Audrey's Reading Toolkit
Levels of Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness is the foundation of reading.
It is the ability to recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of sentences and words (Johnson, n.d.).
It includes skills like identifying rhyming words, segmenting sentences into words, blending and segmenting onset-rimes and being aware and working with individual sounds in a word (which is called phonemic awareness) (Reading Rockets, n.d.).
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Phonological Awareness is a continuum but we can distinguish 4 main levels:
Picture by the Orthon Gilligham SLP - https://theogslp.com/
1 - Word Level
Explanation:
- Word awareness is the most basic level of phonological sensitivity.
- Recognizing individual words within a sentence.
- Identifying words that rhyme, recognizing alliteration.
- Recognizing individual words within a sentence.
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Examples:
- Identifying words that rhyme
- Recognizing alliteration
- Counting the words in a sentence or breaking up a sentence into words
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Typical Age/Grade Range:
4 to 5.5 years old - Preschool to Kindergarten
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Indicators of Struggle:
Difficulty identifying rhymes or segmenting sentences.
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Assessments:
Informal observations, rhyming games.
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Modified picture from the Orthon Gilligham SLP - https://theogslp.com/
2 - Syllable Level
Explanation:
- Syllable awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate syllables in spoken words.
- A syllable is a word or a word part with one vowel sound.
- Usually, the syllable has a vowel and one or more consonants (e.g., “an,” “bug,” “three”). But the syllable may also be a stand-alone vowel (e.g., “I,” “a,” “open”).
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Examples:
- Clapping syllables in a word.
- Counting syllables in a word.
- Segmenting and blending (Breaking a multisyllabic word into its syllables and then blend them back together)
- Syllable sorting
- Syllable puzzle (assemble syllables to create a word)
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Typical Age/Grade Range:
4 to 5.5 years old - Preschool to Kindergarten
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Indicators of Struggle: Struggling to segment words into syllables.
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Assessments:
Phonological awareness assessments (with syllables counting, sorting, segmenting and blending tasks).
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Examples:
- Phonological Awareness Screening Test (Kilpatrick, 2024) (PAST test (https://thepasttest.com/).
- Phonological Awareness Test (PAT-2) (Robertson et al., 2017)
- Phonological Awareness Skills Screener (PASS) (Mather et al., n.d.)
- Phonological Awareness Screening Test (PAST test (https://thepasttest.com/).
- Phonological Awareness Screening Test (PAST test (https://thepasttest.com/)
- Syllable counting tasks / segmenting and blending tasks
Modified picture from the Orthon Gilligham SLP - https://theogslp.com/
3 - Onset-Rime Level
Explanation:
- Onset-rime is a phonological awareness skill that involves understanding the structure of syllables.
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Onset: The initial consonant or consonant blend before the first vowel in a word. For example, in the word “cat,” “c-” is the onset.
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Rime: The string of letters (beginning with the vowel) that follows the onset. It includes the vowel and any remaining consonants. In “cat,” “-at” is the rime
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Examples:
Identifying the onset (e.g., “c” in “cat”) and rime (e.g., “at”) in words.
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Typical Age/Grade Range:
5 to 7 years old. Kindergarten to 1st grade
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Indicators of Struggle:
Difficulty blending onset and rime or segmenting words.
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Assessments:
Phonological awareness assessments (with phoneme recognition, onset and rime identification, segmenting and blending tasks).
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Examples:
- Phonological Awareness Screening Test (Kilpatrick, 2024) (PAST test (https://thepasttest.com/).
- Phonological Awareness Test (PAT-2) (Robertson et al., 2017)
- Phonological Awareness Skills Screener (PASS) (Mather et al., n.d.)
- Phonological Awareness Screening Test (PAST test (https://thepasttest.com/).
Modified picture from the Orthon Gilligham SLP - https://theogslp.com/
4 - Phoneme Level
Explanation:
- Phoneme awareness is the most complex level of phonological awareness.
- It involves detecting and manipulating the smallest linguistic units called phonemes.
- Phonemes are individual speech sounds that make up words.
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Examples:
- Identify and Match: Children can recognize initial, final, and middle sounds in words (e.g., “Which picture begins with /m/?”, "which is the middle sound in cat?"
- Segment and Produce: They can break words into individual phonemes and blend them to form words (e.g., “Say the last sound in ‘milk’”).
- Blending: Children listen to separate phonemes and combine them to say a complete word (e.g., “Listen: /f/ /Ä“/ /t/. Say it fast. Feet”, /c/ + /a/ + /t/ = “cat”).
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Typical Age/Grade Range:
5 to 7 years old. Kindergarten to 1st grade and beyond
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Indicators of Struggle:
Struggling to blend or segment phonemes.
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Assessments:
Phonemic awareness assessments (with phoneme recognition, blending, segmentation and deletion, and reading of non-sense words).
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Examples:
- Phonological Awareness Screening Test (Kilpatrick, 2024) (PAST test (https://thepasttest.com/).
- Phonological Awareness Test (PAT-2) (Robertson et al., 2017)
- Phonological Awareness Skills Screener (PASS) (Mather et al., n.d.)
Modified picture from the Orthon Gilligham SLP - https://theogslp.com/