What are some examples of phonological awareness

Phonological and Phonemic Awareness | Reading Rockets

Phonological awareness is a broad skill that includes identifying and manipulating units of oral language – parts such as words, syllables, and onsets and rimes. Children who have phonological awareness are able to identify and make oral rhymes, can clap out the number of syllables in a word, and can recognize words with the same initial sounds like 'money' and 'mother.'

Phonemic awareness refers to the specific ability to focus on and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. Phonemes are the smallest units comprising spoken language. Phonemes combine to form syllables and words. For example, the word 'mat' has three phonemes: /m/ /a/ /t/. There are 44 phonemes in the English language, including sounds represented by letter combinations such as /th/. Acquiring phonemic awareness is important because it is the foundation for spelling and word recognition skills. Phonemic awareness is one of the best predictors of how well children will learn to read during the first two years of school instruction.

Students at risk for reading difficulty often have lower levels of phonological awareness and phonemic awareness than do their classmates. The good news is that phonemic awareness and phonological awareness can be developed through a number of activities. Read below for more information.

What the problem looks like

A kid's perspective: What this feels like to me

Children will usually express their frustration and difficulties in a general way, with statements like "I hate reading!" or "This is stupid!". But if they could, this is how kids might describe how difficulties with phonological or phonemic awareness affect their reading:

• I don't know any words that rhyme with cat.
• What do you mean when you say, "What sounds are in the word brush?"
• I'm not sure how many syllables are in my name.
• I don't know what sounds are the same in bit and hit.

A parent's perspective: What I see at home

Here are some clues for parents that a child may have problems with phonological or phonemic awareness:

• She has difficulty thinking of rhyming words for a simple word like cat (such as rat or bat).
• She doesn't show interest in language play, word games, or rhyming.

A teacher's perspective: What I see in the classroom

Here are some clues for teachers that a student may have problems with phonological or phonemic awareness:

• She doesn't correctly complete blending activities; for example, put together sounds /k/ /i/ /ck/ to make the word kick.
• He doesn't correctly complete phoneme substitution activities; for example, change the /m/ in mate to /cr/ in order to make crate.
• He has a hard time telling how many syllables there are in the word paper.
• He has difficulty with rhyming, syllabication, or spelling a new word by its sound.

How to help

With the help of parents and teachers, kids can learn strategies to cope with phonological and/or phonemic awareness problems that affect his or her reading. Below are some tips and specific things to do.

What kids can do to help themselves

• Be willing to play word and sounds games with parents or teachers.
• Be patient with learning new information related to words and sounds. Giving the ears a workout is difficult!
• Practice hearing the individual sounds in words. It may help to use a plastic chip as a counter for each sound you hear in a word.
• Be willing to practice writing. This will give you a chance to match sounds with letters.

What parents can do to help at home

• Check with your child's teacher or principal to make sure the school's reading program teaches phonological, phonemic awareness, and phonics skills.
• If your child is past the ages at which phonemic awareness and phonological skills are taught class-wide (usually kindergarten to first or second grade), make sure he or she is receiving one-on-one or small group instruction in these skills.
• Do activities to help your child build sound skills (make sure they are short and fun; avoid allowing your child to get frustrated):
  • Help your child think of a number of words that start with the /m/ or /ch/ sound, or other beginning sounds.
  • Make up silly sentences with words that begin with the same sound, such as "Nobody was nice to Nancy's neighbor".
  • Play simple rhyming or blending games with your child, such as taking turns coming up with words that rhyme (go – no) or blending simple words (/d/, /o/, /g/ = dog).
• Read books with rhymes. Teach your child rhymes, short poems, and songs.
• Practice the alphabet by pointing out letters wherever you see them and by reading alphabet books.
• Consider using computer software that focuses on developing phonological and phonemic awareness skills. Many of these programs use colorful graphics and animation that keep young children engaged and motivated.

