1. Chapter 5 Phonemic Awareness Janet Avery

2. What? Phonemic Awareness is understanding that words can be broken down into smaller sounds – phonemes. Phonemic Awareness is small part of the bigger Phonological Awareness – words, syllables, rhymes, and finally phonemes. Being able to break words into their smallest parts – phonemes, and being able to blend/segment/manipulate those phonemes is the most critical skill in relation to reading and spelling.

3. Why? Phonemic awareness in itself is not critical for students; it is critical in the big picture of learning to read and write well. To benefit from the tools that phonics can give a student in decoding, they must first understand the sounds in phonemic awareness/phonological skills. The phoneme gives the letters and blends sounds that make sense to the learner.

4. When? The greatest impact of phonemic awareness instruction is in the earliest grades – preschool, kindergarten, and first. From second grade on, phonemic instruction is only needed for students not reading at grade level or above. Older students who struggle with reading – phonemic awareness screening needs to be done to check that the student have that foundation for success.

5. How? Rhyming games – allow students to manipulate phonemes to make words that rhyme. Use of manipulatives such as blocks or buttons allow students the kinesthetic outlet – they move a block for each phoneme in a word. Use pictures to add/delete word parts on compound words such as football and starfish.

6. Conclusion Phonemic awareness, and phonological skills are the building blocks on which good, fluent readers are built. It is most important to build this awareness in early grades, and even more important to assess that it was built with students who are struggling in later grades.