Phonological awareness: Prevention is better than cure!

The beginning of a new school year brings all sorts of unknowns about new students and their current developmental levels. The author, a pre-primary school teacher, found that 2006 was no exception. After administrating an array of pre-reading and pre-writing activities and PIPS testing (Performance Indicators in Primary School), she and her colleagues were concerned that a small group of children seemed to be struggling with what was being taught. The teaching team discussed how they were addressing phonological awareness using the levels of Rigg's 'Developmental Sequence of Phonological Awareness' (2001), and decided the children needed extra support with Level 5, the recognition and production of initial sounds, as Levels 1-4 were being explicitly taught. To help gain a thorough understanding of the skills required for initial sound recognition and production, the author conducted an action research project to ensure that the teachers' intervention program was specifically targeted at the children's needs. The project consisted of two parts: a review of the current literature on phonological awareness and the implementation of an intervention program to improve the students' ability to hear initial sounds, isolate initial sounds in words and differentiate between the initial sounds of given words.