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Hi, I'm Dr. Bernadette Pilar Zermeño. Welcome to our course on Phoneme Awareness. I'm so glad you're here. I've been teaching young children for more than 20 years with a special focus on helping multilingual learners. Like you, I give my heart and soul to students every day, helping them become strong and confident readers. This course is all about phonemes. Phonemes are tiny individual speech sounds that we blend together to make words like the /p/ sound you hear at the beginning of the word pump and the /ă/ sound at the middle of the word bat. Phonemes are not the same as letters. There are four letters in the word shop, but only three phonemes — /sh/, /ŏ/, /p/.

For most children, phonemic awareness is an important step in the process of learning how to read. Phonemic awareness means that they can identify and then manipulate individual sounds in a spoken word. If a student hears the word dog, they can understand that it's composed of three sounds — /d/, /ŏ/, /g/. If they take out /d/ and replace it with /f/, the word becomes fog. Some students will learn this quickly, while others might need lots of practice on the road to becoming skilled readers. We'll begin the course exploring the world of phonemes so that you'll be better prepared to teach your students about them. Then we'll present some expert teaching strategies. By the end of the course, you'll be ready to teach your students everything they need to know about phonemes, and to set them on a path towards becoming strong readers. Let's get started, and I hope you have a great time learning.

Susan Robison: Okay, my friends. Today we are going to practice finding ending sounds and words. I know you've done a lot of work on finding beginning sounds, right, but today we are going to focus on ending sounds. Why do you think that would be important? It's so important for us to listen to all the sounds and words, so we will be able to repeat them, but then eventually be able to read them and write them, right? So we need to hear all the sounds and words. Alright, so what we're going to do today is I have some special pictures for us to name. We're going to name the picture, and then we're going to take our hand and repeat the name of the picture and find the ending sound and tap on it. So for example, if I showed you a picture of a dog, I would say /d/, /og/. And then tap on it again and say /g/. All right. Are you ready?

Students Yes.

Susan Robison: Yes. Okay. Our first word, my friends, and our first picture is, everyone say it together ...

Students: Toothbrush.

Susan Robison: Now, what I'd like you to do is trace your rollercoaster and end at that ending sound and we'll say it twice. Let's go on our rollercoaster ride ...

Students: Toothbrush.

Susan Robison: And what's at the end? Everyone point to that stop sign and say ...

Students: /ssssh/.

Susan Robison: Very good. Who would like to tell me what this is? [Teacher points to a picture.] Yes, Olivia.

Olivia: An instrument.

Susan Robison: It is an instrument. Very good. More specifically, this instrument ... the name of it. Listen very carefully. It rhymes with "larp," but it starts with, /h/. What could it be? Everybody?

Students: A harp.

Susan Robison: Yes. Let's all say that together.

Ms. Robison and Students: Harp.

Susan Robison: Now let's rollercoaster it.

Susan Robison and Students: /H/, /ar/, /p/.

Susan Robison: What's at the end?

Students: /p/.

Susan Robison: Oh, my friends, you did a great job producing your ending sounds today, and it's so important to listen to those ending sounds because it will help us with our reading and our writing.

Narrator: For more information, please visit ReadingUniverse.org. Special thanks to Literacy How, Stillmeadow Elementary School, and Stanford Public Schools in Stanford, Connecticut. Reading Universe is made possible by generous support from Jim and Donna Barksdale, the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, and two anonymous donors. Reading Universe is a service of WETA, Washington, DC, the Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book.

Susan Robison: This is Reading Universe.

Morgan Walton: When we teach our students how to make sounds, it's really helpful to offer cues that help them to see, hear, and feel how the sound is produced. We can also use these cues to correct any sounds that are mispronounced. I'm going to model how to teach the sound of the letter 'b' using these cues. 'B' spells the sound /b/. We call /b/ a lip popping sound because when we say it, we keep our mouth closed and our lips together until they pop open with a burst of air as the sound is made. Let's all say that lip popping sound, /b/. When we say /b/, the voice box is turned on and it feels like we have a motor in our throat. Touch your throat while you say the sound /b/. Do you feel that vibration? Hear how quickly we pronounce the sound /b/. It's a sound that we need to clip off so we don't say /u/ at the end. Let's practice the clipping sound, /b/. OK. What sound does 'b' spell? /b/

Students and DeAngela Huggins: [background noise]

DeAngela Huggins: ... All set and we are ready! Our next listening game, we're going to segment or break the word apart into sounds. So I'm going to give you the entire word, and then you're going to help me tap out the sounds. What are we going to do?

Students and DeAngela Huggins: Tap out the sounds ...

DeAngela Huggins: And then you're going to show me on your fingers how many sounds were in that word. Okay. So let's use my mystery word cat again. If we said /k/, /ă/, /t/. Let's tap it.

Students: /k/, /ă/, /t/

DeAngela Huggins: How many sounds are in that word?

Students: Three.

DeAngela Huggins: Three. So you're going to just show me so I can see that everyone is hearing all of these sounds okay. So you ready? All right. First word, we're going to segment it. The first word is far.

Students: far

DeAngela Huggins: Tap out the sounds.

Students: /f/, /ar/

DeAngela Huggins: How many sounds? [Students hold up two fingers.] There are two sounds in that word. Next word. Let's listen. Listen, very carefully. Chart.

Students: chart

DeAngela Huggins: Let's tap it.

Students: /ch/, /ar/, /t/

DeAngela Huggins: How many sounds? Three. Very good. The next word ... listen ... has a blend ... start.

Students: start

DeAngela Huggins: start

Students: [students count the phonemes with their fingers] /s/, /t/, /ar/, /t/

DeAngela Huggins: How many sounds?

Students: Ooh.

DeAngela Huggins: How many sounds Felix? [students hold up four fingers] Four. There are four sounds. You guys are doing so good! All right. Next word is block.

Students: block

DeAngela Huggins: Say the word block.

Students: block

DeAngela Huggins: All right. Let's tap the sounds.

Students and DeAngela Huggins: [Students count the sounds with their fingers.] /b/, /l/, /o/, /k/

Students: block

DeAngela Huggins: How many sounds? Four [students hold up four fingers]. Very good. In our last one, because you guys are so smart, the word's going to be smart. What's the word?

Students: smart

DeAngela Huggins: Let's tap all those sounds.

Students: [Students count out the sounds with their fingers.] /s/, /m/, /ar/, /t/

DeAngela Huggins: Smart. How many sounds? [Students hold up four fingers.] Good job you guys give your brains a big kiss.

Narrator: For more information, please visit ReadingUniverse.org. Special thanks to Burgess Peterson Academy and Atlanta Public Schools. Reading Universe is made possible by generous support from Jim and Donna Barksdale, the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, and two anonymous donors. Reading Universe is a service of WETA, Washington DC, the Barksdale Reading Institute, and First book.

DeAngela Huggins: This is Reading Universe.