Quick Evaluation of Phonemic Awareness

A quick evaluation of your child’s phonemic awareness is helpful. The following informal home-use quick evaluation of phonemic awareness in young children is not official diagnostic testing and will not provide precise, scientific, or medical information on your child’s hearing, vision, speech, development or other areas. If you have any concerns about your child’s hearing, vision, speech, or other physical or developmental concerns you need to have your child professionally evaluated.

The following informal evaluation simply provides you a tool to help you assess your child’s phonemic awareness.   To learn more about phonemic awareness read the article What is Phonemic Awareness and Why is Phonemic Awareness Important?  Miscese Gagen, the author of Right Track Reading Lessons, has found that these simple informal evaluation activities are able to give good indication of a child’s phonemic awareness. When a child appears to have poor phonemic awareness, she simply does some direct work on developing these essential skills.  Some FREE, easy, fun activities you can do to develop phonemic awareness skills in your child are found in the article Fun Phonemic Awareness Activities to Get Your Child Started.

With young children, you want to check your child’s natural phonemic awareness. In other words you want to see if he is able to hear and distinguish individual sounds within words and if he can manipulate sounds within words.  The following ‘Quick Informal Evaluation of Phonemic Awareness” just gives you an idea if he has good phonemic awareness or if you need to specifically develop phonemic awareness skills that are so essential to reading success.

 “Quick Informal Evaluation of Phonemic Awareness”: These oral/listening activities help you find out if the child can hear, distinguish and manipulate sounds within words.   The child just listens and orally responds. Tell the child “Let’s play a few fun sound games”. Be sure and remind him that he needs to listen carefully so he can hear the sounds! You can write down the child’s response so you can go back and see which areas he has problems with.   *** IMPORTANT*** Always be sure and give the child an actual example of what you want him to do. Oral instructions often are not effective with young children! You want to make you’re your child understands what you want him to do so you can evaluate phonemic awareness (not simply that your child was confused on instructions). Remember this is NOT a formal evaluation. This is simply a quick and easy, home-use tool to help you get an idea of your child’s phonemic awareness.  

“Starting Sounds Game”: (To see if the child distinguish and recognize the beginning sound in words) First, I will tell you a word and then you tell me what sound that word started with.  Let me show you what I mean. If I say ‘cat’ you would tell me the sound /k/ that starts the word cat. If I say “dog” you would tell me “/d/”,  If the child tells you letter names, say something like ‘yes that is the letter that the word starts with but I need the sound and give another example.  Write down what the child says.

Say: “The starting sound for “sun” ??  _________ (child should say sound /s/)

Say: “The starting sound for “map” ??  _________ (child should say sound /m/)

Say: “The starting sound for “doll” ??  _________ (child should say sound /d/)

Say: “The starting sound for “fun” ??  _________ (child should say sound /f/)

Say: “The starting sound for “cut” ??  _________ (child should say sound /k/)

Say: “The starting sound for “ship” ??  _________ (child should say sound /sh/)

Say: “The starting sound for “ten” ??  _________ (child should say sound /t/)

Say: “The starting sound for “pay” ??  _________ (child should say sound /p/)

(The next few words have blended consonants and ARE harder for children to distinguish and separate)

Say: “The starting sound for “flash” ??  _________ (child should say sound /f/)

Say: “The starting sound for “smile” ??  _________ (child should say sound /s/)

Say: “The starting sound for “drop” ??  _________ (child should say sound /d/)

Say: “The starting sound for “play” ??  _________ (child should say sound /p/)

“All the sounds in the word Game”: (To see if the child recognize and segment the separate sounds in words, the phonetic structure of words)

 In this sound game, I will tell you a word once and then you tell me all the sounds that are in that word. Tell me all that sounds that you hear in the word. Give an example so the child understands what you want him to do..I say “cat” you tell me /c/.. /a/.. /t/. Make sure you give me the sounds separately.  (if he gives letter names…ask for the sounds) Write down how the child says/segments the sounds.

Say: All the sounds in “at”?  ___  ___  (the child should say  /a/  /t/ )

Say: All the sounds in “if”?  ___  ___  (the child should say  /i/  /f/ )

Say: All the sounds in “sun”?  ___  ___  ___  (the child should say  /s/  /u/  /n/  )

Say: All the sounds in “hug”?  ___  ___  ___  (the child should say  /h/  /u/  /g/  )

Say: All the sounds in “not”?  ___  ___  ___  (the child should say  /n/  /o/  /t/  )

Say: All the sounds in “pig”?  ___  ___  ___  (the child should say  /p/  /i/  /g/  )

Say: All the sounds in “pet”?  ___  ___  ___  (the child should say  /p/  /e/  /t/  )

Say: All the sounds in “test”?  ___  ___  ___  ___  (the child should say  /t/  /e/  /s/  /t/  )

Say: All the sounds in “trap”?  ___  ___  ___  ___  (the child should say  /t/  /r/  /a/  /p/  )

“Putting Sounds Together Game” (To see if the child can blend separate sounds together into words)

Tell the child that this is a listening game and that he needs to listen carefully because you will only say the sounds one time. You will say the sounds separately and see if he can put the sounds together into the word.  Always give the child an example of what you want him to do.  “I will say the sounds /c/…/a/…./t/…. and you would put the separate sounds together and say /cat/.”

