EARLY LEARNING PROFILE (ELP)
PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS
Young learners must understand that words are made up of discrete sounds before they can use a knowledge of sound-spelling relationships to decode words. Many children come to school thinking of words as whole units --- cat, dog, run. Before they can learn to read, children must realize that these words can be broken into smaller units --- and sounded out.
Phonemic awareness is the understanding that a word is made up of a series of discrete sounds. Without this understanding, phonics instruction will not make sense to children. Some children with weak phonemic awareness skills are able to make it through the first stages of learning to read by memorizing words. This strategy breaks down when the number of unique words in text increases in grades 3 and up. Therefore, if weak phonemic awareness skills are not detected and not explicitly taught and practiced, these children may enter the intermediate grades with a very serious reading deficit, and they will need intensive intervention.
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Children who fail to develop phonemic awareness have difficulty learning basic reading and spelling skills.
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When children are taught phonemic awareness explicitly, they demonstrate greater abilities to read and spell words.
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(Canadian Language & Literacy Network, 2009; Catts & Kamhi, 2005; McGill-Franzen, 2006; Snow et al., 1998; Sousa, 2005; Trehearne, 2004; Wren & Watts, 2002)
Phonological Awareness is the ability to hear, recognize and play with the sounds in our oral language. It is an ear skill. Phonological Awareness is an umbrella term that involves the ability to work with the sounds of language at the word, syllable and phoneme level. It includes rhyming, alliteration, sentence and syllable blending and segmenting.
Phonemic Awareness is the most complex phonological awareness skill. It is the understanding that spoken words consist of a sequence of speech sounds and an awareness of the individual sounds or phonemes. It is the ability to attend to the sounds of language as being separate from the meaning of language. Phonemic Awareness is the ability to segment words into sounds, blend them back together and manipulate the sounds to make new words.
Phonics is the ability to apply letter-sound knowledge when translating print into speech. Phonics provides readers with a tool to unlock or decode the pronunciation of written words. Phonemic Awareness skills precede phonics skills because children must first develop an understanding of how spoken language maps to written language. Phonemic Awareness bridges the spoken word (oral) to the written word (print).
HOW-TO ADMINISTER RESOURCES
Instructional videos on how to approach the administering of the phonological awareness sub-assessment of the ELP.​
KINDERGARTEN
GRADE ONE
GRADE TWO
INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES
Instructional strategies and helpful resources to support the development of phonological awareness.
