distinguish among letters, words, and
memorized by your class (i.e. Brown
Bear, Brown Bear, Wheels On The Bus,
There Was An Old Lady etc.). You may - Say the individual words in a sentence
also include letter manipulatives, clip
board with paper and pencil, or
whiteboard and markers.
Chicka, Chicka, Boom,
Boom Kitchen
Set up an area with a copy of the book and
other ABC books. Also include pots, bowls,
large spoon, magnet letters, metal trays,
and 2 cards with letters and words from the
book.
Student Task
- Turn pages from front to back.
- Differentiate between pictures and
words in a book when prompted.
spaces.
after it has been stated orally.
- Gr. 1: Identify common punctuation.
- Gr. 1: Identify features of a sentence
(First word, capitalization, punctuation.)
- Sort letters and words
- Distinguish between letters and
other printed symbols (e.g.
numbers)
- Sort upper and lower case
letters
- Identify and match letters to a
letter grid.
Activities and Questions
- Do you know the front of the book?
- Show me how you turn the pages?
- Which way do I read?
- Can you point to spaces between words on
this page?
- You know the story! Read along with me.
What comes next.
- Lets copy some words from the book and
then go for walk to see if we can find them
around the room or on signs.
- What is this little dot at the end? What does
it do?
- How do we know this is a new sentence?
- Lets find all the letters and put them in our
letter soup. Now lets do all the words.
- Can you find the numbers hiding on the
tray?
- Can you find just the upper/lower case
letters?
- Can you tell me the name of this upper/
lower case letters?
- Lets find the letters for your name/this
word and match them on this card.
 Phonological
Awareness
Phonological Awareness is an understanding of the sound
units of language (i.e. onset, rhyme, syllables, distinguish
words, alliteration etc.)

Phonological awareness refers to not only the sensitivity to the

sound units of language, but the ability to manipulate these
units as well (as cited in Lonigan & Shanahan, 2009).

Phonological awareness as a single cognitive ability that

manifests behaviorally in a variety of skills (Anthony et al.
(2002).

Phonological Awareness is an umbrella term and includes the

sub-skill: of phonemic awareness.

TIP! Be careful to not confuse Phonological Awareness with

Phonology (hearing the difference between sounds in spoken
words) or Phonics (an instructional practice for teaching letter
-sound relationships).
 Importance to the
Reading Process
The knowledge about the sound structure of their language that phonological awareness
provides can lead the way to mastering the alphabetic principle that is needed to develop
word recognition and spelling skills (Adams, 1990).

Phonological awareness training, especially when combined with instruction in letter

knowledge, leads to longstanding improvements in phoneme awareness, reading, and
spelling (Anthony & Francis, 2005).

Phonological Awareness can be assessed prior to a child learning to read. This can
identify which students need intervention and which particular skill needs improvement.
Developmentally appropriate intervention can then be administered long before the
student struggles with learning to read (Anthony & Francis, 2005).

Studies have provided conclusive evidence that by targeting these interventions to the
areas of phonological awareness that a child is developing phonological awareness can
be improved, and therefore improvement in phonological awareness leads to
improvement in word decoding (as cited in Schuele & Boudreau, 2008).
Some Examples of how to include Phonological Awareness
in your instructional practice:

Center Student Skill Activities and Questions

Rhyme Time at the Teacher
Table or the Sorting Centre:
Fill your centre with the following items: -
pictures of objects or actual objects that
rhyme, word cards that have matching
onsets and rhymes, rhyming puzzle pieces
that can be broken into the onset and
rhyme and interchanged, rhyming books,
white boards and markers or clip boards
with paper and pencils, .
- Identify similar sounds in oral speech.
- Determine if spoken pairs of words rhyme.
Identify which spoken words rhyme.
Produce a spoken word with the same
rhyme of a spoken word.
- Determine which part of the word (rime)
is important for rhyming.
- Detect and identify initial sound in spoken
words.
- Detect rime when onset is deleted from a
spoken word.
- Blend the onset and rime to say a whole
word.
- Segment the sounds of a spoken word into
onset and rime.
- Do these words rhyme?
- Can you tell me a word that rhymes with
____?
- Which of these words rhyme?
- Do you hear /t/ at the beginning of the
word top? Do you hear /t/ at the beginning
of the word hop?What sound changes in
the words cake, bake, make?
- When /s/ is removed from sat, do you hear
at?
- Put the parts together to make a whole
word: /m/-/ap/.
- Say the word cat in two partsthe first
sound then the rest of the word

Teacher Table: - Blend spoken words together to make

Have on hand pictures of compound words,
compound word puzzle pieces, noise makers that
can produce a beat (i.e. hand drum), vocabulary
word cards, and various objects with multi syllable
names (i.e. toy mouse, keys)
Computer or Ipad:
Have games available to students such as:
PhonicsPlayuk.co.uk, Or apps: Syllables
Splash, Phonological Awareness Lab
compound words.
- Segment spoken compound words.
- Pronounce the syllables in spoken words.
Count the syllables in spoken words.
- Blend syllables into spoken words.
Segment spoken words into syllables
- Put the parts together to make a bigger
word: cup cake.
- Can you break the word cupcake into two
smaller words.
- Clap (or beat the drum) and say the parts
of the word ______. How many parts?
- Put the parts together to make the whole
word: pic-nic.
 Phoneme Awareness
Phoneme awareness refers to the specific understanding that
spoken words are made up of individual phonemes not just
sounds in general.

Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound. The number of English

phonemes ranges from 40-45 (Dehaene, 2009)

Phoneme awareness is a specific term that falls under

phonological awareness. It is this deeper level of understanding
that has been linked causally to early word decoding skill (Schuele
& Boudreau, 2008).

Children with phoneme awareness understand that the spoken

word contains phonemes, and that phonemes can be rearranged
and substituted to make different words.

Skills associated with Phonemic Awareness include: isolating,

blending, and segmenting sounds, deleting, substituting and
adding phonemes.

Phonemic Awareness is not the same as Phonics but it is an

integral piece of Phonics Instruction.
Importance to the
Reading Process
Students with Phonemic Awareness have learned the connection between
word sounds and written letters or words. Phonemes are the raw material
of reading and writing (Griffith & Olsen, 1992).

Phonemic Awareness is necessary for the reading process because it

allows a reader to decode words. Children have to blend sounds together
when they use letter-sound correspondences to read words they have
never seen before. (Griffith & Olson, 1992).

In order for children to learn to read and spell words they must have an
understanding of how spoken language maps onto written language. It
appears that some level of phonemic awareness helps a child grasp this
understanding. A child who is aware of phonemes is not confused when
the teacher starts talking about the sounds that letters stand for in a word,
and thus is able to benefit from instruction (Griffith & Olson, 1992).
 Some Examples of how to include Phoneme Awareness in your
instructional practice:

Center Student Skill Activities and Questions

Words Games Teacher Table
or the Word Work Centre:
Fill your centre with the following items:
letter manipulative such as: letter stamps,
magnet letters, blocks with letters, letter
dice, or sand/paint/play-doh that can be
made into letters or letters drawn in it.
Word cards that have matching onsets and
rhymes, rhyming puzzle pieces that can be
broken into the onset and rhyme and
interchanged, rhyming books, white
boards and markers or paper and pencils, .
- Isolate Sounds - What sounds do you hear in the word
____?
- Blend Sounds - What is the beginning sound in the word
____?
- Segmenting - What is the middle sound in the word
____?
- What is the end sound in the word _____?
- Here are 3 letters. Lets say all 3 sounds
one at a time. Now can you put all 3
sounds together to make/hear a word?
- Here at two letters, a and t. Together they
say /at/. Can you put the letter b in front?
What does it say now?

Teacher Table: - Deleting Phonemes - What do we get when we take away the
/c/ in cat?
Have on hand all the items listed above along with
phonics materials such as: phonics word games
(i.e. Phonic Pop, available through Scholastics),
- Substituting Phonemes - What happens when we change the /h/ in
word rods, lego labelled with common phonemes,
and blank word boxes etc. TIP: Pintrest has ALOT
- Adding Phonemes hat to /p/?

of printable materials just search: Phonemic - What word can we make if we add /t/
Awareness materials and activities. to /op/?

Computer or Ipad: - What happens when we add an /s/ to the

Have games available to students such as: end of the word pot? What does that
PhonicsPlayuk.co.uk, Or apps: Endless mean?
Alphabet, SoundLiteracy, and Phonics
Awareness etc.
 References
Adams MJ (1990) Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Anthony, J. L., & Francis, D. J. (2005). Development of phonological awareness. Current Directions in
Psychological Science, 14(5), 255-259.

Anthony, J.L., Lonigan, C.J., Burgess, S.R., Driscoll Bacon, K., Phillips, B.M., & Cantor, B.G. (2002). Structure
of preschool phonological sensitivity: Overlapping sensitivity to rhyme, words, syllables,and phonemes. Journal
of Experimental Child Psychology, 82, 6592.

Dehaene, S. (2009). Reading in the brain: The new science of how we read. Penguin.

Griffith, P., & Olson, M. (1992). Phonemic Awareness Helps Beginning Readers Break the Code. The Reading
Teacher, 45(7), 516-523. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20200912

Guidelines for Examining Phonics and Word Recognition Programs. (2002). Texas Reading Initiative. Texas
Education Agency. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/print-awareness-introduction

Justice LM and Ezell HK (2001) Word and Print Awareness in 4-Year-Old Children. Child Language Teaching
and Therapy 17: 207225.

Kosanovich, M., & Verhagen, C. (2012). Building the Foundation: A Suggested Progression of Sub-Skills to
Achieve the Reading Standards--Foundational Skills in the Common Core State Standards. Center on Instruction

continued on next page

 References continued
Lefebvre, P., Trudeau, N., & Sutton, A. (2011). Enhancing vocabulary, print awareness and
phonological awareness through shared storybook reading with low-income preschoolers. Journal
of Early Childhood Literacy, 11(4), 453-479.

Lonigan, C. J., & Shanahan, T. (2009). Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early
Literacy Panel. Executive Summary. A Scientific Synthesis of Early Literacy Development and
Implications for Intervention. National Institute for Literacy.

National Center for Family Literacy. (2009). Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National
Early Literacy Panel. Washington, DC: National Institute for Literacy.

Reading Rockets. (2008, May 19). Becoming Aware of Print [Video File]. Retrieved from https://
www.youtube.com/watch?
v=2Yti78OGxg0&list=PLLxDwKxHx1yJTsTEnSok3vev8O3HjofhS#action=share

Ripple, Marie. (2017). Print Awareness [Web log comment]. Retrieved from https://
www.allaboutlearningpress.com/print-awareness

Schuele, C. M., & Boudreau, D. (2008). Phonological awareness intervention: Beyond the basics.
Language, Speech & Hearing Services in Schools, 39(1), 3-20. Retrieved from https://search-
proquest-com.proxy.queensu.ca/docview/232584017?accountid=6180