Sound-Letter

Relationships

Phonemes and Phonics

Phonemic Awareness
 As stated in the phonological awareness PowerPoint,
phonemes are “the smallest units of sound that change
the meaning of the word” (Gleason, 2005 p. 135)
 So, phonemic awareness is the awareness of this idea and
knowledge of the various phonemes of language.
 When dealing with phonemic awareness, the emphasis
is on the sounds of spoken words, not on reading or
pronouncing letter names (Shedd, 2008)
 This is because, as discussed in the P.A. PowerPoint, once the
emphasis is on written words, it is known as phonics (Shedd,
2008)
Phonemic Awareness Cont’d
 Phonemes are written as graphemes, and a single
phoneme can be represented by one or two letters
(Shedd, 2008).
 Example: The word “Phoneme” can be broken up into its
graphemes- - /f/ /o/ /n/ /e/ /m/
 In the previous example, the letters ph and me were represented
by only one phoneme each.
 There are 44 phonemes in the English language
 19 are vowel phonemes (a sound represented by a, e, I, o, u and
sometimes y and w)
 25 are consonant phonemes (a sound represented by any letter
of the English alphabet other than a, e, I, o, u and sometimes y
and w)

The bottom half of this slide is from Dow, R.S., & Baer, G.T. (2007).
Self-Paced Phonics: A Text for Educators (4th ed.). New Jersey:
Pearson Education, Inc.
Phonics
 When children start reading printed words, it’s known as
phonics
 One way to think about phonics is the relationship
between phonemes and graphemes
 Learning the intricacies of this relationship is integral to learning
how to read

The information above is from Shedd, Meagan (2008). Letter-

Sound Knowledge. Presentation for TE 301, East Lansing,
Michigan
Sight words
 Sight words are words that can be read automatically
(without having to decode the word)
 This can be any word that is read automatically.
 For most people college-age or older, this is words like sociology
and epiphany.
 This is not to be confused with high-frequency words
(words that are seen often in text)
 High-frequency words include: the, is, and, or, was, etc.

The information above is from Shedd, Meagan (2008). Letter-

Sound Knowledge. Presentation for TE 301, East Lansing,
Michigan
Stages of Sight Word Learning
 Pre-alphabetic
 Pre-school and Kindergarten
 Partial-alphabetic
 Kindergarteners, early first graders and older problem readers
 Full-alphabetic
 Consolidated-alphabetic
 Automatic-alphabetic
 The last three are learned by children at varying speeds, but
children are typically at the last stage when entering middle-
school

The information above is from Shedd, Meagan (2008). Letter-Sound

Knowledge. Presentation for TE 301, East Lansing, Michigan
Stages of Sight Word Learning
 Pre-Alphabetic
 Knowledge of the alphabet is not used when reading
words
 Children are therefore limited to words that they see often in
their environment (restaurants, food/toy names, T.V. show
names)
 Children may also read words by using contextual
cues
 Since children at this stage do not know very many words,
contextual clues are often based on illustrations
 An example would be a child reading pop under a picture of
a Mountain Dew bottle

The information above is from Shedd, Meagan (2008). Letter-

Sound Knowledge. Presentation for TE 301, East Lansing,
Michigan
Stages of Sight Word Learning
 Partial-alphabetic
 As children begin to learn letters, they can begin to
guess words by using contextual cues, sight words
and the letters they know together
 An example would be seeing the letter b along with the
picture of someone reading and guessing “book”
 Children may also begin guessing words when they
recognize the first and last letter (by doing this, children often
skip over the middle letters and are incorrect in saying the
word)
 Children learn the sound of letters whose names are
informative of their sound first (k, t and s for example)
 Children do not decode unfamiliar words
The information above is from Shedd, Meagan (2008). Letter-Sound
Knowledge. Presentation for TE 301, East Lansing, Michigan
Stages of Sight Word Learning
 Full alphabetic
 Children begin to break words apart into their various
letters and sounds
 Can match graphemes with phonemes and have a working
knowledge of the major relationships between graphemes
and phonemes
 Children begin to decode words and improve upon their skills
through practice
 The encounter of more words and their ability to decode
increases children’s sight word “bank”

The information above is from Shedd, Meagan (2008).

