Welcome to Circle Time, a podcast by South Side Early Learning unpacking the big things you want to know about little learners. From the car seat to the classroom, we're answering your questions on parenting, child development, and early education. I'm Colin Page McGinnis, CEO of South Side Early Learning and your host on the show. In each episode, I'll chat with a friend or two, all of whom just so happen to be experts and leaders in their fields, as we explore all things little sharing them with you in toddler size tidbits. Are you ready to master the first five years? If so, gather round for Circle Time. Shayne, welcome back to another episode of Circle Time. I have to say we did pretty good on our last one. We had some follow up from parents on some continuation, or at least what I think is continuation of our alphabet conversation. And we're going to talk a little bit about phonological awareness today. But before we jump too far in if you could real briefly remind our listeners who you are and some of the work that you do.
Shayne Piasta:Sure, I'm happy to be back. So my name is Shayne Piasta. I am an Associate Professor at the Ohio State University and a faculty fellow at the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy. And a lot of my work is understanding how young children develop early literacy skills and then how we can best support that as teachers and parents.
Colin:Let's talk about phonological awareness. And I have to say I am not a literacy expert by any means. I feel like I am the minority camp in early childhood where my focus isn't literacies. And honestly it isn't anything to do with reading either. So, if you could, for me and our friends listening, what are we talking about today?
Shayne Piasta:Sure. So I think even for folks who are in the literacy world this is sometimes a confusing term. So phonological awareness is part of what we would call meta linguistic awareness. So it's part of our ability to kind of think about and understand how language works. So phonological awareness specifically is the ability to hear, reflect on, and manipulate the sounds and words. And we can think about this at different levels. So as I'm talking, I'm saying sentences that are composed of discrete words. If we were to look at a diagram of the actual like sound properties coming out of my mouth, you wouldn't see these breaks between the words. But you and I could count how many words I'm saying out loud. We can break that speech stream into these individual segments. And so that's actually part of phonological awareness.
Colin:So how do all these things come together? Are they actually separated out? Because when I've heard of this in the past it's been in the context of reading and language development more broadly. And this, from what you're saying, sounds a little bit more like the cognition side of the world which is a background that I come from and maybe some of the processing of speech and sound more of the ENT side of the house if we're thinking about development. So how does that connection get made?
Shayne Piasta:So this is definitely coming from folks who study phonology and acoustics and speech and things like that. The connection to reading and spelling though, is that this is a critical skill for children and adults to have in order to be able to read. So it might not seem so when we're talking about it at this big level of a sentence, but when we can think about phonological awareness as going all the way from being able to distinguish the individual words in a sentence, down to maybe being able to distinguish the two parts of a compound word. So pancake being able to recognize that that is pan cake. And we can keep going even smaller. So we can start talking about syllables. We can think about rhyming. We can think about alliteration or words that start with the same sound. And when we get to that level of alliteration what we're starting to talk about is what's called phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is that very very smallest piece of phonological awareness where you're able to hear and manipulate the individual speech sounds in spoken words. So now if we think about reading and spelling, well reading in some form when we're talking about decoding simple words, you're taking something like c-a-t and manipulating or blending those individual sounds together in order to get the word cat. And conversely, if you're trying to spell a word and you know that that word has three sounds and you can break that word apart into those three sounds, now you might be able to write the letters that represent those sounds. There's been a lot of work over probably the past three decades, four decades showing that phonemic awareness in particular is this absolutely critical skill to reading and writing. And in fact it's been shown to be causally related. What does that mean? That means that it's something that if we improve phonemic awareness we tend to see that kids tend to be better readers and spellers.
Colin:And the last episode of Circle Time that we did we were talking about the sounds that letters were making. Is that what you're talking about here when we're talking about phonemic awareness or is there something else that we want to start considering when we're working on developing these critical skills?
Shayne Piasta:So it's related. It's not unrelated. But when you think about the sounds that typically go with the 26 letters of the alphabet, that's not all the sounds that we use in English. So my name is Shayne. It starts with the Sh sound. That's one sound even though it's represented by two letters. We can also think about the letter X. We talked about that as being kind of a tricky letter. Well that's because it tends to be associated with two sounds. So we think of the word box. We know that has three letters but it actually has four sounds. And so this is where, just like I was talking about with alphabet knowledge, phonemic awareness is a little bit trickier than we might think about it as adults. So if we asked kids how many sounds they hear in the word box? The right answer is actually four. And sometimes we end up confusing ourselves because we know how it's spelled and it only has three letters. It does get a little bit more complicated than just the letters. And the other thing that I'll add to that is that phonemic awareness is really all about spoken language. So we don't need to have letters in order to develop phonological phonemic awareness. We can do it all through speech.
