For today’s tutor tip I return to one of my favorite free resources on the internet, Scholastic.com. The website, www.teacher.scholastic.com/reading/bestpractices/phonics/explicit_systematic.pdf may be familiar to some of you, as I have recommended it in the past. This time I recommend one specific part of the article. It lists five tasks of phonological awareness that can help you and your learner get more comfortable with taking words apart and putting them back together again. This can help the ESL as well as the ABE learner, since everyone has to read a little bit, and focusing on the sounds gives you one more way to approach pronunciation.
The article recommends going through the tasks using a “playful” approach and lively pace. There is no need to work through every single task, but trying some of them can open up the mind and get a person thinking about how words are made up of component sounds, and that those sounds are represented by the letters of the alphabet. It is not about mastery. My suggestion is to try a little practice with these tasks as a warm-up before the lesson, or try them in the middle of a lesson to get your learners to pay attention to the sounds of a word they are trying to read.
As always, you can find this or any other tutor tip on the BLOG OF LITERACY, at www.literacynetwork.blogspot.com. This helps in two ways. First, you can comment for all to see and share ideas, and second, you can find the tips there if your e-mail server mistakes these messages for spam. The U.W.’s mail server tends to bounce my messages back every time if you don’t have your spam filters set to accept this address. The five tasks are below:
According to Adams (1990), there are five basic types of phonological
awareness tasks. Within each task type are progressively more complex
activities. These task types and sample activities include the following.
• Task 1—The ability to hear rhymes and alliteration
a. rhyme
Example: I once saw a cat, sitting next to a dog. I once saw a bat,
sitting next to a frog.
b. alliteration
Example: Six snakes sell sodas and snacks.
c. assonance
Example: The leaf, the bean, the peach—all were within reach.
• Task 2—The ability to do oddity tasks
a. rhyme
Example: Which word does not rhyme: cat, sat, pig? (pig)
b. beginning consonants
Example: Which two words begin with the same sound: man, sat,
sick? (sat, sick)
c. ending consonants
Example: Which two words end with the same sound: man, sat,
ten? (man, ten)
d. medial sounds (long vowels)
Example: Which word does not have the same middle sound: take,
late, feet? (feet)
e. medial sounds (short vowels)
Example: Which two words have the same middle sound: top, cat,
pan? (can, pan)
f. medial sounds (consonants)
Example: Which two words have the same middle sound: kitten,
missing, lesson? (missing, lesson)
• Task 3—The ability to orally blend words
a. syllables
Example: Listen to these word parts. Say the word as a whole.
ta . . . ble—What’s the word? (table)
b. onset/rime
Example: Listen to these word parts. Say the word as a whole.
/p/ . . . an—What’s the word? (pan)
c. phoneme by phoneme
Example: Listen to these word parts. Say the word as a whole.
/s/ /a/ /t/—What’s the word? (sat)
• Task 4—The ability to orally segment words (including counting
sounds)
a. syllables
Example: Listen to this word: table. Say it syllable by syllable.
(ta . . . ble)
b. onset/rime
Example: Listen to this word: pan. Say the first sound in the word
(the onset) and then the rest of the word (the rime).
(/p/ . . . an)
c. phoneme by phoneme (counting sounds)
Example: Listen to this word: sat. Say the word sound by sound.
(/s/ /a/ /t/) How many sounds do you hear? (3)
• Task 5—The ability to do phonemic manipulation tasks
a. initial sound substitution
Example: Replace the first sound in mat with /s/. (sat)
b. final sound substitution
Example: Replace the last sound in mat with /p/. (map)
c. vowel substitution
Example: Replace the middle sound in map with /o/. (mop)
d. syllable deletion
Example: Say baker without the ba. (ker)
e. initial sound deletion
Example: Say sun without the /s/. (un)
f. final sound deletion
Example: Say hit without the /t/. (hi)
g. initial phoneme in a blend deletion
Example: Say step without the /s/. (tep)
h. final phoneme in a blend deletion
Example: Say best without the /t/. (bes)
i. second phoneme in a blend deletion
Example: Say frog without the /r/. (fog)
This tip message is about teaching compara- tives, words like bigger, shorter, darker, lighter, taller, hairier, bulkier, thinner and so on to give a description of a person. Police artists use software that lets them take a basic character and, with a few mouse clicks, modify it, making the hair fluffier or wavier; the glasses bigger or smaller, rounder or squarer. Recently I found something much easier to use, and better yet, free. Together, you and your learner can use a website to practice using comparatives, telling you how to create cartoon versions of yourselves. 
