Phonemic and Phonological Awareness: A Guide for Parents and Teachers

Table of Contents

1. What is Phonemic Awareness?
2. What is Phonological Awareness?
3. Research Insights
4. Age Appropriateness
5. Helpful Links
6. Activities
7. Newsflash
8. Helpful Tools
9. Download an Editable Copy of This Page
10. References

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1. What Is Phonemic Awareness?

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the smallest units of sound in spoken words, called phonemes. You can even engage in activities that enhance phonemic awareness without opening your eyes, as they solely depend on listening and oral processing.

Important Distinction: Phonemic awareness is not phonics. Phonological awareness forms the foundation for phonics. While phonics is the understanding that sounds correspond to letters in print, phonemic awareness focuses only on the sounds themselves.

Before children learn to read, they need to understand that words are made up of individual sounds. These phonemes are the smallest sound units that can change a word’s meaning.

Example:

• Word: ball → /b/ /aw/ /l/
• Swap /b/ with /w/: wall
• Swap /aw/ with /e/: well

Developing phonemic awareness improves word reading, spelling, and comprehension. Research shows that blending and segmenting phonemes are the most important skills for early literacy because they directly correlate to reading and spelling.

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2. What Is Phonological Awareness?

Phonological awareness is a broader skill set that includes phonemic awareness but also focuses on larger units of sound, like syllables and onsets/rimes.

• Syllables: Words can be broken into chunks (syllables), each with an onset (beginning sound) and rime (ending sound). Example: /d/ /og/ → dog
• Rhyme and alliteration: Recognizing rhyming patterns and repeated sounds at the beginning of words, e.g., sweet smell of success.
• Word segmentation and blending: Breaking words into smaller parts and combining them to make new words.
• Sound manipulation: Identifying initial and ending sounds, hearing smaller words within larger words (e.g., cat in catalog).

Phonemic awareness is a subskill of phonological awareness. Not all phonological awareness skills (like syllable segmentation or rhyme) directly predict early reading success—but phonemic awareness, specifically blending and segmenting, is critical.

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3. Research Insights

• Phonemic awareness instruction is essential for early reading development.
• Students who struggle with phoneme segmentation in kindergarten or first grade benefit from targeted interventions that improve decoding, spelling, and sight-word recognition.
• Students who still have trouble with phoneme-level skills after first grade may be “stuck” at the onset-rime or syllable level, which makes it harder for them to read fluently.
• Phoneme blending and segmentation are the most important skills. Advanced phonemic manipulation (deletion, substitution) is only useful for kids who can already read.
• Multisensory scaffolds, such as Elkonin boxes, manipulatives, and tactile/visual cues, support students as they develop these skills.

• Orthographic mapping—connecting sounds to letters to store words in memory—relies on strong phonemic awareness.

Statistics:

• 80% of struggling readers have difficulty with phonemic awareness (Hill for Literacy, 2022).
• Blending and segmenting at the phoneme level is critical to early literacy success (Hill For Literacy, 2022).

Notes from p. 44 of the Massachusetts Dyslexia Guidelines:

• Phonemic awareness instruction is necessary!
• Phonemic awareness develops students’ knowledge of word sounds and affects their decoding, spelling, and sight-word recognition.
• Students in kindergarten and first grade who score low on tests of phonemic awareness improve when they receive targeted help.
• Students in 2nd grade who perform in the at-risk range on word reading and fluency benefit from assessing their phonemic awareness.
• Phonological skills develop from larger units of language to smaller units.
• Some students become “stuck” at the onset-rime or phoneme segmentation level, affecting decoding and sight word recognition.
• To be a fluent reader, a student needs proficiency in manipulating and substituting individual sounds in words.
• Some students require multisensory scaffolds such as manipulatives or Elkonin boxes.
• Advanced phonemic awareness allows children to change and swap sounds without extra tools, improving sight word recognition through orthographic mapping.

4. Age Appropriateness

Follow this progression: listening → rhyme → syllables → onset/rime → phonemes → blending/segmenting → manipulation → orthographic mapping.

Moats, L. C., & Tolman, C. A. (2019). Excerpted from LETRS (3rd edition). Voyager Sopris Learning.

The above graphic was posted with permission from Kathy Schumacher at http://www.tunefulteaching.com. Check out her great site!

