Phonemic Awareness: Where Do I Start?

The Why:

I was shocked when I read that phonemic awareness is the most common source of reading difficulties. What!?! Why in the world was I never taught about this in college?  Luckily, it has now become quite a hot topic in education, and for good reason. Before we get into the how of phonemic awareness, let's clear up a few terms that are often confused. First of all, this:

(Image from https://www.theliteracynest.com/)

I often hear teachers use the terms phonics and phonemic awareness interchangeably, but they are two separate things. Phonemic awareness is an awareness of the individual sounds in a word. When you tie those sounds with print (letters)....it then becomes phonics.

Another term that is often confused is phonological awareness and phonemic awareness.

Phonological awareness is the umbrella term for the knowledge of sounds in spoken language.  Phonemic awareness is a subset skill and is the highest level of phonological awareness.  It is critical that we explicitly teach to the phoneme level. A phoneme is the smallest unit of speech, for example /k/ or /l/. Blending and segmenting phonemes is critical because it directly impacts reading and spelling. 

Here are some examples that might clear this up:

Blending: You would say the individual sounds and students blend them together to make a word.  You say /s/ /u/ /n/  and student blends those to say the word: sun.

Segmenting:  Now it's the opposite.  You give the student the word and they break it into parts.  You say, "Tell me all the sounds in the word black."  Student says: /b/ /l/ /a/ /k/.

Manipulating: You say, "Say the word stop."  Student repeats, "Stop." You say, "Now change the sound /t/ to /l/. What's the new word?" Student says "Slop."

Here are some quotes from David Kilpatrick's book that really stood out to me:

And then my favorite:

I mean, how exciting is that?  That is why I love teaching kindergarten...I can make sure these little students get on the right track from the beginning. What an amazing and powerful gift that I can give them! I can prevent any reading difficulties that may happen in the future.  I've personally seen what happens if we don't get them on the right track...and remediation is so much more difficult than prevention.

The How:

So let's get into how we teach this. I teach phonological awareness both whole group and small group, allowing my students to get a double dose of this critical skill.

Whole Group

One of the first phonological awareness tasks we learn in kindergarten is syllable awareness.  I love chants and songs, so here is how we practice syllables:

I say, "Class, what's a syllable?"  And the students respond, "How many beats are in a word."  Then I give them a word, we clap it, and count the syllables.

Here is the song I use for blending.  I didn't make these up...I heard another teacher use them (on YouTube...I will try to find who it was) and fell in love! My students love them!

And the song for segmenting is a class fave:

Here's a quick video of me doing some phonological awareness activities (lesson from Heggerty) in kindergarten. 

Small Group

It's important to hit phonemic awareness in your small group instruction too. This is where you can really scaffold for those students who need it.  

When a student is struggling with a phonemic awareness task, pull out some manipulatives to help them. We love using slinkies to help us stretch out a word. Elkonin boxes with bingo chips or cars and tracks are all fun ways to help students segment a word. Using hand motions (as I did in the videos above) are also a way to lend support.  The goal is to eventually pull away from all of these, and for students to be able to do them automatically (within 2 seconds) without any of these supports. Any time I introduce a new level of difficulty with a student, I end up needing to pull out a manipulative of some sort. After a couple lessons, I am usually able to put the manipulative away and do it without. Once they can do the task with ease and within 2 seconds, we move on to the next level and the manipulatives come out again.

If you find the student is still having a hard time, even with a manipulative, you may need to go back a skill or two.  For example, if a child is struggling to blend 3 phonemes (/c/ /a/ /t/ = cat), go back to the onset-rime level (/c/  /-at/ = cat).  If he/she still can't blend onset/rime, go to the syllable level (pa  per = paper).  If syllables are tricky, compound words are a little easier (cup  cake = cupcake). 

The important thing is that you teach phonemic awareness explicitly and with lots of opportunities for practice. Remember to give your students a double dose by teaching both whole group and small group, scaffolding where needed. I hope that is helpful!  Questions?  Leave a comment below or email me through the contact form!

Update 4/29/23

I've learned so much more about phonemic awareness since I wrote this post. For example, I've learned the importance of getting to the phoneme level as quickly as possible. I've also learned that we need to connect phonemic awareness instruction with our phonics instruction. I love that I can continually refine and improve what I do. You can read more about all I've learned in my book: 7 Mighty Moves: Research-Backed, Classroom-Tested Strategies to Ensure K-3 Reading Success. Order here: https://amzn.to/3zCWhQ9