When we are building phonological awareness we are focusing on sounds and playing with those sounds. So, it makes perfect sense to pair read-alouds with our phonological awareness work. So, let’s look at some amazing books that can help us build phonological awareness.
Phonological Awareness Books for Kids
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Using Just About Any Book for Phonological Awareness Work
You can really take almost any read-aloud and use it to do some phonological awareness work. Here’s how to do it.
- Gross Motor Differences: Pick a sentence from a book. A book that has repetititve lines works especially well, but it can really be any sentence. Let’s go with, “Run, run, as fast as you can.” Repeat the sentence with students and have them put up a finger for each word in the sentence. When they get done with saying this sentence, they will have 7 fingers standing.
- Isolated Sound Work: Have students isolate the beginning sounds of the names of the characters in the book. If you are reading a Maisy book, students could isolate the /m/ in Maisy’s name or /t/ in Tallulah’s name. You could also do some middle and ending sound work too.
- Segmentation of Words into Syllables: Character names work really well here too. Clap out the syllables in the names of characters from the story. If you are reading Evelyn Del Rey is Moving Away, clap out Evelyn’s name and you’ll clap three times.
Here are some specific book recommendations that work for phonological awareness work.
Alliteration and Targeted Sound Work
There are some great books where all the text begins with the same sound or the text really emphasizes a particular beginning sound. I’ve gathered up some of the best for you.—> Alliteration Books for Kids
Rhyming Books for Kids
Rhyming books are very plentiful but some of them really miss the mark. I’ve found the rhyming hits for you to try. Give them a try.—> Rhyming Books for Preschoolers
Nursery rhymes are also another wonderful resource for rhyming books. And, I’ve got a big list of those for you too.—> Nursery Rhyme Books for Babies, Toddlers, and Preschoolers
More Phonological Awareness Books
An oldie but goodie is the Hungry Thing by Jan Slepian and Ann Seidler is the story of a monster who mixes up the beginning sounds of things he would like to eat. For example he asks for “feetloaf” when he wants “meatloaf.” It’s silly learning fun just waiting to happen. (phoneme substitution)
Did You Take the B From My _ook? by Beck and Matt Stanton is a fun book for working on the beginning sound /b/, deletion, and substitution. The students will be giggling and shouting out the answers. (phoneme deletion/addition)
The Word Collector by Peter H. Reynolds is the story of the joy of collecting words. And, those words make perfect candidates for doing some segmenting syllables of words and sorting those words by the number of syllables. (segmenting syllables)
More Phonological Awareness Resources
I have a pleothra of resources for you on Growing Book by Book to help you develop phonological awareness with students. Try some of these ideas.
Phonological Awareness Ideas for Preschoolers
Phonemic Awareness Activities for Kindergarteners
Circle Time Songs Chants Vol. 1 and Circle Time Songs and Chants (Month by Month) Vol. 2 are filled with early literacy songs and activities that build phonological awareness, alphabet awareness, vocabulary and more.
Literacy mom says
THanks for the info! I’m curious if you have heard researchers now advocating for getting right into phonemic level awareness instead of needing phonological awareness (word/syllable level) work first. For example, research has shown you don’t need to be able to rhyme to read, so anything like that, or clapping words and syllables etc. wouldn’t need to be ‘taught’ first.