Preparing for Reading

One of the most significant pre-requisites for reading, spelling and writing is phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is strongly associated with early literacy achievement. In Preparing for Reading for 4 and 5 year olds, blending is targeted as blending represents an immediate precursor to decoding ability. This resource contains coloured card sets recommended for explicit 5 minute instruction sessions and provide clear guidelines on how to effectively teach blending. These instructions can form the basis of assistant and parent education.

The PLD developmental 5 step phonological awareness process has been designed by Speech Pathologists for use in schools. When used in conjunction with PLD’s pre-literacy screening, this program forms a significant component in a school’s preventative early intervention strategy.

Phonemic Awareness Readiness for Reading

The phonemic awareness pre-requisite skill involved in reading simple regular CVC [consonant-vowel-consonant] words such as ‘fig’, ‘tin’ and ‘mat’ is the skill of blending.

First students must learn to blend at an onset and rime level. E.g. ‘Listen carefully and put these sounds together and guess this word:’ ‘f’ (one second pause) ‘ig’?’

Students then learn to blend at the phonemic or individual sound level: E.g. ‘Listen carefully and put these sounds together and guess this word; ‘m’ (one second pause) ‘a’ (one second pause) ‘t’? Answer: ‘mat’.

Features:

• Instruction manual (24 pages)
• 5 different blending activities with instructions
• 125+ colour cards, 3 x game boards