Colin:I've been fortunate to work with you for several years now and over the course of that time I'm sure you have noticed but haven't actually called me out on the fact that I'm a terrible speller. And when I was growing up I remember having this constant battle with my mom back and forth when we'd study for spelling tests because the word in the symbol form on paper with the letters didn't match the way that it should have been set up. Was the phonemic awareness what I was struggling with? I know there's probably more to this than that. But when we're working with young children is that disconnect between the letter is this but the sound is this and I want to spell it the way that I think the sounds are actually connected to the symbol. Is that what's happening or am I confusing myself?
Shayne Piasta:That could be part of it. I mean really I think what you're getting into is more about phonics. When we're talking about kind of complicated letter sound combinations and patterns and spelling. When we're thinking about preschoolers though, we just want to start with playing with sounds. And we might even want to start with that before we get to the individual speech sounds. So before getting to phonemic awareness, we might want to be playing with sounds at the level of being able to hear the number of words we're saying. Being able to make up new words. So we know that there's such a thing as Batman. What other kind of superheroes can we make up by putting together two words? We don't need to use letters in order to really be working on phonological awareness and phonemic awareness. Although eventually that's exactly where we want to go. Eventually we want to start connecting the individual sounds to the letters.
Colin:Let's take this out of the textbook and into either the classroom or at the kitchen table. One of the questions that we received from a parent was actually around the fact that they were having quite some fun with some of the games that we were talking about in the last episode. How can we start incorporating this idea of starting with sounds and playing with sounds into actual practice for parents and teachers? What's a good place to start when we want to work on developing these skills?
Shayne Piasta:So again, just playing with language is really great. So one of the things that parents and teachers can use to play with language are rhyming words. So being able to both read rhyming books, but also being able to be silly and come up even with new words that might rhyme. I think about some of the Raffi songs that use his nonsense words that aren't real words but hey, they rhyme and that's playing with language in a way that's causing kids to attend to the sounds that they're hearing. Can also think about sorting things or playing games with beginning sounds, which is a little bit of a harder skill for young kids to learn. Sometimes that's something fun to do with pictures. Or if you have a matching game at home that has pictures of different objects you can easily repurpose those for this type of a game. There's so much available online now. So if you search for phonological awareness games on the internet there's lots of free materials you can print out and use at home or even play in apps.
Colin:One game that we have played in the classrooms, I think ties into this work here, is with an Easter egg. So that's plastic Easter eggs and we'd actually write, if we are using Batman, Spiderman, it might be too complex for preschool, but for older children that can read and you actually spin the egg to get things to match up on one side and then the other half, there might be other words that you can rotate through. And sometimes they're nonsense and they don't really mean anything or they're not a real word but it's this practice of putting those two words together to make one big word. Or we've done it with like a C and then A- T on the other side and you rotate it and it's a B and A- T. And then you flip through and I can't think of what else is on the second half of the egg, but is that what we're talking about?
Shayne Piasta:That's exactly what we're talking about. The other things that I've seen folks do for fun is incorporating some gross motor movement into this too. So you can hop on one word or picture and then hop on another one and try to put those two together. So there's lots of ways of doing this. And the other thing I'll say is, so I talked about kind of the different size units. And we know that when kids are kind of left to their own devices typical development they tend to learn, at least for English speaking children, they tend to learn the bigger sound units and then move down the continuum to being able to work with those individual sounds. But there's also different ways you can manipulate the sounds and that also tends to follow a continuum. So for example, it's much easier for a younger kiddo to start by simply listening and being able to answer, Do these two words sound the same? Two words rhyme? And then they would move on to being able to kind of put two things together. So like we were talking about. What do you get when you hear Bat Man? Then they move on to being able to segment words and take words apart. So they might be able to say pancake is made up of Pan Cake. Then you can get into some of these more fun types of activities like you are talking about. So deletion and substitution. So I have Bat. What happens if I take the "B" sound off of bat? You have "At." What if I add the "H" sound to the beginning of that? Now I have "hat." So you can do all kinds of different manipulations with these. And just attending to the fact that both in terms of that manipulation and the sound unit, that's what's going to help you gauge to what younger kids are going to be able to do. So starting with bigger sound units, easier manipulations, and working all the way down. Because once kids are able to delete and substitute sounds, they're basically at the point where they're able to use that now in service of reading and writing.