Say the sounds for the following words, be sure and say the sounds separately pausing for just about a second between the sounds.  Write down what the child says:

Say:  put together the sounds: /p/.. /a/.. /n/ ____________ (the child should say ‘pan’)

Say:  put together the sounds: /h/.. /i/.. /m/ ____________ (the child should say ‘him’)

Say:  put together the sounds: /c/.. /a/.. /n/ ____________ (the child should say ‘can’)

Say: put together the sounds: /ch/../o/../p/  ____________ (the child should say ‘chop’)

Say: put together the sounds: /t/../u/../b/  ____________ (the child should say ‘tub’)

Say: put together the sounds: /g/../r/../a/  /b/  ____________ (the child should say ‘grab’)

Say: put together the sounds: /t/../r/../i/ ../p/  ____________ (the child should say ‘trip’)

Say: put together the sounds: : /f/../l/../a/ ../sh/  ____________ (the child should say ‘flash’)

“Sound Changing Game”  (To see if the child can distinguish and manipulate individual sounds within words)  Tell the child this is another word listening sound game but this time he will make changes to the word that you ask him to. (Give an example “ I will say “say cat without the /k/” “you would say “at”.) Write down what your child says.

First have your child manipulate beginning sounds (the easiest to distinguish - if your child has difficulty with these, you can probably hold off on evaluating the harder ending and middle sounds and just start work on developing phonemic awareness!)

Say ‘rat’ without the /r/ __________ (the child should say  ‘at’)

Say  ‘mud’ without the /m/ _________ (the child should say ‘ud’)

Say  ‘tap’ without the /t/ _________ (the child should say ‘ap’)

Say  ‘bold’ without the /b/ _________ (the child should say ‘old’)

Say  ‘sick’ without the /s/ __________ (the child should say ‘ick’)

Say  ‘chip’ without the /ch/ __________ (the child should say ‘ip’)

These manipulate beginning sounds with blended consonants that ARE more difficult to separate and distinguish

Say ‘drop’ without the /d/ __________ (the child should say  ‘rop’)

Say ‘grab’ without the /g/ __________ (the child should say  ‘rab’)

Say ‘flip’ without the /f/ __________ (the child should say  ‘lip’)

Say ‘step’ without the /s/ __________ (the child should say  ‘tep’)

Say ‘bring’ without the /b/ __________ (the child should say  ‘ring’)

Say ‘train’ without the /t/ __________ (the child should say  ‘rain’)

These manipulate ending sounds.

Say ‘bat’ without the /t/ __________ (the child should say  ‘ba’)

Say ‘mud’ without the /d/ __________ (the child should say  ‘mu’)

Say ‘grass’ without the /s/ __________ (the child should say  ‘gra’)

Say ‘room’ without the /m/ __________ (the child should say  ‘roo’)

Say ‘fun’ without the /n/ __________ (the child should say  ‘fu’)

These manipulate ending sounds with blended consonants (ARE harder to split out)

Say ‘lost’ without the /t/ __________ (the child should say  ‘los’)

Say ‘land’ without the /d/ __________ (the child should say  ‘lan’)

Say ‘lunch’ without the /ch/ __________ (the child should say  ‘lun’)

Say ‘camp’ without the /p/ __________ (the child should say  ‘cam’)

Say ‘wilt’ without the /t/ __________ (the child should say  ‘wil’)

Although these activities are informal, they can point to specific areas where your child may need work. Don’t worry if your child is not able to correctly do these phonological activities. It just shows your child needs to work on developing phonological skills. Remember, phonological awareness is difficult for many children precisely because speech is seamless (The child seamlessly hears the word ‘cat’ as /cat/ instead of the separate sounds /c//a//t/.) It just takes teaching your child to hear and recognize the separate sounds. Direct instruction and practice of phonological skills is very effective in helping your child develop phonological skills in hearing, distinguishing, separating and manipulating individual sounds within words.  See the article Fun Phonemic Awareness Activities to Get Your Child Started.

Remember while phonemic awareness training provides an essential foundation, it alone does not teach children to read proficienlty. Phonemic awareness is primarily an auditory skill. The child still needs to be directly taught the written phonemic code (printed letter =  sound) and how to phonologically process printed words with an effective direct systematic phonics program.

Link to the Free Reading Information page of Right Track Reading for additional information, articles and resources on teaching children to read proficiently.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This article was written by Miscese Gagen a mother with a passion for teaching children to read proficiently by using effective methods. She is also a successful reading tutor and author of the reading instructional program Right Track Reading Lessons. The purpose of this article is to provide parents with information on issues related to effectively teaching children how to read. More information is located at www.righttrackreading.com.  ~ Copyright 2005 Miscese R. Gagen