How To Teach Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds—known as phonemes—in spoken words. It’s a crucial skill for learning to read because it is the foundation of which phonics is built.

Phonemic awareness is one of the strongest predictors of reading success. Children who can manipulate phonemes in oral language understand the alphabetic principle—the concept that letters and letter combinations represent sounds in words.

Phonemic awareness involves a progression of skills.

1. Sound Matching

Identifying which words in a group start with the same sound.

Identifying which words in a group end with the same sound.

Identifying which words in a group have the same middle sound.

1. Sound Isolation 

Recognizing individual sounds in words (e.g., identifying the first sound in "cat").

It is easiest to identify the first sound in a word, followed by the last sound in a word. The medial sound is the ‘trickiest’ phoneme to isolate.

1. Sound Blending

Combining a series of spoken phonemes to form a word (e.g., /c/ /a/ /t/ to form "cat").

1. Sound Segmentation

Breaking a word into its individual sounds (e.g., "cat" into /c/ /a/ /t/).

1. Sound Deletion, Addition, and Substitution: 

Manipulating phonemes within words (e.g., changing the /c/ in "cat" to /b/ to form "bat").

Educators must provide explicit and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness, especially for young learners and struggling readers. Activities such as rhyming games (ages 2-4), sound blending and segmentation exercises (ages 4+), and manipulating phonemes in words (ages 4+) are suggested. Phonemic awareness instruction should be ongoing, even after students begin to read, as it continues to support reading development.

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