Standard 2: Reading Foundations

Students will develop foundational skills for future reading success by working with sounds, letters, and text.

PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS: Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize, think about, and manipulate sounds in spoken language without using text. 

(e.g., “the puppy pounces”).

Student Actions 

Teacher Actions 

• Students will isolate initial sounds in spoken words. 
• Students will recognize spoken words that begin with the same sound through alliteration and oddity tasks.

• Teachers explain the meaning of initial or beginning sound.

• Teachers model by exaggerating initial sounds, beginning with letters that have continuant sounds. *Continuant sounds can be produced for long periods of time.  Some examples of letters with continuant sounds are f,l,m,n,s,v,z.

• Teachers provide guided practice with isolating initial sounds in spoken words or pictures, using sorts and other oral activities.

• Teachers monitor and provide feedback to ensure students correctly isolate initial sounds in spoken words.

• Teachers read texts with alliteration, pointing out same sound words to students.

• Teachers use children’s names and names of familiar objects or actions to show alliteration. Example:  Tom table, Peter pencil, Katie kicks, Jack jumps.

• Teachers give opportunities to interact with initial sounds through games and activities.

• Teachers give students opportunities to participate in oddity tasks using spoken words or pictures.  Example of oddity task: “Turkey, frog, turtle - which two words begin with the same sound?.”  

• Teachers monitor and provide opportunities for students to receive feedback when making appropriate connections of words beginning with the same sounds.  

Supporting Resources 

 Teacher Insights 

The 44* Phonemes of the English Language (PDF)

Florida Center for Reading Research:  Alliteration Activities (PDF)

Florida Center for Reading Research:  Phoneme Isolating (PDF)

TPRI:  Alliteration Sort (PDF)

Hand Motions for Teaching Phonological Awareness

• The ability to focus on beginning sounds of words is an early step in sound or phoneme segmentation.  

• Students first learn to identify and match words with the same initial sounds, then begin to develop the ability to produce words that begin with the same sound. Initial sounds are easier to isolate in words with continuant initial sounds.

• Game example: “ Timmy Turtle only eats things that begin with the same sound as his name.”  Help students identify the beginning sound for Timmy Turtle, then name items beginning with the same sound, that Timmy can eat.  Picture cards with and without beginning /t/ sound may be provided for student support.

• Oddity tasks such as asking students to identify oral words that do not begin with the same sound as other given words support the skill of recognizing beginning sounds (e.g., mouse, table, monkey).

• For alliteration, alphabet books, letter books, poems, and tongue twisters can be used to help students recognize the repetitive sounds in alliteration.

Due to recursive nature of the standards, it is essential that teachers are aware of how all objectives within and between strands work together for optimal instruction.