What teachers can do to help at school

• Learn all about phonemes (there are more than 40 speech sounds that may not be obvious to fluent readers and speakers).
• Make sure the school's reading program and other materials include skill-building in phonemes, especially in kindergarten and first grade (these skills do not come naturally, but must be taught).
• If children are past the age at which phonemic awareness and phonological skill-building are addressed (typically kindergarten through first or second grade), attend to these skills one-on-one or in a small group. Ask your school's reading specialist for help finding a research-based supplemental or intervention program for students in need.
• Identify the precise phoneme awareness task on which you wish to focus and select developmentally appropriate activities for engaging children in the task. Activities should be fun and exciting – play with sounds, don't drill them.
• Make sure your school's reading program and other materials include systematic instruction in phonics.
• Consider teaching phonological and phonemic skills in small groups since students will likely be at different levels of expertise. Remember that some students may need more reinforcement or instruction if they are past the grades at which phonics is addressed by a reading program (first through third grade).

More information

Additional resources

See the Reading Issues section on Understood.

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What is Phonological Awareness? Examples & Benefits

July 21, 2022

If you have a child who is stepping into the world of literacy and reading, then you must be aware of the widely used term, “Phonological Awareness”. The term is as puzzling as commonly it is used. It brings along with it a bag of concepts, such as phonemic awareness, phonemes, etc. 

That’s why we have brought to you a crash course in Phonological Awareness explaining everything you need to know about it.

Phonological awareness is the foundational skill for reading. As the name implies, phonological awareness is related to sounds. It is the ability to identify and distinguish between sounds in a word. It also helps in explaining how sound works in different ways in a word. 

Lane & Pullen defines it as “the development of different phonological components of spoken language.” It begins at the very initial stages.

Phonological awareness includes the following skills:

Related Reading: Everything You Need To Know About Phonemic Awareness To Help Kids Master Reading

When a child is able to identify words ending with the same sound.

Identifying the similar sounds at the beginning of a word.

Identifying and segmenting words in a sentence and syllables. 

Onset is the beginning sound of the word and Rime is the ending sound. Both of them are taught so that kids can manipulate the two to read new words. For example, if “C” is changed to “B” with an “AT” in the end, it becomes BAT and not CAT.

Identifying and understanding the smallest unit of sound. For example, the word BAT is made of three sounds.

See this video to understand more about phonological awareness! 

Phonological awareness should be taught to children without letters with either blocks or boxes which symbolize the sounds. It is important for children to identify and learn those sounds clearly before moving to their corresponding letters.

After they are aware of the smallest sounds they can blend them together to read and segment them to spell them better.

The two words are widely used interchangeably. Although they deal with similar skills, they are not exactly the same. 

Phonological awareness is an umbrella concept that contains phonics, and phonemic awareness. Whereas, phonemic awareness is the ability to understand the “phonemes”-  the smallest unit of sound that words make.

For example the word ‘bat’ has three phonemes: /b/ /æ/ and /t/. When your child is able to understand and identify different sounds that make up a word, that is called phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness.

While phonemic awareness is concerned primarily with the phonemes, phonological awareness encompasses the sounds of words, syllables as well as phonemes. Phonemic awareness, then, becomes one of the stages of phonological awareness.

We can teach phonemic awareness to kids without any letters as it focuses more on making them aware that there are sounds that can be blended, segmented, and manipulated in any word. 

Related Reading: How to Teach Reading to Kids: Best Strategies for Parents

Phonological awareness is one of the most important foundational skills that a child needs not just for reading but for writing as well. 

In order to read and write words, it is essential for children to develop phonological awareness. It helps them in understanding that words are made up of phonemes, and there are syllables in a word, and how on changing these sound parts, the word changes. 

If a child is unable to understand that each word is made of different sounds (phonemes) and each phoneme represents a different letter, they will not be able to read or write.

This helps them to understand phonics, i.e. the sound and its corresponding spelling. A child with weak phonological awareness becomes a weak reader. Difficulties with phonological awareness can be seen as a precursor to reading disabilities or speech disabilities.

Check out these phonics games to help your kids understand concepts of ELA deeply. These games are made especially for the little ones to enter the world of reading confidently.

Dr. David Kilpatrick emphasizes the importance of phonological awareness when he says, “Students with good phonological awareness are in a great position to become good readers, while students with poor phonological awareness almost always struggle in reading.”

Developing strong competencies in phonological awareness is important for all kids, as the awareness of the sounds in words and syllables is critical to hearing and segmenting the words that they want to spell, and blending together the sounds in the words kids read.  

