How Phonological Awareness & Spelling Connect - Intervention Tip of the Week
Hey there!
Today, we wanted to share a quick intervention tip on using a Phonological Awareness strategy to support spelling.
Syllable & phoneme segmenting and how they support spelling
When we break words into syllables, we are creating chunks. So, for example, in the word alligator, we are breaking the word up into al - lig - a - tor.
Then, once we have a word in chunks, we want to break it up further into sounds (aka phonemes). We like to do this by having students use chips or a manipulative, but if you don’t have them, you can simply have a student draw lines on a piece of paper or whiteboard for each sound they hear.
Then, they need to attach letters (or letter groups) to the sound block. You can check out the video below to see this in action with single-syllable words.
Now, if you have a student or students spelling longer words, you would start by:
1. Segmenting the word into syllables
Start by having the student break the word into syllables. In the picture, you see two scoops for the syllables in the word “railroad.”
2. Segmenting each syllable into sounds.
Once you have your word in syllables, segment each syllable into sounds as you see in the picture. Then, students should identify what makes each sound. For older or more advanced students, you can begin to pull in affixes here as well.
You can see this in action by watching the video at the bottom of the page!
Auditory Discrimination will also play a big role in students’ abilities to spell.
Auditory discrimination, or the ability to hear the differences between sounds, will impact students’ ability to correctly identify which sounds they are hearing in the word. For example, if students struggle with differentiating between /b/ and /p/, then they may struggle to spell words like bear/pear, pin/bin, etc.
We like to practice auditory discrimination as part of a phonological awareness drill or warm-up.
If you want to begin incorporating these warm-ups and more phonological awareness into your instruction, start by trying our FREE PA routine. The PA routine makes this simple and gives you a structure you can follow no matter what other materials or curriculum you’re using.