Phonological Awareness: It’s Critical
In my last post I discussed how important it is for a dyslexic child to be able to discriminate (isolate) individual sounds in words. This is known as phonological awareness and is fundamental in underpinning the skill of reading. Only by isolating a sound can we attach that sound’s corresponding letter/s and thereby crack the code of the English language.
Dyslexic children often have poor phonological awareness. Improving phonological awareness is one of the most important things you can do for your dyslexic child.
As well as segmenting words into individual sounds, your child needs to be able to blend sounds.
Blending. How to Begin?
1. In this exercise you will say sounds and your child will blend the sounds together to articulate a word. As with the segmenting exercises, begin with two-sound words such as to, on, at, in, my, he or even made-up, silly words such as, loo, fi, ka. Say the first sound, pause for one second, and then say the next sound. For example: using the word at, you would say the sound a, pause for one second, and then say the sound t. Your child should then say the word, at.
2. When she gets good at two-sound words, do three, four, five-sound words.
3. Remember, as with segmenting, this is all about sound, NOT letter names.
4. Practise the above in the car, while out for a walk. Do it while throwing a ball, marching or jumping. You don’t need to be seated at a desk to improve phonological awareness. It is all about sound.
Two important points:
- Blending mimics reading (decoding). Your child has to hold sounds in her head and then push them together to discover the word.
- Holding the sounds and then pushing them together relies on working memory. What is working memory? It is the ability to take in short term information, hold onto it, and manipulate it. In the blending exercise the child has to hold the sounds in the right order in her short term memory and then push them together to discover the word. Working memory is critical for learning and, like phonological awareness, children with dyslexia often have poor working memory.
“Approximately 10% of us have weak working memory; however, the estimates of the percentage of weak working memory in students with specific learning disorders, including dyslexia, ranges from 20 to 50 percent.”
— The International Dyslexia Association.
So the great thing about blending is that your child is not only improving her phonological awareness, she is also developing her working memory. In my next post I will discuss phoneme (sound) manipulation.
