Phonological and Phonemic Awareness: Essential Skills for Your Early Learners

Phonological and phonemic awareness essential skills for early readers square image

Phonological and Phonemic Awareness: Essential Skills for Early Learners

Phonological and phonemic awareness are the building blocks of literacy. Without a strong foundation in these skills, it can be challenging for young learners to develop effective reading and writing abilities.

In this blog post, we will explore the importance of teaching phonological and phonemic awareness and provide practical strategies for incorporating them into your early childhood curriculum.

Phonological Awareness is…

Phonological awareness is the key to cracking the code of reading. It’s about hearing and understanding the individual sounds that make up words. Think of it like breaking down “cat” into /k/ /a/ /t/. This skill is super important for learning to read and write.

Research shows that students who are strong in phonological awareness are more likely to become successful readers. So, let’s dive into the world of phonemic awareness and discover how it can help your students unlock the magic of reading!

What are the aspects of Phonemic Awareness?

The major aspects of phonemic awareness are noticing (blending and segmenting), deleting, adding, and substituting sounds.

Phoneme Discrimination

This is the ability to hear the similarities and the differences in phonemes (two or more), usually within words. So you could practice this by asking your class : Which word has a different beginning sound: “cat, cop, jam?”. You can also practice this with middle (medial) and ending sounds.

Phoneme Deletion and Substitution

Deletion of phonemes is removing one phoneme from a word completely. This can lead to a new word or a nonsense word. Here’s an example:

Substitution is the most complex skill of the three because it involves several different skills in one! Students remove one phoneme and replace it with another. For example, the teacher might say “Say lot. Replace the /l/ in lot with /p/. What’s the new word?” and the student says “pot”.

To summarize, noticing phonemes and blending and segmenting are easier phonemic awareness skills and manipulating phonemes (add/delete and substituting ) are more complex.

Keep reading for more tips!

Phonological and phonemic awareness essential skills for early readers fb image

Examples of Phonemics Awareness Activities

So what do you do to get your students practicing phonemic awareness, especially if you don’t have a PA program?

Here are just a few examples:

Blending phonemes – Hearing someone say sounds and putting them together to determine what the words, ie. What word is this: /c/ /a/ /p/ ? Cap.
Segmenting – This is basically the opposite of blending – hearing a word and being able to say the sounds, ie. What are the sounds in cap? /c/ /a/ /p/
Isolating Initial sounds – Identifying the first sound of a word, ie. What is the first sound in cap? /c/
Isolating Medial sounds – identifying the middle sound of a word (for beginners, use CVC words with short medial vowels) ie. What is the middle sound in cap? /a/
Isolating final sounds – naming the final sound in a word, ie. what is the last sound in cap? /p/
Deleting and adding phonemes – taking a word and adding or deleting a sound from it , like “What is cup without /c/?”
Substituting phonemes – replacing a phoneme in a word with a different one, such as “Say cup. Now say cup , but instead of /c/, say /p/” and the students should say “pup”
Onset and rime – asking students to break a word into onset and rime, like cup into /c/ /up/

Fun Ways to Engage Kids during Phonemic Awareness Activities

Make learning fun and active! Try these ideas to incorporate movement and hands-on activities into your phonological awareness lessons:

Movement and Sounds: Do a lunge or squat for each sound in a word.
Hidden Sounds: Place small objects in plastic eggs or bags and have students identify the sounds in the word.
I Spy Sounds: Play “I Spy” but focus on sounds instead of objects.
Manipulative Magic: Use objects like bingo chips or pom poms to represent each sound in a word.

These activities will help students understand the structure of words and make learning more engaging.

Ready to Go Activities from Teachers Pay Teachers

Of course, it would be convenient to have ready-to-use activities and resources from Teachers Pay Teachers! This resource makes teaching PA easy and engaging.

You can take a look at my new teacher led Phonemic Awareness activities! With these teacher lesson plans and task cards, you can have everything you need at your fingertips. There are 30-36 task cards for each skills (80 pages or so) plus 20 lesson plans!

Phonemic Awareness task cards and lesson plans Phonological awareness

Ready to make a difference in your students’ skills? Grab this resource and watch their skills soar!

Check out the Phonological Awareness Bundle!

Boost your students’ reading skills with the comprehensive bundle of task cards! And save almost 15% by grabbing this resource.

Covering everything from phoneme deletion to syllables, this resource offers targeted practice to support your Science of Reading instruction. With over 900 task cards and differentiated activities, you’ll have everything you need to help your students master these essential skills. Perfect for small groups or independent work. Check it out to see how it would help you and your students.

And Peek at Phonological Awareness Bingo

Phonological Awareness Bingo will engage your students in essential PA skills. With seven different bingo boards, your students will have ample opportunities to practice rhyming, syllables, phoneme deletion, and more.

Key Benefits of This Resource

Aligned with the Science of Reading: Provides targeted practice of essential skills.
Engaging and Fun: Bingo games make learning exciting and interactive.
Differentiated Instruction: Suitable for students of all levels.
Easy to Use: Perfect for small groups, independent work, or with teacher assistants.

How to Use Phonological Awareness Bingo

This resource is simple to implement in your classroom. Simply print the bingo boards, provide markers (like bingo chips, coins, or mini erasers), and start playing! You can also use this resource as a warm-up activity, center activity, or independent practice.

Download the bingo resource today !