Counting words in sentences is the most basic phonological skill.
How many times have you read a student’s writing and wondered where all the other words were? As in, connecting words were missing, or things like that. What about when looking at their writing and all the words are smooshed together with no spaces between words. Yes, part of these things could be due to other issues, such as a language impairment or poor handwriting. But another issue could be that the student is struggling with phonological skills.
It sounds so simple, but this really basic phonological skill can make a big difference in later learning.
Just like when we discussed phonemic awareness, the skills under the phonological awareness umbrella seem like skills for really young students. Yes, these skills, just like the others are taught in preK or kindergarten. But don’t underestimate the importance of successfully mastering these skills. In last week’s podcast, I introduced this concept, and if you haven’t listened to that episode, I want to encourage you to check it out.
So, this week, we are focusing on students being able to listen to sentences and discriminate between individual words. Yup, sounds super simple, but it does get slightly more complicated. Students should be able to hear a sentence and count the words in the sentence.
This phonological skill helps them tremendously when they get into writing sentences (and not just writing all the words smooshed together into one very long word). It also helps them to improve listening comprehension. Which how many of us have students who struggle with that? By being able to hear each individual word in a sentence, students can increase their vocabulary and word recognition. When they get to the reading phase, this helps with sight word recognition and retention.
So, have I convinced you that phonological skills are important yet?
There are many ways to practice this phonological skill. One of my favorites for younger students is getting them to step out the individual words in sentences. For example, if I say the sentence: “I have an orange cat at home.” The students would take a step forward for each word which I say. They can either step for each word, or count the words then step.
Older students who aren’t going to be as into the stepping game could count the words and hold up a card with the number, or fill in a bingo card. I’ve used this as a Monday morning warm up with older students. It helps them get their minds back into school after the weekend. I also introduce them to new vocabulary terms in the sentences as an added bonus.
Progress monitoring this skill, if you need to do that is pretty easy in my opinion. Of course, you’ll want your notepad or chart, as always. Then, you just say a few sentences and have students count the number of words in the sentence.
Take note of students who struggle more with words with more than 3 syllables which could be impacting their counting of individual words. Another option is to read poetry to the students (because it can be hard to fit more poetry into the curriculum so you gotta do what you can) and have the students count the words they heard.
Also, if you are interested in getting started with Progress Monitoring in your classroom, check out my free ebook called: 5 Steps to Getting Started with Progress Monitoring.
I have added in simple steps to take to get started, as well as sheets to help you take your first steps into the world of progress monitoring with confidence. Progress monitoring doesn’t have to be hard, let me show you how!
Click the picture to download the free ebook today!