This week in speech, we have been focusing on phonological awareness activities! Phonological awareness helps us understand the sound structure of the words we say to help us communicate and also become great readers! We do this by reading stories about the different sounds we make while we talk and communicate! We also work on increasing our phonological awareness by playing games to help discriminate between “long” sounds (like the /S/) and “short” sounds (Like the /D/). We use materials like these by having the students place the colorful cotton ball in the mini garbage can sitting by the word that is said. For example, if you say the word “Dad” which is a “short” sound, put the cotton ball in the blue bin! By increasing the awareness of sounds and distinguishing the differences between sounds, we can be easier to understand and increase our future reading abilities! Woohoo!!!