Phonological and Phonemic Awareness
What is phonological and phonemic awareness? Phonological and phonemic awareness involve the understanding that spoken language can be broken down into smaller units such as, sentences, phrases, syllables, onsets, rimes, and phonemes (sounds). A vast amount of time is spent developing these oral language skills in the Early French Immersion program, as they serve as a solid foundation for language acquisition, French, or otherwise.
Once learners are able to demonstrate an understanding of the French language through speaking and listening, early reading skill instruction is taught in order for young learners to successfully and efficiently learn to read and write. Some of the learning activities that we will be working on in the classroom include, letter name instruction (the names of the letters of the alphabet), phonics instruction (letter-sound relationships), word identification (the pronunciation of a word in print), word recognition (the meaning of a word in print), and decoding skills (the ability to recognize and to apply the basic sounds and sound blend - "sounding-it-out").
You can help to reinforce some of the concepts taught in class, by simply reading aloud to your child, and having your child read aloud to you. Also, regular exposure to and practice of the French phonemes (individual sounds) and exercises manipulating them (see below) will help to further develop your child's phonemic awareness and reading readiness, as well as, increase his or her reading confidence and overall attitude towards reading and writing.
Exercises and activities related to children's developing phonemic awareness include (but, are not limited to):
1. Phoneme isolation - recognizing individual sounds in words (e.g., the first sound in «le» is [l])
2. Phoneme segmentation - breaking a word apart into its separate phonemes (e.g., «bébé» = [b] + [é] + [b] + [é]
3. Phoneme blending - blending the separate phonemes of a word together (e.g., [t] + [a] + [p] + [i] = «tapis»)
4. Phoneme substitution - exchanging one phoneme for another (e.g., [j] du mot «jour», avec [p] comme «pour»)
See the videos provided below for more practice with letter recognition skills and phonemic awareness.
Once learners are able to demonstrate an understanding of the French language through speaking and listening, early reading skill instruction is taught in order for young learners to successfully and efficiently learn to read and write. Some of the learning activities that we will be working on in the classroom include, letter name instruction (the names of the letters of the alphabet), phonics instruction (letter-sound relationships), word identification (the pronunciation of a word in print), word recognition (the meaning of a word in print), and decoding skills (the ability to recognize and to apply the basic sounds and sound blend - "sounding-it-out").
You can help to reinforce some of the concepts taught in class, by simply reading aloud to your child, and having your child read aloud to you. Also, regular exposure to and practice of the French phonemes (individual sounds) and exercises manipulating them (see below) will help to further develop your child's phonemic awareness and reading readiness, as well as, increase his or her reading confidence and overall attitude towards reading and writing.
Exercises and activities related to children's developing phonemic awareness include (but, are not limited to):
1. Phoneme isolation - recognizing individual sounds in words (e.g., the first sound in «le» is [l])
2. Phoneme segmentation - breaking a word apart into its separate phonemes (e.g., «bébé» = [b] + [é] + [b] + [é]
3. Phoneme blending - blending the separate phonemes of a word together (e.g., [t] + [a] + [p] + [i] = «tapis»)
4. Phoneme substitution - exchanging one phoneme for another (e.g., [j] du mot «jour», avec [p] comme «pour»)
See the videos provided below for more practice with letter recognition skills and phonemic awareness.
Practice forming syllables by blending one consonant together with one vowel:
Song: « le son des lettres »
Practice with alphabet letter name skills and sound skills.
Most common French sounds with examples.