Reading Readiness: How to Develop Sound Awareness in Your Pre-Reader

Concerned your pre-reader may struggle when reading instruction begins? Have a child currently struggling to read? This article (part 2 of our Reading Readiness series) is for you!

What is the Sound System?
How to Know if Your Child Struggles with Phonological Processing
- Signs of Struggle
Reading Readiness Activities to Develop the Sound System
Conclusion

This article is the second part of a three-part series. I have also written a separate article about the reading brain which is helpful in understanding what this article is about – the pre-reading brain. So if you are new here, I would recommend that you go back and read these two other articles before diving into this in order to fully understand where we are coming from.

However, if you’re short on time and want to jump right in, fear not! This article will provide a short breakdown of all the concepts you need to know in order to develop your child’s pre-reading brain!

Technically, today’s focus is not on one area of the brain but on a process within the brain that connects several areas. This process is called the “sound system.” The previous article in this series addressed the brain’s letterbox, and the next article will address the meaning system. All three of these work together in the process of fluent reading.

What is the Sound System?

The sound system doesn’t deal with letters like we think of when we think of reading, but it is an essential process occurring in the background as we read. Spoken sound is processed in a part of the brain called the planum temporale. The planum temporale is where we store all of the individual sounds spoken in our native language, and it helps us process individual sounds within a word. There are 44 spoken sounds in the English language and the planum temporale stores our knowledge of each of them.

As the planum temporale develops, it learns to categorize spoken sounds apart from other environmental sounds like water dripping or a car horn. It figures out that, “Hmm the sounds made when a person’s mouth moves have special meaning. We should probably categorize that.” In a typically developing child, this happens in the first year or so of life.

Later, the planum temporale also becomes increasingly specialized by being able to pick out individual words in a sentence and eventually individual sounds in a word, such as identifying that the spoken word “cat” contains the sounds /k/ /a/ and /t/.

There is a separate area of the brain in the frontal lobe that helps us pronounce and articulate spoken words. It helps us coordinate the muscles in our mouths that are required to make specific sounds and words so that we pronounce them correctly. The connection between this area of the frontal lobe and the planum temporale develops as a child learns to speak and is what we refer to as the sound system. The goal of the sound system is to connect the sounds we hear others saying to our own ability to pronounce them. This is an essential background process in reading, even if we are reading silently.

How to Know if Your Child Struggles with Phonological Processing

Phonological processing or awareness is thinking about and identifying speech sounds (phonemes). Phonemes do not include sounds made with our mouths that do not represent speech (like clicking our tongues or blowing raspberries). The sound system builds progressively by first identifying words in a sentence, then syllables in a word (can-ta-lope), then individual sounds in a word (c-a-t). When a child can work with individual sounds, they have phonemic awareness – a branch of the larger umbrella of phonological awareness. In this article, we will focus on the more basic and broad skill, phonological awareness, which includes work with syllables and larger chunks of sounds. The development of phonological awareness is required in the planum temporale before reading begins.

If your child is already in elementary school, the first step in knowing if you should focus on developing their sound system is to figure out if phonological or phonemic awareness is one of the issues keeping your child from being a successful reader. Remember to always consider first whether the reason they are struggling is that they have lacked quality instruction in the classroom or that they haven’t had enough time to develop certain reading skills, rather than immediately assuming they have a learning disability. For more on how to determine if the issue is poor instruction or an actual learning disability, read this article.

Signs of Struggle

If you child has been through pre-school (with sound instruction) or kindergarten, here are some signs that they may struggle with phonological awareness:

Your child cannot count or clap the number of words in a short, spoken sentence.
Your child mumbles or struggles to pronounce simple words correctly.
Your child cannot tell if two words are rhyming words.
When spoken with a pause in between, your child cannot blend together two smaller words in a compound word, such as “sun” and “set” in the word sunset.

If your child is not in school yet, you do not need to be as concerned about the signs above. They may just not be developmentally ready to meet these standards yet (consult with your pediatrician to confirm), but you can do these activities preemptively to ensure they have a strong sound system before they are expected to read words. It is never too early to start these types of pre-reading activities!

