Phonemic Awareness: Assessing Student Needs and Screening Tools

What’s the importance of phonemic awareness, and what exactly does that mean?

First, phonics and phonemic awareness are not the same thing.

Phonics is understanding the relationship of letters and sounds in WRITTEN language.

Phonemic awareness is understanding the sounds of language, working together in SPOKEN language to make words.

A Little Deeper on Phonemic Awareness

According to the National Institute for Literacy, Putting Reading First, Kindergarten Through Grade 3, “If children are to benefit from phonics instruction, they need phonemic awareness.”

The document goes on to say, “The reasons are obvious: children who cannot hear and work with the phonemes of spoken words will have a difficult time learning how to relate these phonemes to graphemes when they see them in written words.”

Now, In Plain English

What that says to me, is that children need to be able to hear language as much as see language and even “feel” language, by tapping the letters on one hand while saying the sounds, tracing in the air, on paper, in sand, underlining the word while they repeat it, or any other creative way teachers have come up with to implement the kinetic part of OG.

Phonemic awareness is a subcategory of phonological awareness. Phonological awareness is broad, encompassing many different parts of spoken language.

Phonemic awareness is narrow, boiled down to just identifying and manipulating individual sounds in words.

Teaching and Tutoring Using Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness is divided into categories for teaching.

Phoneme isolation

• Recognition of individual sounds in a word.
• Teacher says, “What is the first sound in van?”
• Children: “The first sound in van is /v/.”

Phoneme identity

• Recognition of the same sounds in different words.
• Teacher says, “What sound is the same in fix, fall and fun?”
• Children: “The first sound, /f/, is the same.”

Phoneme categorization

• Recognition of a word in a set of three or four words that has the “odd” sound.
• Teacher: “Which word does not belong? Bud, bun, rug.”
• Children: “Rug does not belong. It does not begin with /b/.”

Phoneme Blending

• Students listen to a sequence of separately spoken phonemes, and then combine the phonemes to form a word. Then they write and read the word.
• Teacher: “What word is /b/ /i/ /g/?”
• Children: “/b/ /i/ /g/ is big.”
• Teacher: “Now let’s write the sounds in big. /b/ write b, /i/ write I, /g/ write g.”
• Teacher: (Writes big on the board.). “Now we are going to read the word big.”

Phoneme segmentation

• Break a word into separate sounds, saying each sound and tapping out or counting it. Then write and read the word.
• Teacher: “How many sounds are in grab?”
• Children: “/g/ /r/ /a/ /b/. Four sounds.”
• Teacher: “Now let’s write the sounds in grab: /g/, write g, /r/, write r, /a/, write a, /b/ write b.
• Teacher: (Writes grab on the board.) “Now we are going to read the word grab.”

Phoneme deletion

• Recognize the word that remains when a phoneme is removed from another word.
• Teacher: “What is smile without the /s/?
• Children: “Smile without the /s/ is mile.”

Phoneme addition

• Make a new word by adding a phoneme to an existing word.
• Teacher: “What word do you have if you add /s/ to the beginning of park?”
• Children: “Spark.”

Phoneme substitution

• Substitute one phoneme for another to make a new word.
• Teacher: “The word is bug. Change /g/ to /n/. What’s the new word?”
• Children: “Bun.”

A Final Word on Phonemic Awareness

Keep in mind when taking in this information, where I said Phonemic Awareness is just one, narrow portion of Phonetic Awareness.

The skills presented here are important for identifying and manipulating the individual sounds of words, not the whole kit and caboodle.

Isolating phonemic awareness is important in the overall practice of the multisensory, see-it, hear-it, feel-it approach. Once students understand the letters and sounds, and realize these little letters make up words, then blending the sounds into CVC words is much easier.

According to the Institute for Literacy, phonemic awareness is best taught in small groups, as opposed to large groups or individually, because students can benefit from listening to the exchange between peers and the instructor.

But, I have had a great experience teaching one-on-one, and watching students have those ah-ha moments is a wonderful feeling!

Here is a list of terms for this post. Source listed below.

 

No prep, ready-to-use lessons for phonemic awareness

The Read and Spell Foundations System: Consonants and Short Vowels is a step-by-step structured literacy system designed to support parents, tutors, and educators in building foundational reading and spelling skills using consonants and short vowels.

This resource includes activities and phonemic awareness activities for use with students! Use it as a clear starting point or as a structured routine to strengthen the lessons you’re already teaching.

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Source:

Source: National Institute for Literacy, Put Reading First, Kindergarten Through Grade 3, Third Edition.