5. Helpful Links

• This document is a helpful handout for parents!
• Phonological & Phonemic Awareness Activities
• PreK Phonological Awareness
• Kindergarten and Grade 1 Phonological & Phonemic Awareness
• Grade 2 and 3 Phonemic Awareness
• CVC words—tap these and then write the letters! Visit Teach With Me for more free downloads.
• Phonemic Awareness Hand Motion Videos

6. Key Activities to Develop Phonemic and Phonological Awareness

Listening Games

• Sharpen the child’s ability to focus on sounds: daily environmental sounds, storytelling, sharing activities, reading aloud, following oral directions, sequencing events, and listening detective work.
• Identify sounds with eyes closed: clapping, door opening, marbles rolling, etc.
• Locate the source of sounds.
• Sequence sounds: what happened first, next, and last.
• Storytelling and read-alouds: detect errors or out-of-order events. Example: “Humpty Dumpty wall on a sat,” or swap word parts. Ask the child to detect story order errors.
• Identify animals by the sounds they make.

Rhyming Activities

• Nursery rhymes, fingerplays, poems, and songs. Printable nursery rhyme charts: here.
• Round Robin Game: Child provides rhyming words in a sequence.
• Rhyme Hunt: Find objects that rhyme with a target word in the room.
• Sing new words to familiar tunes (e.g., “If You’re Happy and You Know It”).
• Use action rhymes: barking/parking, ringing/singing, wishing/fishing—have children act them out.
• Say 2 words: the child uses thumbs up/thumbs down if they rhyme. Alternatively, you can say three words: the child identifies which word does not rhyme.
• Evoke the realization that almost any word can be rhymed—even nonsense words.
• Say rhyme phrases and have the child fill in the blanks, e.g., “A cat is wearing a ____,” “A mouse lives in a ____.”

Words and Sentences

• Say a word slowly and have the child clap or tap for each phoneme.
• Ask the child to repeat sentences and identify how many words are in the sentence.
• Provide nonsense words to encourage segmentation and blending practice.
• Use “I spy” games emphasizing sounds: “I spy something that starts with /b/.”

Onset and Rime

• Break words into onset (initial consonant or cluster) and rime (vowel and remaining consonants). Example: c-at, sh-ip.
• Play “word families” games: cat, bat, sat, mat, etc.
• Have children mix and match onsets and rimes to create new words.

Sound Substitution and Manipulation

• Practice changing the initial, medial, or final sound in a word to make a new word. Example: cat → bat → bag.
• Encourage deletion of sounds: say stop without the /s/: “top.”
• Use Elkonin boxes or counters to physically manipulate sounds.

The letters above are to illustrate what is happening. The child should not see letters.

Syllable Awareness

• Clap out the syllables in words: hap-py, el-e-phant.
• Sort words by number of syllables.
• Count syllables in spoken sentences.

Phoneme Awareness

• Blend phonemes to make words: /b/ /a/ /t/ → bat.
• Segment words into phonemes: cat → /c/ /a/ /t/.
• Use phoneme deletion and substitution for advanced practice.

Consonant Blends

• Introduce blends at the beginning or end of words: bl, st, cr, -nd, -st.
• Practice segmenting and blending consonant clusters with manipulatives or tiles.

Orthographic Mapping

• Connect sounds to letters using a multi-sensory approach: letters in sand, tracing, tiles, or magnetic letters.
• Map known sounds to written words for sight word recognition.
• Highlight how blending and segmenting directly supports spelling and reading fluency.

7. Newsflash: Why It Matters

Phonemic and phonological awareness are essential for reading success. Students who master these skills:

• Develop faster decoding and spelling skills.
• Become fluent readers with better comprehension.
• Acquire stronger orthographic mapping skills, leading to automatic word recognition.
• Are less likely to struggle with dyslexia or reading difficulties later.

8. Helpful Tools

• Free downloadable sound sorting activities
• Elkonin boxes for phoneme segmentation
• Phonics tiles for multisensory mapping
• Hand motion videos for phonemic awareness

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Orthographic Mapping Tools

Please visit my Orthographic Mapping page for optional tool ideas.

Phonemic Awareness Guides

Parent or Teacher Teaching Manual

 

 

This workbook has received positive reviews from parents. By following the activities, your child can make substantial progress in developing phonemic awareness.

Teaching Manual

 

 

As a reading specialist, I have used this phonemic awareness comprehensive guide for years with great success. It provides a thorough, research-based foundation in phonemic and phonological awareness. 

 

9. Download an Editable Copy of This Page

You can download a fully editable version of this Phonemic Awareness page in Word format for planning, printing, or parent handouts:

• Download Editable Word Document

10. References

• Hill For Literacy. (2022). Phonemic awareness research.
• Moats, L. C., & Tolman, C. A. (2019). LETRS, 3rd Edition. Voyager Sopris Learning.
• Massachusetts Dyslexia Guidelines, 2018. https://www.doe.mass.edu/sped/dyslexia.html
• Tuneful Teaching. Phonemic Awareness Continuum. http://www.tunefulteaching.com

This page was last updated on January 13, 2026.