Phonological Awareness

The Key to Good Phonics Skills – Part 2

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Developing #Listening Skills – Sound Screen/Barrier Games

Last week we explained the three things required for good listening skills:

  • To pay attention – being able to focus on a particular voice or sound by filtering out other voices and ambient noises.
  • To concentrate on the voice or sounds to take in the information, building the stamina needed to listen for extended periods of time.
  • To interpret that information to gain meaning – comprehension.

Here are some games to help build these skills.

These games are designed to help a child learn how to block out ambient noises so that they focus and concentrate on one particular sound.

Create a barrier between you and your child so that they cannot see the object you are going to use to make noises with and see if they can guess the object. Try to use objects that make sounds that occur around them a lot of the time, for example keys rattling together or wooden blocks being knocked together. There are many variations of the game that can be played but you need to make sure your child has the opportunity to experience the sounds with the relevant object beforehand so they don’t get frustrated by the game.

  • Mrs Blog has a box… To the tune of Old Macdonald changing the name as best fits the situation. Place a box, on its side with a number of objects inside that make a noise (choose items your child is familiar with the sound of), between you and your child so they can’t see what is in the box. Start singing “My mummy has a box ee, i, ee, i, o and in that box she has…” Stop and gesture to encourage your child to listen (maybe a cupped hand to your ear) then pick one of the objects and make a sound; your child then tries to guess what it is. Continue to sing but imitating the sound of the object you played, which your child can now see. If it was a bunch of keys for example; “with a jingle, jangle here and a jingle jangle there, my mummy has a box ee, i, ee, i, o.” Swap places so your child can choose an object in the box, change the song so you are using their name, for example “My James has a box…”
  • Same or Different?  Place a barrier between you and your child so they cannot see which object you will use to make a sound and that you duck behind so they cannot see your face when you make vocal sounds.  This can be played at different levels. At the basic level using animal noises such as baa, moo, woof etc. A more complex level would be to use shakers with different size things inside to make different shaking sounds. Plastic containers or bags of the same size and type can be used to make the shakers with different small items in such as dried pea, rice, sand or small coins, pebbles or small Lego bricks. Make the noise once and then repeat either with the same noise or a different one. The child then says if they were the same or different.
  • Copy Cat!  Place a barrier between you and your child so they cannot see which object you will use to make a sound and that you duck behind so they cannot see your face when you make vocal sounds.  You will need two set of the same objects, a set for you and one for your child. The aim of the game is for you to make a noise with either an object or your voice and for your child to copy that sound choosing the correct object in front of them or using their voice as you did. The game can become more complicated as you mix a number of sounds using objects and your voice. Swap roles so that your child becomes the leader of the game and you have to copy them.

Have Fun! N.B. Be careful of small objects, especially those escaping from shakers, as these can be a choke hazard.

The Key to Good Phonics Skills – Part 1

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What is listening?

Listening is a complicated skill that requires children to learn how to pay attention – being able to focus on a particular voice or sound by filtering out other voices and ambient noises. They then have to concentrate on the voice or sounds to take in the information, building the stamina needed to listen for extended periods of time. Then they have to interpret that information to gain meaning – comprehension.

The usual approach to teaching children to listen is based on three behaviours:

  1. Sitting or standing still
  2. Looking at the person who is speaking
  3. Thinking about what the person is saying or said

However just because your child is replicating these behaviours doesn’t mean they are listening.

It is also surprising how often children are happy to follow steps 1 and 2 but completely miss step 3.

This is not surprising really as listening is not a set of behaviours but a set of skills that need to be taught and developed, starting from birth.

A child with poor listening skills will find it difficult to complete tasks, as they have not taken in all the information and so not understood the full extent of the task, or what was required of them. This can lead to a child flitting from one activity to another and never finishing anything, slowing down their learning. They also miss out on the sense of achievement and feeling of pride when a task is completed. This helps to build a child’s confidence, self-esteem and self-motivation to try again or attempt a more challenging task.

For many children good listening skills do not develop naturally, they have to be taught!

The Key to Good Phonics Skills

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The key to good phonics skills is having good listening, speaking and vocabulary skills.

These are not just the elements for phonics and for other literacy success but an essential for social communication skills as well.

Sadly, schools are still reporting ever increasing concerns over the decline in young children’s speaking and listening skills. So, over the next 14 weeks, we are looking again at the different developmental elements of listening and speaking which in turn will support vocabulary development. Providing practical information, games and activities to help build a child’s skills. 

