Review: Phonological Awareness Skills (Prim-Ed)
Prim-Ed kindly sent me out their set of Phonological Awareness Books earlier in the year. I posted about them briefly when I received them but haven't had a chance to report back fully on them since then. There are five books in the series and they are aligned well with the new Primary Language Curriculum, covering the Learning Outcomes "Phonological and Phonemic Awareness" and "Phonics and word recognition" in Reading and "Spelling" in Writing. They are suitable for Infants - 2nd Class or for older children who might need some extra work on phonological awareness. For all my complaining about the new Primary Language Curriculum, I do think the way Phonological Awareness is laid out in it is very clear and I think this set of books covers it very well. I would say looking at the progression steps below, steps a-f would be comfortably covered in these books.
I will be very honest and say I didn't get to use these books this year as much as I had hoped. I had too many workbooks this year and phonological awareness was also being covered in the English scheme I was using so I just dipped in and out of these books over the year.
The books are arranged as follows:
Book 1 - Auditory Discrimination, Rhyming and Alliteration
Book 2 - Segmentation and Syllabification, and Blending
Book 3 - Phoneme Matching and Phoneme Isolation
Book 4 - Phoneme Completion, and Phoneme Addition and Deletion
Book 5 - Phoneme Segmentation, Phoneme Substitution and Phoneme Reversal
For each skill, there is a short pre-test and a longer, more detailed assessment of the skill at the end of the section.
This is a very handy feature and I found that the few that I did do this year, really showed up the gaps and helped me to decide which direction to go in. Also, as we know, having a paper-trail of why we're teaching what we're teaching is always good to have if a cuairteoir walks in the door on top of you!
They say in the book that these are presented in developmental order so activities in Book 1 should be completed before Book 5. I wouldn't necessarily agree with that because I think Jolly Phonics covers so much and is of quite a high standard so even though I mostly used Book 2 this year, I did find myself picking bits out of the other books because they were complementing what we were doing in Phonics at that time. (I am no expert and that could be the completely wrong approach but that was just the way it worked out for me this year!) So if you are planning on buying these books, I would really recommend looking through the samples on the Prim-Ed website and checking for yourself which books will suit your class.
So, after all that, here are some things I like about the books. I've taken photographs of some of the activities I used and found worthwhile!
The books are arranged as follows:
Book 1 - Auditory Discrimination, Rhyming and Alliteration
Book 2 - Segmentation and Syllabification, and Blending
Book 3 - Phoneme Matching and Phoneme Isolation
Book 4 - Phoneme Completion, and Phoneme Addition and Deletion
Book 5 - Phoneme Segmentation, Phoneme Substitution and Phoneme Reversal
For each skill, there is a short pre-test and a longer, more detailed assessment of the skill at the end of the section.
This is a very handy feature and I found that the few that I did do this year, really showed up the gaps and helped me to decide which direction to go in. Also, as we know, having a paper-trail of why we're teaching what we're teaching is always good to have if a cuairteoir walks in the door on top of you!
They say in the book that these are presented in developmental order so activities in Book 1 should be completed before Book 5. I wouldn't necessarily agree with that because I think Jolly Phonics covers so much and is of quite a high standard so even though I mostly used Book 2 this year, I did find myself picking bits out of the other books because they were complementing what we were doing in Phonics at that time. (I am no expert and that could be the completely wrong approach but that was just the way it worked out for me this year!) So if you are planning on buying these books, I would really recommend looking through the samples on the Prim-Ed website and checking for yourself which books will suit your class.
So, after all that, here are some things I like about the books. I've taken photographs of some of the activities I used and found worthwhile!
- Each skill has a variety of activities that can be used to teach the skill.
- Some activities will work as whole class activities, some better for station/ small group teaching.
- If the activity requires a printable worksheet/ clip cards/ board games, they are all in the book, ready to be photocopied and used. If you do a lot of literacy stations, these books will definitely make your life easier!
- The pre tests and assessment sheets are very handy to have. They are time consuming in that they obviously have to be done individually but the same can be said for almost all assessments that you do in an Infant Classroom!
- You can use the books to suit your needs and the needs of the children in your classroom. You can dip in and out, pick and choose what works best for your situation.
Counting words in sentences was never something I would have spent a lot of time on but I found these activities great and they loved the challenge of counting up the long sentences and taking turns making up their own!
The books unfortunately aren't cheap... They are €29.95 each so you do absolutely need to do your research and see if they are right for you but there is another option if you don't want to shell out €150 for the 5 books! Prim-Ed also sell each skill individually in e-book form. So if you know that you already have plenty of resources in school for doing initial/medial/final sounds but have nothing for phoneme addition and deletion then you can just buy that skill for 9.95.
As well as that, at the moment Prim-Ed have a site wide sale which is going to give you 50% off the cost of the books and the ebooks until 30/06/2020 so if you had been thinking of investing and held off, now could be a good time to go back and look again!
Overall the books get a thumbs up from me and I hope to use them more next year!
The books unfortunately aren't cheap... They are €29.95 each so you do absolutely need to do your research and see if they are right for you but there is another option if you don't want to shell out €150 for the 5 books! Prim-Ed also sell each skill individually in e-book form. So if you know that you already have plenty of resources in school for doing initial/medial/final sounds but have nothing for phoneme addition and deletion then you can just buy that skill for 9.95.
As well as that, at the moment Prim-Ed have a site wide sale which is going to give you 50% off the cost of the books and the ebooks until 30/06/2020 so if you had been thinking of investing and held off, now could be a good time to go back and look again!
Overall the books get a thumbs up from me and I hope to use them more next year!