Sounding Board: A Parent’s Guide to Early Literacy Skills

Zoë Fabian
Jun 19
5 min read

Blending.

Segmenting.

Letter-sound correspondence.

Decoding.

When you’re a parent, lots of developmental jargon gets thrown around - and it’s easy to get a little lost. As your kid gets closer to elementary school, you'll likely hear many new jargon-y terms related to literacy and pre-literacy skills. Phonological Awareness is one of these terms.

While most reading skills are typically supported by classroom teachers and reading specialists, speech-language pathologists support many of the underlying skills needed for children to learn to read. Let’s take a look at what Phonological Awareness (PA) is, what you can look out for as a parent, and how SLPs provide support.

What is Phonological Awareness?

Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate sounds in words. Early phonological skills include:

In typically developing kids, we expect foundational PA skills (like matching rhymes, identifying beginning sounds, and recognizing syllables) develop in the Pre-K age group. More complex skills, like blending words that contain consonant blends (e.g. s - t - e - p → “step”) develop in early first grade.

SLP Hot Tip: You just read that many phonological awareness skills aren’t expected to be fully mastered until Kindergarten or later. BUT if you have a preschool-aged child with a speech-sound disorder, consider earlier intervention. Current research shows that these kiddos are at a higher risk for challenges with both phonological awareness and broader literacy skills, so the earlier they get support, the better! (Schuele & Boudreau, 2008).

Why should parents care about phonological awareness?

Okay, so we know that phonological awareness is how we recognize and manipulate sounds. Now let’s talk about why it’s important…

Phonological skills are foundational literacy skills. They are critical precursors to reading because we have to learn to read. Yup, that’s right - it’s not an innate skill. We use an alphabetic writing system, so before we learn to read we have to learn that speech sounds correspond with written letters. And before we learn that speech sounds correspond with written letters, we have to be able to identify and manipulate speech sounds that we use in spoken communication. See what I did there? I got us back to the definition of phonological awareness!

Phonological awareness is a foundational literacy skill. Foundational literacy skills provide a strong basis for academic achievement. Not just in reading, but in math too! (Bailey & Im-Bolter, 2024).

How do I support phonological awareness with my kid?

Luckily, it’s easy to incorporate basic phonological skills into your daily conversations with your child. Here are some examples of how:

What if my kid needs more support?

Sometimes kids need extra help in honing their PA skills. As I mentioned above, this is especially true of preschool-aged children with speech-sound disorders, who have a higher likelihood of challenges with PA skills (Schuele & Boudreau, 2008). Here are a couple of fictional case studies that show signs that a child could use some support from an SLP (and how we can help!).

Case study 1: Penny the Preschooler

Penny is a four year old preschooler with a bright personality and a love for books. She eagerly joins in during story time each day and loves to persuade her parents to read an extra book (or two!) at bedtime. Penny has a couple of speech sound error patterns that she’s already working on with an SLP, and she’s making great progress. Though Penny loves books, her parents have noticed when they leave an expectant pause on a rhyming word (e.g. “The cat in the…”), Penny looks a little confused and often will complete the sentence with a relevant, but non-rhyming word (e.g. “house?”) or something she can see on the page.

Case study 2: Kasey the Kindergartener

Kasey is a six year old who just started Kindergarten in the fall. He likes school and has lots of friends but is struggling a bit during English Language Arts. At his first parent teacher conference, his teacher told his parents that Kasey is having difficulties blending sounds to make simple words and sorting words based on their initial phoneme (first sound). English is Kasey’s parents’ second language, and when they practice at home they notice he’s struggling with these skills in Portuguese too.

Case study 3: Felipe the First Grader

Felipe is a first grade student who mostly loves school. Recently though, his teacher reported that he has started avoiding quiet reading time by taking long trips to the bathroom or taking a long time to get his indoor shoes on after recess. When his parents ask him about this, he tells them that he “hates reading!!” and that he “gets the letters all mixed up.” His parents are concerned and consulted with a local SLP, who found his phonological awareness skills were average for his age.

Can an SLP help?

Both Penny and Kasey could benefit from speech therapy because they are struggling with the underlying phonological awareness skills that fall under the scope of practice for an SLP. On the other hand, an SLP would likely refer Felipe to his school reading specialist to help with his phonics skills, which specifically focuses on the relationship between spoken sounds (phonemes) and written sounds (graphemes) to help kids decode written language.

To get professional for a second, here are some (paraphrased!) key points from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA)’s position statement on the role and responsibilities of an SLP in supporting reading and writing:

Spoken and written language are complementary: they each support each other. So delays or disorders in spoken language impact literacy skills (and vice versa).
Challenges with literacy skills can also impact how we use language “strategically,” i.e., to “communicate, think, and learn.”
SLPs can help with:
- Supporting early language development and emergent literacy skills to prevent written language problems.
- Identifying, evaluating, and providing therapy for children at risk for reading and writing difficulties.
- Providing resources and sharing knowledge with others in a child’s community (e.g., teachers, parents, peers) .

(ASHA, 2001)

So yes, an SLP can help! In both the cases of Penny and Kasey, an SLP can provide individualized, one-on-one support to help bring their phonological skills up to age-expected levels to support those vital early literacy skills.

If you have concerns about your kiddo’s phonological awareness, or their language more generally, we recommend reaching out to Talk Time Boston or another speech-language specialist. Research shows that earlier intervention results in better language outcomes (National Institute of Health, 2015).

Talk Time Boston runs a free screening program every Friday at our clinic in Arlington. Sign up here today!

If you are interested in learning more about the services we provide at Talk Time, we invite you to explore our website.