beginning reading writing teks talk image

Knowledge and Skills Statement

Developing and sustaining foundational language skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking--beginning reading and writing. The student develops word structure knowledge through phonological awareness, print concepts, phonics, and morphology to communicate, decode, and spell.

Ask students to sort long and short vowel sounds. Say a word (and hold up a picture card) and ask students to determine if it is a long or short vowel word. Have a t-chart where students can put all the short vowel pictures on one side and all the long vowel pictures on another.

Example words:

Short vowels—cat, tap, flat, bed, nest, bench, lunch, bush, moth, bath, pinch, stink, clock, stop, spin, grab, trip, flock, thin, shot, smell, fell, punch, crush, frog, dress, west, math, pick, truck

Long vowels—cane, gain, train, stay, rake, feel, treat, beam, street, high, bike, tie, light, boat, go, toad, hole, phone, nose, bow, low, grow, cute, blue, chew, knew, use, tube, food, too

Note:

Students are not generating words; they are simply determining if the word has short or long vowels in it.

Phonological awareness is the ability to detect and manipulate the sounds structures of spoken language, including recognizing differently sized sound parts (i.e., phrases, words, syllables, phonemes) and manipulating those parts (i.e., blend, segment, delete, add, and change).
a unit of oral language in which a vowel sound is heard; it may or may not contain a consonant sound
Examples of short vowels taught in first grade are cat, tap, flat, bed, nest, bench, lunch, bush, moth, bath, pinch, stink, clock, stop, spin, grab, trip, flock, thin, shot, smell, fell, punch, crush, frog, dress, west, math, pick, and truck. Examples of long vowels taught in first grade are cane, gain, train, stay, rake, feel, treat, beam, street, high, bike, tie, light, boat, go, toad, hole, phone, nose, bow, low, grow, cute, blue, chew, knew, use, tube, food, and too.

Research

Baker, S. K., Beattie, T., Nelson, N. J., & Turtura, J. (2018). How We Learn to Read: The Critical Role of Phonological Awareness. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Special Education Programs, National Center on Improving Literacy. Retrieved from https://improvingliteracy.org/brief/how-we-learn-read-critical-role-phonological-awareness

Summary: Phonological awareness involves being able to recognize and manipulate the sounds within words. This skill is a foundation for understanding the alphabetic principle and reading success. There are several ways to effectively teach phonological awareness to prepare early readers, including: 1) teaching students to recognize and manipulate the sounds of speech, 2) teaching students letter-sound relations, and 3) teaching students to manipulate letter-sounds in print using word-building activities.