Component 1: Phonological Awareness
Standard 1.a: Children demonstrate awareness of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).
By the following age ranges, children typically, for example:
- Experiment and play with sound
- Respond differently to different sounds
- Listen attentively to familiar stories, rhymes, and songs
- Use sounds for a variety of purposes
- Repeat words in rhymes and chants with prompting
- Identify familiar melodies and rhythms in music (in the way that early readers listen for sound-alike words and patterns)
- Recognize combinations of words
- Use two- to three-word sentences (e.g., “Go bye-bye,” “Mommy’s car”)
- Repeat new words adults say
- Engage in word and sound play with adults (e.g., rhymes, nonsense words)
- Distinguish between words that contain similar-sounding phonemes (“make-mat,” “sit-lot”)
- Fill in repeating phrases of familiar songs, stories, and finger plays
- Sing simple songs and lullabies (such as those with repeating initial sounds)
- Demonstrate an awareness of words as separate units
- Identify whether two words rhyme
- Engage in rhyming games and songs; can complete a familiar rhyme
- With modeling and support, blend onsets and rimes in single-syllable words (e.g., hard “c” sound with “ook” to make “cook”)
- Comprehend and use new words introduced within thematic units, stories, and daily activities
- Match beginning sounds of some words; are able to name several words that begin with the same initial sound
- Produce words (real or nonsense) that rhyme with other common words (e.g., “dance, ants, krance”)
- Identify whether two words begin with the same sound (e.g., when an adult gives three or four oral words, children can select those that begin with same sound, although they may not be able to identify the letter)
- Blend and delete compound words without the support of pictures or objects (e.g., “butterfly, butter crunch, butter sandwich, butter bear”)
- With modeling and support, count, pronounce, blend, and segment onsets and rimes of single syllable spoken words (e.g., “say map; say map again without the /m/”)