1. The ability to recognize rhyme patterns
2. Segment the words into syllables
3. Blend phonemes
4. Identify, segment and manipulate the beginning and ending sound. 

As we know the importance that phonological awareness plays in the learning journey of kids, we have developed games and activities which will help you in building strong phonological awareness in your kids. SplashLearn also has live ELA courses which can help your kids become competent readers and writers.

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Memory: the ability of the brain to store and retrieve information

What is Memory?

Memory can be defined as the ability of the brain to retain and voluntarily restore information . In other words, this is the ability that allows us to remember past events, thoughts, sensations, concepts and the relationship between them. Despite the fact that the hippocampus is most associated with memory, it is impossible to attribute memories to only one part of the brain , since many areas of our brain are involved in this process. This ability is one of the cognitive functions most affected by aging. Luckily memory can be trained through cognitive stimulation and various smart games.

The CogniFit program is the industry leader in brain training to strengthen this and other critical cognitive abilities. The smart games included in the program were designed to stimulate certain neural activation patterns. The repetition of these cognitive patterns helps to strengthen the neural connections involved in memory, and also helps to create new synapses that can reorganize and / or restore the most weakened or damaged cognitive functions.

Types of memory

Memory is an extremely complex cognitive function. It involves a huge number of parts of the brain, and we use it all the time. There are various theories and studies of this cognitive ability. Memory can be divided into different types according to the following criteria:

• By the time during which information is retained : in this case we are talking about sensory memory, short-term memory, working memory and long-term memory. Sensory memory retains information for a few seconds, while long-term memory, on the contrary, can store information for an almost unlimited period of time. All types of memory work in a coordinated manner so that the entire system functions correctly.
• According to the type of information : verbal memory is responsible for storing verbal information (what we read or words we hear), while non-verbal memory allows you to store other data (images, sounds, sensations, etc.) .).
• According to the sense organ involved : depending on the sense organ used, these are visual memory (vision), auditory memory (hearing), olfactory memory (smell), gustatory memory (taste) and tactile memory (touch).

Phases of memory: the process of remembering and remembering

In order to remember what we did yesterday, our brain must perform a series of processes. Each process is required to access memories. Thus, disruption of any of these processes will prevent us from recalling information. In order to create a memory, our brain must go through the following phases:

• Encoding : In this phase, we add the information we remember to our memory system through perception. For example, when someone is introduced to us by name. It is necessary to pay attention to this information in order to encode it.
• Storage : to retain information for a long time, we store it in our memory system. For example, we can remember a person's face and name.
• Recovery : when we want to remember something, we access the memory storage and restore the necessary information. For example, when you see a person on the street, remember his name.

Examples of memory

• Thanks to this ability, we remember where we live, the names of our parents, the faces of our friends, what we ate for lunch yesterday, and even which city is the capital of our state.
• Memory allows us to remember a meeting at work, remember a client name or password on a computer.
• Studying at school or university would be impossible without our memory storage system. It would also be difficult for us to remember the date of the exam or what we planned to do.
• When driving a car, this ability helps us remember the right route. Also, with its help, we remember where we parked the car, and the driving process itself.

Amnesia and other memory disorders

Research on impairments to this cognitive function has helped elucidate what memory really is and how it works. Being the most complex cognitive function, it can suffer to varying degrees and for various reasons. On the one hand, specific lesions may be associated with a double dissociation of memory systems. This means that one of the systems may be damaged, while others are not affected (for example, long-term memory may be impaired while short-term memory is functioning normally). On the other hand, such disorders may be associated with neurodegenerative disease (dementia and Alzheimer's disease), acquired cerebral disease (traumatic brain injury, stroke, infections and other diseases), congenital problems (cerebral paralysis and other syndromes), with mental and mood disorders (schizophrenia , depression and anxiety), consumption of various substances (drugs and medicines), etc. Also, certain types of memory can be impaired in such learning disorders as ADHD, dyslexia or dyscalculia.

The most common memory disorder is memory loss, such as in Alzheimer's disease. The loss of this ability is known as amnesia . Amnesias are anterograde (inability to acquire new memories) and retrograde (inability to remember the past). There are also disorders in which the content of memories (fabulation and confabulation), hypermnesia, is disturbed. Characteristic of Korsakoff Syndrome confabulations are involuntary false memories in which forgotten information is replaced by fictional facts. Hypermnesia , in turn, is an involuntary and too detailed memory of insignificant, insignificant details, which is typical, in particular, in post-traumatic stress.

