Early literacy processes include, but are not limited to, concepts about print, phonemic and phonological awareness. Beginning readers must gain control and understanding of several concepts about print such as:

• rules about direction

• attending to words in a line in sequence

• attending to letters in a word left to right in sequence

• what is a letter/word

• letter orientation

• where to begin

• where to go next

• attending to a left page before a right page

• moving from the top of the page downwards

• moving left to right across a line of print

• returning back to the left of the next line

• using the spaces to control attention to words

• knowing where to find the 'first letter' and 'last letter' in a word

• matching spoken words one-to-one with written words

• locating known words and/or letters in continuous text

Without this understanding of the directional rules of reading, the link between print and sound, and the hierarchy of information (letters make words, words make sentences, etc) the reader will not be able to use print efficiently to get the author's message. These understandings lay the foundation for the development of phonemic and phonological awareness.

What is phonemic and phonological awareness? Phonemic awareness refers to the knowledge or understanding that speech consists of a series of sounds and that individual words can be divided into phonemes (sounds). Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate these sounds.

A child who has developed phonemic awareness understands that:

• sounds in words can be pulled apart and put back together,

• sounds have a specific order

• sounds can be counted, and

• sounds can be moved, removed, or replaced to make new words.

Phonemic awareness helps learners understand and use the alphabetic system to read and write. Children move from hearing larger units within speech (e.g., phrases, words, rhyming patterns and syllables) to hearing the finer distinctions of the individual phonemes (sounds) within the word.

Parents and educators can support the development of phonemic awareness by drawing the child's attention to rhyme and words that start the same (alliteration) while reading aloud poetry or other stories that contain these features. Children can also be encouraged to generate words that rhyme or begin with the same sounds. While writing, children can be encouraged to clap syllables and say words slowly to listen for the sounds in words they want to write. The use of letters to manipulate phonemes (sounds) is most effective. It is important to teach explicitly letter shapes, letter names, and letter sounds so that letters can be used to acquire phonemic awareness.

Phonological awareness is the relationship between sounds and letters. In order for a reader to use phonics, they must first be able to hear and manipulate the sounds in words (phonemic awareness) and recognize and identify letters. Phonics instruction should include both hearing sounds in words and learning to look at letters. In learning to look at letters it is essential that children be taught the distinctive features of letter forms. As children become more automatic with letter knowledge, they begin to notice how letters come together in left-to-right sequence to represent whole words. In the process they learn that words contain predictable and recurring spelling patterns; they attend to larger units within words and note relationships between clusters of letters and chunks of sound.

Children's knowledge of phonics goes through a range of stages from:

• Precommunicative (the use of random letters with no letter-sound correspondence)

• Semiphonetic (uses some letter/sound knowledge to write words)

• Phonetic (records letters for every sound within the word)

• Transitional (begins to rely on how words look)

• Correct (uses a variety of word structures)

(Gentry and Gillette, 1993)

The development of phonological awareness can be done through assisted writing, guided reading, and the use of ABC charts, magnetic letters, and opportunities such as:

• identifying and sorting letters

• matching letters and sounds

• building high frequency words

• learning about word patterns during shared reading and guided reading lessons

• learning about words in writing lessons

• using word-solving strategies during guided reading lessons.

Central to the development of phonological awareness are children's understandings that:

• the letters are written to represent spoken sounds

• the letters should be written in the same sequence in which the sounds are spoken

l some letters are combined to form patterns that represent pronunciations in a single syllable

• some words occur a lot and need to be remembered as a whole

Learning how words work can then be built upon these principles. However, critical to this explicit and systematic teaching of learning letter names, letter sounds and the patterns of words isthe opportunity to read lots books and write stories in order to use phonemic and phonological knowledge effectively.

l E-mail: literacymatterslogic.bm

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