What is Phonemic Awareness?

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Phonemic awareness is hearing, identifying, and manipulating individual sounds, called phonemes, in spoken words. Phonemic awareness activities can be done with eyes shut.

Phonemic awareness is not phonics. Instead, phonological awareness forms the basis of phonics. Phonics is the understanding that sounds and print letters are connected; this is the first step toward “reading.”
Before children learn to read, they need to become more aware of how the sounds in words work. First, they must understand that words are made up of speech sounds called phonemes.
Phonemes are the smallest parts of sound in a spoken word that differ in a word’s meaning. Listen to the word ball. It has 3 sounds /b/ /aw/ /l/. If we switch (or manipulate) /b/ for /w/, we have a new word wall. Change /aw/ to short /e/, and we have another new word, well.
Phonemic awareness improves a child’s word reading, comprehension, and spelling ability.
Research shows that blending and segmentation are the most important phonemic awareness skills! Teaching phoneme blending and segmentation promotes reading and spelling skills and directly applies to reading and writing.

Activities – Teachers, this brochure is excellent for parents!

What is Phonological Awareness?

Phonological awareness encompasses several sound-related skills necessary to grow as a reader. For example, as a child develops phonological awareness, he not only understands that words are made up of small sound units (phonemes) but also learns that words can be segmented into larger sound “chunks” known as syllables. Each syllable begins with a sound (onset) and ends with another sound (Rimes).
When measuring a child’s phonological awareness, we look at his ability to apply several different skills. For example, a child with strong phonological awareness should recognize and use rhyme, break words into syllables, blend phonemes into syllables and words, identify the beginning and ending sounds in a syllable, and see smaller words within larger words (i.e., cat in catalog).
Phonemic awareness is just one aspect of phonological awareness.
While phonological awareness encompasses a child’s ability to recognize the many ways sounds function, phonemic awareness is only understanding the tiniest sound units in words.
Because phonemic awareness is a subskill under the phonological awareness “umbrella,” not all measures for determining a reader’s skill level are applied when assessing phonemic awareness. A reader with strong phonemic awareness will demonstrate the ability to hear rhyme and alliteration (the repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of several different words used in a sentence or paragraph, such as the sweet smell of success), find the different sounds in a set of words (i.e., bat, ball, wet) and blend and segment phonemes.

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Important 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 1st grade who score 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, like manipulation and substitution, without any manipulatives or scaffolds. With advanced phonemic awareness, students can better develop their sight word recognition through orthographic mapping.

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

- “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).

Activities to Develop Phonemic and Phonological Awareness

Listening Games: To sharpen the child’s ability to attend selectively to sounds. Think of environmental sounds, storytelling, sharing activities, read-alouds, following oral directions, sequencing events, and being a listening detective ~ detecting the mistake heard.

With eyes closed, have the child identify the sound of clapping, a bell, a drawer opening/closing, a book slamming, crackers smashing, paper crumpling, marbles in a jar, paper ripping, a zipper going up and down, scissors cutting, etc.
Have the child identify a sequence of sounds.
Can the child locate the source of the sound?
Practice what is said out of order from a familiar nursery rhyme. For example, Humpty Dumpty wall on a sat, or swap the word parts as in one, two, shuckle my boo. Also, can the child detect that the story order is incorrect, as in mixing up the order in the Three Little Pigs? If they can, that is being a good listening detective!
Have the child listen to and participate in storytelling, read-alouds, follow oral directions, and sequence events.
Identify animals by the sounds they make.

Rhyming: To use rhyme to introduce the child to the sounds in words. Think of nursery rhymes, text variations where a rhyming word can be inserted, rimes ~ see my Rime page, poetry, and fingerplays.

Nursery Rhymes

Round Robin Game: I’m going on a trip, and I’m taking a pet, net, jet, etc. The child needs to provide rhyming words.
Rhyme Hunt: I see something in this room that rhymes with rock. Continue in this manner.
Say two words, and the child gives thumbs up/thumbs down if the words rhyme.
Ask What rhymes with top and starts with /h/? What rhymes with rack and starts with /t/? Continue with these riddles.
Sing new words to the tune of If You’re Happy and You Know It: Did you ever see a bear in a chair? (Replace bear and chair with different words the next time around.) Did you ever see a bear in a chair? No, I never. No, I never. No, I never. No, I never. No, I never saw a bear in a chair. Did you ever see a bell in a ______….. “Continue the song in this manner.
Read lots of Mother Goose rhymes to your child. Teach your child to use meaning and meter to notice and predict rhyming words. Then, follow this link to printable nursery rhyme charts.
Have the child sit with friends/family in a circle with fists up, as in One Potato, Two Potato. As a group, say a nursery rhyme with fists tapped one at a time in a circle. If the child’s fist is the rhyming word, the fist goes behind the back. Continue in this manner.
Evoke the realization that almost any word can be rhymed. Say a word, and have the child say a rhyme for it, even if it is a nonsense word.
Say rhyme phrases, and have the child fill in the blank, such as A cat is wearing a ____. A mouse lives in a _____.
ing rhymes for action play ~ barking/parking, ringing/singing, wishing/fishing ~ have the child give a rhyming word and act these out.

