Posts Tagged ‘phonemic awareness’

There’s More to Reading Than Meets the Eye

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

Most of us have been reading for so long that it has become automatic to us. As we look at a magazine or newspaper, we do not have to sound out the words or ponder their pronunciation or meaning. Words flow in an unbroken stream, from the printed page to our brains. Our eyes are windows into a world of magic, adventure, facts and stories as we read reams of information. Libraries, the Internet, newspapers, magazines and books open to us a world almost beyond imagination.

It is only when you begin teaching a youngster to read that you realize what a complicated process this actually is.

There are many skills that you absorbed as a kid that prepared you for your first step into reading. You may remember, or you may have experienced with your own children, many different reading preparation games:

- beginning sounds games
- rhyming games
- matching games
- sorting
- shapes
- listening to and telling stories

One of the most important skills is called phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness is the ability of the ear (and brain) to separate a word into its individual sounds. You’d be surprised what a challenge it can be to learn the individual letters in a word if you do not have good phonemic awareness.

To illustrate the number of skills needed before you read your first word, here is a breakdown of the cognitive development process:

- You can see the black squiggles on a page
- You understand that those black squiggles on a page represent sounds (the same ah-ha type moment Helen Keller had with her teacher Anne Sullivan)
- You know the sound the letter makes
- you can individuate the sounds in a word that you hear
- you can read the letters in order
- you can understand the sounds they represent
- you can remember them long enough to sound out an entire word
- you can blend individual sounds into a word
- you understand what the words means
- you can remember the word long enough to read all the words are in a sentence
- Eventually, you can read and remember several sentences and paragraphs and understand the meaning in a story.

Our ease of reading can be taken for granted if we don’t understand the skills we’ve mastered when we were just beginning. As we guide our children through learning to read, it helps that we understand the process. We can do this by supporting them through all the steps and helping them identify, hear and understand sounds in sequence. This is our gift to our children as they embark on the adventure of learning to read.

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How do Bob Books work?

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

As you are most likely aware, there are a few, important steps and early literacy foundation skills that are necessary for reading. First, your child needs to know the alphabet and the sounds associated with each letter of the alphabet. And then, the ability to hear and identify different sounds in spoken words (otherwise known as phonemic awareness. If this sounds too technical, it doesn’t need to. Bob Books are exceedingly simple!  Once you’ve established that your child is ready for reading you will likely discover that the learning to read process becomes an organic, enjoyable and confidence-building experience for you and your child. This is the magic of Bob Books.

Bob Books work sequentially:

My First Bob Books build important pre-reading skills mentioned above like the alphabet and sequencing. My First Bob Books: Alphabet tunes your child’s ear to the sounds letters make and My First Bob Books: Pre-Reading Skills introduces shapes and patterns to build awareness of letter shapes and groups.

Next in the progression are the Bob Books Foundation sets, designed for beginning readers. Each set builds upon the previous set, with enough repetition (so reading becomes comfortable and easy) and new material (so the child stays interested.) The stories contain silly and mischievous characters and simple plotlines that will make children giggle. The illustrations are intentionally simple and childlike. The books themselves are sized perfectly for little hands. Numbering the books and boxes creates a sense of progress and accomplishment for your child.

And now, a bit of info about each foundation set:

Bob Books Set 1: Beginning Readers contains just four letters in the first book so your child can easily sound out all the words (Mat, Sam, cat, sat etc.). New sounds and letters are added gradually, until all the letters of the alphabet are introduced (except Q).

Next, Bob Books Set 2: Advancing Readers uses three-letter words and consistent vowel sounds in slightly longer stories. Again, repetition is used throughout as a way to continue building confidence.

Consonant blends, endings, and a few sight words mix things up and advance reading skills in Bob Books Set 3: Word Families. The use of word families help make longer stories more manageable.

Once you’ve found that your child has mastered Sets 1-3, longer books and more complex words will continue to engage and challenge your young reader in Bob Books Set 4: Complex Words. New word blends, more sight words and longer words advance their skills, while sound repetition still keeps reading easy.

The final set in the series, Bob Books Set 5: Long Vowels introduces the important new skills of long vowels and the magical silent E. Reading vocabularies will grow quickly as your child begins to master the longer stories. Upon completion of Bob Books Set 5, your emerging reader is now ready to move onto chapter books!

What’s next after graduating from Bob Books Set 5? We’ll cover this in an upcoming blog. In the meantime, be sure to let us know your favorites and recommendations.

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What is Phonemic Awareness?

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

What is phonemic awareness, how does it work and what does it do? Why is it important? Perhaps this is a term you’ve heard before, perhaps not. In a nutshell, phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and identify different sounds in spoken words.

Because different letters of the alphabet are associated with different sounds (or phonemes), phonemic awareness is key to understanding how spoken words translate to words in print.

Therefore, phonemic awareness is a critical step towards reading readiness. Once children understand that letters make different sounds, they can begin segmenting each sound out separately, and then blending sounds together to sound out words.

The University of Oregon has some good examples of these concepts in action:

Examples of Phonemic Awareness Skills

* Blending: What word am I trying to say? Mmmmm oooooo  p.
* Segmentation (first sound isolation): What is the first sound in mop?
* Segmentation (last sound isolation): What is the last sound in mop?
* Segmentation (complete): What are all the sounds you hear in mop?

The Bob Books method is very much based on simple phonemic awareness skills. For example, the first page of Set 1, Book 1 is based on the letters: M-a-t. First, your child segments the sounds: “mmmmm, aaa, ttt.” Then, faster, blending the sounds together: “Mat.” And voila, your youngster has read his first word!  Each book in Set 1 contains simple sounds to make word blending as easy as possible for the reader, creating confidence and early success. Soon, your child will be saying “I read the whole book!” ™

You don’t need to understand all of the nuances or methods of phonemic awareness in order to experience reading success. Bob Books are meant to be fun, simple and low stress for you—and most importantly, your emerging reader.

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The Magic of Bob Books

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

“We had the first Bob book sitting on the bookshelf since my daughter was one. Shortly before she turned four she went over and picked it out, sat down and started sounding out the words. It was one of those moments as a parent I will never forget!”
-Elizabeth S., Davenport Iowa

“I had my son hold the book for me because I was tired and he matter-of-factly began to read from it.”
-Sue L., Australia

“My oldest son has a reading problem, he is in the 4th grade and reads below grade average. I have a younger son who has just started to read, he is in kindergarten. I had the older one read Bob Books Set 1 to the younger one and WOW WOW, both of my boys were happy.  I couldn’t get that 5 year old to stop reading.”
-Nedra M., Washington, D.C.

Have you experienced your own “aha” reading moment with your child, the pride, the smiles, the confidence that comes as they triumphantly grasp a difficult new concept? Welcome to the magic of Bob Books.

As is the case with most transformative experiences, what happens behind the scenes and the skills that are developed before hand are what pave the way for the that special moment.  Children don’t “magically” learn to read. An early foundation in skills such as speaking in full sentences, knowing the alphabet, understanding the sounds that letters make, sequencing and phonemic awareness are all key for reading readiness.

As a parent, you have already been developing these skills by playing games and interacting with your child in your everyday life. Alphabet magnets on the fridge, drawing letters in sand or modeling them in clay, various arts and crafts projects; all of them have been developing reading readiness in various ways. Reading to your child and talking about the story, helps build awareness of sequencing. Playing sound games, singing, rhyming – these all build phonemic awareness.

So, enjoy your time with your child and know that the minutes and hours you invest helping them learn about their world can be both fun and will build important reading and life skills.

Do you have a magical Bob Books moment you’d like to share? Let us know!

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