Week 1. What is Listening?

Week 2. Games to Develop Listening Skills – Sound Screen Games

Week 3. Games to Develop Listening Skills – Sound Scanning Games

Week 4. Games to develop Listening Skills – Music Fun

Week 5. Games to develop Listening Skills – Phonemic Awareness

Week 6. Conversational Turn Taking Skills

Week 7. Different Types of Talk

Week 8. The Importance of Small Talk

Week 9. How to Encourage Your Child to Keep Talking

Week 10.  Word Awareness

Week 11. Activities to Develop Talking & Language Skills

Week 12. Activities to Develop Rhyme & Alliteration

Week 13. Activities to Develop Syllable Awareness

Week 14. Activities to Develop Directional and Positional Language

Indoor/Outdoor Circuits Ideas – To Support Language Development

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Well, true to form, the Easter Holiday weather is a mixed bag, sunny one minute then pouring with rain the next!  

So, here are a couple of ideas to help your child burn off some of that pent-up energy. Best of all you can class it as language development homework (working on instructional, directional, body awareness vocabulary and listening skills).

An indoor/outdoor circuit training course does not have to take up much space or be messy (but it might be a good idea if indoors to move ornaments a little further out of the way).

Simple activities can be fun if they are done for short periods of time and children do love a time challenge. Make each activity last anything from 30 seconds to 1 minute.

You could record how many they did in the time and see if they have improved when you try it again.

Why not try:

  • Hopping on one leg and then the other (balance & coordination)
  • Use the bottom step of the stairs for step ups (bilateral coordination)
  • Curl ups (core strength)
  • With a cushion balanced on their head can they touch their toes without dropping the cushion (balance, coordination, bilateral coordination and core strength)
  • Star Jumps (balance & coordination)

For more fun, simple activity ideas check out our games page, it is amazing how much fun you can have just hopping, jumping, skipping and dancing on the spot: https://teachhandwriting.co.uk/games.html

If you are feeling really brave why not try building an obstacle course, a lot of the fun is in the designing and making.

Let go and have fun!!!

Treasure or Easter Egg Hunts Develop both Handwriting & Language Skills

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The Easter Holidays have started, so here are some fun activities to keep children of all ages entertained whether we have rain or sunshine.

An Easter egg, or treasure, hunt is a great way to teach children directional language. Being able to understand directional and placement (prepositions) vocabulary is important for understanding everyday instructions such as ‘put your cup on the table’; ‘go along the hall and stop at the door in front of you’.

We also use this directional language to explain how to draw patterns and write letters, which is another reason why it is important for young children to be introduced to, and have a good understanding of, this kind of vocabulary.

Through Easter egg, or treasure, hunts you can introduce new directional and placement language in a fun and exciting way. There are a number of different ways to approach this:

  • You can give verbal instructions to the hidden egg/treasure.
  • You could create a map for them to follow and ask them to talk you through the map, supporting them with new language as necessary.
  • You could use a mixture of verbal and map clues.
  • For older children get them to hide the egg/treasure and give you instructions, or draw a map.
  • If you have more than one egg/treasure and they are of different sizes make the larger ones more difficult to find.

The important thing is the language shared. Words and phrases to use are: left, right, straight on, forward, backwards, about turn, turn around, up, down, higher, lower, stop, next to, in front, beside, underneath, on top of, behind, on the left of, on the right of, outside, and inside.

Easter egg, or treasure, hunts are a great whole family activity and you are never too young or too old to join in!

Spring/Easter Drawing Activity Ideas – Supporting Language & Pre-handwriting Pattern Development

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Easter holiday break starts next week!

So, we have put together some quick step by step Easter drawing ideas for you to try, using basic shapes such as circles, rectangles and triangles. It is amazing how, by using these simple shapes, you and your child can create fantastic Spring/Easter: cards, pictures mobiles or bunting: https://teachhandwriting.co.uk/more-activities.html

Drawing pictures is a great way to help your child develop their pre-handwriting strokes and shape forming skills. As well as supporting language development by sharing and using words and phrases as you draw, colour, paint or stick with your child. Here are some suggestions for you: next to, above, underneath, on top of, on the left of, on the right of, different colour names, different shape names and line style such as straight, curved, wiggly, thick, thin, short or long.

Have fun!