Letter-Sound Knowledge. Presentation for TE 301, East
Lansing, Michigan
Stages of Sight Word Learning
 Consolidated-alphabetic
 Children begin to learn chunks of letters that often
appear in words
 Learning these chunks and their pronunciations includes
parts of words like affixes, root words, onsets, rimes and
syllables
 Continue to add to the sight bank while also learning multi-
letter combinations that can be applied to many words (this
leads to less confusion between words)
 Knowing letter chunks and their pronunciations also helps
children think about the influence of certain letters or
combination of letters on words (Sale vs. Sail)

The information above is from Shedd, Meagan (2008). Letter-Sound

Knowledge. Presentation for TE 301, East Lansing, Michigan
Stages of Sight Word Learning
 Automatic-alphabetic
 The reader has all of the skills needed to read
accurately and quickly
 Most words encountered are in the child’s sight
bank
 Unfamiliar words are decoded using a variety of

strategies

The information above is from Shedd, Meagan (2008). Letter-

Sound Knowledge. Presentation for TE 301, East Lansing,
Michigan
Cueing Systems
 Children use different cueing systems
while reading to make sense of the text
 These cueing systems can also be used
by teachers to get students to learn words
without giving them the answer
 The different cueing systems are: the
pragmatic system, semantic system,
syntactic system and phonological system
The information above is from Shedd, Meagan (2008). More Letter-
Sound Knowledge, Vocabulary, and Morphology. Presentation for TE
301, East Lansing, Michigan
Cueing Systems
 Pragmatic Cueing systems
 This
system deals with language variations
according to social and cultural uses (Shedd,
2008)
 An example of this is a child understanding that an
adult speaks differently to a baby than to another
adult (sasked.gov)
Cueing Systems
 Semantic cueing systems
 This
system deals with meaning that focuses
on vocabulary (Shedd, 2008)
 “Does that make sense?”
 Child reads: The horse had four bedrooms
 Text reads: The house had four bedrooms
 Teacher asks: “Does that make sense? Does a horse
have bedrooms? The word starts like horse. What
would make sense? Can you guess what has
bedrooms?”
Example above from
http://www.csufresno.edu/scs/reads/cueing.html
Cueing Systems
 Syntactic cueing systems
 Thissystem focuses on structures that govern
how words are combined in sentences
(Shedd, 2008)
 “Does that sound right?”
 “The pitcher threw the ball” vs. “The ball threw the
pitcher”

Example above from

http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/ela/e_literacy/integrating.ht
ml
Cueing Systems
 Phonological cueing systems
 This system focuses on sounds that correspond to
written symbols
 “Does it look right?”
 Child reads: He jumped over the fence
 Text reads: He jumped over the gate
 Teacher says: “That was a good try. You can jump over
a fence, but does the word look like fence? What would
you expect to see at the beginning of the word fence?”
(Child respond “f”) “Is this an ‘f’?” (You point to the letter
“g”). “What sound does the letter ‘g’ make?”

The example above is from

http://www.csufresno.edu/scs/reads/cueing.html
Approaching decoding
 Some ways in which children decode words can be seen
under “the progress of phonological skill” in the P.A.
PowerPoint.
 Other ways in which children may figure out a word
include:
 Analogy: recognizing a new word based on an already known
word
 Prediction: guessing what the word might be based on initial
letters, words before and after the text, or contextual clues
 Sight (previously discussed in slide 5)
The information above is from Shedd, Meagan (2008). Letter-
Sound Knowledge. Presentation for TE 301, East Lansing,
Michigan
Approaching decoding cont’d
 The importance of decoding
 Ifchildren learn the various types of decoding, they
will be able to read almost anything
 Children often learn knew words this way, without
ever formally being taught the word
 In this way, reading often can expand a child’s
vocabulary immensely
 Also, reading often helps children hone these different
techniques
The information above is from Shedd, Meagan (2008). Letter-
Sound Knowledge. Presentation for TE 301, East Lansing,
Michigan
Stages of Spelling development
 The previous information mainly dealt with
decoding words in order to read them
 When children begin to write however,
they must recall how words are spelled
 The following are the stages of spelling
development children progress through
Stages of Spelling Development
 Prephonemic
 Thestringing of letters together without
attempting to represent speech sounds in any
systematic way
 In this way, children typically represent the length
of words, but nothing else
 abbatts = running vs. tra = car

The information above is from Shedd, Meagan (2008). Writing.

