Oz Education has introduced Whisper Phones to help our Preschool children develop phonemic awareness, a crucial step in developing literacy skills.
What is ‘phonemic awareness’? Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate the different sounds in spoken language. Before children learn to read, they need to be able to recognise that words are made up of speech sounds or ‘phonemes’.
“There are 44 phonemes in the English language. When our Early Childhood Teachers read to our children, we expose them to all 44 phonemes over time. Our children begin to acquire the ability to repeat the sounds and understand them,” says Belinda Aliaga, Centre Director of our new Homebush Centre.
The Whisper Phone is an interactive learning tool that encourages active listening, practicing and mastering of the 44 sounds.
“The phone helps the children ‘hear’ their own voice. The pipe funnels the child’s voice directly to their ear. This intentional focus on hearing sounds helps the children acquire phonemic awareness, a critical element to developing necessary proficient reader phonologic processing pathways.”
The phone compels the children to whisper and tune in to the sounds they are making, self correct and learn the difference between similar sounds.
Overall, it improves the process in which they learn sounds and makes it fun.
“We are already reaping the benefits of this focused activity as our children loves their Whisper Phones and are gaining more confidence each day as they get use to their own voice.” says Belinda.