Colin:When we start working on these skills is it important to have the letters present in front of us or is it really about the spoken component? And should we start in the absence of the physical letter itself so we're not tied to what we think the sound is supposed to be for the letter B for example? Should we do this as a game when we're walking down the street or when we're driving to the grocery store and start the manipulation games there and then bring it into the story time?
Shayne Piasta:Absolutely! So like I said this is an oral language. This is a speech skill. We are aiming for kids being able to play with language in this way even before they necessarily understand all their letters or wanting to engage with print. So you can absolutely do this. When you're walking down the street and making up a rhyming game. That being said, the ultimate goal is that you're going to pair this with letters. There is some research that shows as kids are moving into kindergarten, first grade when they're using this more as a tool for reading and spelling, we want to be teaching this in conjunction with letters. So my recommendation is to start just playing with the sounds in the language and gradually add in letters as you go. I'm also going to be upfront and say that's actually a bit of a controversy in the field right now in terms of when to introduce the letters.
Colin:Let's unpack that a little bit then. Because I was actually going to ask at what point should we start doing that? Or is there a point where we should maybe start to be concerned about if certain things aren't developing or if milestones are missed? Let's talk a little bit about what the research is saying in regards to the introduction of letters and then we can come back to this idea of is there a point where a development and milestone should be met and what did those look like?
Shayne Piasta:So there is some research that shows that being able to integrate phonological and phonemic awareness tasks with letter tasks leads to better reading and writing. And that's the argument for eventually tying these two things together. What we don't have a lot of information about is, at what point we should really start doing that. So on one hand we know that it's actually phonemic awareness that is important for being able to read and spell in a language like English. So we need to be able to get kids to the point where they can work with those individual speech sounds. On the other hand, we also know that kids have huge individual differences in their experiences with language, their interest in manipulating language. And so, when we're thinking about a preschool classroom some kids you can say to them, Hey, what do I get when I put pan cake together? And they're on it. They've got it. Or you can say, Do bat and bear start with the same sound? And they understand that as well. But some other kids are gonna come in and they're not even going to understand what you're asking them. And so, there is not, to my knowledge at this time, clear evidence of when to start pairing with letters. There's also not completely clear evidence of, okay, if you have a kiddo for whom this is a really new concept, do we start with maybe working with compound words and syllables and work our way down to individual phonemes? Or should we just start working on individual phonemes such as the beginning sounds of things? And there's really not clear evidence there. I'm a fan of knowing what kids know and what they're bringing to you and starting where their at in order to help move them forward. And so, until there's better research on that, my recommendation would be, Hey, if you've got a kiddo and they're already able to hear the beginning sounds of words, let's take them to where we're looking at the ending sounds of words. On the other hand, if you've got a kiddo who comes in and doesn't quite understand what you're asking them to do, let's start with bigger units that might be easier for them to understand and grasp.
Colin:You've alluded to it a few times but I want to make sure I ask the question and I fully understand. Is there a difference for non-English speakers, in terms of how all of this develops? Should we handle that differently? Is the language that's being spoken itself going to impact how easily or not these concepts are grasped?
Shayne Piasta:That's a great question. And the answer is yes. So, for example, I talked about how for kids who speak English they tend to progress from working with larger units of sound and eventually with the individual speech sounds or phonemes. For kids who speak Spanish they get to that point of being able to discriminate and manipulate individual speech sounds much faster. Where they might actually seem like they have a less of a grasp is on rhyming because that's just not the same in Spanish as it is in English, necessarily. But again, what we're working towards is that phonemic awareness. So those kiddos, they're doing great. There are lots of them already at that point. So that's one example. Another example of something to be aware of is that the same speech sounds are not used in all languages. So there are certain sounds that are really challenging for kids who speak other languages. So for example in certain languages, the L sound and the R sound are not really distinguishable. And so if you're doing a game where it's dependent on being able to hear and manipulate those sounds, that might be really hard for those kiddos. So thinking about the sounds that maybe overlap among English and other languages is a place to start for those kids because that's something that would be familiar to them. The other point that I'd like to make about this is because this is about the sounds, it's not about vocabulary necessarily. For kids who are learning English, we want to use objects and words that they're already familiar with. So they can really attend to the sound structure and not be worried about, wait, what is this whole new word mean? I don't understand what this is. So we also just need mindful of what we're presenting to kids and what we're asking them to do. And again the idea is to start with what they know and move them forward from there.
Colin:I don't know if this is a real phrase so correct me if there's a better phrase for this, but it sounds like there's a component of what we're doing here that we should attend to which is the socialized language. So we want to use words that are familiar to the littles that we're working with that also are coming up in either conversation or that they've seen before. We don't want to necessarily teach new vocabulary when we're working on these skills. Is that correct? Is that why there's some of the cultural difference? The language difference in here or is it truly because of the way that Spanish is structured differently than English is in terms of the language itself that's more at play? And it's okay if there isn't an actual answer here.