Presentation for TE 301, East Lansing, Michigan.
Stages of Spelling Development
 Early Phonemic
 Letters are used to represent sounds, but
letters are only written for one or two sounds
of a word
 In this way, children begin to convey letter-sound
knowledge in their writing, but usually only for the
beginning or end of words
 Srn = Spider-man

The information above is from Shedd, Meagan (2008). Writing.

Presentation for TE 301, East Lansing, Michigan.
Stages of Spelling Development
 Letter-name
 Phonemes are represented by letters, based
on the similarities between the sound of letter-
names and the respective phonemes
 In this way, children convey their knowledge of the
letters that are informative of the sound they make
 Kap = cape

The information above is from Shedd, Meagan (2008). Writing.

Presentation for TE 301, East Lansing, Michigan.
Stages of Spelling Development
 Transitional
 Words look like English, but are often spelled
incorrectly
 Children know the majority of the letter-sounds, but
make common spelling mistakes due to a small
sight word bank
 Soower = Sewer

The information above is from Shedd, Meagan (2008). Writing.

Presentation for TE 301, East Lansing, Michigan.
Stages of Spelling Development
 Correct
 The majority of words are spelled correctly
 Children’s sight word bank and letter-sound
knowledge is very high and can therefore spell
many words
 Children can also guess fairly accurately at how to

spell unfamiliar words

The information above is from Shedd, Meagan (2008). Writing.

Presentation for TE 301, East Lansing, Michigan.
Issues for SLL’s
 Issues with letter-sounds
 SLL’s will learn letter-sounds that may be different
from their first language
 Because of this, they may need to hear the sounds aloud
more times than non-SLL’s (Shedd, 2008)
 Until SLL’s learn the English language well, cues such
as semantic, syntactic and pragmatic could be of little
use to them
 This is because the structure and meaning of many
languages is different from English
 SLL’s could also potentially have zero English sight
words coming into school, depending on how long
they have been in the country and how many English
texts are at their home
Assessments and Activities
 Using a chant to clap syllables in a students name
 ALL: Name, name, what’s your name?
I have a name and you have a name (pointing)
What’s your name? (point to a student)
Child: Manuel
ALL: Ma-nuel, Ma-nuel, Ma-nuel (clapping syllables)
 This activity is especially good for pre-schoolers,
kindergarteners and SLL’s
 This helps children to hear the different parts of speech while
breaking their own names into syllables

The information above is from

http://www.csusm.edu/Quiocho/ph.second.htm
Assessments and Activities Cont’d
 Names Test
 The Names test involves giving a child a list of names
(first and last) and having them speak the names
aloud
 Responses and errors are recorded by the teacher
 This assesses a child’s ability to decode unknown words
 This can also be a good indicator of what the child needs to
work on, depending on which names/parts of names were
incorrect

The above information is from

http://geckoes4.eschoolonline.com/es4/nova/sdcoe/trec/modules/int_do
cs/module06/pdf/names_test.pdf
References
 Shedd, Meagan (2008). Letter-Sound Knowledge. Presentation for TE
301, East Lansing, Michigan.
 Gleason, J.B. (2005). The Development of Language (6th edition). Boston:
Pearson Education, Inc.
 Shedd, Meagan (2008). More Letter-Sound Knowledge, Vocabulary, and
Morphology. Presentation for TE 301, East Lansing, Michigan
 Saskatchewan Education (2000). Early Literacy: A Resource Guide For
Teachers. http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/ela/e_literacy/integrating.html
 Tutor Information: Literacy Games and Strategies.
http://www.csufresno.edu/scs/reads/cueing.html
 Shedd, Meagan (2008). Writing. Presentation for TE 301, East Lansing,
Michigan.
References Cont’d
 Second Language Learners Considerations.
http://www.csusm.edu/Quiocho/ph.second.htm
 Cunningham, P. Names Test.
http://geckoes4.eschoolonline.com/es4/nova/sdcoe/trec/modules/int
_docs/module06/pdf/names_test.pdf