The use of alliteration (especially repetition of words starting with the same consonant) is also a relatively easy starting point to phonemic awareness. Children develop these two foundations for phonemic awareness through exposure to literature and informal activities that involve children in conscious recognition and use of these sound patterns.

The phonemic awareness activities described in the following pages are arranged from informal to more formal activities. They can be used as whole class or small group activities with students in the emerging phase from pre-kindergarten to grade three. The informal activities would be the only ones used with many of the children in Pre-K and kindergarten.














Language play involves having fun with the sounds of words, creating new words, and exploring and creating language patterns such as the use of rhymes and repetition. The benefits of language play are numerous including that rhymes, chants, and alliterations get incorporated naturally into children's oral language.








































































Nursery Rhymes are often the focus for a language arts mini-unit in Pre-K or kindergarten. Rhymes, songs, and chants with content that matches a particular topic being studied can be introduced as part of the unit.

Phonemic Awareness Activities

Research suggests that the easiest forms of phonemic awareness for most children to acquire are those of rhyming and alliteration. Awareness of when words rhyme and how to create rhyming words is an important prerequisite to the use of rimes or word families (word endings with the same graphophonic pattern) to decode unfamiliar words.

Examples of Word Families for use with Emerging Learners at cat fat sat rat mat an can Dan fan man pan ran tan bent dent sent tent went in bin din fin sin tin win book cook look took bun fun run sun

Word Segmentation

Many children also develop the ability to segment words into their component sounds without more formal instruction. For those who do not, some direct instruction with individuals or small groups will be necessary. As much as possible, these lessons should be followed by opportunities for students to use their developing phonemic awareness skills in real contexts.

Objectives

Students will:

• develop emerging abilities to distinguish similarities and differences in words and sounds
• demonstrate emerging interest in participating in the exploration of the patterns, sounds, and rhymes of the English language during listening, speaking, and shared reading and writing activities.

Exploring Sound Patterns

• Nursery Rhyme books, poetry books, and storybooks with patterned rhymes
• Recorded music, song books, and books with finger plays
• Songs, poems, and nursery rhymes on charts
• Collections of tongue twisters and books that play with language.

1. Read, say, or sing to children daily using material that contains rhymes, chants, alliteration, and language play. Shared Language or Morning Meeting are obvious times in which to include this material but you need not restrict yourself to these times.
2. Reread books with rhythmic patterns and engaging language many times, and encourage children to participate by joining in as they are able. Many of the books that invite children's participation contain phrases that are repeated frequently.

   A good example of a book with a repetitive pattern and interesting language that invites full participation is Pigs in the Mud in the Middle of the Rud (Plourde & Schoenherr, 1997). As different animals get stuck in the mud, different family members try to get them out and the same language pattern is repeated with interesting minor variations. The basic pattern is: "Pigs in the rud!" Grandma said. Oh no. Won't do. Gotta shoo. But who? "I'll shoo. That's who," Brother said. And he shooed. And he squealed. And he rutted. And he reeled. But the pigs didn't budge. Not a tiny little smudge. After listening to this book several times while looking at the illustrations, children will want not only to say the rhyming pattern but also to role play the parts of different characters as the story unfolds.

3. Sometimes you will want to make use of charts or Big Books that show children the print version of the rhymes, songs, or fingerplays. This adds a multi-sensory dimension to the activity but is not a necessary component of developing phonemic awareness. Minimize explicit teaching about the appearance of rhyming words or words that start with the same consonant with younger children. Use the same chart or Big Book many times throughout the year, putting a different emphasis on its use each time.
4. Keep your activities short and your emphasis on enjoyment. Involve children in activities like the following:
   • When reading or chanting a familiar poem, pause before a rhyming word and let children supply the rhyming word. Encourage children to join in with the whole poem, chant, or song when they are able.
   • Use a familiar chant or nursery rhyme to model writing. Begin the recording on an experience chart, stop frequently and ask children what comes next.
   • Create your own simple rhymes or chants based on ones familiar to the children and invite them to try to create some as well.

     The book Hickory, Dickory, Dock (Muller & Duranceau, 1992) is a good book to read to children as an example of creating new rhymes from familiar patterns. The book begins with the familiar "Hickory, Dickory, Dock" but continues with new verses from there. For example: Gigglety, figglety fare, The goat looked under the chair, The clock struck two, The mouse yelled "Boo!" Gigglety, figglety fare. Books such as this one are good for many rereadings and lots of student participation. When children are provided with many book experiences such as these, playing with language and creating rhymes independently will become a natural occurrence in your classroom.

   • Another way to create new rhymes from familiar verses that works well with young children is to substitute their names for other characters in the lines. For example, instead of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?" try verses such as "Tyler, Tyler, What do you see? I see a teacher looking at me."
   • Encourage and recognize children's attempts to memorize very simple rhymes and songs. Provide Pre-K and kindergarten children lots of experiences with nursery rhymes.
   • Record on experience charts any chants or rhymes you hear your students saying, or have them dictate them to you. Include these in your daily, shared language experiences.
   • Use tongue twisters and alliterations for developing awareness of initial consonant sounds. Make up new ones using the names of children in your class. Invite children to do the same. When this can be done quickly, record their ideas for later use.

     Examples of Tongue Twisters/Alliteration Brenda's brother broke brittle bottles. Carla cut cauliflower, carrots, and cucumbers carefully. Justin's jeep just jumped, joggled, and jiggled. My mommy makes marvelous, munchy meatballs. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. She sells seashells by the seashore. Kitty caught a caterpillar. Timmy caught a turtle by his tiny turtle tail.

