Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken words are made up of smaller parts and these parts can be pulled apart into individual sounds.
The first step is recognizing that words can be broken down into their individual sounds (phonemes). Students must then be able to isolate sounds (identify the 1st/last/medial sound in words,) blend sounds together to make a word, segment (break apart) sounds of a word, and manipulate sounds.
Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound. Think about the word chip. You can break this word into three sound parts: ch-i-p.
- /ch/ is a phoneme.
- /i/ is a phoneme.
- /p/ is a phoneme.
When a child has phonemic awareness, he can break that word up into its individual sounds like I just did. He can also identify the first, middle, or last sound in chip (called phoneme isolation).
Next comes phoneme manipulation.
- Deleting a sound: Say “chat”. Take away the /ch/. What is left? (at)
- Substituting a sound: Say “chip”. Change the /i/ to /o/. What’s the word? (chop)
- Adding Sounds: Say “lap”. Add /s/ to the beginning. What’s the word now? (slap)
Manipulating phonemes comes later. Initially, we want our soon-to-be readers to be able to blend sounds (ch-i-p=chip), segment sounds, and isolate sounds (first kids can identify beginning sounds, then ending sounds, and last middle sounds.)
When talking about phonemic awareness, you are not involving print. It’s all about the sounds in words. When a child is able to break apart a word into its smallest units of sound, he/she is ready to read.
This is exactly how I felt when I first heard these two terms. I’m pretty sure I used them interchangeably for my first couple years of teaching. I had a really hard time wrapping my head around it!
Phonological awareness is a more general term. It is having an awareness of larger parts of words, such as syllables or word endings like -at in cat. Having the ability to recognize rhymes and count syllables are two examples of having phonological awareness.
Phonemic awareness is specifically understanding that words can be broken down into individual sounds. I think of phonological awareness as the umbrella and phonemic awareness is underneath it, along with rhyming, alliteration, and syllables.
Click here for a printable version of PHONOLOGICAL skills.
In order to read, a child must be able to break apart the sounds in words.
A phonological weakness will impair a child’s ability to decode words (Shaywitz 2003).
Research: Adams, 1990; Juel, 1988; Share, Jorm, Maclean, and Matthews, 1984; National Reading Panel2000; Scanlon & Vellutino, 1987
2000; Scanlon & Vellutino, 1987
Developing phonemic awareness leads to success with the next step in learning to read: phonics. Once a child has developed a strong phonemic awareness, he is ready to connect letters to those sounds and blend them together to read words. He is also ready to break apart sounds in a word and connect these sounds to letters to write words.
Phonics is an instructional method that involves matching letters to their sounds to decode words. Have you ever had a student who struggled with phonics. You asked yourself, Why can’t he sound out words? The answer is he most likely has not developed phonemic awareness. You need to throw the letters out the window for a bit and focus on strengthening his ability to hear the sounds in words. When applying phonics strategies, a child must first look at the word and identify the letters in that word. Then he connects the sounds to those letters. All the while, he is having to hold in his memory the previous sound. After matching the letters to their sounds, he is ready to blend the word together. But wait. He isn’t able to blend! I’ve had several students who seemed like they were ready to read because they had the letters mastered. They knew their sounds perfectly well too. But they still couldn’t blend those sounds together. Both letter/sound knowledge AND phonemic awareness must be present in order to begin phonics. Once those pieces of the puzzle are put together, the child is ready to decode!
How to Teach It
Phonemic awareness comes more naturally to some kids. With others, it needs to be explicitly taught, modeled, practiced, and practiced some more.
- All children benefit from phonemic awareness instruction, but it is absolutely crucial for kids who are lacking this skill.
- Instruction can begin as early as 4, but it should be in every kindergarten classroom.
- Before you can dig into phonemic awareness instruction (breaking apart the individual phonemes in words,) make sure your kids have a general phonological awareness: Start with rhyming, alliteration, and syllables. Here are some tips for developing these skills:
- Click here to download a printable version of the following ideas:
Once those skills are solid, you are ready to move into instruction to develop phonemic awareness.
I always have several puppets ready to use. I tell them that the puppets talk slower than we do and I need help translating. I even found a sloth puppet which is sort of perfect! Have the puppet talk in individual phonemes and have students “translate” for you.
Here is a link to an older blog post with some specific tips and ideas about phonemic awareness. It is packed with information, so I hope it helps! It’s a long post, so get some popcorn and a cup of coffee. 🙂
You can click here or on the picture to read this post.
If a child continues to struggle with phonemic awareness, this may be a sign of dyslexia. I will blog more about dyslexia in a later post. For now, just know a lack of phonemic awareness IS a sign of dyslexia. They will need more specialized help.
Now that your students have developed a strong phonemic awareness, phonics is a natural next step.
I made this to illustrate how phonics cannot happen without both pieces to the puzzle: phonemic awareness and the alphabetic principle. I will be blogging more about phonics soon! In the meantime, email me or comment with any specific questions you have so I can make sure I include it in my post.
Resources:
If you are looking for some RTI resources, I have a few available too:
This is how I store these:
