Phonemic Awareness: Why It Matters in Education

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. Activities that build phonemic awareness can even be done with eyes closed, because they rely entirely 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.

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.

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, improving decoding, spelling, and sight word recognition.
Students who continue to struggle with phoneme-level skills beyond first grade may be “stuck” at the onset-rime or syllable level, which hinders reading fluency.
The most important skills are phoneme blending and segmentation; advanced phonemic manipulation (deletion, substitution) helps primarily children who can already read.
Multisensory scaffolds like Elkonin boxes (below), 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).

The following are essential notes from page 44 of the Massachusetts Dyslexia Guidelines.

Phonemic awareness instruction is necessary!
Phonemic awareness develops students’ knowledge of the sounds in words and impacts their decoding, spelling, and sight word recognition.
Students in kindergarten and first grade who score in the at-risk range on screening measures of phonemic awareness, such as phoneme segmentation, have been found to improve their decoding and encoding skills due to targeted PA intervention.
Students in 2nd grade who perform in the at-risk range on measures of word reading and oral reading fluency benefit from assessing their phonemic awareness knowledge to confirm whether PA is to blame for their reading deficits.
The development of phonological skills moves from larger units of language (whole words) to smaller language units (individual sounds or phonemes).
Some students become “stuck” at the onset-rime or even phoneme segmentation level at the end of first grade, negatively impacting their ability to advance in decoding and sight word recognition.
To be a fluent reader, a student needs to achieve proficiency in the manipulation and substitution of individual sounds (phonemes) in three-letter (e.g., sip) and four-letter (e.g., slip) words.
Some students require multisensory scaffolds such as manipulatives or Elkonin boxes as their skills develop.
The most significant benefit of phonemic awareness knowledge is that students can automatically perform advanced phonemic awareness skills, such as manipulation and substitution, without the need for manipulatives or scaffolds. With advanced phonemic awareness, students can better develop their sight word recognition through orthographic mapping.

4. Age Appropriateness

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

phonemic awareness

dyslexia

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

phonemic awareness teaching order

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

5. Helpful Links

This is a great 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 being a listening detective.
Identify sounds with eyes closed: clapping, door opening, marbles rolling, etc.
Locate the source of sounds.
Sequence sounds: what happened first, next, 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. Here are printable nursery rhyme charts.
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: child uses thumbs up/thumbs down if they rhyme. Or say 3 words: child identifies the word that 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

Adding sounds: “Add /f/ to ox → fox; add /c/ to at → cat.”
Missing sounds: Identify which sound is removed from a word, e.g., rice/ice.
Alliteration: Create sentences with repeated beginning sounds, e.g., “Six silly snakes sat soaking up some sun.”
Sound discrimination: Recognize which words share the same initial, medial, or final sound.
Round Robin Game: “I’m going on a trip, and I’m taking a pen, pencil, peanut, parrot…” Continue with other letters.

Blend Onset and Rimes

Example: g-ame → game, n-ight → night, tr-uck → truck.
The onset is the beginning letter sound or blend; the rime is the vowel and letters after. See Onsets and Rimes.
Have the child segment onset and rime independently.

Sound Substitution with Blocks

Use four colored blocks (green, yellow, blue, orange), each representing a sound.
Example: Put out green, yellow, blue blocks. Say “rice.” Remove green block → “ice.” Change ice → mice, mice → mitt, mitt → mutt.

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

Syllable Awareness

Clap syllables in names or words.
Blend two-part words: sun/shine → sunshine.
Segment syllables: ta/ble → table.
Delete syllables: table without “ta” → ble; computer without “er” → comput(e).

Phoneme Awareness

Break words into phonemes and synthesize them.
Blend sounds: /s/ /a/ /d/ → sad (start with continuous sounds like s, m, n, f, v, z, l, r, vowels).
Segment words using Elkonin boxes (CVC worksheets). Example: fish → f i sh (one box per sound).

Isolate sounds:
- Beginning sound in cat? /c/
- Ending sound in dog? /d/
- Middle sound in and? /n/
Play “Sound of the Day” by renaming common items with the same sound, e.g., mamper, mesk, mencil.
Play “Name the Object” by segmenting something in the room: “I see a /ch/ /ai/ /r/.”
Manipulate phonemes:
- Map → Mop → Cop → Cot (change /a/ → /o/, /m/ → /c/, /p/ → /t/).
Ask riddles: What ends with /d/ and is a color?
Guess What? Introduce Sounds and Letters: “I’m thinking of something in this room that starts with /sh/.” Say the sound, not the letter name.
Initial Sounds and Letters: Use pictures or objects. Ask if two words start with the same sound, e.g., dog and deer; milk and nest.
Final Sounds and Letters: Ask if two words end with the same sound, e.g., dress and glass; box and hill.
Word Search: Initial or Final Consonants: Ask the child to find objects starting or ending with a letter (say the letter name, not the sound).

Consonant Blends and Letter Introduction

Introduce letters after phonemic awareness is established: Say the sound, not the letter name, e.g., /sh/ → shark.
Consonant blends are difficult for children to segment. When segmenting a word like blend, each sound needs to be distinct: /b/ /l/ /e/ /n/ /d/. Have the child change a part of the blend, such as /l/ to /r/ – brend.

Orthographic Mapping – The Move to Connect the Sound to the Grapheme

Check out the amazing orthographic mapping teaching tools under Amazon Recommendations below!

Strong phonemic awareness allows children to store words for automatic recognition.
Use work mats with boxes for phonemes.
Tap, slide, or move counters for each phoneme.
Write letters in boxes, read, erase, repeat with new words.

7. NEWSFLASH

Blending and segmentation are the most important phonemic awareness skills.

Advanced skills like phoneme deletion or substitution correlate with reading but do not cause improved reading.
Focus instruction on blending sounds to read and segmenting sounds to spell.
Rhyming and syllable skills help with larger sound awareness but are not sufficient for phoneme-level reading skills.

8. Amazon Recommendations

Make your life easier with these handy tools! As an Amazon Associate, I may earn from qualifying purchases, but these are my heartfelt recommendations. See more tools I use on My Amazon Recommendations page.

Orthographic Mapping Tools

Paddles for Reading Groups

How I use these paddles in my reading groups: I give the students a word. They place a circle in each box representing each sound. We slide each circle magnet up to the drawn circle as we say each sound. In the boxes, we write each sound. Approx. $35.

Less Expensive Elkonin Boxes for Small Groups

You get 12 of these double-sided boards. We count the phonemes in a word by touching each dot to represent each sound. Then we add the graphemes. We do syllables on the reverse. Approx. $15.

Individual Elkonin Board for Homeschool

One side is for segmenting and spelling words, and the other side is for syllables. Approx. $8.

Phonemic Awareness Guides

Parent or Teacher Teaching Manual

Parents, are you looking for a simple guide to support your child’s reading skills? This workbook has received rave reviews from parents. By following the activities in the book, your child can make strong progress in developing phonemic awareness. Approx. $18.

Teaching Manual

As a reading specialist, I have used this comprehensive guide for years with great success. While our district has since adopted Heggerty, I continue to recommend this book for districts that do not use Heggerty, as it provides a thorough, research-based foundation in phonemic and phonological awareness. Approx. $33

Tile Boards – when your child is ready to attach sounds to graphemes

Have your child create words using the various graphemes! Great for 1:1 work. Approx. $29.

Students segment words and then use the foam tiles to spell them. Great for 1:1 work. Approx. $23.

Grade 2 and 3 Science of Reading Expectations

Sound Walls

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Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic and Phonological Awareness: A Guide for Parents and Teachers

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