How can we measure and evaluate the state of our memory?

Testing the state of our memory is very useful, because it is of the utmost importance in educational area (in order to understand whether the child will have difficulty remembering the material covered and whether he needs additional help), in medicine (in order to understand whether the patient will remember what medications he needs to take, he can whether he is independent or needs help), at work (in order to understand whether a person can hold a certain position) and in our daily life

Comprehensive neuropsychological testing can reliably and effectively measure memory and other cognitive functions . CogniFit offers a series of tests that evaluate several memory subprocesses such as phonological working memory, contextual memory, working memory, non-verbal memory, visual working memory, working memory and recognition. CogniFit tests are based on the classic Long-term Maintenance Test (CPT, Conner Test), Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS), NEPSY (Korkman, Kirk and Kemp), Test of Variables of Attention (TOVA), Simulated Memory Impairment Test (TOMM), the Tower of London Test (TOL), and the Hooper Visual Organization Task (VOT). In addition to memory, these tests can also measure response or reaction time, processing speed, memory for names, visual perception, monitoring, planning, visual scanning, and spatial perception.

• WOM-ASM Sequential Test: A series of balls with different numbers will appear on the screen. It is necessary to remember this series of numbers in order to reproduce it later. At first, the series will consist of only one digit, then the number of digits will grow until the user makes a mistake. It will be necessary to repeat each presented series.
• Test-Investigation REST-COM: objects will be presented within a short period of time. Next, as quickly as possible, you will need to select the word corresponding to the shown image.
• COM-NAM Identification Test: Objects will be represented by image or sound. It is necessary to answer in what format the object was shown last time and whether it was shown at all.
• VISMEM-PLAN Concentration Test: Stimuli will appear randomly on the screen. The stimuli will start to light up in a certain sequence to the sound signals. It is necessary to pay attention to both the sounds and the sequence of light signals. During the game's turn, the user needs to reproduce the previously seen order of stimulus presentation.
• WOM-REST Recognition Test: Three objects will appear on the screen. First, you will need to remember the order in which these objects are presented as quickly as possible. Next, four series of three objects will appear, some of which will differ from those previously seen. It is necessary to restore the original sequence in the same order.
• VISMEM Recovery Test: An image will be displayed on the screen for five to six seconds. During this time, you need to try to remember the maximum number of objects in this image. Then the picture will disappear, and the user will have to choose the correct answer from those offered.

Restore, improve and stimulate memory

All cognitive abilities, including memory, can be improved through training. CogniFit makes it possible to do it professionally.

Brain plasticity is the basis for the rehabilitation of memory and other cognitive functions. The brain and its neural connections are strengthened by using the functions that depend on them. Thus, when training memory, the neural connections of the involved parts of the brain are strengthened.

CogniFit consists of an experienced team of professionals who specialize in the study of synaptic plasticity and neurogenesis. This made it possible to create a personalized cognitive stimulation program for each user. The program begins with an accurate assessment of memory and other basic cognitive functions. After testing, the Cognifit Cognitive Stimulation Program will automatically offer personalized cognitive training to improve memory and other cognitive functions that are assessed to be in need of it.

To improve memory, you need to train correctly and regularly. CogniFit offers tools for assessing and rehabilitating memory and other cognitive functions. Correct stimulation requires 15 minutes a day, two or three times a week.

This program is available online . A variety of interactive exercises are presented in the form of exciting smart games that can be played using a computer. At the end of each session CogniFit will present a detailed graph of the progress of cognitive state .

Working memory - Cognitive ability

What is working memory

Working memory (WP), also known as working memory, is a set of processes that allow us to store and temporarily use information in order to perform such complex cognitive tasks as understanding speech, reading, application of mathematical abilities, learning or reasoning. Working memory is a type of short-term memory.

Baddeley and Hitch definition of working memory

According to the Baddeley and Hitch model, working memory consists of three systems and includes both storage and processing components:

attention, which decides what we pay attention to and what not, and also organizes the sequence of actions that need to be done to carry out the type of activity.