This article is the second in our three-part Reading Readiness series. All articles in this series and their content are free. For parents who want more specifics, we offer a comprehensive guide that pulls together essential knowledge from this series and other articles.

This guide also boasts over 30 printable pages of assessments, rubrics, planners, and activities to help you implement what you have learned and track your child’s progress. This guide features:

Informed, science-backed conclusions about how our brains learn to read
Complex topics explained in clear and simple language for overwhelmed parents
Practical suggestions for how and when to talk to your child’s teacher
Simple activities that can be incorporated into everyday life for busy families
Activities appropriate for children ages 2-7
Activity and assessment accommodations for children’s various learning styles, interests and strengths (music, movement, art, acting, etc.)

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Reading Readiness Activities to Develop the Sound System

The following skills and their subsequent activities are presented from easiest to the most challenging. Use your best judgement as a parent to determine when to move on to the next activity! They do not need to perform an activity with 100% accuracy before moving to or adding on the next one. The pacing totally depends on your child. For example, you may spend several weeks, months, or just a few days on an activity, and that’s okay! If you choose to make your way through all of these activities, expect that the whole progression could take a year or more.

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Build sound knowledge

There are 44 sounds in the English language, and while we often focus on teaching letters before reading, it is equally as important to teach sounds. Sound knowledge refers to everything we know about a speech sound: what it sounds like; how our lips, tongue, and teeth move to say it; whether it’s a consonant or vowel; where it normally falls in a word, etc. If you speak a language fluently, you have deep sound knowledge although you may not be consciously aware of all you know about sounds.

Children who struggle with phonological processing need these concepts of sound knowledge explicitly taught to them. When teaching sound knowledge, we start by teaching what the sound sounds like and how our lips, tongue and teeth move to say it. This covers both areas of the brain involved in the sound system: hearing the sound correctly when others say it (planum temporale) and saying the sound correctly ourselves by moving our muscles (frontal lobe). The recommended age for practicing and assessing this skill is 2-4 years old.

Play “copy cat”. Give your child a small mirror or stand in front of the bathroom mirror. Tell your child to look at your mouth as you say a sound and then have them copy you. Introduce sounds in the order of typical speech development and feel free to spend anywhere from 2 days to a week on 1 sound, depending on how well you feel your child is pronouncing it. Encourage your child to practice saying the sound in words. Do not expect your child to pronounce all these sounds or words perfectly yet and keep this practice light and stress-free. The aim is only to pay attention to how the sound sounds and start building some muscle memory!
Introduce one sound at a time along with an accompanying picture to represent the sound, such as “apple” representing the sound /a/, and an accompanying hand motion. Introduce the sounds in order of typical speech sound development. Talk about what your lips, tongue and teeth are doing as you say each sound. These are called articulatory features. For example, when I say the sound /ee/ (the sound at the beginning of the word “evening”) my lips pull back like a smile. When I say the sound /oo/ (the sound in the middle of the word “moon”) my lips make a tight circle. (See below for sounds listed in developmental order with articulatory feature descriptions, hand motions and printable sound cards.) Spend 2-4 days on one sound and post the pictures that represent previously taught sounds. Before you begin each day, review previously taught sounds by pointing at the pictures, saying the sound, doing the hand motion and talking about the articulatory features! If needed, circle back every 3–5 sounds to review a few sounds for a day or two.

Practice rhyming

Rhyming has nothing to do with how a word is spelled. It has to do with how a word sounds from the first vowel to the end of the word. For example, “thought” and “not” rhyme even though the end is spelled differently. Also, “flower” and “taller” do not rhyme because the vowel sounds (/ow/ and /ah/) are different. “Flower” does rhyme with “power” because the sounds from the first vowel sound (/ow/) to the end of the word are the same. The recommended age for practicing and assessing this skill is 3-4 years old. You should certainly read rhyming books (Activity #2) before they turn 3, but don’t try to assess their rhyme production until after age 3.

