Research in the past decade has revealed that phonemic awareness plays a critical role in children's reading acquisition. In fact, it is considered a necessary insight for independence in reading and is the best predictor of reading success.

What is Phonemic Awareness?

Phonemic Awareness is the cognitive process that allows fluent readers to translate print into speech and speech sounds into meaningful words.

Why is Phonemic Awareness so important?

• It is the foundation of phonics - greatly shortening the time it takes to "break the code"
• It uses natural speech strategies to replace hard to memorize rules and exceptions
• It is the foundation of "natural" reading - greatly strengthening literature-based instruction

Individuals who are phonemically aware are able to do the following:

• Rhyme
• Blend isolated sounds together to form a word
• Segment spoken words into their constituent sounds
• Substitute sounds in spoken words
• Add sounds to spoken words
• Delete a sound from a spoken word

Phonemic Awareness Inventory

(Here are some easy activities to do with your child to strengthen their P.A.)

Level 1

Whole Word Discrimination (Are these words the same?)

fat - bat	red - rid	slip - slit
dip - hip	nut-nut	grip - grip
man - man	mat - map	flit - flip

Rhyming Words-Recognition (Do these words rhyme?)

happy - sappy	boy - toy	sun - fun
sad - mad	girl - boy	play - game

Rhyming Words-Application (What word rhymes with ___?)

man -	old -	try -
sun -	play -	skip -
eat -	book -	scale -

Syllable Counting (How many syllables do you hear in the word____?)

ball -	wagon -	umbrella -
elephant -	hippopotamus -	orangutan -

Level 2

Syllable Segmentation (I'll say a word, then you repeat it slowly.)

rainbow (rain -bow)	paper (pa - per)	scissors (sci - ssors)
doughnut (dough - nut)	basket (bas - ket)	butterfly (bu - tter - fly)
sidewalk (side - walk)	color (co - lor)	unbrella (um - bre - lla)

Oral Synthesis - Blending Speech Sounds (Listen and tell me the word I said.)

n - o	f - a - t	m - o - p
s - ay	s - i - t	w - a - s
m - e	t - e - n	h - a - ve
r - u -n	c - u - t	s -ai - d
c - a - k - e	w - e - n - t	st - o - r - y

Level 3

Approximation - (Do you hear the /b/ sound at the beginning, middle, or end of ____?)

big	robot	banana
tab	cabbage	crib

Phoneme Isolation - (What sound do you hear ______?)

FIRST	LAST	MIDDLE
sun foot yes red	water buff candy ten	feet tub lake pan

Level 4

Segmentation - Rereat each word slowly so I can hear each separate sound, like c - a - t.)

me	you	book
so	play	skip
man	old	scale

Level 5

Phoneme Deletion -( Say the word ____, but leave off the ______. )

pop	dip	not	cub	fin
can	ten	tab	mop	set

 

Phoneme Substitution - (Replace the first sound in ____with _____. What is the new word?)

pail	log	get
cat	tub	pop
pig	dice	jump