Words and Sentences: To develop the child’s awareness that language is composed of strings of words.

Add A Sound (Synthesis) to introduce the child to synthesizing words from their separate phonemes. To Add a Sound, explain that if we put a sound at the beginning of a word, we can have a new word, as in ox, add /f/, now we have fox. At add /c/, now we had cat. Say a vowel with a consonant and have the child add a sound.
Different Words, Same Final Phoneme: Gather objects in your house, ask the child which 2 objects end with the same sound, or even say a word such as fork, and ask the child to find something in the room that ends with the same sound. Cake ends like fork.
What Is Missing? Say 2 words and ask the child what sound was taken away, such as rice/ice ( the r sound is missing), same/aim (s sound), thick/ick (th sound), or do this in reverse ~ what sound was added?
Use alliteration in silly sentences, such as six silly snakes sat soaking up some sun. Ask what sound was heard most often. Big bears bake bread, etc. Jiggle, Joggle, Jee by Laura Richards and Chicky Chicky Chook Chook by Cathy MacLennan are two books that focus on alliteration that preschoolers enjoy.
Round Robin Game: I’m going on a trip, and I’m taking a pen, pencil, peanut, parrot. . . . Continue this game using various letters.
Create titles and a story for a character like Robert, the Running Rabbit. This is a form of alliteration.
Do discrimination activities. Listen to which word starts with the same sound as the take. Say three words such as pencil, tub, pan. The child should recognize tub as having the same beginning sound as take. Which word does not belong: mat, leg, or had ~ it would be leg because of the short e sound ~ the other 2 words are alike because they have a short a. This would be more advanced. You can play which word does/does not belong using beginning letter sounds, vowels, and ending letter sounds.
Blend onset and rimes such as g-ame is game, n-ight is night, tr-uck is truck. (The onset is the beginning letter sound or blend, and the rime is the vowel and string of letters that comes after.) Have the child segment the onset and rime on their own. See my Rime page.
Sounds In Words: You can use 4 different colored blocks for this activity ~ green, yellow, blue, orange. Each color represents one sound, but not a particular sound. For example, on the word rice, the child may represent /r/ with a green block, /i/ with a yellow block, and /s/ (the actual ce in the word sounds like /s/) with a blue block. When the green block is removed, it becomes long /i/ /s/ ~ ice, a whole new word. Your child needs to segment words into their phonemes. For example, ask your child to change rice to mice. Your child should swap out the green /r/ sound with a different color ~ perhaps orange, for /m/. The blue block is slid out to change mice to mitt, and the green block can now represent /t/.

Awareness of Syllables: To develop the ability to analyze words into separate syllables and to develop the ability to synthesize words from a string of individual syllables.

After modeling and asking the child to listen to syllable counts, have the child clap the syllables in their first and last name. Have the child feel his chin move to the various syllable amounts. Count syllables in different words.
Blend and Segment Syllables: Have the child blend the 2-word parts heard sun/shine, up/stairs, ta/ble. Say a word, and have the child segment the syllables.
Play Syllable and Sound Deletion: Say table. Say it again, but don’t say /ta/. The answer would be ble. Any 2 or more syllable words can be broken down in this manner. Say computer. Say it again but don’t say er. It would be compute.

Phonemes: To develop the ability to analyze words into a sequence of separate phonemes and to develop the ability to synthesize words from a series of individual phonemes.

