Phonological Awareness Overview

Phonological awareness(PA) is an important but often overlooked component of beginning reading. As with any skill set, there is a standard progression from the least complex to the most complex components.

Each of the above components work together to prepare a student to become a successful reader.  Students need to be able to hear individual phonemes(sounds), distinguish between them, manipulate them, and hold them in their working memory in order to eventually find success decoding words.

Don't confuse PA with phonics.  Someone once told me that PA practice can be done in the dark.  You see the focus of PA is the sound system, not the alphabetic principle or how phonemes(sounds) are recorded by corresponding graphemes (letters). Instead, PA is truly about playing with sounds through rhyme, segmentation, blending and manipulation.  Thus, it encompasses far more than just counting the syllables or phonemes in a word.  The next post will take a more specific look at rhyme within the continuum.

Final Stable syllable

    You did it!  You made it to the last of the 6 syllable types.  The final stable syllable is just that.  A syllable that is often at the end of a multisyllabic word that makes a unique sound.  Notice that the definition does not say a vowel sound.  That is because final stable syllables include more than just vowels or vowels sounds.  Final stable syllables include ble, cle, dle, fle, gle, kle, ple, tle, and zle.  These are also known as consonant-le.  As you know the e is silent.  The reason it exists in this syllable type is because every syllable must include a vowel.  In the English language we often use e to fill this role.
     There are more than just the consonant-le words within this syllable type.  Other examples include tion (caution), sion (vision), and ture (nature). Because this syllable type could be confused for an open, vowel team, or magic e syllable, it is important to directly teach the examples of this syllable type and tell the students that if you see the certain series of letter together, they should be treated as a final stable syllable.
     The gesture I use to provide kinesthetic feedback about this syllable is to make a box of sorts with my two hands.  It is the very last syllable type I teach and some of my students think it is the easiest because you can pretty much count on the fact that these syllable will be pronounced the same way each time you see them.

Vowel Teams

    A vowel team syllable consists of 2, 3, or 4 letters that team up to make a unique sound.  Notice that the definition says letters not just vowels.  That is because a vowel team is much more than just the two letter teams we think of most often. (ea, ai, oa, ue, oe, ie, ou) This syllable type also includes  two letter teams such as ow, aw, ew and oy.  Other examples include igh and ough.  As you can see the list is rather long and I haven't even listed them all yet!
    Because the list of vowel teams is long, plan to set aside ample time to cover this syllable type.  It is best to directly teach each example.  Some teams such as ai and ay can be taught together to help clarify the orthographic rule of using ay at the end of a syllable and ai at the beginning or in the middle of a syllable. In any case, depending on how many teams you introduce in a week (usually around 2), you may need to plan a thorough study of teams for a quarter.
    As I suggested with the other syllable types, it is helpful to tie a gesture to each type.  The gesture I use is holding up the pointer and middle finger together.

Remember, the first step in teaching a team is to provide the definition and give multiple visual examples.  Students need to be able to quickly and accurately identify a team to be able to read a team.
    This is the time when we blow the "walking/talking" rule out of the water.  Although we like to say that "when two vowels go walking the first does the talking and the second is silent," that rule is true less than 50% of the time.  For example the team ea may make the long e (seat) sound but it also makes the long a sound (bear) and the short e sound (health). For that reason, let's spend less time over teaching that rule and instead teaching kids that some teams allow us to flex the vowel sound and some teams make just one sound.

Bossy R Syllable Type

What I call Bossy R is often referred to as the R controlled syllable type.  However, for the students I work with, Bossy R is much easier to connect to.  They understand that someone who is bossy often follows someone else to make the other person do what "Bossy" wants.  To introduce this syllable type a friend of mine has one student wear a vest with a vowel and another student wear a vest with the consonant r.  The consonant r's job is to follow the vowel wherever it goes and make the "r controlled" sound. This is quite fun for the little ones who all volunteer to be either the consonant r or the vowel!

The bossy r syllable is made up of  a vowel followed by an r.  (ar, or, er, ir, ur)  It is important for teachers to directly teach the order of vowel followed by an r when teaching the bossy r syllable type because vowel position is the trickiest part for many students.  As a matter of fact, when you begin to teach this syllable type, many students will think that any word with a consonant r is a bossy r syllable. Let's consider the words BARN and BRAN.  The first is a bossy r syllable and the second is a closed syllable.  That is an important distinction because we pronounce the vowels differently in these two syllable types.  Therefore, it is important to spend time helping students to accurately and quickly differentiate between the two.  I often give students the cue of "Find the vowel.  Does the r follow the vowel?" When we provide this cue over and over at the beginning of instruction, we are actually teaching the kids what they should be thinking when they come across a word they must decode with an r in it.

As with the other syllable types, I assign a hand gesture to the bossy r syllable.  This gesture is the American Sign Language (ASL) sign for the letter R.  To make this gesture, I have kids hold up their magic e gesture and cross their fingers.

The CUBS Strategy

Some syllables hold meaning, others do not.  Affixes are an example of syllables that hold meaning. There are two types of affixes called prefixes and suffixes.  They hold meaning and are added to either the beginning or end of a base or root word. Some affixes are closed syllables (un, mis) and some are open syllables (re, ly).  Many multisyllabic words include affixes and as we know, when struggling readers come across a multisyllabic word, they often give up.  The CUBS strategy is designed to give readers a tool for attacking a multisyllabic word with affixes.

CUBS is an acronym that stands for circle the affixes, underline the base or root, blend the parts together, and say the word.  In the beginning, I actually have students read with a pencil in hand to physically complete the steps.  Once they gain automaticity, I have students cover the affixes with their fingers, read the base or root and then add the affixes to read the entire word.  Finally, the students are able to mentally complete the process without using a pencil or their fingers.

Of course, CUBS is not the only acronym that exists to give students a memory tool for word attack.  However, the cute bear and it's paws work particularly well for the students I work with.  I post a picture of the bear and refer to it when a student is struggling to decode an unfamiliar word.  I have even heard students say, "Oh, I can CUBS this."