The ‘What’s That?’, What You Doing?’ and ‘Why?’ Stages

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As children interact more with the world and those around them so their language and communications skills increase and the ‘What’s That?’, ‘What You Doing?’ and ‘Why?’ stages begin. Yes! It can drive you insane at times, but it is at these stages they are cementing their knowledge and understanding, their brains are like a sponge, absorbing all sorts of information and linking them together.

It is at these stages that a child can easily misunderstand explanations and develop misconceptions as they try to find reasons and meanings for themselves. So, it can be very useful to talk through some things again later, checking their understanding and thinking. A good way of doing this is to ask them to tell someone else who was not there, perhaps Dad or an older brother/sister for instance. This way you can help them to develop a better understanding of the meaning of the word or concept.

You can also broaden their experiences, on which to draw understanding, by setting up play scenarios or other activities.

Beat ‘The Terrible Twos’ – Gestures & Signing

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Before an infant/toddler (1 to 2 years +) can talk they will often use gestures to help them get what they want, or let you know that they want you to do something again. Quite often these gestures are only really understood by you, this makes it difficult for others to understand your child, causing them to become frustrated at the lack of response.  

Although your child’s receptive language (understanding what is being said and asked of them) is developing well, their expressive language (telling others what they want and think) is far more limited, with them only being able to say around 20 words. The frustration of understanding but not being able to communicate leads to what is commonly known as ‘The Terrible Twos’. Sign language can be a very powerful tool to help you and your child to manage and lessen these communication frustrations.

For more tips and ideas to help you and your child to develop effective gesture and signing techniques follow the link to our ‘Gesture & Signing’ page: https://www.teachphonics.co.uk/gestures-signing-babies.html

When do phonics skills start?

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There are 10 stages of phonological awareness. Stages 1 to 7 are what we class as the pre-phonics skill stages (https://www.teachphonics.co.uk/phonological-development.html) and stages 8 to 10 (https://www.teachphonics.co.uk/phonological-development-phonics.html) we would class as the phonics stages.

Phonological awareness skills relate to our sensitivity and understanding of the sound structures of our spoken (oral) language. It enables us to progress from our awareness of large sound units (words in sentences) to smaller sound units (phonemes in words). It also incorporates the ways in which we communicate through speech, body language and written forms.

Research suggests that our phonological awareness (Stage 1: https://www.teachphonics.co.uk/phonological-awareness-stage-1.html) begins in the womb at about 24 weeks.  New born babies have a preference for their mother’s voice, as they have had an extended period of time hearing the voice before they are born, and so find it comforting. They do not understand the words, just the sound, rhythm and intonation of her speech pattern; more like music.

So, talk to your baby even before they are born, they will not understand what you are saying but their brain is busy; starting to store sound information that will later help them to understand language and learning to speak.

Babies initially have no language preference; they respond only to the sounds and facial gestures and mouth shapes that accompany them.

How you talk to your baby also has an impact; research has shown that babies prefer you to talk to them using regular words (normal adult vocabulary) in a slightly higher pitched and more sing-song way. Although many adults do this naturally when talking to babies it has become known as ‘Parentese’ and is very different from ‘Baby Talk’. For more information about ‘Parentese’: https://www.teachphonics.co.uk/how-to-speak-parentese.html

Language of Drawing

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Sharing and showing your child how to draw shapes and make pictures is a great opportunity for you to help them practice and develop known and new vocabulary.

Your child does not have to actually draw and can just watch, if that is what they prefer to start with. In doing so they may ask you to draw different things in the picture, use certain colours, or want to help you colour or draw things.

You can explain what you are doing as you draw, for instance, if you are drawing a straight line or a wavy line to make a shape or pattern.

Other language you may use:

Straight, short, long, diagonal, up towards …, down towards …, across, curvy, wavey, zig zag, squiggly, swirling, dots, dashes.

A couple of weeks ago we talked about placement (preposition) and directional vocabulary which would also be great to use here as part of drawing activities.

Not all children enjoy drawing and colouring and it can be difficult to encourage them. There are a number of reasons why some children seem reluctant to draw, paint or colour. For instance, some will not like the smell of the paint or crayons, while others may find the pencils, brushes or crayons too thin, long or heavy. Others may be reluctant due to past negative experiences. It can be tricky to work out exactly why a child doesn’t want to draw or write.

For some tips and ideas that may help you get them started, check out this week’s Teach Handwriting Blog: https://teachhandwriting.blog

We have created some new drawings using simple shapes which you may find helps you to get started. Follow this link and scroll down the page a little you will find them under the ‘Activities to help hand development’:  https://teachhandwriting.co.uk/more-activities.html