Shayne Piasta:I was going to say I think it's a little bit of attending to both. The reason that I would argue to use words that are already familiar for kids is so that we're not asking them to do two things at once. If we really want them to pay attention to the sound structure then we want to use words they already know. That's not to say you couldn't teach a new vocabulary word and then also play with its sounds after teaching it and providing a child-friendly definition.
Colin:As far as you're aware are there any books or structured games or media whether it's TV or songs that do a really good job at promoting these concepts or is it kind of a free for all and in terms of media that we could tap into?
Shayne Piasta:So in terms of books, I don't have any immediate standout recommendations but there were so many books out there that deal with rhyming. And that also deal with alliteration or playing with language in a way where the first sound of subsequent words are pretty similar. Alphabet books are also a great resource when working on this because, although we discussed this last time, and sometimes you get words that may not actually start with the right sound, for the most part it's giving you kind of a ready made set of words that all start with the same sound. In terms of apps, I don't have a recommendation on that because I haven't gone through and evaluated them but there are so many apps out there that could be used. And I can send you a list of other online resources for some of these activities that you could maybe share with parents and teachers if they're interested.
Colin:That would be awesome! We will definitely link to that in the show notes if you send that our way, so I really appreciate you doing that. There was an unrelated question to the topic for today that came up from the last episode that I wanted to throw your way and not give to you and the prepared questions section of what we on prepping an episode. We had several parents ask for recommendations for a new book after the last episode. So we talked about general alphabet books. We've talked about books in some other episodes. The parents are really interested in what you're reading right now. So one recommendation on a children's book to throw into the back half of this episode. So this question is going to replace my typical, If you could say anything to parents or teachers at this point what would it be? We're going to try something different with you in terms of what's your recommendation from the bookshelf. For either the classroom or the bedtime story. And I'll give you a second to think about what your answer might be here but I figured you'd be a fun person to ask this question to because parents were particularly interested in what you're reading.
Shayne Piasta:So my answer is actually not going to be a surprise to you because I read this book for you all last year. But one of my all time favorite books it was called "What's Next Baby Bear?" And now I think for some reason the title changed to whatever next and I know this because I just bought this to mail it to my niece. But this is a story about baby bear who takes a trip in a cardboard box with a strainer for a helmet to a on the moon. I think that this is a wonderful book to read. It has a little bit of alliteration. Right? Baby bear. But it's also an opportunity for kids to maybe role play and maybe they can also go to the moon and have a picnic in their own paper box. And it also is an entree even though it's a narrative storybook, it's an entree to talking about the moon and talking about space and I think that's relevant now especially as we're learning new things about Mars that we've never learned before because of the Rover that we've just landed there. So I think it can tie-in in lots of ways. So you can talk about the letters while you're reading. We can do a little bit of phonological awareness with some of the alliteration of sounds. It's a really rich language opportunity and there's even a way to introduce some science in using it as a jumping off point.
Colin:It is a great book. I am familiar because you did read that for us for our littles down at South Side. So I would echo and recommend that pick as well. Before we close out on this episode I wanted to turn it over for any last minute thoughts. Whether it's with phonological awareness. Whether it's broad reading and literacy. Just anything you want to add to the back half of the episode for parents or teachers.
Shayne Piasta:I think what's important to understand about phonological awareness is that it's all playing with language. It doesn't require any special materials. It doesn't require any particular expertise beyond just making sure and thinking twice about, wait, am I asking for sounds that actually are the same sounds or something like that? And it's a really important thing to be cognizant of in playing with your child. So again, you can do this with all different units of sound. You can do this with, or without letters, you can do it in the context of book reading, you can do it in the context of walking down the street. What's important to remember is that, ultimately what we want kids to be able to do is to be able to hear and play with those individual speech sounds. But knowing that that may not happen until they are actually in the process of truly learning how to read words and spell words.
Colin:With that Dr. Shayne Piasta, it is always a pleasure to have you on Circle Time. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode and who knows? Maybe there's some more to come.
Shayne Piasta:I'll be happy to talk again.
Colin:What questions do you want to ask our experts on Circle Time? Join the conversation by using the hashtag #CircleTimePod, tweeting us @CircleTimePod or by visiting circletimepod.com. If you liked this episode, be sure to rate and subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts and share this and all of your favorite episodes with others. From South Side Early Learning I'm Colin Page McGinnis and this is Circle Time. We'll see you in the next episode.