Play the yes-or-no rhyming game. Determine a way in which you want your child to indicate “yes” or “no.” It could be signaling thumbs up or thumbs down, standing for yes and sitting for no, jumping to a green hula hoop for yes and a red hula hoop for no, or singing a high note for yes and a low note for no. Choose something that will be easy and enjoyable for your child based on their strengths and interests. When beginning the activity, explain simply that words rhyme when they sound the same at the end. Say two words and show your child how to indicate if “yes, they rhyme” or “no, they do not.” After modeling with a few pairs of words, have your child do the activity on their own. Switch up the yes-or-no indicator every few times you do this activity. If they struggle, explain the definition of rhyming again and do a few rounds with them before having them do it on their own again.
Read rhyming books on repeat. Easy peasy! Make things more challenging by having your child predict what the second rhyming word at the end of the line might be, based on what the first rhyming word was.
Play rhyming eye-spy. Prompt your child with “I spy with my little eye, something that rhymes with ___.” Keep the prompts fairly obvious.The goal of the game should be to connect two rhyming words together, not to find a hard-to-see object. You can do this during any part of your day – as you cook, while you drive (spy something in the car, not something moving), at the grocery store – you name it!

Work with words

Being able to parse out individual words in a sentence may seem like a really straightforward concept that doesn’t have to be taught. However, I am of the belief that if you are concerned about your child’s reading and phonological processing, we should always err on the side of over-teaching the most foundational skills. The recommended age for practicing and assessing this skill is 3-4 years old.

Emphasize individual words in a sentence by having students clap, jump, stomp, etc. to individual words in short 3-5 word sentences. Start by saying a sentence normally first, as anyone would say it and have your child repeat it. Then model how to parse each word by clapping, etc. and leaving a 1-2 second pause between each word. After giving an example, see if your child can do a new sentence with you. Continue supporting them until you feel that they can do it without your help.
If your child is able to count objects, have them count words in any sentence. Say a sentence normally as they would hear anyone say it and ask them how many words it has. If your child struggles at first, start with short 3-5 word sentences and have them clap the words before they count so you can see if they are struggling with parsing the words or with counting.

Work with syllables

Syllables are parts of words that are defined by each vowel sound in the word. For example, the word “can-ta-lope” has three syllables because it has three vowel sounds. Teaching a child to separate syllables is an important skill because it draws attention to how words are made of smaller and smaller units of sound: syllables, and then individual sounds. The following two phonological awareness activities can be done concurrently and the progression will be with longer and longer words. The recommended age for practicing and assessing this skill is 4-5 years old.

Make a list of two syllable words. Say each syllable with a pause between them and show your child how to blend them together to say the whole word. It may be helpful to clap to the right as you say the first syllables and to the left as you say the second syllable, then move your hands from right to left slowly as you say the whole word. (You move from right to left because your child will be looking at you and see left to right – the direction we read!) Give your child the next word, then help them say it and do the hand motions with you. After a few examples together, see if they can do it on their own. Once your child can blend two syllable words on their own, move to three syllable words
Now we model the reverse. Make a list of words with two syllables. Model for your child how to say the whole word and then break apart each syllable. It may be helpful to make two fists together with your hands in front of you as you say the whole word. Then, pull your right fist away as you say the first syllable and pull your left fist away as you say the second syllable. Give your child the next word and help them say it while doing the hand motions with you. After doing a few together, ask them to do it on their own. Once your child can blend two syllable words on their own, move to three syllables.

Conclusion

Your child’s brain is malleable and is capable of being changed. If you are patient and diligent with activities like these, they will have fewer long-term struggles with sound processing and reading. Do these activities early and often to help create foundational change at the brain level so your child doesn’t pick up fake-it-till-you-make-it habits or begin to internalize their reading difficulties. (And even if they already have, you can still reverse it!). To learn more about how to change your child’s brain and better equip it for reading, check out the rest of the article in this series, consider purchasing our course “A Parent’s Advantage for Struggling Readers,” or book an affordable consultation for some tailored next steps!

Here’s to setting your pre-reader up for success!