   • Make up a few rhymes with the children's names to use as examples, then invite children to make up their own. The rhymes could make use of either real words (for example, "Fancy Nancy") or nonsense words such as "Alex Palex". From time to time, you may want to make lists of these combinations for Shared Reading²³ time or for use in the activity Read Around the Room (see page 141 of this resource for a description of this strategy).
   • Do the same with alliteration, varying your examples to encourage sensitivity to new vocabulary (for example, "Soggy Sarah" on a rainy day instead of "silly" or "sad"). Be sure that children understand that the point is to have fun and not to make fun of each other. These last two activities can be done on occasions when children have to line up or wait for other children to join a group.
   • Use finger plays that incorporate rhyme to bridge the transition between different activities.
   • Follow the reading of a rhyming book, chanting, or singing activity with a short word production activity that makes use of one or two rhyme combinations from the book, chant, or song. For example, after reading Green Eggs and Ham, say "Sam, ham, what other words can you think of that rhyme with Sam and ham?" Do the same following a book or tongue twister that features alliteration. For example, follow the reading of Sheep on a Ship by asking "What other words do you know that start like sheep and ship?" Accept nonsense words as well and label them as such so children start to distinguish sense from nonsense.
   • From time to time make use of rhymes, chants, or songs that are on overhead transparencies or experience charts, to model left to right progression and to develop the concept of word. This can be done through the use of a pointer, touching each word or sweeping along under each word as it is read, and through a variety of word or sentence framing practices.

Book Suggestions for Language Play: Prose, Poetry, Word Play, Tongue Twisters, Songs, and Jump-rope Rhymes To order books on this list which are not available in your school division, contact the Learning Resources Distribution Centre, 1500 4th Avenue, REGINA SK S4P 3V7, telephone 787-5987, fax 787-9747, toll free fax in Saskatchewan 1-800-668-9747. The books in this list offer a starting point only--there are many more. Share your favourites with colleagues! Books that come in a Big Book format are marked with an asterisk (*). Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain (Aardema) Noisy Poems (Bennett) Tiny Tim (Bennett) Hand Rhymes (Brown) I Love You, Good Night(Buller & Schade) The Biggest Tongue Twister Book in the World (Brandeth) What am I? Very First Riddles (Calmenson) All About Arthur: An Absolutely Absurd Ape (Carle) The Hopeful Trout and other Limericks(Ciardi) *Goggly Gookers (Cowley) Mrs. Wishy Washy (Cowley) Tomie dePaola's Mother Goose(dePaola) Sing a Song of Popcorn (deRegniers, Schenk, White, & Bennett) Butterscotch Dreams (Dunn) Crackers and Crumbs (Dunn) Deep Down Underground (Dunrea) 101 School Jokes (Eisenber & Hall) One Wide River to Cross (Emberley) In the Tall, Tall Grass (Fleming) In the Small, Small Pond(Fleming) Henny Penny (Galdone) Is Your Mama a Llama? (Guarino & Kellogg) Stop that Noise! (Geraghty) Jillian Jiggs (Gilman) Six Sleepy Sheep (Gordon) *Jewels, Children's Play Rhymes (Harwayne) Pat the Cat (Hawkins & Hawkins) Surprises (Hopkins) The Sky is Full of Song (Hopkins) Don't Forget the Bacon (Hutchins) *Letter Clusters (Iversen) I Can Fly (Krauss) Roar and More (Kuskin) Oh, A-Hunting We Will Go (Langstaf) Alligator Pie (Lee) Jelly Belly: Original Nursery Rhymes(Lee) Frederick (Lionni) Buzz Said the Bee (Lewison) What's a Frank Frank?(Maestro) The Hungry Thing Returns (Slepian & Seidler) The Dove Dove (Terban) Eight Ate: A Feast of Homonym Riddles (Terban) The Itsy Bitsy Spider (Trapani) 1000 Knock Knock Jokes for Kids (Kilgarriff) I Don't Care! Said the Bear (West) The Happy Hippopotami (Martin) The Teddy Bear Book (Marzollo) One Sun: A Book of Terse Verse (McMillan) Pigs Aplenty, Pigs Galore! (McPhail) When We Were Very Young (Milne) Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin (Moss) Row, Row, Row Your Boat (Muller) Hickory, Dickory, Dock (Muller & Duranceau) Poems for 7-year-olds and Under (Nicoll) Faint Frogs Feeling Feverish, and other Terrifically Tantalizing Tongue Twisters (Obligado) Moose on the Loose (Ochs) Dinosaur Chase (Otto) Amelia Bedelia books (Parrish) Pigs in the Mud in the Middle of the Rud (Plourde & Schoenherr) My Parents Think I'm Sleeping (Prelutsky) The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (Prelutsky) Read Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young (Prelutsky) Something Big Has Been Here (Prelutsky) Old Mother Hubbard (Provensen & Provensen) Alphabet Annie Announces the All-American Album (Purviance & O'Shell) Down by the Bay (Raffi) Sing a Song of Mother Goose (Reid) We're Going on a Bear Hunt (Rosen) Frogs in Clogs (Samton) A Twister of Twists, A Tangler of Tongues (Schwartz) Fox in Socks (Seuss) Green Eggs and Ham (Seuss) There's a Wocket in my Pocket(Seuss) Sheep on a Ship (Shaw) The Listening Walk (Showers) Where the Sidewalk Ends (Silverstein) A Giraffe and a Half (Silverstein) The Hungry Thing (Slepian & Seidler) The Lady with the Alligator Purse (Westcott) Hush, Little Baby (Zemach)