The Relationship Between Phonemic Awareness And Preschool Children\u27S Literacy Activities

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the relationship between preschool children\u27s phonemic awareness and the literacy activities in which they choose to engage. Children (N=l4) in the study were observed twice weekly for 12 weeks in the normal preschool environment. Data collection was divided into two phases. The first phase consisted of watching one child at a time for 15 minutes and recording everything that child did during that time. The next phase c~ data collection consisted of watching the entire class and indicating on checklists what the children were doing during free play, circle time, and library time. This information allowed for frequency counts indicating what activities the children most frequently chose=~ engage in. Data was analyzed using the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Two researchers reviewed all field notes on several occasions to develop categories of literacy activities. These categories were developed and defined based on the activities of the children. Data were analyzed for each category, for each individual child, for the entire class, and for children with high and low phonemic awareness. Results indicated that children with high phonemic awareness were observed to engage in fewer literacy activities than children with low phonemic awareness. The children with low phonemic awareness engaged in the most literacy activities of all the children in the class. Recommendations for future research in regards to phonemic awareness and emergent literacy are provided