Blend the sounds into a word, such as/s/ /a/ /d/. Talk like a robot, segmenting each sound, and have the child blend the sounds into a word.
Say a sentence leaving a word out that you deliberately segment, such as where did I leave my /p/ /e/ /n/? This is a fun way for the child to blend.
Say a word, and have the child segment it on his own. Use Elkonin boxes, which look like this:

The word /f/ /i/ /sh/ fit nicely in the 3 squares because fish has 3 sounds. Ask the child to point to the box where they hear /i/, for example. The answer would be the middlebox.

f	i	sh
t	oo	th

Elkonin boxes

Have the child work on sound discrimination. Does boy start with /b/ or /v/? Say various words and give 2 sound options.
Have the child do manipulation activities with pennies or ziti, representing sounds: Show the child 3 pennies. Say this says map, /m/ /a/ /p/. Now change map to mop. The child should know to swap out the middle penny for a different penny. Then say, now change mop to cop. Now change cop to cot. The child should be swapping out the correct penny. You can also do this orally without the penny. Say, change the /a/ in map to /o/. What is the word? Mop! Now change /m/ in mop to /c/. What is the word? Cop!
Play “Sound of the Day” by renaming common items with the same sound, such as mamper, mesk, mencil, etc. . .
Consonant Blends ~ Adding and Subtracting Initial Sounds: The child should have plain blocks or pieces of ziti ~ any item ~ small, uniform, and plain. Say a simple word such as lay. The child must represent the phonemes heard by using plain blocks or ziti. Lay has 2 phonemes,/l/ and /a/. Now say a rhyming word – play. That has 3 phonemes to be represented /p/ /l/ /a/. Continue in this manner.
Guess A Word: Have the child find a secret object in the room. You guess what the object is while he says it phoneme by phoneme, such as /ch/…./ai/…./r/.

Introducing Letters and Spellings: To introduce the relation of letters and speech sounds.

Ask riddles such as What ends with /d/ and is a color?
Guess What ~ Introducing Sounds and Letters: I’m thinking of something in this room that starts with /sh/. So, say the SOUND, not the letter name(s).
Initial Sounds and Letters: Use pictures from a book or objects in a room, or words from your head. Say 2 words and ask the child if they begin with the same sound. For example, does dog and deer begin with the same sound? What about milk and nest?
Final Sounds and Letters: Say 2 words, such as dress and glass. Ask the child if the words end with the same sound. What about box and hill? Continue playing in this manner.
Word Search Initial or Final Consonants: Ask the child to find something in the room that starts with. . . and say any letter of the alphabet ~ NOT the sound, but the actual letter. The child must determine the sound of the letter to find the object. Play the same game with ends with. . . again, say the letter name, not the sound.
Introduction to How Words Are Spelled By Adding A Letter: Start by writing down 2 letters, such as at, ad, or even sa or ma. Add a 3rd letter for the child to decode, such as mat, sat, pat in the at example or sat, sad, or sag in the sa example.

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

Phonemic Awareness Hand Motion Videos

NEWSFLASH – Blending and Segmentation are the most important phonemic awareness skills!!!

Advanced oral PA skills (such as deletion and substitution) are not as important as blending and segmentation. There is a correlation between advanced PA skills and reading skills, but correlation does not imply causation. Students who can orally delete or substitute phonemes can typically read better, but research shows that students who do well with advanced PA do well because they can already read! They can visualize words and mentally move the letters. But that does not mean teaching oral deletion or substitution helps children read better. TEACH BLENDING AND SEGMENTATION INSTEAD!

As far as phonological awareness and larger chunks—rhyming and syllables—teaching children to rhyme or segment syllables do not contribute to phoneme-level skills—skills needed to read and spell. TEACH BLENDING AND SEGMENTATION INSTEAD!

Research shows that teaching phoneme blending and segmentation promotes reading and spelling skills. Using orthographic mapping and manipulative letters is a bonus for blending and segmentation! When we decode a word, we blend the sounds. When we spell a word, we segment the sounds. Blending and segmentation have direct applications. There is no direct application of oral phoneme deletion or substitution skills.

Use orthographic mapping! Orthographic mapping is how we anchor words into memory and store them for accurate and effortless recognition. Here’s how:

Students each have a work mat in a wipable plastic sleeve or laminated (10 ml) with the same number of boxes as sounds. Have a counter or penny in each box.
Say a word (cat), and students repeat.
Everyone taps the individual sounds tactilely – using fingers, poppers, tapping on the table, or tapping along their arm.
Ask, “How many sounds?” Students say “3.”
On their workmat of 3 boxes (3 boxes since the word is cat – cat has 3 sounds), children slide each counter up to the circle as they say each sound.
Children then write the corresponding letters in the boxes using an erasable marker.
They read it, erase it, and are ready for the next word.

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